How would one measure the influence of "social justice warriors"?

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

...on campus or elsewhere?

I just opened up Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff's book The Coddling of the American Mind and did a quick scan to see if they provide a precise measurement for the increased influence of their "three bad ideas" on American campuses. Here's what they say:

There is no Misoponos, and we didn’t really travel to Greece to discover these three terrible ideas. We didn’t have to. You can find them on college campuses, in high schools, and in many homes. These untruths are rarely taught explicitly; rather, they are conveyed to young people by the rules, practices, and norms that are imposed on them, often with the best of intentions.

This is a book about three Great Untruths that seem to have spread widely in recent years:

• The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
• The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.
• The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.

While many propositions are untrue, in order to be classified as a Great Untruth, an idea must meet three criteria:

• It contradicts ancient wisdom (ideas found widely in the wisdom literatures of many cultures).
• It contradicts modern psychological research on well-being.
• It harms the individuals and communities who embrace it.

We will show how these three Great Untruths—and the policies and political movements that draw on them—are causing problems for young people, universities, and, more generally, liberal democracies. To name just a few of these problems: Teen anxiety, depression, and suicide rates have risen sharply in the last few years. The culture on many college campuses has become more ideologically uniform, compromising the ability of scholars to seek truth, and of students to learn from a broad range of thinkers. Extremists have proliferated on the far right and the far left, provoking one another to ever deeper levels of hatred. Social media has channeled partisan passions into the creation of a “callout culture”; anyone can be publicly shamed for saying something well-intentioned that someone else interprets uncharitably. New-media platforms and outlets allow citizens to retreat into self-confirmatory bubbles, where their worst fears about the evils of the other side can be confirmed and amplified by extremists and cyber trolls intent on sowing discord and division.

The three Great Untruths have flowered on many college campuses, but they have their roots in earlier education and childhood experiences, and they now extend from the campus into the corporate world and the public square, including national politics. They are also spreading outward from American universities to universities throughout the English-speaking world. These Great Untruths are bad for everyone. Anyone who cares about young people, education, or democracy should be concerned about these trends.

The language of the bolded is a little ambiguous because it seems to imply that the "Great Untruths" are precursors to the subsequently mentioned problems, but the corresponding sections of the book actually show the opposite: that the problems are collectively causing belief in the untruths to proliferate.

While the book does do the job of discussing and contextualizing some of the bigger on-campus events (that you would have heard about on here anyway), there aren't many actual metrics when it comes to demonstrating an increasing trend that's worthy of alarm, and there's no metric at all for the consequences beyond campus. The two graphs they do provide show an increasing number of invited speakers being cancelled due to protest, and the increasing proportion of liberal viewpoints among professors.

So here's my question: I think both sides should be able to agree that the number of headlines produced by a phenomenon is not an ideal measure of the actual influence of the phenomenon (unless you're open to believing, as a consequence, that Trump's crass personality and gender diversity are the two leading problems of this generation) - so what other metrics are superior?

Here are some I've considered:

• the number of students enrolled in "social justice"-associated post-secondary programs
• the number of laws passed enforcing "social justice" positions
• the number of people expressing sympathies or allegiances to "social justice" positions
• the number of votes going to "social justice" politicians
• the amount of money going to "social justice" brands

Since the treacherous influence of the "social-justice left" seems to be such a meaningful, partisan issue, it seems like it would be a good idea to have the true risk properly measured. How do we do it?

 

[Rygu]

They even make moderate liberals cringe.

 

[Ripskater]

Since the treacherous influence of the "social-justice left" seems to be such a meaningful, partisan issue, it seems like it would be a good idea to have the true risk properly measured. How do we do it?

I don't think you can measure it but,
Social Justice is a curse on all Western Societies

 

[surrealworlds]

They are worthless. Measurement is easier.

 

[m25105]

I don't think you can measure it but,
Social Justice is a curse on all Western Societies

Outside of the internet it is really not a thing here. You lot cry about it a lot though.

 

[GearSolidMetal]

They destroyed the greatest film series of all time.

 

[Devout Pessimist]

You measure SJW influence by the amount of overweight women with short hair and ridiculous hair dye and the skinny, beta-male cucks who claim to be feminists trying to get laid.

 

[brothir]

Nearly all of the posters above me should be ashamed for not even attempting to contribute to the actual question.

2) and 4) are what I'd like to say, but laws aren't very quantifiable in and of themselves because it can be difficult to gauge the actual effect from the letter of it, and much the same goes for politicians in that two politicians can superficially be said to have the same beliefs but have widely disparate effectiveness in pursuing those beliefs. In conclusion, laws and politicians should be the biggest confirmations of the trend, but not measure it in and of itself.

1) and 5) score high on the measurability meter but are suffer from ambiguity in actual meaning. There's no guarantee that students enroll in "SJW courses" because they are themselves that, or that them participating will have the effect that their political beliefs are directly pulled in the direction of SJW-ism. Somewhat the same for people spending money on SJW brands: maybe those have value outside of the obvious political leaning.

So that leaves us with 3), which I'll take to basically mean polling. But when polling for sympathy towards SJW, it should be constructed to delineate between various grades of SJW-ism. An example of a question to measure hard SJW-ism could be "should white men be denied the ability to vote for a few decades to let women and minorities have their say in the political process". If the percentage that says "yes" to that question goes steadily upwards year after year, I think we have a problem, though I expect < 3% as of now.

 

[tonni]

Hello I am a true alpha male but at the same time I’m obsessed with young people’s hair color

 

[Prutfis]

They don´t really have a presence. I see more right wingers on here complain about SJWs, trannies, LGBTQWDSFT, teh gays etc than I see or hear the actual people.

 

[Rygu]

SJWs talk the loudest, and they say the least.

 

[Son of Jamin]

Good question, if one would have believed social media presence in Sweden and the amount of buzz a far right party called Alternative for Sweden had, one would have believed they would make major waves in the recent election. They were very vocal and dominated many forums but come election day, they hardly got any votes at all.

If nothing else, it's good to step outside the social media bubbles.

 

[emefer]

Never heard of them until a bunch of snowflakes started to cry about them on sherdog. Never heard of them or from them anywhere else.

 

[Rational Poster]

SJW has become a broad brush for the modern Neo-Nazi that means "anyone that thinks or believes something I disagree with"

 

[Rational Poster]

They destroyed the greatest film series of all time.

lol Star Wars has always been campy bullshit and George Lucas sucks.

The latest Star Wars wasn't bad because of SJWs. It was bad because the writing and plot was terrible.

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

There aren't many of this type of folks, and they can generally be found in only a few places. But they are quite powerful on college campuses, which makes their influence much greater than it ought to be.

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

SJW has become a broad brush for the modern Neo-Nazi that means "anyone that thinks or believes something I disagree with"

This is true to a large extent. Ironically (and perhaps that's the joke) is that "neo-nazi" has come to mean precisely the same thing but is in vogue with a different set of people.

 

[Rational Poster]

There aren't many of this type of folks, and they can generally be found in only a few places. But they are quite powerful on college campuses, which makes their influence much greater than it ought to be.

Attending lots of colleges lately?

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

lol Star Wars has always been campy bullshit and George Lucas sucks.

Preach!

 

[Rygu]

SJW has become a broad brush for the modern Neo-Nazi that means "anyone that thinks or believes something I disagree with"

So just like Liberals call people Nazis who think or believe something they disagree with?