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The Origins of Wokeness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#641

Post by maniacwhat »

tflinton wrote: post #568
UncleOxidant wrote: post #456

"Prig" is in the eye of the beholder. What about when the "prigs" were right? I'm sure the Quakers were seen as "prigs" by the southern slaveholders/traders. The Quakers were early to the abolition party and their opposition to slavery was based on religious zeal which made them seem like "prigs" to the people in the South who's whole society and economy was built on slavery. But we now consider the Quakers were righ…

I think the basis of his arguement is a prig is incentivized by calling out the moral failures of others to make themselves feel more virtuous. Where perhaps the quakers or MLK were doing it out of moral outrage.

As pointed out by Uncle oxidant, this is hard to determine.

I would suggest instead that a prig deems a person to be bad/evil based on them having a different view/behavior that society is generally divided on.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#642

Post by babyshake »

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…

My original understanding of "woke" was similar to what in the 60s they might have called being "turned on". Being awake and seeing the actual reality of things for what they are.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#644

Post by StanislavPetrov »

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…

>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 feeling called out by that.

>People tend not to like it being pointed out that they are assholes, especially when they know it’s true. That’s pretty much the whole “anti-woke” thing in a nut.

I think this is an example that accurately sums up with most normal, non-partisan people mean when say say "woke". The smug self-righteousness exhibited by those who believe themselves morally superior to others is "woke". The suggestion that somehow you are an asshole if you don't sign on completely and without question to the bizarre social and political agenda of self-appointed word and thought police. The people that you avoid like the plague because they are constantly searching for something to be offended about or some way to chide you about having transgressed against some ever-changing lexicon of acceptable terms and phrases. The people that think the world is neatly divided between "oppressors and the oppressed" and that where you fall on this insurmountable divide is based almost entirely on who your ancestors were or what your skin-tone is rather than anything you've actually done in your life. The people that think they have a monopoly on deciding what is right and wrong, and that they have been appointed the moral arbiters to decide what everyone is allowed to say.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#645

Post by pdimitar »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #553
soheil wrote: post #371

Unbelievable how anti-pg hn has gotten. I don't think what pg is saying is anything new, he's always had the same sentiment around anti-censorship, anti-authoritarian/mob and pro-breaking-the-rules attitude. It's called "hacker" news for a reason.

I'll give my opinion, as someone who used to hold pg in extremely high regard, but who is often surprised at just how thoroughly uninsightful pg's essays seem to me now. The biggest problem I see with pg, and basically with all of the SV elite, is that I rarely see them question any of their assumptions or conclusions that don't lead them to "everything I've done is right, or at least the original goals of the 'SV et…

> I'm also extremely suspect at all these SV leaders suddenly highlighting their views that are conveniently in lock step with the new administration. Like you say, pg has talked about this before, so I'm not saying his thoughts aren't genuine, I just think what Tim Sweeney said recently is pretty spot on "All these SV leaders pretended to be Democrats, and now they're pretending to be Republicans."

Yep. IMO you struck right at the heart of it. My cynical POV is that pg, like many others, tries to be on the good side of who's now in power.

Everything else discussed in the article or here, as valid or interesting as it might be, looks to be a distraction from this central motivation.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#646

Post by energy123 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #116
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…

[flagged]

Read about semantics and social constructionism.

A symbol or word carries no inherent meaning. We give it subjective meaning. That meaning is constructed socially through a shared understanding of what that symbol means through context and intention.

The same symbol or word can have multiple, and sometimes opposite, meanings, in different contexts.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#648

Post by ggm »

I continue to be fascinated by "coded slurs" -the way people use labels like this to attack views they oppose. It feels like a shorthand, but also a way to attack the voice, not the message.

So "thats just PC|woke|SJW nonsense" is used, over time, to avoid having to address the point.

TBF it's also true "he's a fascist" is probably shorthand.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#649

Post by adam_seeliger »

cmdli wrote: post #210
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”, 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…

[dead]

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#650

Post by LeroyRaz »

I think the term woke is a clear and unambiguous term. I find it surprising people consider it a slur / empty insult. I consider it a substantive characterization of people and acts that reflects a genuine disagreement.

To me, as the right uses it, the term woke refers to people or movements prioritising signalling virtue (e.g., policing the words people use) over actually improving the world. One clear instances of it was the spate of scrapping standardized testing (despite this scrapping actively harming rather than helping the disenfranchised).

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