Thank you pg for writing this!
The Origins of Wokeness
961–970 of 1001 posts
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#962You 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…
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Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#963[dead]
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#964"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…
Doesn’t matter ultimately. If you’re at the point of requiring loyalty oaths to get hired, you’ve already lost the plot. Way past counterproductive.
There’s a great sttng episode, the drumhead, which explores witchhunts.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#965I 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…
I am from Europe and from my point of view there ís really a wokeness problem in the US. The US is on average far more right wing mostly in the capitalistic sense than Europe. But it's difficult to talk to people from the US for me because anything might and will offend them at the blink of an eye. These things like trigger warnings and things. I'm always afraid I could be cancelled at any moment when talking to somebody from the US.
I don't think it's really a left-right wing thing because Europe is in general 90% left wing from a US standpoint, and we don't have it.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#966> You can express your own religious identity and explain your beliefs, but you can't call your coworkers infidels if they disagree, or try to ban them from saying things that contradict its doctrines, or insist that the organization adopt yours as its official religion.
The issue with this is that it enshrines denial of identity in the same place as religion. If a trans colleague identifies a way that you disagree with, does this give you free pass to misgender them and deny their identity? That is cruel, and you would be denying a colleague their right of self-determination. This is bullying.
I'm not saying you should be stricken down for needing time to adjust to their pronouns and chosen name; I'm saying you shouldn't be cruel to them by denying them their identity, and that such cruel behavior should not be protected in society.
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I would turn this entire discourse about "wokeness" on its head, especially the discourse from the pg's and Musk's of the world, and assert that they don't actually care about the way the ideological wind is blowing; They're afraid of the collectivist nature of it.
That many less-powerful people can band together in pursuit of social justice against them, entrenched titans of capital, those capable of steering mainstream discourse, can provide a counter-argument to their power structures, is what _really_ troubles them.
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#967I 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…
As a non-american, reading the definition of woke I dont know what to think If woke means progressive and politically conscious then the opposite is what, uninformed,thoughtless. So people say they rather be ignorant than conscious? Sometimes I think people are not actually fully conscious and tend to behave like primitive animals and they are hating everything because reverting to hate is a primitive animalistic tra…
I would advise you to ignore yapyap's definitions.
Paul Graham has defined woke in the best way I have read so far, and it is in the article we are discussing about:
Woke: An aggressively performative focus on social justice.
(Performed by a self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others.)
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#968> You can express your own religious identity and explain your beliefs, but you can't call your coworkers infidels if they disagree, or try to ban them from saying things that contradict its doctrines, or insist that the organization adopt yours as its official religion. The issue with this is that it enshrines denial of identity in the same place as religion. If a trans colleague identifies a way that you disagree w…
> If a trans colleague identifies a way that you disagree with, does this give you free pass to misgender them and deny their identity?
Yes, of course. If you believe that false claims of an opposite-sex identity constitute a harmful lie, why should you be compelled to endorse it?
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#969> Article titled "The Origins of Wokeness"
> Doesn't actually discuss the origins of wokeness
> Claims to be against male chauvinism
> Publish date timed within days of right wing male chauvinist being inaugrated as American president
> Article is full of right wing male chauvinist talking points
> Author moved from United States to England in 2016, the same year that right wing male chauvinist became president for the first time
Hmmmm...
Re: The Origins of Wokeness
#970Black 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…
jrm4, yours should be the top comment.
I denounce Paul Graham's essay. At a time when our leaders - especially our thought leaders - reliably do the wrong thing, it's especially appalling that he has the wrong take on wokeness, transparently and self-evidently to appease Donald Trump and his followers in order to protect his financial ties to Y Combinator startups. That's low, bordering on unforgivable, and until he retracts his statements, I'm afraid that I've lost respect for him and his opinion in all other matters.
It's obvious that pg isn't schooled in the basic civic virtues that I assumed he was. Such as: in journalism one always punches up. That's perhaps the simplest litmus test to know if one is siding with the oppressor.
I identify as woke and progressive. I speak out against all forms of oppression. I call out othering such as sexism, racism, ableism and ageism. I watched political correctness rise and fall under the boot of capitalist authoritarianism. I witnessed the wrong people win the internet lottery and deliberately undermine everything the civil rights movement achieved since the 1960s, as well as the shared prosperity that the New Deal brought since FDR. I watched them monopolize our media, take over and corrupt symbols of what's possible like Twitter and Wikipedia, attack beloved institutions like the US Department of Education and Environmental Protection Agency, divide us on wedge issues in order to enrich themselves, and capture our regulatory bodies through lobbying and packing courts with judges and justices who toe the party line. I watched the winners sell out like pg just did. I watched my heroes fall.
I thought the readership of Hacker News was with me on this stuff. But I guess I was wrong. It's apparent that too many people here just don't get it. They don't work on their unhealed traumas, they don't seek equitable solutions. They just side with concentrated wealth and power, whether out of fear over their own job security, greed by hoping to be at the top of the pyramid someday, or through simple projection by not nurturing their own dignity and the power that their voice could have to shed grace and light onto the world.
If everything I just said is performative, so be it. I'd rather be on the side of peace, love and righteousness than whatever all this is.