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"Wokeist" - When people talk about progressivism without acquaintance
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Our bark is worse than our bite. Sometimes it is easier to wade into less controversial topics as a starting place, but you have made the first step. Please take another.
AntSou
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I do think a wokeness phenomenon exists, with specific peculiarities. Though it is also a word with a pejorative connotation used by a section of the population in a very vague manner to encompass just about anything they disapprove of.
I'll give my two cents. I'm not binding myself to any of this as I haven't put sufficient thought into it (though obviously I take responsiblity for it) and I'm open to being royally made a fool of:
1. It seems to be a class phenomenon. Generally associated with educated individuals with a certain degree of cultural capital who wish to signal membership of their particular social clique, not too dissimilar with the social cliques who ostentate wealth by displaying expensive cars, or those who do so by paying millions for works of art, or even those who seek to distinguish themselves by displaying their social networks. In this sense, wokeness is a form of social distinction. It has its own language and symbols and those who do not understand the fine details are excluded or looked down upon.
2. Wokeness has its own rituals. For instance, the practice of routinary protest. It contrasts with other forms of protest, such as organized but sporadic (e.g. the March on Washington, but also symbolic ones like the 1st of May which occur on that day in several countries); unorganized and sporadic, such as the manifestations of the Arab Spring, George Floyd's, Rodney King's, etc, which may include a degree of organization, but that typically can be traced back to a specific trigger or "final straw", tend to lack an organizing body, or where such a body exists, control over protesters actions is not tenable; or labour strikes, which tend to be highly organized, economically disruptive and whose goals are the improvement of working conditions/wages for its members.
Routinary protest is neither disruptive, unpredictable or of symbolic significance. The protest is an end in itself, not a means toward an end. It has less to do with the above mentioned protests, and more akin to Sunday mass: a social gathering where one demonstrates devotion, and through this devotion one's identity and status within the community is reinforced. It's comfortable, predictable and inconsequential. It's a lifestyle.
3. It includes processes of "oneupness". This is nothing new. It's where a new idea or way of understanding something imposes itself upon older understandings within the same current of thought. Those who hold themselves to the old ways are ostracised. It's frequently generational, and the animosity can be more severe than that applied to those who are outside the group. A specific example: the individual who would argue in the 1990s and early 2000s that homosexuals should be tolerated because "they do not choose to be homosexual" suffered fierce disdain from some younger cohorts who would argue that ones actions should merely be accepted regardless of whether one can "choose" or not. One can choose to experience an homosexual act, and that requires no further justification. The enemy here becomes the boomer who cannot comprehend or keep up with such minute alterations. And the animosity is directed not towards those who hold diagonally opposing views, but towards the boomer mother who enjoyed Crash or Green Book. Dreadlocks used by Caucasians, which was a sign of the depraved liberal of the 90s and 2000s, became an example of cultural appropriation to the new progressive.
What is part of the creed one moment ceases to be the next. Figures who hold sway and power one moment are excluded through their inability to comprehend or speak with the new vocabulary and understandings. In this manner the younger cohorts disrupt and circumvent established structures of social status, defining the new hierarchy in their own terms. The enemy becomes J. K. Rowling, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, or Hitchens, because such figures are the ones who hold power and influence. These manifestations, which are commonly presented in the form of ideational struggles, are essentially power struggles. New ideas are a necessity, the tools by which those within progressive social milieus acquire power.
Oneupness can be observed within almost any social sphere. For instance, the self-help movement (or whatever that is) over the last few years went from "I wake up at 6am and here's why" to "I wake up at 4am and here's why" to "I wake up at 3am and here's why"; practicing certain types of diet rather than others within some communities can be a sign of lack of sophistication; and in some circles, running (yes, literally jogging) is not the action of the healthy individual, but of the uninformed.
Such attempts are not always successful. Caitlyn Janner, Brandi Love, Dave Rubin, etc have attempted to establish themselves within the American "conservative" movement, yet their brand of "actually, it's Republicans who are open minded" has been thwarted by the "no, I'm racist and homophobic and proud of it" crowd.
4. Wokeness is a consequence of hyper individualism and closely associated with modern capitalism. The individual seeks to express increasingly unique and differentiated identities, giving rise to the "72 genders" or the "LGBTQIAPK". It occurs where differentiation becomes a marker of social status or is socially valued. It's related with oneupness, but not the same thing. Such differentiation and the impulse to express uniqueness is a manifestation at the individual level of the kind of marketing which was first sought by producers in order to differentiate their products in a market of roughly undifferentiated products. A culture of "self expression through consumption" developed and became normalised, ironically being most vehemently adopted by those who often express opposition against the system. The modern woke individual takes it a step further, seeking to express uniqueness in every facet of his/her life, stamp it in his forehead, make it public, God forbid somebody confuses him for something else: Father, Entrepreneur, Filmlover, He/Him, opinions are my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer, because I'm willing to be against the norm, but not so much that I might actually suffer any negative consequences from it."
The individual who is woke may also (and usually is) involved in actual meaningful action, but he is woke in so far as his actions towards what he considers social progress are driven not by a need to see that progress occur, but by the need to self-identify as progressive or to be accepted by others as progressive. He can do both at the same time, and he's not necessarily hypocritical. It doesn't require self-awareness, and the need to express group membership can occur along a genuine belief in such ideals.
TLDR: Wokeness is the means by which progressive individuals engage in the dethronement of the established hierarchy within progressive social milieus. It may be directed towards those from outside the social group, but it's usually ineffective when doing so, since cancellation is only effective to consumers who are susceptible to it. Cancellation is by no means exclusive to progressives, neither have they invented it. Typically, progressives can only cancel other self identified progressives or liberals, since they share the same market.
I'll give my two cents. I'm not binding myself to any of this as I haven't put sufficient thought into it (though obviously I take responsiblity for it) and I'm open to being royally made a fool of:
1. It seems to be a class phenomenon. Generally associated with educated individuals with a certain degree of cultural capital who wish to signal membership of their particular social clique, not too dissimilar with the social cliques who ostentate wealth by displaying expensive cars, or those who do so by paying millions for works of art, or even those who seek to distinguish themselves by displaying their social networks. In this sense, wokeness is a form of social distinction. It has its own language and symbols and those who do not understand the fine details are excluded or looked down upon.
2. Wokeness has its own rituals. For instance, the practice of routinary protest. It contrasts with other forms of protest, such as organized but sporadic (e.g. the March on Washington, but also symbolic ones like the 1st of May which occur on that day in several countries); unorganized and sporadic, such as the manifestations of the Arab Spring, George Floyd's, Rodney King's, etc, which may include a degree of organization, but that typically can be traced back to a specific trigger or "final straw", tend to lack an organizing body, or where such a body exists, control over protesters actions is not tenable; or labour strikes, which tend to be highly organized, economically disruptive and whose goals are the improvement of working conditions/wages for its members.
Routinary protest is neither disruptive, unpredictable or of symbolic significance. The protest is an end in itself, not a means toward an end. It has less to do with the above mentioned protests, and more akin to Sunday mass: a social gathering where one demonstrates devotion, and through this devotion one's identity and status within the community is reinforced. It's comfortable, predictable and inconsequential. It's a lifestyle.
3. It includes processes of "oneupness". This is nothing new. It's where a new idea or way of understanding something imposes itself upon older understandings within the same current of thought. Those who hold themselves to the old ways are ostracised. It's frequently generational, and the animosity can be more severe than that applied to those who are outside the group. A specific example: the individual who would argue in the 1990s and early 2000s that homosexuals should be tolerated because "they do not choose to be homosexual" suffered fierce disdain from some younger cohorts who would argue that ones actions should merely be accepted regardless of whether one can "choose" or not. One can choose to experience an homosexual act, and that requires no further justification. The enemy here becomes the boomer who cannot comprehend or keep up with such minute alterations. And the animosity is directed not towards those who hold diagonally opposing views, but towards the boomer mother who enjoyed Crash or Green Book. Dreadlocks used by Caucasians, which was a sign of the depraved liberal of the 90s and 2000s, became an example of cultural appropriation to the new progressive.
What is part of the creed one moment ceases to be the next. Figures who hold sway and power one moment are excluded through their inability to comprehend or speak with the new vocabulary and understandings. In this manner the younger cohorts disrupt and circumvent established structures of social status, defining the new hierarchy in their own terms. The enemy becomes J. K. Rowling, Bill Maher, Richard Dawkins, or Hitchens, because such figures are the ones who hold power and influence. These manifestations, which are commonly presented in the form of ideational struggles, are essentially power struggles. New ideas are a necessity, the tools by which those within progressive social milieus acquire power.
Oneupness can be observed within almost any social sphere. For instance, the self-help movement (or whatever that is) over the last few years went from "I wake up at 6am and here's why" to "I wake up at 4am and here's why" to "I wake up at 3am and here's why"; practicing certain types of diet rather than others within some communities can be a sign of lack of sophistication; and in some circles, running (yes, literally jogging) is not the action of the healthy individual, but of the uninformed.
Such attempts are not always successful. Caitlyn Janner, Brandi Love, Dave Rubin, etc have attempted to establish themselves within the American "conservative" movement, yet their brand of "actually, it's Republicans who are open minded" has been thwarted by the "no, I'm racist and homophobic and proud of it" crowd.
4. Wokeness is a consequence of hyper individualism and closely associated with modern capitalism. The individual seeks to express increasingly unique and differentiated identities, giving rise to the "72 genders" or the "LGBTQIAPK". It occurs where differentiation becomes a marker of social status or is socially valued. It's related with oneupness, but not the same thing. Such differentiation and the impulse to express uniqueness is a manifestation at the individual level of the kind of marketing which was first sought by producers in order to differentiate their products in a market of roughly undifferentiated products. A culture of "self expression through consumption" developed and became normalised, ironically being most vehemently adopted by those who often express opposition against the system. The modern woke individual takes it a step further, seeking to express uniqueness in every facet of his/her life, stamp it in his forehead, make it public, God forbid somebody confuses him for something else: Father, Entrepreneur, Filmlover, He/Him, opinions are my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer, because I'm willing to be against the norm, but not so much that I might actually suffer any negative consequences from it."
The individual who is woke may also (and usually is) involved in actual meaningful action, but he is woke in so far as his actions towards what he considers social progress are driven not by a need to see that progress occur, but by the need to self-identify as progressive or to be accepted by others as progressive. He can do both at the same time, and he's not necessarily hypocritical. It doesn't require self-awareness, and the need to express group membership can occur along a genuine belief in such ideals.
TLDR: Wokeness is the means by which progressive individuals engage in the dethronement of the established hierarchy within progressive social milieus. It may be directed towards those from outside the social group, but it's usually ineffective when doing so, since cancellation is only effective to consumers who are susceptible to it. Cancellation is by no means exclusive to progressives, neither have they invented it. Typically, progressives can only cancel other self identified progressives or liberals, since they share the same market.
Angst
Rambling and inconsistent
Just for the record; I'm merely arguing that it's not new and that censorship was previously at the discretion of the right. "Cancel culture" is not insignificant, and it is not harmless. It's just often brought up by right wingers as the literal worst thing in the world to ever have happened, which is either hypocritical or clueless as to the history of the West. It is bad but really only visible as peculiar because all of the sudden the left is doing it, and because of its novel media in technology.
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Narz
keeping it real
I like your thorough analysis.
A big problem w wokness is its negative focus. Such folk prattle on about 'problematic' behavior without any focus on virtue. The main virtue is to not f-up. But to f-up is human.
A person can be an ally for 30 years taking many positive actions and then thrown in indefinite time out over one comment?
While these dumbasses eat their own the right, which has gotten dumber and dumber over the decades continues to make inroads.
And none of these goofery is grassroots of course. It's deliberately seeded division.
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Lexicus
Deity
walking away from me at the party when i try to explain that black lives matter are degenerate marxist swine is a violation of my free speech rights
Berzerker
Deity
Democrats in Congress demanded censorship and got it
Synobun
Deity
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Censorship of who?
Berzerker
Deity
it matters?
their political opponents, the NY Post article about Hunter's lap top days before the election
their political opponents, the NY Post article about Hunter's lap top days before the election
Synobun
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2006
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- 24,884
This is a rather unique interpretation of the Hunter Biden laptop situation. But I also don't feel like deconstructing it in a thread about wokeism.
I'll just offer this link and leave it at that: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/
Berzerker
Deity
from your link
Ajidica
High Quality Person
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Hunter Biden, continuing the tradition of black sheep in the president's family, has the same level of influence on Biden as Billy Carter had on Jimmy Carter.
EDIT: Wait, what thread is this?
This is what happens when I open a thread, go do something else, come back, and only look at the most recent posts.
EDIT: Wait, what thread is this?
This is what happens when I open a thread, go do something else, come back, and only look at the most recent posts.
Be careful sharing stories like this on Twitter or Facebook.
Don't want to get hit with that misinformation tag.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-...ohnsont-blood-clot-risk-fda-restrictions/#app
Moderator Action: Enough with the Hunter Biden talk. If you want to talk about that open a thread on it.
Lexicus
Deity
LMAO, imagine believing Hunter Biden exists. I bet you got that from either mainstream or government-funded media.
Modder_Mode
Prince
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2010
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These are good points, but I'm unsure if the original OP is denying that wokeness/political correctness/cancel culture exists or that they just don't agree with its terminology/usage?
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
AntSou - Part of what you're describing seems to be the phenomenon that I've seen quite a few people within left-wing circles refer to as the puriteens (which may not itself be an ideal term) : people who are mixing a fundamentalist evangelical perception of morality as sinners and non-sinners, and those who sin are to be condemned and shunned ; with moral precepts drawn from social justices (ie, the "sins" become based on social justice concepts instead of religious ones) and a high school perception of social relation that's built entirely around belonging and shunning where sinning must be avoided so you can belong. They're not all teens, but it's mentality largely formed by and around early generations of massively online teenagers that many of them retain in their later online years (while others grow out of it) because it's the way they learned to interact with the internet, and in which many younger teens easily fall once they join the online world. The term overlaps a lot with what used to be called social justice warriors (which originated back on tumblr when that was the site to be for young progressives) before that was turned into a general left-bashing meme by conservative pundits.
It draws upon (and is nourished by) the much older (but less centered on belonging-and-shunning as social mechanism) ideological purity factions that are found within most any ideology (anyone remember the entire RINO-hunts in the Republican party about a decade ago?). These tend to be more pragmatic in their reasons for hunting down the ideologically impure (they want to silence dissenting voices within the movement because those are a threat to their own political objectives, compare to the quasi-religious shun-the-sinner perspective of the puriteen). But the puriteen are *very* useful idiots for these ideological purists (and for right wingers trying to bring down figures on the left).
But it has precious little to do with other phenomenons you describe, most notably the expansion of the LGBTQIAA2+ (or Quiltbag+) spectrum to include new concepts and new realities as we better understand them. Research in the field of human sexuality and human relation to the concepts of gender and sex is barely a century old if even that, and most of the early research was destroyed by the actual, literal, people-who-coined-the-name-for-themselves German Nazis of the 1930s. Prior to that, all of society's weight was focused solely on lumping together all of these things so they could be stigmatized and criminalized. Many of the few definitions that existed were imposed by outsiders, based on their perception of how far a person deviated from established social norms, which is a pretty terrible way to define other people's reality.
Of course we're finding out how much we don't know at this point, and we're realizing there's much more variety to humanity than we previously had thought, and finding new concepts and new definitions. That's how study into a field works. Puriteens *borrow* the definitions and ideas of gender exploration (and many, many, many other form of social justice-related scholarship and research), but rather than treat them as a way of understanding the world turn them into dogma to be shoved down people's throat.
It seems to me that, in you lumping these two things together, and as well in drawing in any form of social backlash online regardless of what the person suffering the backlash has actually done (and the impact and severity of those actions), you are falling right into your second definition of "woke": lumping together the things you disapprove of.
It draws upon (and is nourished by) the much older (but less centered on belonging-and-shunning as social mechanism) ideological purity factions that are found within most any ideology (anyone remember the entire RINO-hunts in the Republican party about a decade ago?). These tend to be more pragmatic in their reasons for hunting down the ideologically impure (they want to silence dissenting voices within the movement because those are a threat to their own political objectives, compare to the quasi-religious shun-the-sinner perspective of the puriteen). But the puriteen are *very* useful idiots for these ideological purists (and for right wingers trying to bring down figures on the left).
But it has precious little to do with other phenomenons you describe, most notably the expansion of the LGBTQIAA2+ (or Quiltbag+) spectrum to include new concepts and new realities as we better understand them. Research in the field of human sexuality and human relation to the concepts of gender and sex is barely a century old if even that, and most of the early research was destroyed by the actual, literal, people-who-coined-the-name-for-themselves German Nazis of the 1930s. Prior to that, all of society's weight was focused solely on lumping together all of these things so they could be stigmatized and criminalized. Many of the few definitions that existed were imposed by outsiders, based on their perception of how far a person deviated from established social norms, which is a pretty terrible way to define other people's reality.
Of course we're finding out how much we don't know at this point, and we're realizing there's much more variety to humanity than we previously had thought, and finding new concepts and new definitions. That's how study into a field works. Puriteens *borrow* the definitions and ideas of gender exploration (and many, many, many other form of social justice-related scholarship and research), but rather than treat them as a way of understanding the world turn them into dogma to be shoved down people's throat.
It seems to me that, in you lumping these two things together, and as well in drawing in any form of social backlash online regardless of what the person suffering the backlash has actually done (and the impact and severity of those actions), you are falling right into your second definition of "woke": lumping together the things you disapprove of.
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Narz
keeping it real
Evie
Pronounced like Eevee
Some skepticism toward new definition is not bad, but at the same time, updating exo-definition (eg, defining a group from the persepctive of how an outsider perceives them to be different, which account for a lot of the more traditional gender and orientation terminology) to account for endo-definitions (eg, defining a group from how the people inside that group perceive themselves and their own experience) is probably essential to bettering understanding in the long term.
Otherwise, we often end up with definitions that don't actually match the actual reality on the ground.
Otherwise, we often end up with definitions that don't actually match the actual reality on the ground.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
On the use of the label "woke", Freddie deBoer has a short blog post which I can't link because the URL falls afoul of the autocensor, so I'll post it below-
I largely agree with this. The term "woke" is criticised for being vague, but the thing to which it refers is readily recognised even by those who reject the label. (Perhaps it is a vague term because the thing it describes is itself nebulous and lacks clearly-defined boundaries?) There is evidently something here, but because of the way that something has emerged- as a universal common-sense among educated professional-class urban liberals- it refuses to acknowledge itself as anything other than the inevitable tide of history.
I largely agree with this. The term "woke" is criticised for being vague, but the thing to which it refers is readily recognised even by those who reject the label. (Perhaps it is a vague term because the thing it describes is itself nebulous and lacks clearly-defined boundaries?) There is evidently something here, but because of the way that something has emerged- as a universal common-sense among educated professional-class urban liberals- it refuses to acknowledge itself as anything other than the inevitable tide of history.
The OP, TraitorFish's quote above, plus this post helped me realize the deficit.
Given that there is robust thinking on the topic (which needs a name) and given that there are tremendous number of activists who don't know the robust thinking but are dangerously confident anyway it strikes me as needing terms for either. It's a self-identification, too, which makes it very hard. If a certain percentage of people who claim the title aren't themselves capable of discussing the theory correctly (nevermind apply it usefully) then ... what? If there are four groups in the discussion: the academic proponents, the academic critics, the misinformed proponents and the misinformed critics then that 3rd cohort needs a title. Obviously the fourth cohort needs a title, because they're the ones sharing the "Ben Shapiro OWNS lib!!!" videos, but the OP is about 'woke'.
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