[BoLevi]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

One of the big cleavages emerging in our society is between the educated, mobile, tech-savvy, progressive, and irreligious on one hand; and the uneducated, geographically rooted, low skilled, and religious on the other. As the economy becomes ever-more knowledge based, these two groups increasingly break along class lines as well.

This cleavage is really bad for society. It’s toxic to trust and civility. Of course populists make great hay exploiting these divisions. But the knowledge-class does the work of populists for them when they denigrate the unenlightened. Notice I didn’t say disagree with, but denigrate.

One of the ways the enlightened keep up a compassionate self-image is by imagining that the people they’re denigrating are all middle-aged white men. People who don’t deserve sympathy. Which is why I’d guess people around here haven’t been particularly receptive to the data showing high rates of vaccine hesitancy among people of colour. They want to hate people who won’t get vaccinated, and that’s a lot easier when they’re picturing some people in their minds and not others.

The same with religion. The popular depiction of religious conservatives in our media is white men. Which makes performative contempt for religion and the religious acceptable in their social circles - admirable even. Lots of social media points to be earned showing white people emerging from a church during the pandemic with a caption “#### these idiots.” I’d wager few of these people would post a picture of people emerging from a mosque over that caption. It would be unthinkable.

Maybe the enlightened wouldn’t be so contemptuous of the unenlightened if they were prodded to recognize that many of those unenlightened don’t fit the profile they want to assign to them. White men are actually the least religious demographic in North America (women of colour are the most religious). Catholics aren’t just pasty old white dudes, but young Filipino women, South Korean families, and the tens of thousands of indigenous Canadians who make the pilgrimage to Lac Ste Anne every year. There’s a good chance the next Pope will be African, and that would almost certainly shape how people talk about the Church.

I point out these demographics in the hopes of making people more tolerant. Less eager to put the unsophisticated and unenlightened in boxes so they can hate them with a clean conscious.

Finally, the root of the monstrous residential school system was white saviour syndrome. The idea that benighted native people needed to be led into the light by enlightened Europeans. A bunch of white atheists expressing contempt for the brainwashed fools (many of them indigenous) who persist in their ignorant beliefs has echoes of the same arrogance.

Fantastic post. I agree that the cleavage you describe is real. However, I don't think it represents as large of a majority as people think it does. It's just the loudest conflict at the moment.

There is a substantial group that stand outside of this conflict, looking on both parties with disdain (disdain which is deserved).

I would describe a large portion of this silent crowd as:

educated, mobile, tech-savvy, progressive, classical liberals (small L libertarians if you prefer), and irreligious

These people tend to get vilified by both sides, but mostly as traitors by the progressives you describe in your post. Public figures representing this demographic would be the likes of John Mcwhorter, Glenn Loury, Sam Harris, Hitch, Douglas Murray, etc.