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How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

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Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#21
post #9

Well given that they have to redefine terms under new names and to create a newspeak for all of this, it was not long until it had spread unchallenged from the social-sciences classrooms in universities to the workplace and we now see rejected concepts that were left in the past to later resurface under a redefinition under newspeak. A great way to confuse the general public and push an agenda to create a culture of…

Newspeak, like... Ms? Plenty of past examples, you probably use most of them now, and don't think about the controversy when they first appeared.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#22
post #9

Well given that they have to redefine terms under new names and to create a newspeak for all of this, it was not long until it had spread unchallenged from the social-sciences classrooms in universities to the workplace and we now see rejected concepts that were left in the past to later resurface under a redefinition under newspeak. A great way to confuse the general public and push an agenda to create a culture of…

A great way to confuse the general public and push an agenda to create a culture of silencing anyone opposed to view points someone disagrees with.

That's what's bothersome. It's not just advocacy. It's mandatory advocacy. That generates a backlash.

The push for transgender bathroom privileges just before the 2016 elections may have pushed Trump over the top.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#24
The elite have always had a disconnected culture from the masses. Things like a taste for golf or the influence of certain clubs over high levels of government. That isn't unusual. That people from that culture then get to control the rest of a country because someone has to, and it may as well be the elites.

So the cultural disconnect isn't new or a problem. The problem is that this ideology seems to be (1) heavily focused on race and (2) be the most credible home for a resurgence of the ideas that powered the communist disasters of last century.

It is deviant from cultural norms. And that is fine and dandy, elite cultures are always deviant. The problem is this culture looks bad. It has abandoned some excellent ideals of tolerance and liberty.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#25
See "concept creep" - https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-08154-001

Abstract:

> Many of psychology's concepts have undergone semantic shifts in recent years. These conceptual changes follow a consistent trend. Concepts that refer to the negative aspects of human experience and behavior have expanded their meanings so that they now encompass a much broader range of phenomena than before. This expansion takes “horizontal” and “vertical” forms: concepts extend outward to capture qualitatively new phenomena and downward to capture quantitatively less extreme phenomena. The concepts of abuse, bullying, trauma, mental disorder, addiction, and prejudice are examined to illustrate these historical changes. In each case, the concept's boundary has stretched and its meaning has dilated. A variety of explanations for this pattern of “concept creep” are considered and its implications are explored. I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm, reflecting a liberal moral agenda. Its implications are ambivalent, however. Although conceptual change is inevitable and often well motivated, concept creep runs the risk of pathologizing everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood.

The full article has a bit more nuance. It points out that intolerance to minor forms of harm has both pros and cons.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#26
post #6

Fundamentally languages have been evolving in a reductive manner, which is why adding syllables to terms like in "Latino/Latina -> Latin-x -> Latinx+" won't last. People will quickly eschew these terms for things that are easier to pronounce. There's no malice in this - just a natural evolution of language towards efficiency. As such its an endless cycle: new stuff is introduced to everyday language then reduced to s…

People have been trying to change gender terms forever. It's nothing recent. I recall discussions about the use of the non gendered pronoun 'e' years ago.

To replace she vs he.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#27

I think this is the result of the gradual femininization of our culture. It started with the feminist/gender-studies types and slowly caught on. Not because people necessarily wanted to change, but cancel culture makes it so that you can't risk nonconforming. At first it was little things like switching to softer language and giving kids participation trophies so that they don't feel bad. Now it's spread to the point…

People on this forum/website might not like it but you're basically dead on. Everyone can see this is what's happening. Outside of this bubble, normal people see it. Our enemies abroad see it. The only people trying to suppress us talking about it are the people trying to inflict it upon us.
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