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The Origins of Wokeness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#351

Post by [deleted] »

narag wrote: post #90
Leary wrote: post #59

I think there’s a fascinating throughline from older Christian moral enforcement to what the essay calls “wokeness.” Historically, a lot of Christian movements had the same impulse to legislate language and behaviors—just grounded in sin rather than privilege. For instance, the 19th-century American Puritans famously policed each other’s speech and actions because the stakes were framed as eternal salvation versus da…

Christians are so new. I wonder why Pharisees aren't mentioned more often when bringing in this topic. Actually, "pharisaical" is the dictionary definition for this kind of hypocrisy.

[deleted]

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#352

Post by prewett »

kardianos wrote: post #266
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…

Woke is critical construcivism. The belief consists of two parts: 1. That truth is socially constructed thus when we see bad things, it means society created these bad things. 2. In order to determine what parts of society to cut-out to make society better, so bad things stop happening, use a critical theory to determine who should be removed from society so it can be more equitable (usually the stand in for good. Wo…

But #1 is wrong and #2 is abusive.

There is no such thing as "society", just relationships between individual people. To get a better "society", you need people to act better. However, all of recorded history suggests that people are pretty universally willing to use other people as tools to benefit themselves. (Obviously not everyone does this all the time or to the same amount.) History also makes it clear that passing laws will not work: despite laws against things that are evenly timelessly non-virtuous, like stealing and murder, do not prevent murder and theft. In fact in Judeo-Christian thinking, to do this requires people receiving a "new heart, a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone" from God. (I saw "Judeo-" because the passages is from Ezekiel, which is common to both. I do not know if rabbinical thinking agrees, however.) Even if it does not require a divine gift, certainly the problem has proven intractable up to the present time.

"determine who should be removed from society" is just a scary thought. Who gets to determine that? How can we be sure they are right? What prevents them from using this as a tool to eliminate people that are competitors or whom they simply dislike? In fact, this has a name: "to purge". The Soviet Union under Stalin and the Chinese Cultural Revolution were scary times.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#353

Post by TimTheTinker »

JohnMakin wrote: post #254

> In 2020 we saw the biggest accelerant of all, after a white police officer ~~asphyxiated~~ a black suspect on video. This is quite some impressive editorializing, especially when the black "suspect's" killer is currently in prison for murder. I only highlight this because it indicates a very particular viewpoint held by the author - particularly stuff like this - > And that's the real problem — the performativeness…

> But, inevitably, when you ask these same people what then should be done about inequality, whether it be racial or otherwise, the answer is often "nothing" or denying that a problem even exists.

That's an assumption you're making - I don't see any evidence of that viewpoint in pg's essay. Any specifics you can point to?

I can point to a specific that seems to contradict you:

> But by the same token we should not automatically reject everything the woke believe. I'm not a Christian, but I can see that many Christian principles are good ones. It would be a mistake to discard them all just because one didn't share the religion that espoused them. It would be the sort of thing a religious zealot would do.

Inevitably, someone will chime in and say that it wasn't what he said, it's what he didn't say -- arguing from someone's purported silence. But that's exactly the kind of performative nonsense he's arguing against. It ought to be possible to speak against something without being castigated for failing to pay lip service in some way to a related topic.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#354

Post by pfg_ »

daseiner1 wrote: post #176
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

bipoc means a different thing than black. you should use the word that has the meaning you want.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#355

Post by BobaFloutist »

daseiner1 wrote: post #176
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

90% of this list is less the slur treadmill and more the MLA/AP Stylebook version treadmill. Nobody's going to get mad at you for writing African American, unless you work for a newspaper, it's largely motivated by MLA and AP wanting to sell new books every year or two, same as how titles were underlined when I was in grade school and now they're italicized.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#356

Post by santoshalper »

Paul would much rather make a punching bag out of straw than actually grapple with the massive inequality that he has personally helped cause. Just remember guys, the real problem our society faces is that someone was once mean to paulg on Twitter.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#357

Post by bpt3 »

grahamj wrote: post #181
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…

> i.e. the morality of homelessness and not having a disdain for them but empathy for them instead. > people on the American political right see it as what this website describes it as “ A self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others.” I think those are just two perspectives on the same situation. “wokeness” is realizing we should be treating people better and “anti-wokness” is people feeli…

You missed the point of the article completely. Wokeness (as PG defined it, which I would agree is the most commonly used definition today) isn't merely realizing we should be treating people better, it's realizing that people should be treated better and focusing on being a "prig" about completely inconsequential and tangentially relevant concerns as a result of that rather than taking meaningful action.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#358

Post by anal_reactor »

justinrstout wrote: post #200

This article never takes up the cause of the minorities who are being harassed and killed on a daily basis, but spends a lot of time whining about having to show even a modicum of empathy by using more inclusive language. For this reason it reeks of self-centered willful ignorance.

I think that inclusive language became a symbol of a step too far. If you expect me to adjust some governmental policies to make a better society that's fine, but if you expect me to change the way I express myself because you personally don't like it and you have a bunch of bullies behind you, that's just not okay and should be fought against.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#359

Post by ComposedPattern »

narag wrote: post #90
Leary wrote: post #59

I think there’s a fascinating throughline from older Christian moral enforcement to what the essay calls “wokeness.” Historically, a lot of Christian movements had the same impulse to legislate language and behaviors—just grounded in sin rather than privilege. For instance, the 19th-century American Puritans famously policed each other’s speech and actions because the stakes were framed as eternal salvation versus da…

Christians are so new. I wonder why Pharisees aren't mentioned more often when bringing in this topic. Actually, "pharisaical" is the dictionary definition for this kind of hypocrisy.

An optimistic explanation is that they don't want to be antisemitic. The present-day term for "Pharisee" is "Jew." The early rabbis who created Judaism as we know it were Pharisees, and theirs was the only first-century Jewish sect which survived until today. You can even see the alternation between "Pharisee" and "Jew" in The New Testament. For instance, in some verses it criticizes the Pharisees for washing their hands before eating, whereas in others it levies the same complaint against Jews generally: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2011%3A38%...

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#360

Post by qaq »

rhelz wrote: post #5

From the article: "Twitter, which was arguably the hub of wokeness, was bought by Elon Musk in order to neutralize it, and he seems to have succeeded — and not, incidentally, by censoring left-wing users the way Twitter used to censor right-wing ones, but without censoring either. [14]" Then follow to the footnote: "[14] Elon did something else that tilted Twitter rightward though: he gave more visibility to paying u…

If I go into for you instead of following it's extremely heavily skewed into conspiracy theory right. So to me it looks like they are boosting the reach of that content.
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