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The Origins of Wokeness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#171

Post by forgotacc240419 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #50

I thought this was an interesting read. For me, it sparked the insight that wokeness parallels the rise and fall of the attention economics, with the premise that attention is the real bottleneck in social justice. It places an emphasis on awareness, and the solution is often left as an exercise to the observer. Political correctness and language codes are not new. I think what was new is the idea that people could r…

There was a variety of causes that gained prominence ~2015 when Bernie Sanders came much closer to challenging Hillary Clinton than anyone expected. The Democrat party establishment picked the wishy washy meaningless bits out and focused on them while keeping away from the more challenging economic issues that would actually require their ideologies to adapt

I think what most people call "woke" is probably just a reaction to the obvious emptiness of many of the things politicians like Kamala Harris chose to focus on whilst ignoring more concrete issues. A lot of it was stuff there never was a solution for.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#173

Post by jandrese »

Symmetry wrote: post #6

I remember having a conversation with someone around a decade ago about whether "social justice warrior" pointed at anything real. My contention was that every popular moral system has its prigs and its fanatics - social justice no less than Christianity, environmentalism, socialism, etc, etc, etc.

Every decade has its new leftest boogeyman for the right to complain about, same as always. Critical Race Theory, Political Correctness, Hippies, Civil Rights Crusaders, etc... Doesn't really matter, just so long as it is an "other" that can be ostracized as a group.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#174

Post by Apreche »

yapyap wrote: post #99

I 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…

[dead]

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#176

Post by daseiner1 »

Ukv wrote: post #38

> 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…

they’re not negroes, they’re colored

they’re not colored, they’re African-American

they’re not African-American, they’re black

they’re not black, they’re Black

they’re not Black, they’re People of Color

they’re not People of Color, they’re BIPOC

I wonder what the next twist of the pretzel will look like

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#177

Post by ImHereToVote »

pydry wrote: post #65
Ukv wrote: post #38

> 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…

It's the same with the performative moral posturing. Woke used to mean being cognizant of systemic injustice - stuff like police brutality. It came from 1970s harlem. Then the dominant culture that was responsible for a lot of that injustice latched on to it and twisted its meaning, watering it down. This is known as political recuperation - when radical ideas and terminology gets sanitized and deradicalized. It isnt…

In every American community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects, ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally. Here, then, is a lesson in safe logic.

Phil Ochs

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#178

Post by jiriknesl »

p4bl0 wrote: post #114

> Twitter, which was arguably the hub of wokeness This is a fake news. Research shows that Twitter algorithmic amplification favored right-wing politics even before Musk made it even worse. See: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025334119 > On the other hand, the people on the far left have only themselves to blame; they could tilt Twitter back to the left tomorrow if they wanted to. Being this much clueless in…

Can you prove it? Do you have any proof that Twitter promotes right leaning views more than left leaning ones?

"When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression"

Twitter was discriminating against right leaning views. Extreme far left views (like communism) were absolutely OK and widespread on Twitter. If one had as extreme right leaning views, he would be shadowbanned, reprioritised etc.

What is Twitter now is a fair game. Every voice is heard the same. What Twitter is doing now should have been the norm the whole time.

And the same is true for all major social networks, search engines, public funded media, universities and other organizations. When only leftists get their voice heard, they got used to it. Loosing this privilege looks like discrimination, doesn't it?

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#179

Post by throwawa14223 »

softwaredoug wrote: post #135

I sadly suspect we’re going to see some risk adverse hiring of boring white dudes in all positions of leadership. Regardless of competence. We’re already seeing DEI weaponized. Any non white male person in charge of an organization that makes a mistake will be labeled a “DEI Hire” accurately or not. Organizations will be risk adverse and only hire the most boring white dude they can find from central casting. Whateve…

Why exactly is that a terrible outcome? What's wrong with boring white dudes?

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#180

Post by excerionsforte »

The problem with words like "woke" is that there is no agreement on what it means. One sides it means this another says it means that. I think whatever it means to you shows truly what you believe. I don't use this word because it means nothing to me and I use more specific words to better communicate.

"Cancel Culture" has agreement on what it is, but one side says only the other side does it while doing it themselves. Give me a break. I just don't care enough about this.

Feminism, Privilege, gaslighting, toxic, DEI, etc. These words are perverted to mean whatever people want it to mean these days. Sometimes there is agreement other times there are not. DEI means inclusion spaces to one and exclusion/racism/sexism/ageism to another.

To address one part of the article about moral purity, again give me a break. We all have our compasses and will typically react with disgust to those who don't follow. Some people share some vague sense of moral compasses. You see it everywhere, not just politics. The spreading of outrage via the mainstream via internet and media outlets is really what has changed.

America, in its history, has had mobs that would be "woke" in today's culture apparently. Social media mobs are nothing fundamentally different.

Also, Twitter under Elon did censor people and ban words causing them to move to Mastodon and Threads before Bluesky, so let's not whitewash the suppression of "free speech" under him by saying that all he did was give more visibility to paying members when in fact it's what they settled on.

If PG actually wants better examples of moral purity and pushback against it, he can get in touch. Some of these examples are just not it.

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