It's ridiculous that this is an essential point, because it means the common understanding of the practical understanding of politics has degraded to this point, but you're absolutely on point here, Freddie. We shouldn't have to have this reminder, and yet, here we are.
Since you last posted on this topic, I’ve been working on a definition that I post any time someone says “you can’t even define what woke means”. Then I update it based on the responses/discussion”
I’d love to hear what people here think.
Here is my current long version:
“A morally absolute political ideology focused on ”experienced” oppression based primarily on exclusionary group identification (such as race, gender, ability, etc). These precepts are presented as self-righteous demands that must be treated as self-evident, universally true and mandatory no matter how internally inconsistent or counter-productive they may be in practice. The promotion of these ideas (and any perceived or derived concepts from those ideas) supersedes any fundamental individual civil rights such as freedom of speech and any expression of contradictory personal religious or moral beliefs. Failure to comply is punished by social exclusion and expulsion from employment.”
Thankfully this is one battle the woke lost definitively. Now when I contrast my liberal views with wokery everyone knows what I'm talking about. That was the outcome they were desperate to avoid, and succeeded in avoiding for most of the past decade.
On 2) and especially 3), I have lately been developing the notion that "wokeness" is a fundamentally neoliberal response to the problem of social injustice. Undergirding the philosophy of neoliberalism is a sort of hyper-individualism, and I think we see that manifest in wokeness. There's an acknowledgment of social problems like racism and sexism and etc, but because neoliberalism fundamentally abhors any kind of collective solution you get what we have. That this "solution" is accompanied by a whole lot of great market opportunities for DEI consultants & allows large organizations to pay their way into virtue is not a coincidence. Likewise it is not a coincidence that threatening individuals' labor income is one of the primary tactics to enforce compliance.
Now that the Soviet Union is gone, and People Of Influence And Authority no longer have to toss the masses a bone or two, they would much prefer that we dissipate our energy on dreary arguments about cultural appropriation and how many LGTBQXYZPDQ+ can dance on the head of a pin, endless and endlessly performative struggle sessions, rather than raise uncomfortable questions about how the economic pie is sliced, why the humans are feasting on salmon and prime steak and the family pets must be content with off-brand dry kibble that smells musty.
Put another way - to paraphrase Chris Hedges - elites will gladly discuss race, they will decry gender inequality most piteously, they will demonstrate a touching concern for the rights of sexual and gender minorities so oppressed that they have not even been discovered yet. They are so open-minded that they will even feign sensitivity to those who call themselves a different species, for Bastet's sake. Those same elites will not readily discuss economic class.
Or, in the negative formulation - if businesses were to stop opposing unionization of their workers, the result would be a transfer of wealth, of *concrete* *material* *benefits*, to brown and black and yellow and tabby and white working class people and cats greater than all the allyship statements ever penned, all the diversity committees ever instituted, all the preferred pronoun tags ever attached to a corporate email. Which is precisely why they will not do this.
With foregoing in mind:
1. Always remember to keep your eye on the money.
2. Never forget to keep your eye on the money.
3. Always remember to never forget to keep your eye on the money.
4. Never forget to always remember to keep your eye on the money.
Everything else is smoke and mirrors designed to get you to violate one or more of above-listed tenets and dissipate your energy into something harmless.
I think the right has also muddled the definition of woke politics to mean everything they don’t like. Like any diversity initiative is woke in their eyes. The conflation makes it challenging to define.
This is perhaps what you mean by “emotionalist,” but I am struck by the predominance of therapeutic/self-help/vaguely Buddhist terminology in woke-speak. In fact I think if its linguistic tics were merely academic, wokeness wouldn’t be nearly so off putting for the uninitiated. It’s the bizarre and ugly combination of academic-ese and therapy-ese (and, to the extent that it’s distinct, activist-ese) that makes it intolerable, impenetrable, and therefore self-defeating.
The reason for this is the argument tactic of just assuming any decent person is on board with their assumptions about the world and how it should be. That way you start an argument having to contend with the assertion you are a bigot for not just nodding along with the latest social justice axioms.
I disagree with some portions of your definition, but I think you're missing the point of this whole Bethany episode a bit - the actual definition isn't really important, it's that it's a catchall term (like CRT) to describe anything that a particular kind of person doesn't ideologically agree with. Forcing people who use "woke" pejoratively to define it illuminates how it's actually used - as a virtue signal, if you will, by right-wingers to signal which side they're on. Asking them to define it forces them to articulate aspects of their ideology that they prefer to keep hidden or at least want to avoid being pinned down on - in this case, surely the fact that these people have a hard time defining these terms without sounding racist.
Do I think this is necessarily an effective tactic? Not really. But it's not clear that there are any effective tactics in politics anymore. I think asking someone who wrote a book about the evils of wokeness to define "wokeness" is fair play, regardless of how well people "intuitively" understand it - especially since we clearly disagree on the definition when we get into specifics.
Jesus Freddie - did you really just write that? So you have been ideologically captured by woke as a viable thing? Really, when the quest for free speech and free expression is your topic de jur and conservatism is the side of politics demanding the same, and woke is demanding it be destroyed as a historical relic... you are going to favor woke over conservatism?
You see... this is why we cannot have nice things.
I think "Woke" is fine because it is a pejorative. Personally, I would also consider "Woke Racist" to borrow from John McWhorter. The problem with just calling it social justice is that social justice is focused on equality, equal opportunity... it lives within the constitution and laws on the books. Woke is an ideology. It derives from the fake scholarship of Critical Theory which blatantly says that it is all about capturing political power. It really has nothing to do with social justice. The woke practitioners just exploit victim groups to their end of achieving political power. That is why rank and file Democrats latch onto it. It seems you are doing the same... accepting the evil of that Pandor's Box just because you hate Republicans and conservatism. This is not a good look... and it, along with Republicans that vote against Trump because of his mean Tweets... are the reason we even have this woke crap within the Democrat party.
This is a big deal. It is our extensional threat. But you seem to be waffling on it.
That said I’m fascinated by the anti-woke forces. There was talk that all the recent aircraft near misses, Bank failures etc. were due to woke policies namely the hiring of less qualified minorities to the detriment of whites and Asians. It seems like they think certain minorities are genuinely inferior. But they will never admit it of course.
Ugh you’re right about “y’all.”
It's ridiculous that this is an essential point, because it means the common understanding of the practical understanding of politics has degraded to this point, but you're absolutely on point here, Freddie. We shouldn't have to have this reminder, and yet, here we are.
Since you last posted on this topic, I’ve been working on a definition that I post any time someone says “you can’t even define what woke means”. Then I update it based on the responses/discussion”
I’d love to hear what people here think.
Here is my current long version:
“A morally absolute political ideology focused on ”experienced” oppression based primarily on exclusionary group identification (such as race, gender, ability, etc). These precepts are presented as self-righteous demands that must be treated as self-evident, universally true and mandatory no matter how internally inconsistent or counter-productive they may be in practice. The promotion of these ideas (and any perceived or derived concepts from those ideas) supersedes any fundamental individual civil rights such as freedom of speech and any expression of contradictory personal religious or moral beliefs. Failure to comply is punished by social exclusion and expulsion from employment.”
wow. this was well written and cogent. captures the essence
Thankfully this is one battle the woke lost definitively. Now when I contrast my liberal views with wokery everyone knows what I'm talking about. That was the outcome they were desperate to avoid, and succeeded in avoiding for most of the past decade.
Tim Urban uses the term “social justice fundamentalism”, which I find quite fitting
On 2) and especially 3), I have lately been developing the notion that "wokeness" is a fundamentally neoliberal response to the problem of social injustice. Undergirding the philosophy of neoliberalism is a sort of hyper-individualism, and I think we see that manifest in wokeness. There's an acknowledgment of social problems like racism and sexism and etc, but because neoliberalism fundamentally abhors any kind of collective solution you get what we have. That this "solution" is accompanied by a whole lot of great market opportunities for DEI consultants & allows large organizations to pay their way into virtue is not a coincidence. Likewise it is not a coincidence that threatening individuals' labor income is one of the primary tactics to enforce compliance.
Now that the Soviet Union is gone, and People Of Influence And Authority no longer have to toss the masses a bone or two, they would much prefer that we dissipate our energy on dreary arguments about cultural appropriation and how many LGTBQXYZPDQ+ can dance on the head of a pin, endless and endlessly performative struggle sessions, rather than raise uncomfortable questions about how the economic pie is sliced, why the humans are feasting on salmon and prime steak and the family pets must be content with off-brand dry kibble that smells musty.
Put another way - to paraphrase Chris Hedges - elites will gladly discuss race, they will decry gender inequality most piteously, they will demonstrate a touching concern for the rights of sexual and gender minorities so oppressed that they have not even been discovered yet. They are so open-minded that they will even feign sensitivity to those who call themselves a different species, for Bastet's sake. Those same elites will not readily discuss economic class.
Or, in the negative formulation - if businesses were to stop opposing unionization of their workers, the result would be a transfer of wealth, of *concrete* *material* *benefits*, to brown and black and yellow and tabby and white working class people and cats greater than all the allyship statements ever penned, all the diversity committees ever instituted, all the preferred pronoun tags ever attached to a corporate email. Which is precisely why they will not do this.
With foregoing in mind:
1. Always remember to keep your eye on the money.
2. Never forget to keep your eye on the money.
3. Always remember to never forget to keep your eye on the money.
4. Never forget to always remember to keep your eye on the money.
Everything else is smoke and mirrors designed to get you to violate one or more of above-listed tenets and dissipate your energy into something harmless.
I think the right has also muddled the definition of woke politics to mean everything they don’t like. Like any diversity initiative is woke in their eyes. The conflation makes it challenging to define.
It seems like woke is bad. How much word count on something that’s good you think we could get?
This is perhaps what you mean by “emotionalist,” but I am struck by the predominance of therapeutic/self-help/vaguely Buddhist terminology in woke-speak. In fact I think if its linguistic tics were merely academic, wokeness wouldn’t be nearly so off putting for the uninitiated. It’s the bizarre and ugly combination of academic-ese and therapy-ese (and, to the extent that it’s distinct, activist-ese) that makes it intolerable, impenetrable, and therefore self-defeating.
The reason for this is the argument tactic of just assuming any decent person is on board with their assumptions about the world and how it should be. That way you start an argument having to contend with the assertion you are a bigot for not just nodding along with the latest social justice axioms.
I disagree with some portions of your definition, but I think you're missing the point of this whole Bethany episode a bit - the actual definition isn't really important, it's that it's a catchall term (like CRT) to describe anything that a particular kind of person doesn't ideologically agree with. Forcing people who use "woke" pejoratively to define it illuminates how it's actually used - as a virtue signal, if you will, by right-wingers to signal which side they're on. Asking them to define it forces them to articulate aspects of their ideology that they prefer to keep hidden or at least want to avoid being pinned down on - in this case, surely the fact that these people have a hard time defining these terms without sounding racist.
Do I think this is necessarily an effective tactic? Not really. But it's not clear that there are any effective tactics in politics anymore. I think asking someone who wrote a book about the evils of wokeness to define "wokeness" is fair play, regardless of how well people "intuitively" understand it - especially since we clearly disagree on the definition when we get into specifics.
"I’d rather woke politics win than conservatism."
Jesus Freddie - did you really just write that? So you have been ideologically captured by woke as a viable thing? Really, when the quest for free speech and free expression is your topic de jur and conservatism is the side of politics demanding the same, and woke is demanding it be destroyed as a historical relic... you are going to favor woke over conservatism?
You see... this is why we cannot have nice things.
I think "Woke" is fine because it is a pejorative. Personally, I would also consider "Woke Racist" to borrow from John McWhorter. The problem with just calling it social justice is that social justice is focused on equality, equal opportunity... it lives within the constitution and laws on the books. Woke is an ideology. It derives from the fake scholarship of Critical Theory which blatantly says that it is all about capturing political power. It really has nothing to do with social justice. The woke practitioners just exploit victim groups to their end of achieving political power. That is why rank and file Democrats latch onto it. It seems you are doing the same... accepting the evil of that Pandor's Box just because you hate Republicans and conservatism. This is not a good look... and it, along with Republicans that vote against Trump because of his mean Tweets... are the reason we even have this woke crap within the Democrat party.
This is a big deal. It is our extensional threat. But you seem to be waffling on it.
Very well written.
That said I’m fascinated by the anti-woke forces. There was talk that all the recent aircraft near misses, Bank failures etc. were due to woke policies namely the hiring of less qualified minorities to the detriment of whites and Asians. It seems like they think certain minorities are genuinely inferior. But they will never admit it of course.