Of Course You Know What "Woke" Means
The title for this thread was stolen from the Freddie deBoer blog/article quoted and linked below. I couldn't come up with anything better, so why not. According to Wikipedia: DeBoer identifies himself as a "Marxist of an old-school variety." I don't know anything about him that extends beyond that and the two blog posts I've read. Now, let's get to it.
I could go on. And some will disagree with this or that. But whether you think this is an accurate portrayal of the kind of politics that became dominant in progressive circles in the last 10-12 years, something happened. Something changed. Of course something changed! I find it so, so bizarre that people still insist that nothing much changed in progressive discourse or politics in that time period. Go back and read stuff that was getting published in liberal outlets in 2010 and tell me it’s the same. Come on. Give me a break. Grow up.
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/202304040135...
If you're going to jump into this conversion, please read the the blog post. That way we'll be, at least somewhat, on the same page, and hopefully the conversation won't devolve too much.
In another thread, someone shared that they were planning on voting for Trump (even thought they don't like him) because the Democratic party has shifted so far to the left. Their response was simply dismissed, and someone else pointed out why that's a problem. If you don't think "woke" ideology is driving people into Trumps arms, then you're not thinking clearly. Are those Trump voters misguided? Maybe. But they're not all the morons and monsters they're made out to be. Does "woke"— ambiguously defined — get a bad rap? Sometimes, sure. So, what are your thoughts on "woke"?
I thought I was woke, but then I learned woke is a lot more than "treat people with respect", so I am prob not woke.
What today’s social justice politics ask for is a world that’s nice, a world that’s safe for everyone all the time. And of course this is impossible. The nice world is never coming. Yes, we need to work to make the world a more equitable and humane place. There are certain areas in that domain where progress is possible. But to say, as many now do, that we need to eliminate bullying, or even eliminate microaggressions, is no less fantastical than saying we need to build spaceships to take us away from this fallen earth. You may as well say we need to eliminate greed or jealousy; these things are part of the basic emotional endowment of being human. People hurt each other out of malice, true, and always will, but much more often they hurt each other because we are clumsy and insensitive creatures by our nature...
No one is against the abstract notion of protection from harm. That effort, in and of itself, is noble. But what we have arrived at now in progressive politics is a grotesque exaggeration of our moral duty to one another, a funhouse mirror version of what it means to be a caring and supportive society. We make promises we can’t possibly keep about protecting the vulnerable and in so doing reduce all who suffer from (the trendy kinds of) injustice to impossibly weak and eternally fragile wards of our benevolence. We speak of ending micro injustice not despite the fact that the macro version spins on all around us but because it does, because we cannot face up to the sheer vast scale of what we will never be able to fix. And in all of this useless effort we have completely evacuated our shared societal vision of two of the most essential elements of being a person: forgiveness and resilience. These are indispensable values in a human world defined by human weakness, but they are inconvenient to those whose personal and professional best interest lies in pretending that human life is perfectible.
Woke appears to me as..
2 parts toxic femininity
1 part revolutionary deconstructionist
1 part pagan
1 part Christian
This part was good
Enabling people who aren’t Black or Southern to say “y’all” - this one is unforgivable.
maybe some of the rest, but it was all too vague.
The title for this thread was stolen from the Freddie deBoer blog/article quoted and linked below. I couldn't come up with anything better, so why not. According to Wikipedia: DeBoer identifies himself as a "Marxist of an old-school variety." I don't know anything about him that extends beyond that and the two blog posts I've read. Now, let's get to it.
Archived version:
Social media has to be a big part of it. Adversarial algorithmic content, a format that encourages one-liners and potshots rather than discussion, the ability to “show” everyone how good you are without action.
I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that this shift has occurred at the same time as the rise of Trumpism, incels, etc. If the threat of the enemy seems to be rising it seems quite common for purging and hardliners to rise to prominence. Probably both sides believe compromise is how things have gotten to a point and/or we’re at a point where the danger is too great to entertain compromise. Hardliners on both sides are justified by each other, think of the shift in the U.S. after 9/11 and the rise in terrorism as a response to U.S. wars or a right wing Israeli government and extremist Palestinians locked in a spiral.
This is how I feel about criticizing wokeness sometimes.
I typed up a few paragraphs in response but mainly I want to direct my attention to the last paragraph.
I’d rather woke politics win than conservatism. But I’d rather have a friendly forgiving plainspoken big tent civil libertarian socialist mass movement, personally. Trouble is, there is only woke and anti-woke. There is no escape.
Yeah it sucks that pretty much if you criticize wokeness you can sometimes be labeled as helping conservatives. One thing I would say is that I think it’s precisely the socialists that are feeding into this “woke” culture. We need to go back to pluralistic liberalism and need to excise our party of the purity testing and toxic identity politics.
That being said I am of the Sam Harris school. I will apportion my opposition to certain aspects of society based on the damage it is doing. Trumpism does by far more damage and has way more cultural currency, so that is what I’m focused on. I think to her credit Kamala has been pleasantly surprising on her liberal bonafides. She is a true leader when it comes to standing up to the far left. I don’t see why any true liberal would eschew Kamala in favor of Trump. And even a principled conservative should never support this man. Woke is not on the ballot, Kamala who stands by Israel and refuses to degrade Trump supporters is on the ballot.
Yes because of the rise of non-traditional media sources and conservative populism writ large globally. Also there are is a huge contingent of maga that uses economic and political pressure to attack people like Chris Rufo, Matt Walsh, Libsoftiktok, Blaze Media in general, etc. They are taking up the mantle of the cancel culture aspect.
Furthermore a movie or video game being labeled “woke” can be a huge detriment to it in terms of success. And companies that wholly embraced wokeness in the past have taken a huge step back from that.
Honestly what are any cultural touchpoints you can point to right now that have been trending towards wokeness? Everything seems to be going AWAY from wokeness.
What today’s social justice politics ask for is a world that’s nice, a world that’s safe for everyone all the time. And of course this is impossible. The nice world is never coming ... But to say, as many now do, that we need to eliminate bullying, or even eliminate microaggressions, is no less fantastical than saying we need to build spaceships to take us away from this fallen earth. You may as well say we need to eliminate greed or jealousy
Yes because of the rise of non-traditional media sources and conservative populism writ large globally. Also there are is a huge contingent of maga that uses economic and political pressure to attack people like Chris Rufo, Matt Walsh, Libsoftiktok, Blaze Media in general, etc. They are taking up the mantle of the cancel culture aspect.
Furthermore a movie or video game being labeled “woke” can be a huge detriment to it in terms of success. And companies that wholly embraced wokeness
I kind of agree with this. Woke ideology is trending downward, and it may be because a lot of people who were touting it have moved on and gotten older. However, it did catch on, and the orthodoxy is still widely accepted. I don't think higher education has moved on. It's still prevalent in pop culture and online, and it changed the dynamics of political discourse.
Higher education and corporations haven’t really moved on just because a lot of wokeness is bland hr stuff like don’t tell a Muslim colleague Muhammed was a heretic and Jesus definitely was crucified, rise from the dead and worshipping him is somehow not a violation of the first commandment, or refusing to use someone’s preferred pronouns is just a distraction.
Wokeness is cultural marxism which basically replaces class with identities
Cultural marxism is downstream of the real issue which is toxic femininity
If you want to see what toxic femininity looks like you can view it on the spectrum from antifa to white dudes for harris
Much of masculinity is now just low intelligence white males wanting more power. But everyone else wants to live in a more merit based society.
Being woke would be conflating masculinity with toxic men
It's amazing how you also managed to squeeze in multiple identities plus power within a single line. Basically encapsulated cultural marxism in one line. A simple and deeply flawed world view that makes mediocre people feel clever and righteous
The world is complicated. Ideologues run a simple algo to explain everything
True
But of course your post falls short of demonstrating an understanding of that vs what comes across and a blindly defensive take
I wasn't trying to demonstrate an understanding of anything beyond exactly what I wrote - that the quoted snippet was a very apt one-line definition of modern conservatism.
Being woke would be conflating masculinity with toxic men
It's amazing how you also managed to squeeze in multiple identities plus power within a single line. Basically encapsulated cultural marxism in one line. A simple and deeply flawed world view that makes mediocre people feel clever and righteous
Right. Your white working class welfare views of the educated elite is full of nuance and doesn't just serve to inflate the importance of white working class losers. But ultimately your dividing of the working class into male/female/white/regular does nothing but dilute their power to the benefit of the educated elite you claim to detest.
Much of masculinity is now just low intelligence white males wanting more power. But everyone else wants to live in a more merit based society.
People don’t value intelligence because they don’t understand it. Power is easily understood.
I’ll say again, IQ is correlated with intelligence, but it’s not intelligence.
Right. Your white working class welfare views of the educated elite is full of nuance and doesn't just serve to inflate the importance of white working class losers. But ultimately your dividing of the working class into male/female/white/regular does nothing but dilute their power to the benefit of the educated elite you claim to detest.
Your schtick hasn't gone unnoticed and is quite embaressing
No I support progress for normal educated diverse areas with international immigration as well as the whitest lowest performing rural welfare Trump +60 communities. You don't have to pick one or the other like a zero sum game They've been brainwashed into voting conservative for 100s of years. I grew up (and obviously fled for education) not in a bottom tier but sparse suburban below average income area. These places can do better than the conservative culture wars they're being sold.
I don't dislike white non college MAGAs but they are flooding our country with crime welfare dependency, and trillions in education spending on people that won't be able to pass jr high level math as adults.
Same wisdom on covid
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showp...
It’s hardly being dismissed. Lab creation and accidental or intentional release is a very very popular theory among the masses. If you went to a mediocre to bad high school like mine and wade into people’s Facebook feeds you’ll probably find a healthy majority support the idea.
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showp...
Not sure why anybody would care about my opinion but if there was a million dollar free roll and and an incontrovertible way to have it settled i would definitely choose non lab origin.
Recent research has shown that it did originate in the wet food market, not the lab.
Your schtick hasn't gone unnoticed and is quite embaressing
Same wisdom on covid
That's still all correct. Uneducated MAGA types who don't know the difference between a chainsaw and the chain rule are sure it started in a lab. Normal, educated people think it evolved in nature. That is true regardless of where the virus actually came from.
As a young man, I became infected with the woke mind virus; it rendered me easygoing and left me unable to get upset about women and minorities in Star Wars movies.
