The comparison between religious fanaticism and wokeness is incomplete. One big difference is that religion can be deeply meaningful to an individual without them needing to express their beliefs publicly - religion can often be an entirely private affair. Many a loud preacher of religion has retired to a private life of quiet worship. Wokeness would have no meaning at all as a private affair, it's entirely based around shaming others in the public discourse. That's why PG's proposed solution of "allowing expression of beliefs without enforcement" might work for creating religious tolerance, but will not work for combatting priggish wokeism. If you don't allow their policing of words, there's nothing left to wokeism.
The Origins of Wokeness
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Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#122> In fact there's an even more ambitious goal: is there a way to prevent any similar outbreak of aggressively performative moralism in the future — not just a third outbreak political correctness, but the next thing like it?
Yes. It requires the willpower to disengage from the performative point scoring of internet discourse. Most good conversation must now happen in private for many reasons, much of that has to do with the technology PG himself has previously supported.
Presently, you are seeing social media forking into red and blue (x and bsky and fb and truth social). This is bonkers. A superior format for discussion is a place like HN which is tightly (and opaquely) moderated. Another great development is the use of 'community notes' which, for all its imperfections, is superior to straight censorship.
Ultimately I'd like to see people like PG invest in high quality journalism where the mission is a dispassionate reporting of the best-available facts, supported where possible with data, and presented in such a way as to demonstrate transparency.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#123And there I was, reading a comment earlier today about how HN is better than the other places because it prefers technical articles over "politics".
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#124I think the word “woke” means very different things to some people. As an example I think people from the American political left to somewhere(?) in the middle see it as what it has been introduced as, that being looking past the status quo and instead looking at your own values, i.e. the morality of homelessness and not having a disdain for them but empathy for them instead. and then on the other side it feels like…
"Woke" was originally an AAVE term, popular in the midcentury civil rights era and beyond. Literally meaning "awake [to what's happening to you and your community]," as opposed to being ignorant and asleep. Not really a statement about your own behavior so much as an acknowledgement of what other people are doing to you—it just meant you're well-informed.
Perhaps not a coincidence that reactionaries have now co-opted black slang to mean "things minorities do that I don't like."
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#125Why does woke like set people off like this?
Someone should study the anti woke they way these people focus on woke so much. I don't get it? If it's truly just words why are so bothered by them, let them go for the worthless words they are.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#126[dead]
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#127It’s interesting to me that a certain type of person is so susceptible to buying into this fable of wokeness, especially when it pertains to universities. Almost like there is a woke mind virus, but it’s not infecting the people they think it is.
I attended university in the mid 2010s, so close to peak “wokeness”, and I never witnessed or heard of anything like what pg is describing. In my experience it was totally fine to hold just about any political/ethical view as long as you were a decent human being to your fellow classmates. There certainly was no political correctness police forcing us to assimilate.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#128> The number of true things we can't say should not increase. If it does, something is wrong. Word.
What are some true things you cannot say? Enumerate some, please.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#129> Imagine having to explain to a well-meaning visitor from another planet why using the phrase "people of color" is considered particularly enlightened, but saying "colored people" gets you fired. [...] There are no underlying principles. To understand much of our language, Gnorts would have to already be aware that our words and symbols gain meaning from how they're used, and you couldn't, for instance, determine th…
Haven't read the article yet, skimming the comments. Wild quote though. Does PG self censor when using the N word? Or does he say it, with the hard r? If that word isn't part of his vocabulary, why not? Seems like it should be.
> If that word isn't part of his vocabulary, why not? Seems like it should be.
I don't get the comparison. Hard "R" or not makes little difference. You're eligible to be canceled for using either form. So not like PoC/CP.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#130> Female students might object if someone said something they considered sexist, but no one was getting reported for it.
It seems that the defining factor is that there was no actual authority attached to the morality of the situation. He is essentially saying that life was better when one could get away with doing whatever they wanted with no repercussions.
This is such a well-travelled path that I am surprised his intellect, nor that of the people that he claims proof-read this document, didn't protest before hitting 'publish'.
Here's a question: how can social justice actually be justice without enforcement. The US constitution coded this as the 13th amendment - is that now a woke document? Is that an example of "radicals getting tenure", or is it example of progress?
Articles like this really don't age well. Neither, it seems, does the author.