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The Origins of Wokeness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#911

Post by BryantD »

techfeathers wrote: post #672

I don’t disagree with his definition, not disagree that it’s a problem, but it’s still feels a bit to anti-Wokey in that he calls out things that he just disagrees with. #metoo brought down some terrible people who did terrible things, I don’t think you should call metoo in and of itself woke, not overly moralistic to be mad about sexual assault, there should be some nuance there. He also calls Bud Light woke for… ac…

Yeah, that's just nuts. Let's be very specific: the issue was that Bud Light hired Dylan Mulvaney to do a social media promotion. It's not as if Dylan's face was on beer cans available in stores or anything. And this simple act caused a massive backlash. I would think that this might raise some questions about who exactly the prigs were in this instance.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#912

Post by ljm »

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…

The irony of all of this is that if you boil down the concept of 'wokeness' to simply looking past the status quo, then a lot of the things that are currently labelled 'woke' are in fact anything but. It transcends the political spectrum and simply becomes a cudgel for shit you don't like but can't explain why.

Gay marriage? It's legal, therefore status quo. Making gay marriage illegal again? Not status quo, therefore woke.

Abortion? If it's legal and you want to make it illegal, that's also changing the status quo. Woke.

Immigration? Status quo is to hire employees who are citizens or resident. Laying them off in favour of H1B workers? Woke AF.

Roe v Wade and the Chevron Doctrine? Those were status quo for decades! How woke of the Supreme Court to reverse those decisions after so many years.

Of course in each of these cases the policy is actually regressive as it reverts society back to the point before the original policies were implemented, and to that extent the argument falls apart: none of that actually seems 'woke'. Except...the people who agree with all of the above would see it as progressive towards their own aims, so it pretty much is 'woke' for them, especially as they believe their own morals to be superior (and traditionally backed by religion).

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#913

Post by oytis »

I think PG is right in tracking modern political ethical standards (that he prefers to refer as wokeness) to the student movements of the 60s. It is worth reminding about the roots of 60s movements itself though.

It was spread over the whole Western world, and was basically reconsidering Western power structures and political beliefs in the aftermath of WWII. The generation of the 40s-50s was either complicit in fascism/nazism directly or have seen it as "them" problem and was more preoccupied in defeating it militarily. The generation that came after them though had more time to reflect on how it all was even possible, and found its roots not just in Germany or Italy, but all over the world including the US - in colonialism, in racism, in sexism, classism/social darwinism etc.

So I think we should understand where we are going to be heading to if we let the oligarchy declare this work and the ethics that stemmed from it outdated.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#914

Post by greenie_beans »

ahhhahahahaha saw the title then saw who wrote it hahahaha.

anti-woke people are more annoying than the people they criticize. yawing on like a broken robot. this is one of PG's longest essays which should say a lot about somebody who has written such great, tight, concise essays about startups.

i will not be reading this. compact has a better-written reactionary pov about wokeness if you want to read it (i don't recommend that one either though. honestly i recommend reading american history instead of some white dude's reactionary "a history of wokeness" blog post)

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#917

Post by capital_guy »

The beautiful thing about essays like this is that they show you that the author has truly never known what he was talking about. Just a guy who stumbled through life at the right time. It’s a shame these people have so much power and influence. It could be wielded by people much more thoughtful and benevolent.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#918

Post by greenie_beans »

bachmeier wrote: post #530

You can tell who a person does and doesn't talk with when reading something like this. To write an essay of this length, on this topic, and not bring up (at a minimum) Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority suggests you shouldn't be writing about it. I was a college student in the 1990s. Not only that, I was a member and even leader of evangelical Christian groups in college. Outrage, us versus them, claims of being pe…

ironically paul graham has an essay about reading journalism as a subject expert and immediately knowing that the writer is writing about subjects that they don't know much about.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#919

Post by greenie_beans »

gretch wrote: post #731
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…

> What about when the "prigs" were right? I think the big take away is that being right via a lecture doesn't do anything. If you are morally right, and your aim is social justice, you should stop lecturing people, because it doesn't actually achieve what you are aiming for or really even advance the cause (in fact it may run backwards). Instead, go out and do something. For example, defer typing up that long comment…

> If you are morally right, and your aim is social justice, you should stop lecturing people, because it doesn't actually achieve what you are aiming for or really even advance the cause (in fact it may run backwards).

i'm basically a professional social justice warrior in tech and nobody is lecturing each other. everybody just does the work.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#920

Post by greenie_beans »

jimbokun wrote: post #804
jrm4 wrote: post #226

Black person here. Like most discussions of "woke" and "wokeness," this one too fails HARD by not fully and directly addressing the origins of the term -- and by "fails hard" I do mean will almost certainly do more obscuring than clarifying by starting from an information-deficient premise. Including, e.g. "The term 'woke' has its origins in the Black American community as a signifier of awareness about ones politica…

Sure but that has almost nothing to do with how it’s used today. Language and the meanings of words change over time, and it’s all but impossible to make people go back to using tre old definition.

but don't you think an essay titled "the origins of wokeness" should consider that definition?
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