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[return to "The Origins of Wokeness"]
1. wrs+0c1[view] [source] 2025-01-13 18:39:03
>>crbela+(OP)
Certainly this essay is, mostly, “not wrong”. But I was hoping PG might use his powerful brain and hundreds of words to explain how one should combat structural racism and sexism without the unfortunate side effect of “wokeness”. As far as I can see, he just recommended you do it “quietly”. Disappointing.
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2. haswel+hh1[view] [source] 2025-01-13 19:02:10
>>wrs+0c1
For sake of argument, what if the answer truly is "do it quietly"?

What if it's most effective to live your life to the best of your ability without prejudice, and instead of preaching about what people should do, you just do what it is that you believe to be right?

I grew up in (and left behind) conservative evangelical christian circles, and the thing that always made me most uncomfortable with "wokeness" is how much it often resembles those holier-than-though people I grew up around.

It's not that I disagree with the underlying ideas behind "woke" positions as much as it is the behavior of the people who want to move those ideas forward.

Whether it's overly pious evangelical christians or "very woke" people, I think there's an underlying belief that transcends particular points of view that there's a particular way people must conduct themselves and that using various tactics ranging from moralizing to public shaming are tactics that are effective.

Except I don't think these tactics are effective at all, and while it may be unsatisfying, "try to be the best example you can be" seems far more helpful than what often emerges when people feel they're morally justified.

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3. jodrel+Zf2[view] [source] 2025-01-13 23:25:13
>>haswel+hh1
> "What if it's most effective to .. instead of preaching about what people should do, you just do what it is that you believe to be right?"

It isn't. See these LessWrong articles[1,2,3] about charitable giving for more reasoning. People take ideas, understanding of the world, behavioural cues, from what we see around us. From the first link, a charitable fund raise over a mailing list involved quiet private donations without fanfare, and public mailing list posts about why (other) people were not going to donate, why it was a bad idea. None of the donators posted publicly in support of donating.

I could make up any number of examples, but here[4] is a recent news article about two young lesbian women living together who "had been spat at in the street and received anonymous messages - including abuse scrawled across their front door on Christmas Day". What good does it do them if everyone who supports them does it quietly, and everyone who hates them does it loudly and publicly? What world does it lead to when spitting on someone in the street is fine, but speaking out against it is "woke leftist moralizing"? What world does it lead to when people who are not involved looking around to see how others are behaving (bystander effect) see LGBT hate enacted, written, spoken, and don't see or hear anyone around them speaking against it?

Would the young women care if someone vocally complaining about it at the pub is genuinely annoyed or just performatively status grabbing?

Seems pretty clear from history that just quietly living your life while horrors whirl around you is a personally comfortable way to live your life, but is not an effective way to change any of the horrors. Whereas taking arms against the horrors can be an effective way to change the horrors regardless of whether you're doing it because you really want to, or because you were peer pressured into it, or because you are just going along with what everyone else is doing.

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7FzD7pNm9X68Gp5ZC/why-our-ki...

[2] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N6FNkxMJpraMLTPwq/to-inspire...

[3] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KoTCTwmPbEAZTyPbz/why-you-sh...

[4] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgnwqdp7gno?at_bbc_team...

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