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

economist.com

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

#131

Post by thaumasiotes »

bitwize wrote: post #121
Barrin92 wrote: post #7

I'm glad that the Economist points out at the end that 'wokeness' has become a favorite of business, and the reason is pretty obvious, as a movement it's self-defeating because all identitarian politics eventually ends in infighting, with its subjective, choice and preference based worldview it's actually ill-equipped to move anything. It might exist in academia or PR departments or journalism or facebook pages and t…

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> TSR/WotC laughed off the right's assault on D&D during the "Dark Dungeons" era when they tried associating it with Satanism.

Well, there was a period of many years when WotC stopped printing the creature type "Demon" out of deference to that assault.

(And if I recall correctly, TSR replaced the terms "devil" and "demon" with "Baatezu" and "Tanar'ri". I don't know whether they had yet been bought out by WotC.)

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

#132

Post by Barrin92 »

enkid wrote: post #48
Barrin92 wrote: post #7

I'm glad that the Economist points out at the end that 'wokeness' has become a favorite of business, and the reason is pretty obvious, as a movement it's self-defeating because all identitarian politics eventually ends in infighting, with its subjective, choice and preference based worldview it's actually ill-equipped to move anything. It might exist in academia or PR departments or journalism or facebook pages and t…

Identitarian does not mean what you think it means. In fact, it's basically the exact opposite. I also have no idea what you mean when you say it has no ability to change anything. Are you talking about identity politics? Politics that specifically aim to better the position of people in certain subgroups? Because there are many political movements that have been wildly successful in doing that, women's suffrage, the…

>Identitarian does not mean what you think it means.

From context it should be clear that I'm talking about identarianism in the literal sense of the term (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/identitarianism), not the European right-wing political movement that confusingly shares the same label.

>women's suffrage, the US civil rights movement, universal male suffrage

the keyword in those movements is 'suffrage' and 'civil' not 'man' or 'woman'. The reason they were successful is because they were republican movements. Women's suffrage wasn't about women with a capital W having a sort of privileged identity, it was about the opposite, women being treated like equal citizens. Identity politics is the opposite, it is the creation of separate, distinct, protected spaces for groups of people based on some set of features.

Rather than gaining access to the commons, aspiring to universal values which was the goal of desegregation in the civil rights era, women's rights and so forth, identity politics seeks to carve out virtual spaces that are only even understandable if you share said identity. The notion of the a citizen proper goes out of the window.

And the gay rights movement is a good example of that shift, whereas historically it was focused on access to civil rights, nowadays you have clashes between different queer groups. Which part do we include, are TERFS reationary? Are asexuals queer? There is at least half a dozen fronts in this war already about who deserves to be part of the rainbow label.

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

#133

Post by joconde »

SunlightEdge wrote: post #109

On a related point, what I'm uncertain about are the reasons for the increase in transgender kids in the west. I understand there's been a massive increase in cases for transmen in the UK and USA for example. Is this because we can identify these conditions much better now? Maybe. I don't have the background to say for sure. There is a real fear in society though that woke schools of thought are a harmful influence t…

Alternative explanation: there have always been as many transgender kids, but they hid it because they knew they'd get bullied by everyone, including their own parents.

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

#134

Post by neilwilson »

choeger wrote: post #73

As someone who lives in a formerly fascist country and was born in a socialist country that borrowed many fascist tools, I can tell you all one thing: Taking control of the language is a telltale sign of a fascist movement. Whoever tries to control the language automatically stands on the wrong side of history. It is not an accident that the woke movement attacks liberties so vehemently. It is also not an accident th…

Less a fascist movement, more an authoritarian movement. 1984 and Animal Farm are not about Fascists. Same problem though.

It's about the power of a self appointed elite group to dictate terms to other.

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

#135

Post by AnthonyMouse »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #105
bengold14 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nor is it confined to the Left: neo-Nazi groups offer some of the clearest examples of purity spirals Seems like your own linked article says it's not just a leftist thing?

To an extent left and right are asymmetrical---leftist groups tend to be groups organized around being leftist as their main purpose, while "rightist" groups (churches, police unions, gun enthusiasts) tend to be rightist incidentally . Neo Nazis feel like the exception that proves the rule.

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

#136

Post by burntoutfire »

timonoko wrote: post #112

More weird is that Merican Wokeness is replacing *ness in other countries. Finnish has only one personal pronoun for all sexes, but Woke Finns add American Pronouns to their twitter pages.

People have adopted burgers, coca-cola, Hollywood movies etc. from The Current Dominant Culture, why wouldn't they parrot things like woke pronouns.

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

#137

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

chmod775 wrote: 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…

Gendered nouns are kind of silly and antiquated when you think about it though, and many languages have a neuter gender too (e.g. German). The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language.

English doesn't have gendered nouns, but we do have gendered pronouns, which not all languages have. Chinese doesn't have gendered pronouns, which is why you'll often hear native Chinese speakers accidentally refer to a woman in English as "he".

Today, young English speakers are trying to popularize "they" as an English neuter pronoun, and it's not too absurd: we already use "they" this way when the gender of the person is unknown. For example, if you found a random wallet, you might say, "Someone lost their wallet," and it would be acceptable.

Intentionally changing language isn't unprecedented either: in the 1970s, feminists successfully introduced "Ms." as a female equivalent to "Mr." to denote a woman who may or may not be married, (instead of Miss and Mrs.).

Ultimately, most language evolution is driven by young people: they're bending their native tongue to better describe their world. And that's a good thing. Language is supposed to be fluid and dynamic. We shouldn't be constraining our thoughts to a static unchanging language invented by our ancestors to describe their world that no longer exists. It's a tool meant to serve us, we're not meant to limit ourselves to it.

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

#138

Post by rgspectrum »

bitwize wrote: post #121
Barrin92 wrote: post #7

I'm glad that the Economist points out at the end that 'wokeness' has become a favorite of business, and the reason is pretty obvious, as a movement it's self-defeating because all identitarian politics eventually ends in infighting, with its subjective, choice and preference based worldview it's actually ill-equipped to move anything. It might exist in academia or PR departments or journalism or facebook pages and t…

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This is the reality right now. Dictatorships and Juntas arise if enough voters (nerds in this case) are apathetic.

The totalitarian (and corporate) Steering Councils that pop up in some OSS projects are rarely elected by a majority. Nasty politicians and the mentally ill apply and get 30% of the votes. The rest of the voters do not apply or care enough to vote them out.

Historically, even Hitler never had a majority in an election. He got total power by the enabling act:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933

He was also mentally ill and a meth addict later in life. Please remember such cases before falling into apathy.

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

#139

Post by swarnie »

fridif wrote: post #119
timonoko wrote: post #112

More weird is that Merican Wokeness is replacing *ness in other countries. Finnish has only one personal pronoun for all sexes, but Woke Finns add American Pronouns to their twitter pages.

Probably for the same reason that foot biding took off in China

I'm not sure anyone has a clue what you're on about.

Care to expand?

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

#140

Post by watwut »

m0zg wrote: post #127
unity1001 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not applicable. The 'wokeness' in US largely encompasses things like minorities not tolerating being denigrated, debased, harassed anymore. Not even talking about things like nudity in beaches, abortion and other bullsh*t in which US still stays back 150 years in the past in US.

No, it's more of a virtue signaling scheme and a "luxury belief" that brown and black people can't think for themselves, and white liberal upper middle class knows what's best for them. Such as, for example, abolishing the police in high crime lower income neighborhoods and other loony bin shit like that, which does absolutely nothing to help anyone they pretend to care for. These tend to be the same folks who would…

I have seen quite a few blacks to advocate for what you call loony shit.

The problem here is that you are making stuff up in order to build perfect demographic of your enemies.

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