Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Document Notes
Something to add to discussions about values, especially changing behaviors and rules while maintaining them.
Highlights
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anger isn’t vanishing anytime soon. The only question is whether it will be directed at economic elites (“robbing you blind”) or cultural elites (“think they’re better than you”).
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Far-right populism deflects anger away from economic elites onto cultural elites. This works because social class is expressed not just through economics but also through profound cultural differences. One central cultural fissure is the divide between self-development and self-discipline.
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Middle-status workers highly value self-discipline and rule-following because that’s what’s needed to show up on time, without an “attitude,” take orders, and succeed in blue-, pink- and routine white-collar jobs. These workers also value the traditional institutions that anchor self-discipline.
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Elites highly value self-development because they need to be at the top of their game to survive and thrive in professional and managerial jobs. Elites’ best move in the scrum for social honor is sophistication, which displays both their high human capital (“I am educated and intelligent”) and their moral capital (“I think things through for myself and am not bound by tradition”).
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the only way to change deeply embedded power differentials is to be a pain in the ass. In 1996, only 27 percent of Americans supported gay marriage. By 2022, 71 percent did. That never would have happened if advocates had tamely accepted majority values.
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But how you’re a pain matters a lot.
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The push for gay marriage came from people who wanted to join the mainstream, not smash it. Gay liberation activists had the good sense to pay attention. Importantly, Coles and other leaders didn’t back away from other facets of LGBTQ rights. But they listened to nonelites and changed the order of their priorities in order to build a broad coalition.
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This involved shifting away from the language that most appealed to the movement’s gatekeepers — the language of discrimination and legal rights — to the language of commitment.
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this emphasis on commitment — borrowed from the discipline side of the discipline vs. development divide — was critical to combating homophobia on a mass scale. Gay relationships were stereotyped as “tawdry, shabby things,” Coles told me. The key to “changing the way Americans thought about this was to show them not so much the consequences of discrimination as to show them the commitment.”
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The answer is to respect that blue-collar values make sense in the context of blue-collar lives — and to develop the cultural competence to connect progressive goals with working-class priorities.