The Madness of Crowds

Intersectionality, Identity, and Finding A Place

On the Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew podcast recently, they were discussing the relatively new phenomena that is transgenderism, specifically when it comes to younger white women. It was actually an interview done by Dennis Prager, but they add some good discussion to it. It’s about 13 minutes in.

One of the striking observations (I’m paraphrasing) they made was this particular demographic seems to knowingly or unknowingly suffer from white guilt, feels shame in “white privilege”, fed by Critical Race Theory (CRT) and porn, and therefore wants to find a way out of it.

The path into transgenderism provides them a way to chose to become a victim, an oppressed group, and therefore gives them the rights and favor that oppressed group are seemingly rewarded with in this day and age.

If you didn’t know any better, it would seem the entire population in the US is either identifying as trans or supporting the push towards normalizing it. However, less than .6 percent of the US population currently identifies as trans. While this isn’t necessarily a post about transgenderism, I feel it’s important to point this out. These numbers will increase, however, as the push to normalize this continues into the HR departments, movies, and culture at large.

I’m pretty libertarian. You do you and please leave me alone. If you want to get an operation and change sexes, that’s your prerogative. My problem becomes two-fold when:

1. You start telling me I have to accept something, especially something that’s ultimately based on a false premise (identification as whatever you think you are or want to be against science, logic, and empirical evidence). This includes things across the board including “the science and proven restrictions of Covid”; I should feel “white guilt” because I was born a white man; wheat toast is better than rye toast; etc. You can have your opinion. You can even do insane things. Leave me out of your madness. “Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part” and “don’t make your problems my problems” are two sayings that come to mind.

2. You not only start telling me I have to do something, you set out to intimidate, bully, regulate, litigate, and otherwise railroad me into your insanity.

But I digress.

The transgender issue is just one head on the hydra though. Intersectionality and inclusion have become the mantra and driving doctrine of the Woke. Rather than finding the brilliant identity that’s been given to them, that’s inside of them to discover as an individual, they have slid into the morass of finding their identity in groups, causes, isms, and tribes.

In a previous post/podcast, we discussed the need to belong:

The Emotional Need of Belonging

What breaks my heart to know is that at the root of all of this intersectionality is a fundamental loss of the individual identity. What infuriates me is that it’s fantastically orchestrated.

For the last 50 years, the assault on the individual has been unrelenting. The breakdown of the nuclear family opened the floodgates for all kinds of numbing, disconnecting, and dehumanizing ideas aimed at detaching the individual from their own sense of self-discovery and self-determination. The family has been the traditional safeguard for these principals and the primary source for fostering the need and sense of belonging.

Disclaimer: I know many of you had crappy families. The nuclear family certainly doesn’t guarantee a life of bliss and identity. Families are messy, harsh, unwelcoming. All of that can be true. However, statistically, the nuclear family provides the best environment and opportunity for a child to grow into an educated, self-reliant, and self-sustaining adult capable of perpetuating a healthy society.

As the family began to break down, so did society, especially in the United States.

With that breakdown came a deep desire to belong…to something. Somewhere. Into this void came rushing all kinds of isms. Movements. Identity politics.

Humans are ingrained with the deep need to belong. It used to be that when you were cast out of your family or tribe or found yourself on the outside of the gates at night, you were at the mercy of all of the literal barbarians and wolves outside the gate. Your instinct to belong is a primitive defense mechanism.

Your need to belong also is spiritual. Although man is separated by God through sin, our longing to be reconnected to God, to each other, and to the natural world remains.

Family represents being safe within the gates. It represents an unbroken connection with Creator and creation. Intrinsically this guides us and pushes us to belong. When our family breaks down, we are in effect outside the gates, and those barbarians and wolves that have long threatened the unfortunate and lonely outcast still remain.

They have taken on different shapes and forms, but they are still just as deadly. In some ways, maybe more so, because instead of coming at you and your kids with actual swords and fangs, these barbarians and wolves come at you with lies. With programs and agendas that seem virtuous. With credentials and degrees and smart-sounding titles. With victimhood. With handouts. With hate for the other, disguised as injustice.

When our sense of belonging is skewed and unmet in healthy ways, the drive to satisfy that need drifts to any port in the storm. And boy, today, there are a lot of ports.

This assault on sexuality is much deeper than deconstructing physical gender. It’s about deconstructing the mind and heart. It is breaking the individual down so that the substance that remains of their soul and spirit can be poured into a larger group. Classism, racism, hedonism, ageism, environmentalism…the list goes on, but the goal remains the same. Destroy the individual.

Destroy the individual who’s losing themselves to this group. Deconstruct their every thought so that the only place they find some sense of belonging is within the strict confines of that particular group or some other pre-approved group.

And destroy the individual who’s outside the safe confines of the pre-approved groups.

As Douglas Murray describes in his book “The Madness of Crowds”, there’s a social hierarchy of victimhood that’s taken shape. You almost need a map to navigate this web of terms and intersecting ideas, which is exactly what he does in this amazing book.

We all desire and are driven to be inside the gates, somewhere. Some of us just isolate ourselves, content to be behind our own mental and emotional walls, determined to hold onto our individuality privately. Others balance community, self-reliance, and self-discovery in a more public way. Yet for either of these options, the desire to remain an individual drives us.

There’s a whole society out there, getting more vocal and numerous by the day, however, that either has no concept or no desire to find their identity and belonging on the individual level. Chanting the mantras of the isms, wearing the colors and waving the flags and decorating their Twitter bios with the approved groups - of any “side” - has become more important and more fulfilling than the thirst to know themselves, to know their neighbors, as individuals.

When all you see are groups and slogans and causes, not people, individuals don’t really exist. Only the greater good and the furtherance of that group’s cause.

When you’ve given up your self-determination, self-discovery, self-reliance, and individuality, you are putty to be molded by whomever is strong and smart enough to come along and feed into the nebulous, subjective space that you call reality.

And when you’ve lost your identity to a group and crave their belonging, whoever “they” say is one the outside of those vague but comforting gates becomes the enemy. A less than. An other. A not quite. You are the oppressed, and they are your oppressors. It is therefore mandatory for you to rage against them. In this rage and victimhood, you find purpose and belonging, which temporarily soothes the individual deep inside, dying more each day while you slip further into the groupthink.

And THAT is madness. It always was, and it always will be.