Large groups of humans living together, including large human societies, develop values and rules that follow from those values that to some degree provide for the welfare, sustainability, and survivability of the group or the groups perish.  As the elites in the society generally design, implement, and enforce the rules, they feel constant internal pressure to mold the rules to serve their own narrow interests and external pressure to develop rules that serve the broader interests of the entire society, i.e., utilitarian rules.  This results in a a set of rules that contains some rules for the exclusive benefit of the elites and other rules for the benefit of the whole, including non-elites.

However, if the external pressure is reduced in some way, for example if the elites become more insulated because of the accumulation of wealth or other forms of power, then the balance is tilted towards the values and narrow rules that only serve their interests.  This can create self-reinforcing feedback loops as these self-serving rules may accelerate the accumulation of wealth and power of the elites.  This leads to the deterioration of the welfare of the non-elites, which eventually leads to general societal deterioration which even impacts the elites, regardless of the degree to which they have insulated themselves from the problems and suffering of the non-elites.   Unless this societal deterioration is addressed rapidly and forcefully, the economy of the society and the society itself begin to disintegrate and develop runaway feedback loops of self-destruction, caused by ever narrowing self interest, leading to complete disintegration and collapse.

Also note that while civilization offers a great improvement in the quality of life for humans, it is at the cost of suppressing certain behavioral trends and desires that naturally occur (that would be consistent with group survival and welfare in a small hunter-gatherer group but inconsistent with group survival and welfare in a large, complex civilization).  The best minds of most generations throughout the thousands of years of civilization have agreed that the benefits of civilization far outweigh the costs, but because of a confluence of several different forces many influential individuals in Western societies, particularly the United States, during the past few decades have become convinced that the benefits are not worth the costs and have successfully brought pressure to discard or reduce the civilized values, i.e., those that benefit the general welfare, from society.

The term “gender” has evolved from originally meaning the biological sex of an individual to meaning something about the social or cultural identity of the individual.  This is logically problematic.  A male gender identity is said to derive from engaging in behaviors that are generally classified as “male,” and similarly for a female gender identity.  The fundamental logical problem with this is that the classification of any behavior as “male” is subjective and imprecise and is a gross generalization that is only used for simplicity and convenience.  Engaging in any one behavior or even any set of behaviors does not make one male, as clearly females can engage in virtually any male behavior and vice versa.  A much more scientific, precise, and objective determination of whether one is male is based on the presence of the XY chromosome, while a determination of whether one is female is based on the presence of the XX chromosome.  To use a particular behavior or set of behaviors as an indicator of an individual’s sex when there is much more powerful evidence such as the individual’s chromosomes is not logical or reasonable.  One does not judge an individual’s age based on their behavior, even though many behaviors are correlated with age just as many behaviors are correlated with sex.  If one has evidence of an individual’s birthdate, that outweighs any evidence of age-related behavior.  The same should be true for sex or gender.

One particularly troubling result of this gender confusion is that some believe that changing from one sex to the other, i.e., undergoing a transgender procedure, is a healthy and reasonable choice to make. First off, maybe medical advances will change this in the future, but as of now even with surgery and hormone therapy one can only resemble the other sex in a superficial manner. The years of brain and body development as the other sex can not be completely, or even mostly, erased. Also, much of the knowledge of how to survive as a member of one’s birth sex will lose its value, and one will have missed out on gaining the corresponding knowledge that members of the other sex developed during youth.

Since one’s physical sexual characteristics at birth are objective and anything but arbitrary, while a culture’s association between an individual’s sex and gender identity may be somewhat subjective and arbitrary, rather than changing the non-arbitrary body to fit with arbitrary and subjective notions about gender identity, it would make far more sense to change the arbitrary and subjective notions about gender identity to fit with the objective characteristics of the body.

But maybe the most compelling reason to condemn this idea is that it distracts and confuses troubled and unhappy individuals and prevents them from focusing on more reasonable means to improve their lives. A further problem is that as the idea gains momentum, it offers another opportunity for individuals to knowingly make behavioral choices that are disfavored by the general society, and then, after claims of discrimination, expect the society to make accommodations for that choice. This is problematic for behavioral choices because humans are quite flexible and adaptable animals, and there are innumerable possible behavioral choices they can make, and social chaos is only prevented, and some degree of social harmony achieved, by limiting that number through societal pressure to restrict apparently unhealthy or arbitrary behavior.

One approach to reduce the popularity of and harm caused by the transgender movement would be to replace the labels “female” and “male” or “woman” and “man” with the labels “XX” and “XY,” e.g., XX restrooms, sports teams, clubs, schools, etc…

“Freedom” is an often misused and abused term that has limited usefulness in political analysis. Certainly every political actor acts in accordance with the forces or pressures, internal and external, that are applied to the actor.

The word “freedom” is often used by elites to obfuscate and confuse and to keep the powerless non-elites from joining together to form a government to protect themselves from the predations of the powerful (i.e., “freedom” means the elites have the right to be protected from the possibility that the little people use a government to protect themselves from the elites).  The elites sell the idea of freedom as a substitute for equality as it suggests the equal ability to engage in a wide range of activities, with the implicit assumption that only governmental action would act as a restriction.  However, the lack of financial resources is usually what limits an individual’s ability to engage in various activities.  The elites usually tack on a promise of “equal rights before the law” but this type of equality also is generally subject to the financial limitations of the individual, as it usually requires financial resources to enforce the individual’s legal rights.  Moreover, the most important measure of equality, financial equality, is ignored while every other possible form of equality may be promoted and celebrated, including the equality of different types of behavior regardless of the negative implications for social harmony or for the development of common values and shared goals.

There is some value in the social freedom that comes from feeling that one is not dominated by other particular individuals in the society.  Through millions of years of evolution, people developed some resistance to other individual humans exerting control over their activities. This is unsurprising, as in many instances they were being controlled against their own interests, particularly reproductive interests, and so the survival of the individual’s genes depended in part on avoiding such control.  On the other hand, once people accepted and submitted to such dominance, evolution designed people to shut off their analytical and creative processes to minimize conflict and to allow the group to behave as one when competing with outside forces.  But people who are not so dominated and who do not shut down their own analytical and creative processes tend to be much more productive and contribute more to the society.

Some argue that the way to achieve this social freedom is to avoid all analysis, because inherent within any form of analysis is social programming by the elites to control the population.  However, analysis-free thought leads to perceptions or models with no depth, and these are the simplest and therefore the easiest to program.  The deeper the analysis, the more combinations of thoughts that are possible and the more complex the models that are created, such that they could not possibly be pre-programmed.

Also, the individual is a social being and survives and reproduces as part of a human social group, so avoidance of others to achieve the social freedom is not an option.  A balance must be struck, which would involve achieving harmony with others in the social group that the individual belongs to.  Harmony is achieved through agreements on the division of labor (made easier through specialization), and the remuneration that would accompany such (with consideration of the inevitable feelings of alienation and injustice from a wide distribution of income but also with a recognition of the need for a higher rate of remuneration to motivate some to perform the more difficult tasks), and the development of common goals based on common values with collaboration on achieving them.

However, it should be noted that social freedom through social equality is actually a weak substitute for financial equality.  Equality leads to social freedom, i.e., a lack of domination, but social freedom does not necessarily lead to financial equality.  Though it should be added that the goal should be a limit on inequality rather than complete equality, as discrepancies in income are necessary for motivational purposes and for promotion of best behavioral practices.

Note that some elites promote the idea of social equality because their self-image requires that they convince themselves that they are “fair” and “support equality” while other elites just recognize that non-elite individuals are more apt to contribute positively to the society if those individuals believe the society is “fair” and offers them a chance to have or aspire to some semblance of social equality.

The idea of “free will” is simply a misconception following from the illusion of pure identity over time, i.e. lack of recognition that we are not exactly the same people we were a moment before. We are all evolving all the time, our neuronal connections are changing, and what we think in any moment is a function of that evolution as prompted both by ongoing chemical changes and by changes induced by input from the external environment. By the time we finish the choice we are a slightly different person from the one who was prompted with the input that leads to the choice. The determinist focuses on the external input to the choice and how it affects the choice and a true believer in “free will” starts with the assumption that the person who finished making the choice is identical to the person before making the choice, before being prompted by the external input that leads to the choice. But it would be a mistake to model it as simple determinism where the input solely determined the choice, as the person at the time of being prompted was a fundamental part of the equation, a very significant participant.

Moreover, the concept became popular and useful during a particular period in the development of human knowledge and related social/cultural development.  The elites of many groups, who preferred to keep the non-elites separate and weak, and who wished to portray themselves as capable and deserving of their elite status, developed a philosophy of individualism and free will and they promoted this philosophy among the population.  The beauty of this philosophy for the elites is that, as the belief that a “God” had ordained the social order began to wane, it justified the continuation of a hierarchical social order with extreme inequality as it implied that: (1) through their own superior ability, work ethic, and the exercise of their free will, they had risen to the top and deserved their elite status and all the benefits that went along with it; and (2) the non-elites were deserving of their low status because of their own failures and decisions from the exercise of their free will, and it would be inappropriate and useless for them to try to understand the social or economic forces that may have contributed to those failures or to join together to change the social order.

The allure of political correctness is that it offers a path toward more civilized, less offensive discourse that ideally would lead to a more harmonious and just society.  However, there is no practicable method for determining the boundaries of speech so that no one would be offended or harmed, and the powerful determine the priorities in deciding what harm should be avoided.  So in practice political correctness tends to stifle the speech of the politically weak or powerless, as preventing transgressions against them are considered of lower priority than preventing offenses against the well-connected and powerful.  So it tends to further empower the elites while  it silences dissent from the powerless.

Also note that in any sphere of human activity that involves interaction with nature, including human nature, models must be used which are of necessity incomplete and approximate.  Nature, and any phenomenon in nature which may be perceived and represented, is of unbounded complexity, and so a model, which is of finite complexity, can always be improved upon.  That is why no social convention, and no opinion regarding optimal human social interaction, should ever be immune from criticism and scrutiny.  Analysis of such conventions, opinions, and behaviors is unbounded in depth, and pat answers are the province of the uneducated and the lazy-minded.

Note that Identity Politics, which has become a significant component of political correctness, divides the common people in an age where technological developments offer the opportunity for them to create common understandings and common values that could lead to the development of a common purpose and create a more healthy and harmonious society.  Those who advocate Identity Politics often claim that sexism can best be fought by dividing the society between the sexes and that racism can best by fought by dividing the society between the races.  But dividing people by sex is sexism at its most fundamental, just as dividing people by race is racism at its most fundamental.

Also, it should be obvious that individuals are multi-dimensional, i.e., each has individual characteristics, some immutable and some not, on the dimensions of sex or gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, talent or intellectual ability, sexuality, religion or spiritual beliefs, age, health, athletic ability, income, personal or family wealth, educational level, profession or job, physical attractiveness, etc… On each of these dimensions, an individual may be advantaged, disadvantaged, or somewhere in between. So to properly determine whether someone is advantaged or privileged overall, one would have to examine the entire list of dimensions and note one’s position in each, but this is rarely done. I suspect what mostly happens is those individuals who are underprivileged overall but who are privileged on the dimensions most often emphasized, i.e., race and sex, pay most of the price of being labeled “privileged,” while those who are actually privileged overall are able to position themselves so they escape the negative consequences. And those who are privileged overall but are considered underprivileged on the emphasized dimensions gain a further advantage from what they already have, and they are often the ones who most enthusiastically promote the scheme.

Note that Nationalist Identity is probably the most defensible type of identity, because nations are somewhat closed systems that can resemble a tribe, or they used to be and can be with functioning borders, where people can work together and provide positive and negative feedback to each other to improve the general welfare, including establishing a functional political system that responds to the needs of all the people. Other forms of Identity Politics which lead to other groupings do not form closed systems at all, and cannot form proper tribes, and so there can be no healthy or functional feedback process to improve the group’s general welfare.

Since Identity Politics, particularly when focused on race and sex, obviously causes more harm than good, it seems likely that the movement to popularize it has been subject to manipulation by malevolent outside actors from the beginning.  Such action would appear to be consistent with the time-honored technique of the powerful — to divide the common people so that they may more easily be subjugated.

Given the infinite number of possible alternatives available, the only way that uniformity in belief systems, regarding aspects of reality not subject to rigorous scientific experimentation, is attained is through conversion by dominant individuals or groups of submissive individuals or groups. Uniformity of some degree is essential to provide common goals and purposes and harmony of activity within a society. So the effort to provide uniformity has utilitarian components, though it usually also contains components that serve more the interests of the dominant individuals or groups.

Some attempts at conversion are arguably pure utilitarian, particularly with regard to certain interpretations of utilitarianism. For example, spreading the belief that long-term benefits should be prioritized over short-term benefits would be purely utilitarian if utilitarianism is interpreted to mean “the greatest good for the greatest number over the long term.” So the conversion of others to this belief could be characterized as purely utilitarian.

However, this example illustrates how no conversion, or motive behind a conversion, can be critically reviewed except with regard to particular goals, and the goals are arrived at by a priori desires

One other point is that those converting others to prioritize long-term benefits are more likely to create a sustainable group or society than those converting others to prioritize short-term benefits. The latter groups usually vanish from the face of the earth in the long-term and we are left with the former groups.

Humans evolved in small groups to the point that each individual knew each other individual, with emotional attachments to a significant percentage of the other individuals in the group, allowing for the formation of a cohesive and healthy unit with good prospects for survival. The development of agriculture and then civilization provided pressures for groups to merge together and become larger and larger.

Large groups allowed for economic specialization and greater control over the environment, which provided much more efficient use of resources and the accumulation of wealth. However, the anonymity and the increase in the number of emotionally detached individuals caused by the large group provided significant costs, such as a greater degree of alienation and a much higher frequency of violent and harmful acts, including parasitic acts by the strong and by the weak. The strong would use their power, usually derived from wealth they already possessed, to take the wealth created by others or otherwise abuse and control others, either directly or indirectly by controlling the government, while the weak would use their anonymity to steal the fruits of others’ labor or otherwise ignore social conventions and rules for their own benefit.

The greater problem, the more dangerous parasitism, was that presented by the parasitism of the strong, who could use their economic power and control of the government to accumulate ever more wealth and power to allow them to steal more and more over time. Though both the strong and the weak parasites somewhat diminished the motivation of others to work hard to produce value, it was the strong who provided the much greater threat to the health and welfare of a social/economic system, for they held the power to bend the societal value system to meet their needs, promoting an imprudent and self-destructive mode of behavior that emphasized the importance of using power, such as military force or violence, rather than hard work and ingenuity, in order to create wealth and reach one’s goals.