[flagged]
The Origins of Wokeness
381–390 of 1001 posts
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#382I 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…
[flagged]
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#383I 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”, for the most part, is a boogeyman that the conservative right uses as a summary label for various political movements on the left. Basically nobody on the left talks about “woke” except for perhaps a period of six months back in 2017. Many political groups do this: they identify some aspect of the opposition, preferably one that is easy to ridicule, and then repeat those accusations ad-nauseum. The complaints…
It's the ultimate irony that this post is doing the exact same thing it is accusing another group of, with the only distinction being that there is no "term" attached to it.
I suppose the US politics have gone so bonkers that the left actually uses the term "conservative right" pejoratively in the same way that the right uses "woke" to describe the left.
In which case this scenario is so childishly insane that the only sane choice is to reject it all outright and focus inward.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#384Would this essay be on the HN frontpage if it was written by anyone else?
We just had a day-long front page about why we need to feel shameful about using the term "Cargo Cult" because some tribe that positively no one is thinking about when they use the phrase believed a God would deliver cargo if they setup fake radio towers and used bamboo headsets. Some sort of hand wavy "why I am better than all of these fools who don't understand the real details" bit of noise. Colonialism or something. White guilt.
When I saw this PG article I wondered if that article inspired it. It is the perfect example of someone walking into something where zero people have ill intentions, and everyone understands exactly what that very useful term means, and telling us all we should stop using it because of their moral eye opening. Aren't we all better people now?
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#385I 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
#386FWIW, my llama suggests that the original usage of the term `political correctness` was somewhat inverted:
> The term "political correctness" was first used in a political sense by Maoist factions within the American New Left movement during the 1970s. It was employed to criticize liberal critics who were perceived as compromising revolutionary principles for the sake of mainstream acceptance.
So the original sense was a too-centrist/too-mild/too-pragmatic sort of INcorrectness. I found that interesting.
Is wokeness / anti-wokeness the new heresy ? Cool beans. I'm not really interested either way.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#387There is an entire cottage industry on Substack of people writing about Wokeness. It has been covered extensively and I do not feel like PG is adding anything new here.
IMO Freddie deBoer wrote the best definition of "Woke", something that many people fail to grasp.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiede...
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#388Wokeness is what happens when you have socially liberal and fiscally conservative investors / executives try to please their democratic leaning employees without having to pay more taxes. It costs them nothing, so you get corporations and the media to embrace race and gender progressivism with a full clamp down on any true progressive causes like universal health care, free education and etc. The same VCs crying abou…
"Starbucks can have LGBT mugs but hell no to unions". I think you hit the nail on the head. There is a whole chapter to be written about pro/anti "wokeness" stances used by companies / politicians to divert attention from the deeper class vs class issues.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#389This 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.
You did notice the trend of 2025 is Billionaires complaining?
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#390>and not, incidentally, by censoring left-wing users the way Twitter used to censor right-wing ones, but without censoring either. Type the word "cisgender" on twitter and say that again, Paul.
https://x.com/search?q=Cisgender&src=typed_query&f=live
There are many typing that word?