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The Origins of Wokeness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#741

Post by fromMars »

Not much I can say other than that was a disappointing piece of trash from Paul.

The whole tirade against wokeness by the far right is nothing more than a bizarre attempt to stigmatize those who want to improve things for segments of society.

A more legitimate article might have focused on tactics such as shaming and cancelling those who disagree which is problematic in many instances, but Graham paints with too broad of a brush and comes across as another conservative whose only interest is to discredit those who think differently.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#742

Post by steve_taylor »

One the one hand, I think it’s great that after all these various iterations of prigs throughout human history, we’ve finally arrived at a point where the label they gave themselves has become a humorous insult. Unfortunately, this means

- they culturally appropriated “woke” from a group they believe to be systemically persecuted and turned it into a joke,

- telling someone that you don’t want to hear their racist joke is now “woke” even if you’re not playing to an audience, and

- suddenly, every little thing people don’t like is “woke” and it is beyond ridiculous.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#743

Post by felizuno »

Articles like this on either side are a waste of time to write and read. Commenting on them is even worse (and here I am too...)

Zero people are receiving value from any of this energy, because it is impossible to - these are intellectual empty calories. Nobody here will be changing their mind, and these comments won't bring anybody closer to changing their mind. Literally nothing of substance is being created, and nothing will change because of any of it.

It proves that you and I are foolish that we participate in such useless activities while our short lives slip away. I'm here hypocritically yelling into the wind like an idiot right now. All of this is a sad waste of human potential.

Imagine if the time spent writing this article and all these 1400+ comments went into something simple like picking up litter where we live. What a real appreciable difference that would make. I'm going to go do that to offset the time I spent writing this stupid comment.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#745

Post by rockskon »

CooCooCaCha wrote: post #98
Leary wrote: post #59

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 da…

The difference here is people are trying to address people’s actual life experiences instead of something they believe based on faith.

All peoples' life experiences equally matter. Just some areas more equal than others.

/s

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#746

Post by jacobjjacob »

h43z wrote: post #477

Still can't believe we all changed our branch names from master to main.

Decades ago, when I was a teenager, and saw that “master/slave” was a technical term, it made me uncomfortable- like, it has so much baggage for a technical term.

I’m guessing that the master branch is not a master/slave reference, but “master copy”. But I think main is just as good, so I really don’t care that it got caught up in the movement. This is just language naturally evolving, which I know many people are fundamentally against on an ideological basis.

To me, fighting the changes of language over time is like yelling at the wind. Just let it go and focus on what’s truly important (almost everything else). People will advocate for changes and they will stick or they won’t. If you are an effective communicator, you really shouldn’t have too much trouble keeping up.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#748

Post by rockskon »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #736
Leary wrote: post #59

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 da…

Everyone does moral enforcement though. Even this blog post we are commenting about (which I really agree with) is an attempt at moral enforcement. He even prescribes that wholeness be treated like a religion and gives a whole list of scenarios where one should deny the request of a woke person (same as one would a religious person). To constantly keep up this equality among all ideologies requires rules and enforcem…

The frequency and severity of enforcement are the distinguishing factors here.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#749

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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