The Origins of Wokeness

Reading and understanding the article beyond the title, it's just a term that used to be called something else before, and will be called something else in the future. I think you're focusing too much on the actual word, rather than the "movement", which is what pg's article is really about.

Unfortunately he's going along with right-wing orthodoxy instead of seriously confronting modern internet cults. Graham proves himself to be a groupthinker, not an independent thinker.

(The real tragedy of "woke" is how it undermines the left; how could you ever win an election if people who seem to travel with you tell 70% (white) or 50% (men) of people that they're intrinsically bad? Worse yet those "fellow travelers" will sit out the election because they think any real politicians is a "fascist" for one reason or another.)

My son has two friends who I'll call B and C -- "wokeness" could be evoked in the case of B but you'll see it is a wrong mental model.

I knew B from elementary school and I know he's a bit out of sync with other people, like myself and my son. Call him "neurodivergent" and leave it at that. I introduced B to TTRPGs which he enjoyed greatly at the time and is an ongoing interest for him. (Unlike my transsexual friend from college, neither I nor his mother ever heard him express anything noncongruent about his gender identity as a child.)

My son met C in high school. He probably has a developmental problem too but I wont't DX it. B seemed a little depressed and withdrawn, C has always expressed hostility against people and institutions. C certainly has pathological narcissism and says that hard work is for suckers, his dad is a provost at an elite school. If he was seriously seeking a royal road he'd continue in the family business (where nepotism rules) but he hasn't talked to his dad in years, though, like B, he still lives at home. C jumped off the roof of his house one day to impress his little brother and broke his leg. His mom, who grew up in rural China and later got an MD valid in China but not here, thinks he is possessed by demons.

B works part time. C doesn't work. Neither are in school.

During the pandemic B was worked on by an "egg-hatcher" who helped B develop body dysmorphia. Last thanksgiving family plans fell through but we went to the community center in B's hamlet because we knew we'd get to meet up with B and his mom. (B uses a different pronoun and different name at work but doesn't mind if we use his old pronouns and name.) B told us all about the horrible side effects of the meds he is taking, and then got jumped on by a (seemingly mental ill) Trump supporter when I was coming out of the bathroom. B expresses a lot of hostility to the likes of J K Rowling because he's been told to.

C encountered "blackpill" incels who also talked him into body dysmorphia. (Like the transgenderists they have a language of transformation through ideology, in this case based on a scene from The Matrix.) His height is average, but that's not good enough. He stretches every day and wants to have surgery where they break his legs to extend them. He hasn't talked my with my son or myself since the time my son said what his real height was in an online chat. I had a 'Black Card' membership at Planet Fitness and made the offer to teach him how to lift weights, but he refused. Rumor has it, however. that he bought anabolic steroids online and injected them.

People who see things through an ideological lens would see B as good and C as evil or maybe C as good and B as evil. I look at them and see similar signs and symptoms and if I had to DX it would be "lack of social connection and lack of meaning"; both acquired body dysmorphia through ideology, I've got no doubt about it and I see both as victims of internet cults.

In Terry Prachett's Hogfather professors at the Unseen University discover a principle of "conservation of belief" so that when the Hogfather (like Santa but comes on Dec 32, drives a sleigh pulled by pigs, ...) is assassinated the world becomes plagued by the Hair Loss Fairy and the God of Hangovers (the "Oh God!") I see transgenderism, inceldom, evangelicals who don't go to church, BLM enthusiasts who don't personally know any black people, people senselessly adding stripes to the rainbow flag (hmmm... people in those classes have always had trouble with being confused with others... In Iran they think gay people need trans surgery, Intersex people frequently express that they've been violated when they get the same surgery that helps transexual people feel whole, etc.) , anti-vax activists and people who are obsessively pro-vax just to oppose anti-vax people as being our own Hair Loss Fairy that comes out of traditional religions failing.

There are many things on which I don’t agree with pg. But I feel he is accurate with describing wokeness as the term is commonly used currently. He doesn’t go into the history of the word in this essay.

It's very telling that he gives Marxist-Leninism as an example of moral orthodoxy instead of the much more relevant Capitalist orthodoxy that exists in the U.S. which he viciously upholds. It's pretty clear that it's much more acceptable to rail against DEI, "wokeism", etc., than it is to suggest that a different economic system is possible in American society. There's very few people in power that can get away with suggesting that there can be something better than Capitalism, or even admitting that there's some problems that Capitalism just can't fix. Most of the progressives or "wokes" in power only go so far as suggesting refinements and guardrails for the current system. Meanwhile, roughly half our elected officials rabidly speak out against the "woke" with no consequences, and the media clearly props up the current system against all else.

It's just so frustrating to see guys like Paul Graham pretend like they're somehow outside of or above "orthodoxy" and "ideology", to use their own terms. "Wokeism" is a religion, but somehow "anti-wokeism" isn't? My point isn't that all of what they label "wokeism" is good or that Capitalism is all bad, it's that there is a hypocrisy in their beliefs that belies their whole argument.

Above all it's just embarrassing to see, and it kills me that they paint their obvious orthodoxy as heresy, when it's anything but.

The only people who could plausibly define 'woke' as 'people who investigate their own values and have empathy' are people who consider themselves woke and are sufficiently under pg's 'prig' definition to believe that is exclusive to them, and sociopaths. What emotionally normal person would say membership of another group is defined by 'basic human decency' and 'thinking about whether their objectives are any good'?