What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies

by Tim Urban

The narrow focus on the Force is a key distinction between Social Justice Fundamentalism and Liberal Social Justice. In the world of Liberal Social Justice, the Intersectional Stack is indeed a valid lens to examine one form of justice discrepancy in society. But it’s only one of many such axes, along with others which arrange people according to wealth, intelligence, talent, attractiveness, temperament, age, geography, family structure, family connections, quality of upbringing, education, and others. Each axis burdens certain people with baggage and lifts others up with balloons. But SJF, depicting society through the lens of the Force, sees the Intersectional Stack as by far the most meaningful axis of advantage and disadvantage. We see this in the way it defines key terms: While Liberal Social Justice considers many forms of diversity—racial, ideological, socioeconomic, geographic, etc.—in SJF, “diversity” almost always means “racial diversity.” Along the same lines, believers in Liberal Social Justice see society as a product of many social elements—power, culture, competition, integrity, altruism, persuasion, compassion, forgiveness, etc.—while SJF views society mostly in terms of power. In SJF, power among groups is the governing force that determines why things are the way they are, how they got that way, and how things will go in the future. The two lines of thinking also differ in their approach to solutions. While Liberal Social Justice tries to make improvement...