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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?

#531
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous; I've known people through their transition. It is not a fad. Has everyone forgotten famous hacker Sophie Wilson?

How do you explain groups or clusters of young children suddenly becoming trans?

The only "study" reporting this problem is so unbelievably obviously flawed it is incredible.

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

#532
post #340

As a christian I believe in mercy and grace. And yes, many of us 'believers' have not practised what we preached. Many of us do try however not to be hypocrites. Here's my question. Where is mercy and grace in the midst of wokeness? I want you to believe my christian message but I will not force you to do so. I don't want to introduce laws to force you to believe what I believe. I don't want you to lose your job beca…

Where's the mercy and grace in allowing people to engage in terrible behavior without consequences? The ruthlessness was in tolerating serial predatory behavior, and people are finally tired of it.

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

#533
post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an example you have in mind? That is, an example of a dissenting view point being treated ruthlessly?

I recall a researcher who lost his job for publishing research that violence on black lives by police was only covered by the media when the media understood them as sympathetic victims and so a successful strategy is to intentionally play up the helplessness of being violenced upon as opposed to militant resistance and cooperative resistance. I believe the rage about it at the time was more or less how dare this per…

David Shor? It seems he was sacked for reducing black grief and anger to nothing more than a bad campaign strategy for the democrats in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. It wasn’t a smart thing to tweet, given that he worked for a political org. Should he have been sacked? I don’t know.

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

#534
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…

>> "It's always surprising to me that this seems to be such a Conservative topic of concern who if anything should be glad that it occupies so much mindspace."

I think most people who self-ID as conservative really believe what they claim to believe about wanting to work with people who have other views to make a better world where they don't have to worry so much.

There are people within their own spheres who encourage their fears because they know it's a distraction. A lot of them do seem to be wising up to it, but only because the firestarters overplayed their hand. The people who once persuaded people to see this as some majority, overwhelming force did so by sounding more reasonable than the people they complained about.

Once the agitators went off the deep end, I think most people are reasonable enough to see it for what it is even if the realization takes a while to propagate past the scripts people have developed in a half decade or so getting mad online about it.

A similar thing happened on "my" side when people started to catch on to all the plainclothes cops in protests trying to turn them into riots.

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

#536
post #340

As a christian I believe in mercy and grace. And yes, many of us 'believers' have not practised what we preached. Many of us do try however not to be hypocrites. Here's my question. Where is mercy and grace in the midst of wokeness? I want you to believe my christian message but I will not force you to do so. I don't want to introduce laws to force you to believe what I believe. I don't want you to lose your job beca…

Under the woke philosophy the criterion for deserving forgiveness still exists but is changed. In classical Christian philosophy, forgiveness requires contrition whereas under woke philosophy forgiveness requires powerlessness . This is often misinterpreted as an absence of forgiveness because no amount of contrition seems to abate the condemnation.

In classical Judeo-Christian philosophy, there is one law for all - regardless of whether the person is poor or rich, and other classifications.

Also, there existed this concept of a re-do -- as in a 'jubilee' - land is returned - and 7 years where the debts are reset etc ( the original of current laws limiting bankruptcies to 7 yrs ). No one in a biblical scenario remained poor because their ancestors slacked off.

Now that those are not in play, one sees a class of people condemned to remain low with no ways of rising up.

While there is progress being made to alleviate these conditions, it is not fast enough. These group ( poor socio-economic) train their guns against the rich.

The rich being smart, use their puppets like the media, etc to create fake outrage - propping up 2 parties which essentially are the same thing with minor differences, drumming up differences based on race, creating new controversies with gender etc.

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

#537
post #340

As a christian I believe in mercy and grace. And yes, many of us 'believers' have not practised what we preached. Many of us do try however not to be hypocrites. Here's my question. Where is mercy and grace in the midst of wokeness? I want you to believe my christian message but I will not force you to do so. I don't want to introduce laws to force you to believe what I believe. I don't want you to lose your job beca…

>> don't want you to lose your job because you don't agree with me. But lots of people want that power. It is within living memory that people could be fired or denied employment based on thier religion. Many today still want thier religion beliefs to be enforced against believers and non-believers alike (abortion, education, marriage, adoption, right to die etc). Not every person of faith is so liberal about the aff…

What we need is a test for ideological purity. A ritual, pointless, possibly dangerous, that demonstrates obedience to the woke tribe.

Some kind of medical procedure, perhaps. With associated paperwork, of course.

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

#538
post #521
post #340

As a christian I believe in mercy and grace. And yes, many of us 'believers' have not practised what we preached. Many of us do try however not to be hypocrites. Here's my question. Where is mercy and grace in the midst of wokeness? I want you to believe my christian message but I will not force you to do so. I don't want to introduce laws to force you to believe what I believe. I don't want you to lose your job beca…

Do you not think there is a difference between 'you should follow my religion' and e.g. 'you should use neutral pronouns to make other people more comfortable?' The later isn't about some fundamental belief, it's really just an extension of a concept that has existed for thousands of years -- politeness

Yes, the difference is the second question is a loaded question, it has already moved the definition of "politeness" to exclude people who don't answer "yes" to that question.

IMHO, it is a more sneaky question than some religious preacher who can easily take "no" for an answer

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

#539
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm curious what any possible alternatives might be to the practical problems "wokeness" tries to present itself as a solution to. The obvious solution is meritocracy and race/sex blindness. That's the world I wish to live in - non-discrimination & equality of opportunity, not "positive" discrimination (it's always positive for someone ) and (enforced) equality of outcome. But the Woke Left has been quite hostile t…

> meritocracy A core problem is what this means. A lot of people insist that we previously lived in a meritocracy and that things like admissions tests are pure representations of this meritocracy, so that moving away from these systems is an attack on a purely level playing field of meritocracy. But we don't all agree with this. The same people who you criticize do not agree that we have achieved equality of opportu…

Yes, this is a common strawman.

Noone (sensible) is claiming that any system is a meritocracy. "Meritocracy" is just an ideal, like "equality", "fairness", or "airplanes not crashing", and it's unlikely we'll ever achieve this ideal, but that doesn't make it not worth fighting for.

So, while obviously objective exams aren't "meritocracy", they are without doubt more meritocratic than not having objective exams.

If "these people" really wanted to move towards greater meritocracy (as opposed to abandoning meritocracy), they'd support things like, abolishment of "extracurricular activities" in college admissions, or legacy admissions, or maybe even things China's limit on the amount of tutoring kids can do (I personally thing this is both too extreme and ultimately counterproductive, but at least we can all agree that it's with the right goal in mind - increasing meritocracy).

I agree that "wealth" is a problem, but the answer is having more objective measures, not less.

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

#540
post #521
post #340

As a christian I believe in mercy and grace. And yes, many of us 'believers' have not practised what we preached. Many of us do try however not to be hypocrites. Here's my question. Where is mercy and grace in the midst of wokeness? I want you to believe my christian message but I will not force you to do so. I don't want to introduce laws to force you to believe what I believe. I don't want you to lose your job beca…

Do you not think there is a difference between 'you should follow my religion' and e.g. 'you should use neutral pronouns to make other people more comfortable?' The later isn't about some fundamental belief, it's really just an extension of a concept that has existed for thousands of years -- politeness

> The later isn't about some fundamental belief, it's really just an extension of a concept that has existed for thousands of years -- politeness

No, it actually is a new, fundamental belief: The belief that it’s okay to assume the worst intent unless others go out of their way to follow all of the correct wokeness rules.

Ironically, assuming the worst intent in cases of ambiguity is quite the opposite of politeness.

For what it’s worth, I’ve made a best effort to use neutral pronouns in my own writing. However, when I read someone else’s writings that use “his” or “her” in a generic statement, I don’t assume the author is being sexist, misogynistic, or impolite. I assume the author was simply making a generic statement.

That’s the difference with the new woke movement: It has been misused and abused as an excuse to assume ill intent in others unless they know and follow all of the right rules.

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