At a recent conference, and against my better judgment, I attended an Unconscious Bias training session. I was compelled by morbid curiosity. A few years ago, resistance to Unconscious Bias training and testing was all the rage among the self-proclaimed ‘Intellectual Dark Web’. Despite their objections, this sort of thing is now so accepted in many professions it is as though it always existed. For the uninitiated, Unconscious Bias training serves, in theory, to divest you of your unmapped prejudices – prejudices that ramp up in accordance with your whiteness and your maleness.

Despite the fact all my biases are conscious ones, the first part of the session was to remind us that none of us are free of sin. Like all theology, there is original sin and the possibility of redemption. Original sin is our history; redemption is destroying it. We do this by abandoning our brains. The war on generalisations – the prejudices built often through hard experience – is a war on our ability to categorise anything. The result is a world of social confusion where predators pretend they’re prey and nobody can suggest otherwise. The only generalisations allowed are those that are positive about certain groups and negative about other groups, along completely predictable lines, as philosophically incoherent as you’d like. As I’ve said elsewhere, it’s a weird postmodern reconstruction of the Nuremberg Laws.

The main thrust of the session was ‘decolonising’ school curricula and ‘indigenising’ them. What this means in plain language I cannot tell you, because no plain language was used. One presenter mentioned a physics teacher who had complained there was no room for indigenous perspectives in his subject. It seemed he had taken things at face value, a critical mistake. She implied he had been thoroughly struggle-sessioned into compliance and left her office born again. In this world, petty bureaucrats believe themselves fire-and-brimstone preachers.

An older lady emphasised the importance of Acknowledging Country in Primary Schools daily. ‘When I was young, we had to stand for the Queen and sing the anthem. Nobody told us why. It was brainwashing.’ She stood on the precipice of a moment of great irony, perhaps even of self-discovery, but the moment came to nothing.

The thing was part loyalty test, part humiliation ritual, and part Chris Lily skit. We spent some time filling out charts that indicated our privilege along intersectional lines, something no longer novel. My colleague maudlinly declared that society was made for him. He was deeply unhappy about it. You should probably Darwin-Award yourself, I said. I meant in Minecraft, but the organisers of the session might prefer the literal sentiment. Those who deconstruct whiteness eventually deconstruct white people.

Another friend asked me to imagine what it would be like when these people have the ascendancy. One doesn’t need stretch the imagination. They don’t have the ascendancy in terms of the popular will, but they certainly have the moving parts of society comfortably captured. Elites determine society’s direction; middle-class intelligentsia carry out the program. Some attendees were true believers, but many more were fellow travellers. Despite the recent referendum result, they sense the breeze and fill their sails. The empty-souled functionary, who would aid and abet the devil himself for a little advancement, is the oily rag upon which every regime depends.

What struck me most was the forthright confidence the organisers displayed. This was not a vetted meeting of a secret society or a closed caucus room, but an ostensibly general audience. Yet there was no attempt to disguise their zeal: they were upfront about wanting to destroy everything prior to themselves. The degree of security they feel in saying such things indicates they believe that everybody thinks they are right. Products of higher education, and representative of their type, we must concede the system has failed them. If they think this guff is true, they are failures of intellect. If they believe it is merely expedient, they are failures of character. Either way, they are living arguments for the dissolution of the postmodern university.

As for ordinary people, many believe only that which benefits them, which is entirely human and the fatal weakness of mass societies. Those who might believe other things are corralled into quietude; they have been persuaded against commenting on badly-clothed emperors. Dissent is easily mitigated when mortgages and careers are on the line, even if this peril exists only in our minds. Certainly, if the organisers of events such as these could annihilate their enemies, they would.

Among the questions was one about dealing with such recalcitrant types who resist the program. Most are conventional conservatives. They argue using liberal conceptions – free speech and the antiquated meaning of equality – critiques for which the organisers have practised answers. They are doomed to lose these arguments because they assume good faith. ‘It’s not 2019 anymore,’ said the organiser, ‘the kid gloves are off. I don’t care if I offend people. This must happen. It should have happened already.’ These people are the lovechildren of Whigs and Leninists, for whom timelines progress linearly, and thus the past has no lessons. There is only progress and victory, even if victory is always one final push away. They would behave like revolutionaries even if they achieved their hopelessly Utopian goals.

Forget utilitarian arguments that suggest we ought to indulge this sort of thing as though it helps whatever marginalised group is presently in vogue. Instead ask the following: does this sentiment deal in truth? If not, then discard it. If you are not sure what is true, or do not believe that the truth can be known, then you have spent too long drinking from their trough.

I left in good spirits. The absurdity of these ideas guarantees that without patronage they are doomed to failure. They are anti-natural and once a man learns he needn’t fear these people, they lose all power. The atmosphere was one of matronly schoolmarms giving naughty boys a lecture, even if all testosterone had been left at the door. In addition to adherence to truth, the re-emergence of the Australian larrikin, who cannot abide a pompous fraud inflated with hot air, would be a welcome remedy. Nothing can survive ridicule, which is why authoritarian regimes are unfailingly humourless. We have become a humourless people, too, which reflects the dour authoritarianism they would make for us.