How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life? • Hacker News Board

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#581

Post by UK-Al05 » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:11 PM UTC

Applejinx wrote: post #562

UK-Al05 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Woke' is illiberal. A lot of the ideas behind it attack liberalism as they see at enabling the status quo as opposed to action for change. Edit: Why are people down voting me? Critical theories are very open about their critique of liberalism and rationality? And how they've led to lack of change. It's not some weird conspiracy. I personally think it's not worth it to abandon liberal ideas. As suddenly you validate…

People are downvoting you because they don't trust that your argument is in good faith. It's a foundational argument for manipulatively moving goalposts, and sketchy as far as redefining commonly accepted words. No, 'woke' and 'liberal' don't make sense to paint as opposite ideologies, much less set up straw-men for trying to plant the idea that 'woke is abandoning liberal ideas, you wouldn't do THAT, would you?' And…

I wouldn't say they're opposite. But I would say they're ok in abandoning liberal ideals in order achieve their goals. I.E Mob justice, "positive" discrimination, silence is violence, ostracization of people who dare think differently, etc etc

But if you don't take liberal ideas seriously, suddenly you validate authoritarian tactics. The only difference then is that it's ok to use authoritarian tactics just as long as they push my ideas, and not yours. If you don't like authoritarian tactics that right wing people use, you can't use authoritarian tactics to promote left ideas without being a massive hypocrite. Either using authoritarian tactics is ok or it isn't.

Most atrocities in the world come from the authoritarian parts of politics regardless of where you are on the left/right spectrum. My ideas are the right way, and I'm going enforce it using law, mob justice and violence. As opposed to liberalism where diversity of thought is welcomed.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#582

Post by spangry » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #451

p0d wrote: post #340

As a christian I believe in mercy and grace. And yes, many of us 'believers' have not practised what we preached. Many of us do try however not to be hypocrites. Here's my question. Where is mercy and grace in the midst of wokeness? I want you to believe my christian message but I will not force you to do so. I don't want to introduce laws to force you to believe what I believe. I don't want you to lose your job beca…

Under the woke philosophy the criterion for deserving forgiveness still exists but is changed. In classical Christian philosophy, forgiveness requires contrition whereas under woke philosophy forgiveness requires powerlessness . This is often misinterpreted as an absence of forgiveness because no amount of contrition seems to abate the condemnation.

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this. What you you mean by 'requires powerlessness'? If I commit a sin against wokeness, how do I demonstrate powerlessness in order to gain forgiveness?

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#583

Post by dc-programmer » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:16 PM UTC

slibhb wrote: post #507

I think "wokeness" comes not so much from "safetyism" but from a generation who were educated to be critical of their own society. They were raised and educated by ex-hippies, who had successfully critiqued the post-war US. I think this was a pedagogical crime (raising children to be critical). Every generation is supposed to critique its predecessor but teaching critique to children from a young age robbed them of t…

This was not my early education experience in an American public school. The history taught to elementary school students circa 2000 was whitewashed to the point of almost being propaganda for American exceptionalism. Yes, later on in my education career I took classes that emphasized critical thinking and deconstructing ideas and texts, and these had a big impact on my worldview. But as a someone on the younger end of the millennial generation, I think collectively we became critical of our society due to the back to back travesties of the Iraq War and the financial crisis (as cliche as that sounds). For me, I have been completely disillusioned to the idea that social progress is inevitable, so I believe it’s well worth learning how to call out regressive ideas and the asymmetrical power structures that exist in our society.

Yes I believe some people take this way too far (and the media capitalizes on this by cherry picking the most egregious examples and using those as a straw man to represent all of left wing thinking), but on the other hand I don’t think we should accept the status quo. On Hackernews, we usually strive to look for better ways to solve problems or to solve problems people didn’t even know they had, so I don’t see why we should accept the organization of society as either a global maximum or as static and immutable. It’s something that should be hacked and improved upon like anything else. As you can tell, my experiences have culminated in my adoption of a liberal worldview (more moderate on a few ideas, radical on a handful) but I can see how different life experiences could lead someone to adopt a different ideology. My biggest frustration currently is the status quo bias of mainstream American thought where we just ignore the existence of inconvenient problems. If you think less government activity will solve a problem, I’m glad to hear you out as long as your argument is in good faith.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#584

Post by mrshadowgoose » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #110

Barrin92 wrote: post #7

I'm glad that the Economist points out at the end that 'wokeness' has become a favorite of business, and the reason is pretty obvious, as a movement it's self-defeating because all identitarian politics eventually ends in infighting, with its subjective, choice and preference based worldview it's actually ill-equipped to move anything. It might exist in academia or PR departments or journalism or facebook pages and t…

I'm curious what any possible alternatives might be to the practical problems "wokeness" tries to present itself as a solution to. I don't think the problem of racism and sexism (two classic "woke" topics) are "Left" problems, which is why it strikes me as odd that I don't see ideas about how to deal with them coming from everyone, beyond a straight denial they exist, or that it's actually the fault of the folks expe…

TLDR: Actually address the fundamental problems (spoiler: sexism and racism are not the fundamental problems, they are aggravating factors) that allow sexism and racism to cause issues for disadvantaged groups.

Most of the discussions around systemic racism and sexism fundamentally boil down to the topic either poverty or violence from police.

Poverty:

Specific groups are over-represented in the impoverished population, sometimes across generations. We, correctly, have identified systemic bias as an contributing factor to these trends.

Imagine a hypothetical society where the means of comfort (good food, safe and adequate housing, new clothing, entertainment, etc...) are available to people that need them, regardless of whether or not one is employed. Now ask yourself, would racism and sexism have the same bite that it currently has? If one's ability to live comfortably is not based on systemic bias, one would be disingenuous if they said "yes".

Life gets a lot easier when one can ignore shitty racists and sexists without fear of losing their means of survival. It would be nice if racists and sexists didn't exist, but if everyone had the means to ignore them without fear of repercussions, that's almost as good.

Violence from police:

A few observations from the last few years of police violence and the BLM movement:

-There is a large portion of shitty individuals within various police forces that enjoy victimizing victimizable individuals

-Racialized groups are more victimizable than the average

-Police violence, although concentrated against minorities, also victimizes everyone to some degree, regardless of race or gender.

What practical solutions have come out of all of the years of outrage and protests? Instead of using "master/slave" software terminology, my company now encourages "leader/follower", while all of management is patting its back for "fighting systemic racism". Huh?

Here are some actual practical solutions to this issue:

-federally-mandated body cameras for all overt police officers that are always-on, and record to multiple external and publicly-viewable archives

-police review bodies with actual teeth to punish criminality amongst police officer

-a legal mechanism to permanently bar an individual from any kind of policing, country-wide

-removing "verbal evidence from a trusted officer" as admissible evidence in court

"Wokeness" is just yet another socially-acceptable form of discrimination, where us commoners have been pitted against each other playing some stupid "privilege points" game based on physical appearance. It's divisive, and is not actually moving us towards a healthier society. We should be looking towards our government to solve the actual issues that are aggravated by (and not caused by) sexism and racism.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#585

Post by fallingknife » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

thurn wrote: post #521

p0d wrote: post #340

As a christian I believe in mercy and grace. And yes, many of us 'believers' have not practised what we preached. Many of us do try however not to be hypocrites. Here's my question. Where is mercy and grace in the midst of wokeness? I want you to believe my christian message but I will not force you to do so. I don't want to introduce laws to force you to believe what I believe. I don't want you to lose your job beca…

Do you not think there is a difference between 'you should follow my religion' and e.g. 'you should use neutral pronouns to make other people more comfortable?' The later isn't about some fundamental belief, it's really just an extension of a concept that has existed for thousands of years -- politeness

Since when did "politeness" mean you have to do what other people tell you? If English people demanded that we spell color like "colour" because seeing it without the u made them uncomfortable, the correct response would be to tell them to fuck off. I don't see why it's any different with people demanding their own pronouns

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#586

Post by k__ » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

Probably better access to information these days.

Back in the days you'd have to go out to the right place to meet the right people.

Now they're just a few clicks away.

I guess, we just have to wait until the the generation of woke people is old enough to run the world.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#587

Post by foepys » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

Glide wrote: post #522

concordDance wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way American values have spread all around the world and started supplanting the native values is upsetting. Everything from commercialism and employment to attitudes towards nakedness and violence.

Cultural colonization

More like cultural imperialism.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#588

Post by fidesomnes » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:21 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #7

I'm glad that the Economist points out at the end that 'wokeness' has become a favorite of business, and the reason is pretty obvious, as a movement it's self-defeating because all identitarian politics eventually ends in infighting, with its subjective, choice and preference based worldview it's actually ill-equipped to move anything. It might exist in academia or PR departments or journalism or facebook pages and t…

it's because you don't have any idea how destructive purging undesirable factions from your body politic are to society as a whole. it is perfectly fine if you remain ignorant of this, the rest of us are not.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#589

Post by frankbreetz » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #577

rayiner wrote: post #549

Our political and cultural institutions are dominated by people who attended those elite schools. This is the next batch of folks who will be doing your IPO paperwork: https://freebeacon.com/campus/northwestern-law-administrator... Now it’s making the jump to K-12. My second grader is apparently learning how to develop an “identity” around her “skin tone” (according to an email from her teacher). This has had the pre…

What are the objections to this sort of teaching?

Parent said in his comment, the teachings made his brown skinned child feel inferior, and he didn't feel this way as a child with the old way of teaching.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#590

Post by papandada » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

pitspotter2 wrote: post #551

p0d wrote: post #340

As a christian I believe in mercy and grace. And yes, many of us 'believers' have not practised what we preached. Many of us do try however not to be hypocrites. Here's my question. Where is mercy and grace in the midst of wokeness? I want you to believe my christian message but I will not force you to do so. I don't want to introduce laws to force you to believe what I believe. I don't want you to lose your job beca…

The practice of Christianity is primarily about repentance. We none of us have full control over our behaviour but we always have the ability to correct our hearts by swallowing our pride and accepting divine forgiveness. And we are obliged to forgive others who have repented. Wokeness doesn't understand this. It sees people, woke and Christians both, as hypocrites. And we are! This is because it's necessary to advoc…

Even worse, we're supposed to follow the example of forgiving our enemies while they murder us. ("For they know not what they do")

this leads to controversy even among Christians, but the cross is scandalous (Greek skandalon is literally a block that causes stumbling) foolishness when encountered face first.

God acted first, forgave us before we repented, even forgives those who will never repent ("causes rain to fall on the righteous and unrighteous"). But there is judgment, krinomai, discernment of a heart's response to that forgiveness -- God allows us to reject him in the end, and if I ultimately reject the source of life, I die.