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The Origins of Wokeness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#51

Post by swed420 »

jimkleiber wrote: post #46

To me this seems to be the most rambling, disorganized essay I've seen him write. I normally appreciate how he structures his arguments and in this one, I struggled to get past the first few sentences. Also maybe it's because he assumes there is a group of "the woke" instead of realizing that the people who self-identify as "woke" probably mean something really different than the ones who use "the woke" in a demeanin…

The biggest flaw imo was the deafening silence around how "wokeness" is used as a tool by corporate Dems/Repubs and state agents of capital interests to distract from material issues and keep people divided over "culture war" / identity politics issues instead of uniting their focus on the former.

No mention of how the recent resurgence coincided with the Occupy Wall St protests.

No mention of how it was used to dismantle the Bernie Sanders campaigns.

Etc.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#52

Post by jollyllama »

hhackity wrote: post #15

A well-considered essay from PG. I thought this part, discussing a practical approach to dealing with disagreement of beliefs, was particularly insightful: > Is there a simple, principled way to deal with wokeness? I think there is: to use the customs we already have for dealing with religion. Wokeness is effectively a religion, just with God replaced by protected classes. It's not even the first religion of this kin…

For better or worse, I don't think much practical possibility stems from this insight, and I wish PG had considered the possibility that the enforcement of some orthodoxy is unavoidable, and that the liberal environment he's describing is a vacuum into which some orthodoxy will inevitably insert itself.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#53

Post by foldr »

Hmm, this is a completely generic and unreflective rant about ‘wokeness’ that could have been cobbled together from YouTube comments and Jeremy Clarkson columns. What is PG thinking?

The most striking thing about it is that it makes absolutely no attempt to consider how there might be a link between the undeniable social progress that’s been made on race and gender over the past decades and the aspects of ‘wokeness’ that PG finds distasteful. He simply assumes that you can automatically get all of the progress without any of the stuff he doesn’t like.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#55

Post by th19367 »

taylodl wrote: post #11

[flagged]

What? Paul Graham has been making statements that people found "too right wing" for at least 20 years. I have never seen him express pro-censorship or radical DEI views like the big U.S. corporations did.

We see now that all these corporations are A-grade hypocrites, which was already clear in 2020 but forbidden to say.

You cannot accuse Paul Graham for suddenly changing his views.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#59

Post by Leary »

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 damnation. That social dynamic—where the “righteous” person gains status by exposing the lapses of others—feels remarkably similar to what we see now with “cancellations” on social media.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#60

Post by Frummy »

It’s simple, if you can do a special rain dance that makes you not have to draw back your bottom line, you will do it every day of the week whether you’re a billion dollar corporation or a 500 year old university
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