"Wokeist" - When people talk about progressivism without acquaintance

[Gorbles]

If you want to apply this heuristic when scrolling Twitter, feel no compulsion to imagine Old Man Traitorfish shaking his fist at you, but I think that in a context like CFC, where persistent use of a shared space implies at least some stakes to discussion, it represents a more noxious bad faith argument than whatever you might suspect is lurking behind "woke".

I'm just pointing out that you seem to be mixing up Akka's quote of Angst (which has a lot more detail in the OP of the thread where the quote comes from) and Akka's position.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm just pointing out that you seem to be mixing up Akka's quote of Angst (which has a lot more detail in the OP of the thread where the quote comes from) and Akka's position.

My mistake!

 

[Samson]

The critics aren't driving the woke mobile, we dont need critics to see how preaching tolerance shifted into mostly peaceful riots and censorship.

That is saying nothing about the meaning of the label woke, which when coined had nothing to do with riots (or demos) and censorship. It was all about being aware of the world around you.

 

[Senethro]

What is it about reciprocation that some people are struggling with?

 

[El_Machinae]

Attempting to suppress violence without resort to violence is very arguably the key indicator of a civilised society.

This is a very good point, and you're correct. The realist in me notices the backdrop of assumed violence being available (so I notice it so often, maybe too much), but the vast majority of diffusions are (you're correct) done without the actual presence of violence. Like, when I talk down a mugger, I do so knowing that the police will never actually get involved.

Handwaving away that a lot of the violence being done needs to be talked down, because the people committing the violence have all of the capacity for violence as well.

 

[MaryKB]

That is saying nothing about the meaning of the label woke, which when coined had nothing to do with riots (or demos) and censorship. It was all about being aware of the world around you.

"Woke" basically means you have empathy.

 

[Lexicus]

So if we're taking this analogy at face value, the assumption of Western liberal society is that we should attempt to address intolerance with tolerance, and resort to intolerance only when tolerance has demonstrably failed.

Tolerance of conservatism has demonstrably failed.

 

[bernie14]

The emergence of any kind of hierarchical authority dates back a few thousand years at most, a few percentage points of humanity's time on this earth, and the degree of the division of labour and of central supervision in the modern workplace isn't even anticipated until the last few centuries. If the world is full of witless drudgeons, what were they doing for all that time? Have human beings really degraded so rapidly in their capacities that the greater mass of them can no longer be productive without constant instruction from their superiors? Is the modern worker really so much stupider, so much more inept, than a Medieval peasant, that where the latter could be trusted to manage the cycle of seasons and harvests by himself, the former must be scrutinised and dictated to in every working moment?


In what sense does taking direction imply learning? If the directee does not have a view of the larger process, if they are not learning how to personally manage the whole process or at least to participate in its managements, if the instructions are simply passed down from on-high without justification or context- and you correctly identified in a later post the key phrase in my argument, "may as well be arbitrary"- then what is the directee learning? What lesson is contained in "do this, because I said so"?

The only lesson I can see is "do what you're told, because I said so", and how many times does that need to be taught? Children pick up quickly enough; does it really need to be repeated for eight hours a day, every day, for fifty years, in order to stick?

I disagree with much of what you are saying here, although i think most of the disagreement we are having is pure semantics (mostly related to definitions of learning and hierarchy). In any case, let's just suppose hierarchy (assuming this is due to ownership) as you say, is a new phenomenon. In that case, and accepting the tenants of dialectic materialism, it makes no sense to me to deal with this phenomenon in a reactionary manner. The ownership genie is not going back into the bottle.

Wrt "witless drudgeons", what are you referring to, "alienation?

I still can't help but see some strange blur, conflating/generalizing the "psychological health" of society and individuals.

 

[bernie14]

What is it about reciprocation that some people are struggling with?

What "value" means in relation to cognitive dissonance?

 

[Traitorfish]

I disagree with much of what you are saying here, although i think most of the disagreement we are having is pure semantics (mostly related to definitions of learning and hierarchy). In any case, let's just suppose hierarchy (assuming this is due to ownership) as you say, is a new phenomenon. In that case, and accepting the tenants of dialectic materialism, it makes no sense to me to deal with this phenomenon in a reactionary manner. The ownership genie is not going back into the bottle.

"Ownership" is not one single phenomenon, though, it's dependent on specific social circumstances. The way a Medieval lord "owns" land is not the same as we "own" land within the the modern framework private property- or, going the other way, it's not the same way that a Sumerian priest-king "owns" land. What reason do we have to think that we have arrived at the terminal form of "ownership"? Especially given that so much of the modern world is characterised by the interactions between and the consequent tensions between different, increasingly abstract forms of ownership- from private property to corporate stocks to IP to data.

Wrt "witless drudgeons", what are you referring to, "alienation?

You seemed to suggest in your previous posts that a great many people, possibly the majority, require oversight and instruction, that they don't have the capacity to work without being told what to do. I'm summarising this as "witless drudgeons": people who lack the wit for anything but drudge-work. My contention is, people evidently didn't require this sort of close supervision for the first 99.9% of biologically-modern humanity's existence on this planet, so what exactly has changed?

Tolerance of conservatism has demonstrably failed.

What alternative did you have in mind? If the lines of battle are determined to be "conservative vs progressive"- not breaking down along regional or sectional or class interest, but along lines of ideological and cultural affinity- what is the "intolerant" program that you propose?

 

[Lexicus]

What alternative did you have in mind? If the lines of battle are determined to be "conservative vs progressive"- not breaking down along regional or sectional or class interest, but along lines of ideological affinity- what is the "intolerant" program that you propose?

To start with, ban their political parties and jail their leaders.

 

[Samson]

And now its about intimidation and violence... The critics didn't do that. The oppressed typically preach tolerance until they get enough power for payback.

It is the critics that have defined it as such.

 

[Narz]

To start with, ban their political parties and jail their leaders.

Any real solutions?

 

[Lexicus]

Any real solutions?

Destroying the power of the Republican party over national policy is not a solution, it is a precondition for any solution.

 

[El_Machinae]

Honey Pot Texas into leaving the Union!

 

[Arakhor]

Moderator Action: STFU is a direct insult. Do not use it, Further use will be moderated.

 

[Farm Boy]

But honestly, I don't have the spare cash because I'm too busy going to ethnic restaurants while trying to convince myself that I'm not racist.

Surely awareness building is saving the world one person without a shovel at a time!

 

[Samson]

So, figuring out which were precipitated by police overstep

No, it really is not. The whole thing was precipitated by police overstep over decades (or centuries), with one particular event in Minneapolis being a straw that broke the camel's back and a whole load of violence after that that just made it worse. You may try and point at particular events that you think were not justified, but any such requires a disassociation with the real cause that would never be accepted by the other side.

 

[El_Machinae]

I am only referring to any specific incident. I 100% acknowledge the necessity and inevitability of the damages at the macro level. It is a conundrum, I've spoken of the conundrum before. I think the only actual solution is for white money to help the victims. There is no reason for a black civilian to be poorer after the riot, if simple allocation of white money would help.

I'm not talking about the straw that broke the camel's back, I'm talking about a young man's choice to misidentify the target of his brick, in real time.

 

[El_Machinae]

We agree on the sum of the factors. I even agree that the total damage is probably necessary. It doesn't change the fact that any specific damage is quantifiable. I don't think it's avoidable except by not having the root problem in the first place. The best you can do is help the actual victims.

I think it's a bit like General Relativity and QM. The individual choices still matter but the mass psychology still predicts total outcomes. But if you try to frame from one direction too hard, you'll be wrong.