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The Origins of Wokeness
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Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#712Unbelievable 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.
He claims to be anti-censorship, yet he can't see Twitter is just as censored as it used to be because it aligns with his world view now. The same as the Left used to be blind to Right censorship. Maybe he should try tweeting "cis".
"pro-breaking-the-rules attitude" come on. He's aligning himself with the most conservative and powerful people in the world right now. How is that a rule breaking attitude?
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#713Would this have gotten front page if it wasn't pg? Because I think I know the answer to that.
It's not surprising that people come to PG's commenting site to comment on PG's writings.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#714I 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…
Anyone using the term woke in 2025 is using the term in bad faith and to create the bogeyman you describe. It's actually hard to find the time when anyone on the left actually used it. Seems like it was a little under a year and the term was dropped to be more specific actions.
Part of the problem here is that while there's a set of social and political attitudes that really do exist, a lot of the people who practice them are very reticent to label themselves, preferring to claim either that they occupy the whole space of compassionate legitimate political practice, or that they have nothing in common with other groups who are (from an outside eye) very similar.
I like Freddie deBoer's 2023 definition, which at least is framed from a left-wing point-of-view rather than the aggressive and weaponised right-wing framing:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiede...
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#715Incredible article, thank you for sharing. The parallels to unwelcome and unsolicited religious proselytizing is something I've been calling out for years, and ironically have often been met with extreme hatred and condemnation in response.
Never in my life did I think that nearly every institution, company, corporation, (you name it), would compel and coerce people into following a narrow set of societal rules that appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and grated firmly against a functional, albeit imperfect, status quo -- most of which was accepted and even celebrated by most people in Western nations.
What's terrifying to me is how acceptable it became to write and defend academic literature around these manufactured problems, specifically for "prigs" to justify their abhorrent behavior towards other people.
I'm glad more people are finally willing to have an honest discussion about this, without immediately labeling it a "right-wing talking piece", as too many so lazily love to do.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#716This is one of Paul Graham's best essays. The historical timeline is accurate, the phrasing is much more careful than the comments here claim. If you are 20 and in university, it will be hard to understand the historic perspective. You cannot just rip out single sentences and attack them without context. If you disagree with everything, at least read the paragraph about Mao's cultural revolution, where he riled up yo…
I didn't know that happened to Python. It happened to NixOS.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#717I 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…
Why and how is labelling unlikable behaviour as woke bad faith. As I understand the right using the term, they use it consistently to refer to a very specific type of behaviour they see as bad (one core aspect is prioritising signalling being virtuous over actually improving the world). Is your complaint that this usage unfairly co-opts the original left usage of the word?
> they use it consistently to refer to a very specific type of behaviour they see as bad
I disagree that their use is consistent and specific.
Their usage is constant and is malleable enough to encompass "whatever i don't like right now".
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#718People on the left don't like to admit it, but a lot of the left wing activism we see today growing out from the 1960s was directly influenced by the Soviet Union and it's "active measures" programs
According to the KGB defector Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov, the Soviets actively encouraged colleges to focus on studies away from science and engineering, and also encouraged the "break down" of things like "religion" and "family" to make for more fertile soil for the inevitable communist takeover. At best such measures were focused on encouraging anti-nuclear activism to reduce the US capacity for nuclear retaliation in the event of a total war. At worst it led to Cultural Revolution style critiques of college faculty. Despite the Soviet Union being gone, the cultural aspects of these efforts live on (mostly in Sociology departments)
People on the right don't like to admit it, but a ton of the right wing "activism" we see TODAY is from modern Russian efforts to try the same sort of interference on the right (and still to a lesser extent on the left). There was no one from the 80s more disallusioned by the old Soviet tactics using left wing actors than Putin (who was in contact with left wing Red Army Faction terrorist groups in Germany). He's sought to try the same tactics out on the right which has been incredibly receptive to conspiracy theories of all kinds.
There's an active campaign to erode the public's faith in science (anti-vaccine movements, ivermectin being a cure-all for everything) and journalism. Spread through channels like Rogan's podcast, and perhaps even Mr. Musk himself who spreads propaganda about big lies like "Ukraine having some sort bioweapons program" unquestioningly. Gradually the goal is not to get people to believe in something, but rather to get them to not know what to believe.
The American left is too distracted by culture wars bullshit to counter blatant propaganda, and people like Paul Graham are too enamored by the success of Musk et al to see what is directly in front of them.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#719I 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…
Oh I'm sorry, are we now saying "woke" covers economic class issues like homelessness and poor people, instead of just social issues which both sides have used to suck all the air out of political discussion?
Now that the neoliberals are embarrassed enough to throw out "woke", are we slipping in economic concerns too?
PSA: YOU CAN STILL BE A SELF-RIGHTEOUSLY MORALISTIC PRICK, SO LONG AS IT'S BASED ON ACTUAL TANGIBLE ECONOMIC ISSUES THAT ARE SYSTEMIC AND ACTIONABLE
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#720I 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" make as much sense as "liberal", "fascist" or "nazi" these days.