"Social justice" is inherently problematic, as explained in "Hayek: Social Justice Demands the Unequal Treatment of Individuals" https://fee.org/articles/hayek-social-justice-demands-the-un....
- IMO it should've acknowledged that there is genuine "intolerance" of foreigners/gays/trans, not the speech/writing you hear about in the news, but specifically the physical attacks and legal discrimination in third-world countries and rarely by extremists in first-world countries. And that seemingly-mild speech can lead to blatant hate speech, then physical attacks and legal discrimination; but it's not inevitable, and analogously when society swings to the center, it can swing too far to the other side, but maybe there's friction that makes it swing less and pulls it closer to an ideal equilibrium.
- It also states that Twitter doesn't censor left-wingers, which is factually wrong, unless every case of journalists being suspended and links being auto-removed is made-up or overblown. 4chan is an example of true free speech (sans calls to violence etc.), but it doesn't help the argument for multiple reasons. I think it's too early to say that "wokeness" is being rolled back; the truth is, woke intolerance isn't as pervasive as people think it is, so you will always find examples of people who directly contradict it and prosper.
However,
I strongly agree with the core message: there will always be people who use "morals" to control others. Taken straight from the article: "There's a certain kind of person who's attracted to a shallow, exacting kind of moral purity, and who demonstrates his purity by attacking anyone who breaks the rules. Every society has these people. All that changes is the rules they enforce." The article applies this and the remaining parts to left-wing "social-justice warriors" but you can apply it to right-wing religious zealots.*
The reality of "free speech", "live-and-let-live", and other compromises, are that people use them for their own agenda, to get more control. But that's OK. One of the reasons we have as much free speech as we do today, is that there are groups from all sides pushing it for their own reasons, and within these groups there's an opening to express your opinion. The vast majority of people are more focused on helping themselves than they are hurting you, even when hurting you is on their agenda, which means you can benefit from compromising with even smart people who hate you.
* Also, Paul Graham isn't really saying anything that he hasn't before. See: https://paulgraham.com/heresy.html, https://paulgraham.com/conformism.html, and https://paulgraham.com/say.html, written in 2022, 2020, and 2004. For a different left-biased take, see https://paulgraham.com/pow.html, written in 2017. But even if he was, this response stands. You can pick decent messages even out of articles people far, far more "right-wing" say, although it's a lot harder, and unlike this one the message you pick out probably won't be what the writer intended.
That idea gets very close to
https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/question/2009/march.htm
> “I am a middle-aged white person and even I know that blacks and other racial minorities cannot be racist, just like women can not be sexists. Racism equals power. Whites are not hurt by the everyday flow of society.”
I’m Black and I can go into a long rant about how I disagree with every word of that sentence.
But the Christian Right has had most of the power in the US for most of its existence until the rise of tech during the last 20 years. The entire crusade against “woke” is that demographic shifts are going to make the US a “minority majority” country within our lifetimes and that people who were usually in the shadows are now able to speak out.
> When this term became popularized, initially the meaning of this term was when an individual become more aware of the social injustice. Or basically, any current affairs related like biased, discrimination, or double-standards.
> However, as time passed by, people started using this term recklessly, assigning this term to themselves or someone they know to boost their confidence and reassure them that they have the moral high grounds and are fighting for the better world. And sometimes even using it as a way to protect themselves from other people's opinion, by considering the 'outsider' as non-woke. While people that are in line with their belief as woke. Meaning that those 'outsiders' have been brainwash by the society and couldn't see the truth. Thus, filtering everything that the 'outsider' gives regardless whether it is rationale or not.
> And as of now, the original meaning is slowly fading and instead, is used more often to term someone as hypocritical and think they are the 'enlightened' despite the fact that they are extremely close-minded and are unable to accept other people's criticism or different perspective. Especially considering the existence of echo chamber(media) that helped them to find other like-minded individuals, thus, further solidifying their 'progressive' opinion.
> 1st paragraph >"Damn bro, I didn't realize racism is such a major issue in our country! I'm a woke now!"
> 2nd paragraph > "I can't believe this. How are they so close-minded? Can't they see just how toxic our society is? The solution is so simple, yet they refused to change! I just don't understand!"
> 3rd paragraph > "Fatphobic?! Misogyny?! What's wrong with preferring a thin woman?! And she is morbidly obese for god sake! Why should I be attracted to her?! Why should I lower myself while she refuse to better herself?! These woke people are a bunch of ridiculous hypocrite!"
I’d argue their power fell earlier, with the Civil Rights movement: we’ve seen almost monotonic decreases in Christian religiosity since [1]. (It’s currently in a generational peak. I don’t know if that’s a last gasp of their boomers or something deeper.)
> The entire crusade against ‘woke’ is that demographic shifts are going to make the US a ‘minority majority’ country within our lifetimes and that people who were usually in the shadows are now able to speak out
I think it’s about as unfair to paint the rejection of “wokeness” like this as it is to paint every progressive policy as woke.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/how-u-s-reli...
This is so well known that during the protest in 2021, there were “white shields” where White people would stand in front of Black protestors because everyone knows that police would not beat White people because there would be consequences.
https://www.blackenterprise.com/white-protesters-form-human-...
That hasn't changed. Neither has any of the other logic around voting, flagging, or vouching.
Vouching unkills [dead] posts. The current thread was dead, for example, and vouches rescued it. But a post can be [flagged] without being [dead]. See >>38918548 for a past explanation.
https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-hist...
If the "conventional-minded" define new heresies, against a new creed, how are they conventional? What gives Paul Graham away is what he doesn't mention and may be what bothers him more: the old heresies that the surprisingly innovative and even rebellious "conventional-minded" abolish. (Actually, they do neither, but those who believe the former also believe the latter)
As with the myth of the "cancel culture" that Graham mentions (or the similar myth of "the war on Christmas"), the problem isn't the truth of certain events that do occur. It is the exaggeration of magnitude and ignorance of context. Clearly, at no stage in human history were more people not only free but also able to widely disseminate a wider range of views as they are today. Specifically, far fewer people are "silenced" at universities today than were, say, in the 1950s (except, maybe, in super-woke Florida).
> College students larp. It's their nature. It's usually harmless. But larping morality turned out to be a poisonous combination.
Yeah, larping in a world of Jewish cabals and weather/mind control has turned out to be far more poisonous.
Anyway, for a more interesting and astute perspective on wokeness, see https://samkriss.substack.com/p/wokeness-is-not-a-politics Kriss shows why comparing wokeness to socialism or Christianity -- as Graham does -- is a category error:
> [I]t’s not a politics, or an ideology, or a religion. If you’ve ever spent any time in a political movement, or a religious one—even a philosophical one—you’ll have noticed that these things always have sects. Small differences in doctrine turn into antagonistic little groups. There are dozens of denominations that all claim to be the universal catholic church. Put two Marxists in a room and you’ll get three different ideological schisms. ... But it’s hard to see any such thing happening in any of the movements that get described as woke. Black Lives Matter did not have a ‘left’ or a ‘right’ wing; the different rainbow flags did not belong to rival queer militia ... The spaces these movements produce might be the sites of constant churning mutual animosity and backstabbing, but the faultlines are always interpersonal and never substantive. This is very, very unusual. Of course, there’s always the possibility that the woke mind virus is so perfectly bioengineered that it’s left all its victims without any capacity for dissent whatsoever, permanently trapped in a zombielike groupthink daze. This is the kind of possibility that a lot of antiwoke types like to entertain. Let me sketch out an alternative view.
> ... Wokeness is an etiquette. There are no sects within wokeness for the same reason that there are no sects on whether you should hold a wine glass by the bowl or by the stem. It’s not really about dogmas or beliefs, in the same way that table manners are not the belief that you should only hold a fork with your left hand.
> ... What makes something woke is a very simple operation: the transmutation of political demands into basically arbitrary standards of interpersonal conduct. The goal is never to actually overcome any existing injustices; political issues are just a way to conspicuously present yourself as the right kind of person.
> ... Unlike wokeness, the word antiwokeness is still used as a self-descriptor. The antiwoke will announce themselves to you. They won’t deny that antiwokeness exists. But since there’s no fixed and generally agreed-upon account of what the object of this apophatic doctrine actually is, you could be forgiven for wondering whether it is, in fact, particularly real. Wokeness is not a politics. And antiwokeness is not a politics either. It’s a shew-stone
> Every day, the antiwoke are busy producing wokeness, catching visions of incorporeal powers, desperately willing this thing into colder and denser form. What does this look like? Hysteria over uncouth material in entertainment media. Pseudo-sociological dogshit jargon. Endless smug performances of wholesome trad virtue. To be antiwoke is to be just another type of person who mistakes etiquette for politics, putting all your energies into the terrain of gesture and appearance, obsessed with images, frothing at every new indecency, horrified, appalled. We must protect the children from harm! I’m sure that some day very soon, the antiwoke will have their own miserable cultural hegemony. Big companies organising compulsory free-speech training for their workers. An informal network of censors scrubbing the mass media of anything that smacks too much of progressive tyranny.
This is a fake news. Research shows that Twitter algorithmic amplification favored right-wing politics even before Musk made it even worse. See: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025334119
> On the other hand, the people on the far left have only themselves to blame; they could tilt Twitter back to the left tomorrow if they wanted to.
Being this much clueless in pg's position is not possible. I can only assume he's consciously lying. He can see front row what Musk does with Twitter and how the "free speech" he's supposedly defending is actually "what Musk likes to hear speech", and he perfectly knows Musk is strongly aligned with the far right that he supports however he can all over the world. See for example: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/europe/article/2025/01/10/musk-dou...
"An essay is something you write to try to figure something out.
"Figure out what? You don't know yet. And so you can't begin with a thesis, because you don't have one, and may never have one. An essay doesn't begin with a statement, but with a question. In a real essay, you don't take a position and defend it. You notice a door that's ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what's inside.
"If all you want to do is figure things out, why do you need to write anything, though? Why not just sit and think? Well, there precisely is Montaigne's great discovery. Expressing ideas helps to form them. Indeed, helps is far too weak a word. Most of what ends up in my essays I only thought of when I sat down to write them. That's why I write them."
So there's your answer. PG is thinking "This is something I don't know; I should write an essay to figure out an answer."
It also makes sense to me that when he writes an essay connected to an area he knows well (like startups), the result is maybe full of unique perspectives and is broadly insightful/useful. Whereas an essay on wokeness isn't likely to bring much to the table to anyone who has been paying attention to diversity for several years.
Maybe it's still useful to engineers who've been living under a rock and haven't paid any attention at all; I don't know.
https://thecslewis-studygroup.org/the-c-s-lewis-study-group/...
This part in particular seems misguided if only because pg fails to recognize that "the next thing" is already here and wearing a red MAGA hat.
> In fact there's an even more ambitious goal: is there a way to prevent any similar outbreak of aggressively performative moralism in the future — not just a third outbreak political correctness, but the next thing like it? Because there will be a next thing.
[1] https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-orders-flags...
[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/republicans-still-t-trump-lost-17...
CPG Grey’s co-dependent memes video comes to mind [1].
Each group defines wokeness (and defines how other groups define it) to maximise outrage. To the extent there is a mind virus it’s in using the term at all. (Which is where I appreciate Graham bringing the term prig into the discussion.)
This always needs to be followed by a condemnation of his violent methods, but that has been used as a way to avoid dealing with his horribly on point diagnosis of the problem.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_F...
Here he is with receipts that he has been talking about wokeness like a weirdo for close to a decade now.
Ok, I'll bite. What is having empathy for the homeless? Is allowing unconstrained immigration to increase competition for entry-level positions empathy? What about restrictions on construction that make housing completely unaffordable? Is that empathy? Is leaving the drug-addicted portion of the homeless out on the street to battle their addictions on their own empathy[1]?
Saying nice words (not having disdain) is not the same thing as helping someone.
[1] https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-call-that-compassio...
https://web.archive.org/web/20211108155321/https://freddiede...
How Much Discomfort Is the Whole World Worth?: Movement building requires a culture of listening—not mastery of the right language. by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/how-much-discomfort-is...
we will not cancel us. by adrienne maree brown https://adriennemareebrown.net/2018/05/10/we-will-not-cancel...
As for an example of Elon making Twitter rules around speech he doesn’t like, here[8] is one that is very public and not hard to come by.
1 https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/02/elon-musk-nazis-kanye-twit...
2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/12/20/elo...
3 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/08/technology/elon-musk-far-...
4 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/elon-musk-...
5 https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/23/business/elon-musk-nazi-jokes...
6 https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/05/02/elon-musk-reinstates-...
7 https://www.vice.com/en/article/elon-musk-twitter-nazis-whit...
8 https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-cis-cisgender-slur-twitter-185...
This is more recent: "We observe a right-leaning bias in exposure for new accounts within their default timelines." https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.01852
You can also find a lot a testimony from users like: https://www.reddit.com/r/behindthebastards/comments/1es2lfd/...
---
Now from personal experience (I've been on Twitter since 2007 and used it virtually everyday since then):
I've heard and read a lot of such testimony in particular from user who don't post much or at all and only follow a few accounts. In the last two years they've been exposed to a lot of far right content.
I've seen how the moderation team at twitter took action before musk when reporting (often illegal) hate speech and now just respond by saying that it doesn't violates the platform rules.
I've seen on the contrary people (even journalists) and political or news organization getting locked out of their account following a far right online mob against them, and then having a hard time (sometimes to the point of giving up) getting it back because the moderation team did not act.
But the immigration stuff is just right-wing nonsense. a) We don't have anything like unrestrained immigration, that's propaganda. Obama and Biden both deported more people than any other presidents in history to that point (https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-re..., https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obamas-deportation-policy-nu...). And b) the percentage of homeless who might compete with a Honduran immigrant for a day-laborer job is a tiny sliver.
Greg Lukianoff of FIRE, a free speech defender said Musk made twitter better for free speech (on balance): https://youtu.be/Er1glEAQhAo?si=2aWdSIsbKzjz0nGA&t=2853
> They’ll tell you that actually, there’s no such thing as wokeness. It’s not an ideology. It’s not a belief system. It’s just basic decency. It’s just being a good person.
> They’re right. Wokeness is an etiquette. There are no sects within wokeness for the same reason that there are no sects on whether you should hold a wine glass by the bowl or by the stem. It’s not really about dogmas or beliefs, in the same way that table manners are not the belief that you should only hold a fork with your left hand.
[1] https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-region/massive-lineu...
SNL - Republican or Not - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h_N80qKYOM
If one desires understanding and learning about the world, one must remain curious and humble. Unfortunately curious and humble people are generally not as emotionally and more importantly, politically activated.
So a politician may go looking for a subject that will be emotionally activating to as many people as possible. It barely matters whether more people will be on their side or the other side. As long as the fight is going, they will get engagement.
It is very difficult to motivate a person towards a complex world where the other side is made of humans (sinners, but still human).
It is much easier to motivate a person towards a simple world where their own side is righteous and the other side is composed of demons.
---
So, is the other side made of sinners or demons?
The Origins of Contemporary Woke Culture ft Christian Parenti
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxdBOxl_eik
which is an excerpt from the full This is Revolution podcast episode:
The Cargo Cult of Woke ft. Christian Parenti
https://www.youtube.com/live/6TJbv45DJyk
Chris Hedges interviewed Parenti also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTpeQ4V-YeY
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/how-wokeness-kills-class-...
Also, it's just not true that "Previously, algorithms seemed to prioritize content aligned with extreme left narratives while outright blocking opposing views". It's a lie. Twitter's research itself revealed their algorithm favored right wing politics even before Musk. And it became a lot more true since he took power. See: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2025334119
The idea is he promotes the talking points that benefit the right and the Republicans. Both personally and in changing the platforms algorithms [1].
There have been reports of people disagreeing with that general 'platform' loosing their blue check marks [2], accounts being disabled, followers dropped [3] and so on to reduce the reach of left/liberal people.
He doesn't need to remove speech he disagrees with, he can drown it and amplify the messages he wants to be heard and significantly control the narrative and discussion that way.
[1]https://eprints.qut.edu.au/253211/1/A_computational_analysis...
[2]https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/elon-musk-accused-...
[3]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-twitter-accounts-left-los...
IMO Freddie deBoer wrote the best definition of "Woke", something that many people fail to grasp.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiede...
There are many typing that word?
This is a double standard. For example, Contrapoints was cancelled for using Buck Angel to do a 10 second voice over in one video[1]. A far less politically charged association with someone than what Bud Light did. In this regard, I think the left has been the ones who primarily set the rules of engagement for the last few years. Can't complain when those same rules are used against you.
[1] https://medium.com/@rachel.orourke_88152/the-10-second-voice...
I think it's a farce to suggest that no one out there could be accurately described by it (identity politics being more important than class, language policing, etc)
"Wokeness" is a fake bear the right has built up to distract from class issues and sow dissent amongst workers and stave off class solidarity. Progressive policy is largely embraced by the majority of Americans [2], but because the right (and its newfound grifter-billionare tech exec class like PG, Musk, Zuck, etc.) have convinced an overwhelmingly large amount of Americans that their woes are because we have gender neutral bathrooms (instead of wage theft by the C suite), it is peddled and use as a smokescreen to continually push through policy and regime changes that will only every serve the .1%.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_annual_...
[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/majority-of-americans-suppor...
Different racist cultures develop different ideas on what makes someone white. "Yiannopoulos" might be called a 'wog':
The slur became widely diffused in Australia with an increase in immigration from Southern Europe and the Levant after the Second World War, and the term expanded to include all immigrants from the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. These new arrivals were perceived by the majority population as contrasting with the larger predominant Anglo-Celtic Australian people. [1]
All boats rise with the tide I guess.
Yes, this origin is correct as I remember it. I first heard the term publicly from Larry on his show a decade or so ago, mainly referring to police interactions. He presented it well using comedy, unlike the rabid versions of today. He presented it too well as today, it seems this movement has since taken over by (mostly) white college people to service their own selfish ends; that's the mind virus part.
This clip pretty much encapsulates this idea:
True, but remember that many people's experience of any movement will be through an interface that is both lossy and hostile (whether it be government, corporate, clan leadership, what have you). "The effects that this had were well beyond the scope of what we intended" is so old it's in the Old Testament (but there as an answer-in-advance):
> These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.
~ 1 Samuel Chapter 8 via https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%208%...
There is definitely censorship on Twitter these days. A local strip club has its account suspended for "hate speech"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/the-penthous...
> Twitter took action after a photo of the club's latest marquee reading, "Forever neighbours, never neighbors" went viral.
> The wording references president-elect Donald Trump's recent trolling of Canada by calling it America's 51st state, and uses the juxtaposition of the Canadian spelling of "neighbour" against the U.S. "neighbor" for political satire.
> ... the free speech social media platform shut down the club's account saying "it violates the X Hateful Profile Policy."
But a group prayer led by a school coach is, of course, totally fine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_v._Bremerton_School_Di...
This has never made sense to me. People don't need an external motivator. People who like to collect things or complete puzzle (including high performers), do so because they like to collect them, not because society rewards them. It generally penalizes them as it's wasted time or capital. Granted, sometimes recognition is a good motivator, but that's fleeting over a non-trivial timeline (like a season) and not specifically tied to society at large (eg the longest running game of Tag).
Free speech requires public spaces [digital townhalls], but any journalist breaking critical news of Musk gets muted or banned on X. [https://thespectator.com/topic/spectator-story-debunking-elo...]. This is why several major global journal outlets have taken to just entirely leaving X in protest [https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/journalists_leaving_x_bl...].
[0] suggests otherwise.
[0] https://diversity.sonoma.edu/sites/diversity/files/history_o...
[1]: https://dailysceptic.org/2024/12/11/revealed-the-full-hidden...
When it comes to things that people find mundane or agreeable, the stuff he posts about all day reflects what he thinks but when he gives fifty million dollars to Stephen Miller[1] in 2022 to fund his Citizens for Sanity ads[2], maybe he’s trolling or it’s drugs or whatever.
> I'm thinking about what led to his success, and how those lessons might apply to me or people I'm supporting.
This is quite literally a defense of his character. If your response to “this guy sucks, here is proof that this guy sucks” is “there is literally nothing bad he could do that justifies thinking about anything other than the positives about him”, that is what defending a person looks like.
1
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/4912754-musk-donated-m...
2
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/who-is-behind-citize...
“Latinx” is presented uncritically as “inclusive”, and the people who don’t like it are smeared as “queerphobic”.
This is academia at its most tone-deaf and ignorant. If he actually spoke to some Latino people he would quickly discover that the reasons for the backlash have approximately zero to do with “queerphobia”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx
To me it seems like Musk's twitter takoever has done more than just "neutralize" the wokeness of twitter. It has amplified factless-ness and fake claims beyond proportion.
https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2024/how-elon-musk-twi...
(some strong language and racist words used so maybe not safe for work or around kids)
I’m relieved to read that racism isn’t as bad as I think it is.
IIRC usage didn't really drop off until 2020 or after. That was when conservatives started using the term in a negative way and progressives abandoned it.
But even if you look at police murders on civilians, they are killing more whites than blacks. You might argue that whites are 5x more than blacks, but police has more interaction with blacks than with whites. https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...
https://paulgraham.com/say.html
This is top to bottom a more thoughtful, nuanced take on essentially the same topic. The main difference is that saying stuff like "class of bureaucrats pursu[ing] a woke agenda" and "woke mind-virus" is fashionable among SV elites today, and it was not in 2004.
I remember pearl clutching over The Simpsons in the early 90s, to the point where Bush Sr. got involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Bad_Neighbors
https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/addi...
You can also declare a business as "woman owned/led"
https://blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/empo...
and "black owned"
https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/31/21348990/google-black-own...
> So yesterday I gave my lecture. Despite a lack of preparation, I spoke quite well and without any hesitation, which I ascribe to the cocaine I had taken beforehand. I told about my discoveries in brain anatomy, all very difficult things that the audience certainly didn’t understand, but all that matters is that they get the impression that I understand it.
Maybe pg has the same strategy. Certainly reads that way.
[1] https://www.truthorfiction.com/sigmund-freud-i-ascribe-to-th...
As an example, see this old anti-MLK comic; it certainly sounds quite familiar: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/s6ll2c/a...
Obama is using the term and criticising people who do it in this clip. I in no way consider him to be right wing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM
Here is someone who you may or may not consider to be a far right bad actor explaining what woke is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM
Germany actually has several laws in place that explicitly protect people in the workplace, such as the General Equal Treatment Act (2006, with revisions to 2022) which contains an explicit treatment of Harrassment, specifically mentioning that of a sexual nature.
Going further, in a judgment dated from 06.12.2021, LAG Cologne, sexual harrassment was explicitly stated as acceptable grounds for extraordinary dismissal. So actually you already live in exactly that kind of country.
https://www.heuking.de/en/news-events/newsletter-articles/de...
What I think you're trying to say, though, is that you don't experience the kind of angry fanatical discourse that seems to a big feature of social media and US discourse, where laws are being weaponised and used as blunt political instruments, with which to do as much damage to society as possible.
In this case, I agree with you and am super grateful I don't live there.
It doesn't. Judaism holds that the soul starts out pure, having been made in the image of G-d, and it only becomes impure through wrongdoing. All humans are born with an impulse to do evil, the Yetzer Hara, but we're also created with the power to overcome it. And when we have done evil, we have the ability to atone and return our souls to the pure state they were created in. That happens, for instance, on Yom Kippur.
The context of the verse from Ezekiel is:
> O mortal, when the House of Israel dwelt on their own soil, they defiled it with their ways and their deeds […] So I poured out My wrath on them […] I scattered them among the nations […] But when they came to those nations, they caused My holy name to be profaned, in that it was said of them, “These are GOD’s people, yet they had to leave their land.” […] Say to the House of Israel: Thus said the Sovereign GOD: Not for your sake will I act, O House of Israel, but for My holy name, which you have caused to be profaned among the nations to which you have come. […] I will take you from among the nations and gather you from all the countries, and I will bring you back to your own land. I will sprinkle pure water upon you, and you shall be purified: I will purify you from all your defilement and from all your fetishes. And I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit into you: I will remove the heart of stone from your body and give you a heart of flesh;" https://www.sefaria.org/Ezekiel.36.17-26
Ezekiel lived during the Babylonian exile. At face value, the text is saying that the people of Israel have been exiled because of their sins, but it makes a prophecy that G-d will cause them to stop sinning and return them to their land. That eventually did happen under Cyrus the Great. This is a constant cycle in the bible: When things are good, the Israelites forget G-d's teachings. Then something bad happens, but G-d redeems the Israelites from their suffering, which leads them to follow G-d again. Then thing get good again, and they start to forget G-d once more...
When it says that G-d will give the house of Israel a new heart, it's not (at face value) saying that individual people will literally receive new spirits (or otherwise be metaphysically transformed). Nor is it saying that G-d will literally sprinkle water on them. These are poetic ways of saying that the house of Israel will stop worshiping idols (etc), the same way that happened many times before in the Torah. You can of course add a layer of exegesis and make it about individual believers today instead of the nation of Israel in Babylonia of the 6th-century BCE. That's fine, the rabbinic tradition does that sort of thing all the time too. But at that point you're firmly in Christian territory and not in the space shared between Judaism and Christianity.
Another good one that gets it even closer is from Sam Kriss. His prose is a bit less to the point than deBoer, but he outlines his idea that "wokeness" is not a political ideology but rather an etiquette. I think it's paywalled now but the archived version can be read:https://web.archive.org/web/20230324050437/https://samkriss....
It's a good writeup that doesn't require the reader to have taken a stance or agree with the author's (arguably reactionary in the case of PG's post, depending on one's perspective) politics.
e.g. sometimes white people have some experience where they realize how much crap black people get; they might actually meet some black people or learn about history (e.g. black people have been complaining about the police in America as long as there is America, why are we supposed to remember one person's name but forget Rodney King or the Watts Riots, that people like Booker T. Washington had trouble w/ the police) but instead they chant thought-stopping slogans like "defund the police" (tell that to the black people who have gunshots in their neighborhood every night) and instead of saying something like "Black people are beautiful" they have to say "Black lives are beautiful".
The trouble is that people today are looking back 15 minutes and looking ahead 15 minutes and are up against the likes of Xi, Putin and Netanyahu who are thinking in terms of hundreds of years if not thousands. They're like children in the hands of gods.
---
There is an undercurrent of priggery in attitudes about sexuality that's a different and much more complex theme that starts w/ Baudrillard's essay at the beginning of
https://monoskop.org/images/9/96/Baudrillard_Jean_Seduction....
and continues with experiences such as discovering that when squicky rumours are flying around it is is the former BDSM professional several steps removed from the event who goes the the police with a garbled, confused and hysterical story or that the transgenderist gatekeepers of Tildes don't know that there are 549 paraphilias (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphilia) and that pedophilia is just one of them in their mad rush to cancel anyone they can. In contrast the people who pray a few times a day, homeschool their kids, and volunteer on deadly cold nights at the homeless shelter, while people who hate them are sharing hateful memes online, who "seek first to understand" the way Steven Covey says you should)
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...
The Case for Reparations [1]
People are right to react with vigour to these sorts of large-scale redistribution plans. This is a design of the far-left in academia that has its roots in the communist movements of the early 20th century in Europe and Russia, whose worst excesses led to the deportation and execution of millions of Kulaks in the Soviet Union [2].
You might call this a slippery slope argument but the historical precedent was exactly that: a slippery slope where society slid all the way to the bottom. Once enough people have convinced themselves that it is good and right to use the political process to take property away from a group they consider to be their enemies, there is no limit to the amount of destruction they can achieve.
There are numerous changes over the first two days, Exercise to the reader to find which HN comments inspired them.
To note: I really have no problem with him updating his piece to reflect accurate criticism, I do find issue with doing it silently, and with not reflecting on how it should influence his thoroughness in the future.
Left strategy has been terrible for years. That's one of the consequences of the Woke movement. Far too much political capital was expended on niche issues. Gays are 3% of the US population. Trans are 0.3% of the US population. Can't win an election catering to those groups. Too few votes. (See Sex in America, the Definitive Study,[1] which selected their survey group randomly across the whole US and followed up with mailed, in person, and paid interviews, until they got >90% participation. Most other surveys have some degree of self-selection of the participants.)
Occupy Wall Street never came up with a political agenda. Black Lives Matter had a huge agenda, and one of the groups claiming to be in charge had a document over a hundred pages full of demands. Nobody was pushing hard on worker protections or labor law enforcement - not cool enough, but affects a big fraction of the population. Nobody was pushing to break up monopolies that raised prices, even in apartment rentals and health care where collusion has been proven.
This lack of focus lost elections.
The Right agenda is basically tax cuts for the rich, plus God, Family, and Guns. That's enough to form a majority.
So here we are.
[1] https://archive.org/details/sexinamericadefi00mich/mode/2up
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger
> However, in the late 20th century, the word was seen as a hurtful racial slur in English. It was called hate speech. "Nigger" was seen as very offensive to say or hear which caused many to not use the word at all. They instead called the word "The N-Word". It is said with a "hard R", because the word ends in 'er' instead of 'a', as in the word "nigga".
Seeing all of that, I'm really not sure his boat has been rising with the tide, so to speak. I personally don't believe anyone thinks conversion therapy is good for themselves unless they are deeply troubled.
[1] https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/activist-milo-yiannopoulos...
Is this a reference to the law preventing teachers from speaking to young children about sexuality?
> ...and academic inquiry
I assume this is in reference to Florida's rejection of the College Board's AP Black History curriculum, which was rejected for containing "critical race theory" in violation of Florida Law. Surely our democratically elected state governments are better suited to have the final say in what goes into our kids heads than some NGO's Board of Trustees? Anyone who thinks educators make for less political judges than politicians is invited to review the donation history of teachers unions[0].
https://world.hey.com/dhh/google-s-sad-ideological-capture-w...
What did they do that was "An aggressively performative focus on social justice."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Light_boycott
Seems like they did a branded tie in with a celebrity who was trans?
Would it be woke to have an advert with a black, Jewish, female, immigrant, albino, gay, Chinese or Hispanic celebrity?
I kind of feel like it would have been at some point in the past.
Is there a list somewhere of what kinds of celebrity is "politically correct" these days so that corporations trying to advertise beer can avoid these accusations?
I don't think its totally unknown in the past although I suppose you might say it was often done with implausible deniability. As people pointed out there's a difference between being out and being openly out.
One funny example was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Zhirinovsky (Putin's fascist clown who played the extremist to make Putin seem more reasonable, although it was probably close to his real views). Surprisingly the antisemitic Russian ultra nationalist had a Jewish father(who divorced his mother and moved to Israel when he was an infant) which he used to sort of deny it in a ridiculous manner saying his mother was Russian and his father was a lawyer
I like Freddie deBoer's 2023 definition, which at least is framed from a left-wing point-of-view rather than the aggressive and weaponised right-wing framing:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiede...
My historically red county in Maryland went 55-41 for Harris, but 55-43 for Larry Hogan. It’s full of woke Romney 2012 voters.
Also, society can tackle problems like the study time gap https://fburl.com/oa3uenrr
Here's the Harvard data from the somewhat recent SCOTUS trial: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/222325/202...
Asians in the top academic decile are half as likely as African Americans in the 5th decile to be accepted. I highly doubt exposing Americans to this data would make them more favorable to affirmative action– the very opposite is more likely.
> The theme of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was “uncancel America.” But when news broke that one of the speakers, a hip hop artist named Young Pharoah, had called Judaism “a complete lie,” CPAC cancelled him. Which led Young Pharoah to denounce CPAC for practicing “cancel culture,” which just goes to show: Denouncing “cancel culture” is a lot easier than defining what it actually is.
https://peterbeinart.substack.com/p/want-to-fight-cancel-cul...
In my country an artist made songs titled "Fuck children" and "Women are whores". He was cancelled (and then cried about it). Cause it's so unfair to not book artists who jokes about raping children? Who gets to cancel who? In the real world, pro-Israel "wokeists" have gotten way more people in trouble, both on and off campuses, by calling people "anti-Semites" than left-wing "wokeists" have for complaining about usage of wrong words for "non-white" people.
Like certain washed up comedians, these people are all hypocrites. They reserve the right to offend others, but when others offend them they cry.
When people were asked whether male-dominated or female-dominated industries were sexist, they vastly overestimated the degree of gender discrimination as compared to the experimentally observed rates (and in the case of male-dominated industries, they got the direction of discrimination backwards): https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S07495978230005... from https://id.elsevier.com/as/authorization.oauth2?platSite=SD%...
The whole pattern of people saying what amounts to "the fact that you disagree with me means you haven't bothered to examine the problem" is a very unfortunate trend. Did it occur to you that perhaps he did do the work on studying the problem, and came to a different conclusion?
It was partly that, though. Read the section "Rallies and protests organized by IRA in the United States" in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
Also: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook...
These troll farms exploited genuine grievances in order to stoke as much chaos as possible.
I'm not trying to say this was the main cause, my comment "wokeness was state sponsored attack" was rhetorical in nature. While a state sponsored attack did happen (see above links...) it isn't the main explanation.
To be clear, the law that the person I am replying to is likely referring to is Florida House Bill 1557, which passed in 2022 and originally applied to kindergarten through 3rd grade. In 2023, it was expanded to apply to all grades, K-12. Here is a quote from the rule [0], this is the rule's self-summary:
"The amendment prohibits classroom instruction to students in pre-kindergarten through grade 3 on sexual orientation or gender identity. For grades 4 through 12, instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity is prohibited unless such instruction is either expressly required by state academic standards as adopted in Rule 6A-1.09401, F.A.C., or is part of a reproductive health course or health lesson for which a student’s parent has the option to have his or her student not attend"
[0] https://flrules.org/Faw/FAWDocuments/FAWVOLUMEFOLDERS2023/49...
“In that survey, 74% of U.S. adults said that, when making decisions about hiring and promotions, companies and organizations should take only a person’s qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity.”
Not very successfully. Only 6.9% of private-sector US workers have a union. That peaked at 35% in 1954.
[1] https://www.epi.org/publication/union-membership-data/#full-...
But I wouldn't be surprised if this is also discarded as biased. The issue is that the allegation of bias is often justified by the outcomes of the research, thus statements like "the research showing people overestimate racism is biased" becomes tautological.
Also, do you have specific critiques of the study? Or is your dismissal solely based on the authorship of the study?
My personal philosophy for most topics is to find out what the extremes are, then look at what the middle between these would be, and then call that the ideal.
On Reddit, that philosophy is enough to be called "racist" and "Nazi". Trying to start a proper discussion to (in-)validate any of my - in my opinion - rational points was met with "I don't talk to Nazis!" several times. Mind you, I never even talked about race or anything similar and most times not even about culture. I basically formulated my starting points, added some facts, and was ready to discuss. There were very few discussions that really took place and I have even changed my opinion on several topics based on these discussions. But in the last few years, even these few discussions became less and less. I can only remember one discussion in the last two years that I had with a left-wing person (a teacher from Africa) and I only got this far because our kids were playing with each other. Based on what she told me, I am pretty sure that I would not have the chance for that discussion under other circumstances. She even thanked me for that conversation and told me, that she could not remember the last time that she could talk so open to anyone. I don't know if she realized that she told me how she categorized every negative feedback about her as "racist" half an hour earlier. Strangely, the more to the left a person is leaning, the less they like to discuss nowadays. I find that very strange and also not helpful to their case. If I have two parties where one of them likes to discuss and argue, while the other one directly calls anyone with a slightly different opinion a swear-word, I tend to sympathize more with the party that likes to speak with me. I've yet to encounter a really right-wing extremist that is actually racist. I know that they exist, and I have a friend who was in one of these groups when he was young, but I never had anyone tell me directly that they find any specific ethnicity inferior to others or something in that regard. Well, except for members of a certain religion, but I don't want to start that topic here.
Btw., I am German, and I associate the word "Nazi" with war, racism, and industrial-scale mass murder. But today it is enough to say "I don't like how the immigration into Europe is handled, and I think we should reduce the amount of illegal immigration" to be called a racist and even a Nazi. Ffs, I've seen people in high ranks calling people "racist" because their products were criticized. It had nothing to do with race or anything like that, only with the quality of the product, but they still throw that word around as if everything was just based on race. And if people say that everything and everybody is racist, they at some point start believing that themselves.
Nowadays, you really have to be careful if you criticize anyone's work if they are part of any minority. What's even more ridiculous, most times it's not even the person themselves, but some other person who has their "everyone is racist" opinion, and they will start attacking everyone who dares to critique anyone belonging to any kind of minority. That leads to "toxic positivity", where no-one dares to call out any BS. And that leads to bad products being created. Just look at some of the films and games that have been produced in the last few years. Concord is a good example of something that is the result of this "woke" culture.
This is bad in so many ways. If you hire people by how good they fit into their role, the heritage of the applicant must not be a factor. If the pool of applications does not fit the overall demographic, that is not the fault of the recruiting company. If a company obviously discriminates against anyone, they should be held accountable. That is what I call the balanced solution.
But forcing them to hire specific percentages of certain demographics is contra-productive. Now you don't have the best person for the job, if their ethnicity, sexuality or whatever doesn't also align with the current requirements. This might lead to very bad results. You want your brain-surgeon to be good at his job, and not just the only one that had the right skin tone in that hiring session. And even if they are good or even the best choice, others in the company don't know that, and they might categorize them a "DEI-hire" anyway. That only creates further resentments.
The greatest success I have seen in the fight against racism was not seeing color. We should be color-blind and treat everyone equally. For a time, that worked great. Today, the heritage, gender, color of skin and even sexuality are things that have to be acknowledged, recognized and valued. I've only seen bad results coming out of this and nothing positive.
Oh, and about the part of the professors making their students "feel uncomfortable"; Of course, if a professor says something like "Women belong in the kitchen anyway", or any really sexist or racist stuff, that behavior is not okay, and they should face consequences for that. Only making someone "feel uncomfortable" is not enough, though. To learn, you have to be told if you are wrong. Feedback can't just be positive, and it doesn't help anyone to be wrapped in cotton candy for their whole education. That's what leads to the aforementioned "toxic positivity".
About my last point, I strongly recommend this podcast. One part dedicated to this is timestamped, but I recommend listening to the whole thing. It's really good and it explains a lot about our behavior. https://youtu.be/R6xbXOp7wDA?si=MCF3hfZxe9NmzJ-b&t=4724
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH2WeWgcSMk
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0W9QbkX8Cs
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vyBLCqyUes
This should make anyone's skin crawl with the way this college's faculty and staff were treated, and the childish behavior of the students to allow this to happen. This gives a reason why "college kids" are no longer considered adults.
This passive phrasing implies a kind of universal consensus or collective decision-making process that the word has officially changed connotation. If this were the case, it would not be such a problem.
What happens in practice is that a small minority of people decide that a certain word has bad connotations. These people decide that it no longer matters what the previous connotation was, nor the speaker's intention in uttering it, it is now off-limits and subject to correction when used. People pressure others to conform, in varying degrees of politeness -- anything from a well-intentioned and friendly FYI to a public and aggressive dressing down -- and therefore the stigma surrounding the word spreads.
It's hard to believe that this terminology treadmill genuinely helps anyone, as people are perfectly capable of divining intent when they really want to (nobody is accusing the NAACP of favoring discrimination and segregation).
Add to this that the favored terms of the treadmill creators don't necessarily even reflect what the groups in question actually want. Indigenous Americans generally prefer being called Indian, not Native American (CGP Grey made a whole video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ).
So that momentary pause you feel when you almost say "Indian" and then correct it to "Native American", who is that actually serving? It's not the people in question. It's a different set of people, a set of people who have gained the cultural power to stigmatize words based on their own personal beliefs.
I voted for Kamala, and I don't think this is accurate.
I support having empathy for homeless people. I would love to see a movement focused on actually helping homeless people, by volunteering at soup kitchens and so on.
Wokeness does not seem to be that movement. Insofar as wokeness concerns itself with homeless people, (a) it wants you to refer to them as 'unhoused' instead of homeless, (b) it wants to make sure you don't talk about it when they e.g. sexually assault you: https://x.com/CollinRugg/status/1845244113249063227
So yeah, your philosophy sounds nice. Aggressive performative-progressives sometimes claim to subscribe to it, but their actions tend to differ in practice. See this article for details on this phenomenon: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/07/social-justice-and-wor...
Should have told that to that teacher from decades ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vz9Zy2-C_lY
Such a wild interview that Boondocks outright sampled it for an episode.
There's a big difference between these two things
* Berkeley's Free Speech Movement: https://qr.ae/pYCVXO
* "Free speech is a disease and we are the cure", from the sidebar of /r/ShitRedditSays: https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitRedditSays/
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
But it has nothing to do with "cutting checks". PG hasn't been doing that, nor influencing HN, nor even reading HN as far as I know, for many years.
The movements exist and they demonstrably stem from a common ideology
Naming a political tendency is not making a "boogeyman" out of it.
>The complaints about, say, LatinX have far surpassed the number of actual proponents of it, which were a small number of people of the left. However, it still brought up again and again because it forms a useful image of what people are fighting against.
Here's CNN Business casually repeatedly using the term in 2021: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/26/business/netflix-diversit...
More generally, the point is that there is something to "fight against", which is causing real harm, including to people I know personally.
For example, it's fundamentally behind the idea that Tim Peters somehow "used potentially offensive language or slurs" by literally writing "XXXX" to censor a word and then providing context to enable people to figure out what word he had in mind, because it was relevant to the conversation. (I know that this was ideological because they do this for the word "slut", but not e.g. for "shit" or "fuck".)
Or the idea that he "made light of sensitive topics like workplace sexual harassment" by... claiming that workers sometimes get "training" because a higher-up did something bad. (Or the idea that "making light of a sensitive topic" is even bad in the first place.)
Or the entire bit about "reverse racism and reverse sexism" as explained at https://tim-one.github.io/psf/silly . (Incidentally, Tim, if you're reading: you cede too much ground here. "Racism" isn't a term that activists get to define. Discrimination is discrimination, and it's morally wrong in and of itself; injustice in the surrounding social conditions simply doesn't bear on that.)
It's also responsible for the fact that prominent members of the Python community are still making hay about the supposed mistreatment of Adria Richards - who, as a reminder, eavesdropped on a conversation in order to take offense to it and then went directly to social media to complain because a couple of other people were being unprofessional (although mutually completely comfortable with their conversation).
And it's behind the entire fracas around the removal of the endorsement of Strunk and White as an English style guide from PEP 8, as a supposed "relic of white supremacy". (There are public mailing list archives. I have kept many bookmarks and have quite a bit of detailed critique that wouldn't fit in the margins here. But here's just one example of the standard playbook: https://www.mail-archive.com/python-dev@python.org/msg108879... )
Outside of Python it's also fundamentally behind the plain misreading of James Damore's inoffensive and entirely reasonable takes, and his subsequent tarring and feathering. To cite just one example that sticks in my head.
And people see that this framing of “breaking ties between qualified candidates” concept is merely wordplay. Harvard doesn’t say “everyone above a particular academic index score is ‘equally qualified’ and there’s no difference above that line.” According to the SFFA data, Asian and white students in the 10th decile of academic index score are 5-6 times as likely to be admitted as white and Asian students in the 5th decile (who have virtually no chance). But black and Hispanic students in the 5th decile are as likely or more likely to be admitted as white and Asian students in the 9th and 10th deciles. Thus, Harvard uses race to admit less qualified students—as measured by the very metric Harvard has established to measure qualifications.
Most people intuitively understand this without the explanation. They intuitively understand that grades and test scores establish a sliding scale of more or less qualified candidates.
https://4w.pub/male-inmate-charged-with-raping-woman-inside-...
This is a direct result of "progressive" beliefs being translated into policy.
It should be no surprise that people start to question and reject these beliefs when they begin to understand the harm they cause.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
From first search:
The n-word pronounced with the final ‘r’ sound, as opposed to a softer pronunciation that often omits this sound
Over the decades, the n-word has evolved, with the softer version being reclaimed by some within the Black community as a term of endearment or camaraderie. However, the “hard R” variation remains a symbol of hate and discrimination.
Great idea; shame about the name.
Here's the problem with using words like "bro" (however jokingly) [...]
It's strange for the author to distinguish "those who dislike the term" from those who don't, considering that the term is overwhelmingly unpopular (https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/09/12/ho...).
It's still illegal in half the world https://www.hrc.org/resources/marriage-equality-around-the-w...
Active users of the suffix are a small minority: https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/09/12/ho...
"Heresy" (https://www.paulgraham.com/heresy.html) was during Biden's tenure.
"Orthodox Privilege" (https://www.paulgraham.com/orth.html) was during the height of lockdown-era BLM.
"Keep your Identity Small" (https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html) is from the beginning of Obama's tenure.
Criticizing "wokeness" today is not at all inconsistent with PG's historically stated opinions and beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B6hm_scandal
"Beginning in April 1931, the SPD newspaper Münchener Post published a series of front-page stories about alleged homosexuality in the SA, which turned out to be based on forgeries. SPD leaders set out to obtain authentic evidence of Röhm's sexuality and, if possible, convict him under Paragraph 175. Röhm was tried five times, but never convicted. During the German presidential election in March 1932, the SPD released a pamphlet edited by ex-Nazi Helmuth Klotz [de] with Röhm's letters to Heimsoth. This second round of disclosures sparked a plot by some Nazis to murder Röhm, which fell through and resulted in additional negative press for the party."
It cannot be more public than that. The Social Democrats used the anti-gay paragraph.
Another known gay Nazi was Rudolf Hess:
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/07/10/opinion/l-hess-homosexual...
And Klaus Mann wrote a novel about German actor and director Gustaf Gründgens, famous for his Mephisto role in Goethe's Faust:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephisto_(novel)
"The author Hermann Kesten suggested that he write a novel of a homosexual careerist in the Third Reich, with the director of the state theatre Gustaf Gründgens as a subject matter. Gründgens's homosexuality was widely known."
The whole selective persecution of gays began after Röhm's paramilitary SA surged to 4,000,000 members in 1934, and a couple of people including Himmler intrigued against him.
People like Hess and Gründgens were never touched or exposed even though most people knew.
Concluding that there is no problem with the term and the real problem is “queerphobia” is textbook academic myopia.
See this critique, which the author engages with - unconvincingly: https://x.com/paulnovosad/status/1851994193503359003
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22latinx+community%22&tbs=q...
In fact, when I query for results and specify date ranges for each year (using Tools > Any time > Custom range), I get:
2018: 4,410 results
2019: 7,070 results
2020: 15,900 results
2021: 17,500 results
2022: 21,000 results
2023: 34,300 results
2024: 88,600 results
Google Trends doesn't show a clear decline either: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2018-01-01%202...
Some cultures have known that things are not binary for a very long time:
There is no generally accepted definition of woke, and that is largely by design to mislead others through well known psychological blindspots (Cialdini), towards inducing others to join collectivism while also inspiring disunity and hate, albeit indirectly.
The movement often couches its perspectives in power dynamics which follows elements common to Maoism and Communism, along with many other similar marxist movements. It also has elements from critical pedagogy (the critical turn), which has origins in Marxist movements.
The mind virus part of it is the same with any belief system that lends itself towards irrational delusion, inducing bitter resentment in individuals and falsely criticizing without any rational framework or basis, often ignoring objective reality for a false narrative.
Woke-ism is a cult of the semi-lucid insane brainwashed children they manage to mislead, who desperately try to poorly grapple with reality, miserably, and bitterly, while dragging everyone else down.
Its rather sad for the individuals who become both victim and perpetrator. There is no cure for insanity, nor the blindness induced.
If you want a rational discussion on this subject matter, I'd suggest checking over James Lindsay's work outing these type of movements. Your description is fairly misinformed.
https://newdiscourses.com/2023/03/workings-of-the-woke-cult/
There are left-wing critics of "Woke", see for example the African-American Marxist Adolph L Reed Jr – https://newrepublic.com/article/160305/beyond-great-awokenin...
If an unapologetic Marxist is attacking "Woke", that really disproves the contention that it is purely some right-wing bogeyman
Or, consider that the Trotskyist International Committee of the Fourth International published a review of the sitcom Abbott Elementary, which includes the line "In fact, in its treatment of Jacob’s wokeness, Abbott Elementary refreshingly mocks the suffocating trend of racialism in American culture" – https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/01/abbo-m01.html
Similarly, read their review of John McWhorter's Woke Racism – https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/06/14/ihjm-j14.html – in which they largely express agreement with his criticisms of the progressive "woke" ideology, but simultaneously condemn him for making those criticisms from a pro-capitalist instead of anti-capitalist perspective
And see the socialist publication Jacobin's approving review of the philosopher Susan Neiman's book Left Is Not Woke, which attacks "wokeness" from an explicitly left-wing perspective: https://jacobin.com/2024/07/wokeness-left-ideology-neiman-re...
One in two transgender person is victim of sexual assault at some point in their life [1]. That is the very real and statistically significant result of "anti-wokeness".
[1] https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/pubs/forge...
https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2014/05/rupaul_s-_tran...
Before that it was "social justice warrior", before that it was "political correctness". It's just a drumbeat of demonization.
https://theonion.com/woke-conservatives-define-what-it-means...
My favourite is number 5.
"Visibility limited: this Post may violate X's rules against hateful conduct"
You then have to click "View" where you're taken to another view where the message is shown, but with the warning still present. You can't share, like, or reply to the message
Not sure if the account also receives a suspension or shadow banning.
It's policy from Elon himself: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1671370284102819841
You can see it play out in replies to my tweet here, where someone didn't believe it: https://twitter.com/WickyNilliams/status/1855754162102816937
Surely you have evidence for this claim that would counter all the other evidence that disputes it?
Your definition doesn't even stand up to the first paragraph on Wikipedia
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke - https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/home-news/woke-meani... - https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/06/06/what-doe...
If you're reading "stay woke" and understand it to me "fuck people we don't like" then I'm not sure what reading comprehension program to recommend.
https://eji.org/news/alabama-attorney-general-releases-white...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unarmed_African_Americ...
Or here's a case where 6 officers collude to torture 2 black people to death (https://apnews.com/article/mississippi-deputies-guilty-pleas...). Surely they'll get a real sentence now that it's news, but it makes you wonder how many cases never get identified as racially-based when the investigators are the perpetrators.
And boy it sure does seem odd that further south you go the more of a problem it is... I wonder what could explain that phenomenon....
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2018-01-01%202...
Right, it barely moves above the zero line.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/07/13/fbi-crime-rate...
Enforcing this false dilemma is what leads us to this situation. Even this CCP Grey guy is arguing for the false dilemma. Actually referring to Native Americans or Indians as a monolithic group is the problem. The many peoples forced to live in the Indian Territories(Oklahoma) have different needs than the peoples forced to live along the US-Canadian border(like Ojibway, Blackfoot, and Mohawk) and different needs than the Apache... another overloaded name[1].
"Usage is usage. I don't make the rules."
He also clarifies he's referring to the contemporary meaning in the linked essay:
> Wokeness is a second, more aggressive wave of political correctness, which started in the late 1980s, died down in the late 1990s, and then returned with a vengeance in the early 2010s, finally peaking after the riots of 2020.
> This was not the original meaning of woke, but it's rarely used in the original sense now. Now the pejorative sense is the dominant one. What does it mean now?
And that's what really pisses off the average guy. It is perfectly fine to have certain statements and to want to raise awareness of specific issues. The main demographic for these computer games is straight white men. So it makes sense to try to insert your views about this in a game if they are your target audience. But that needs to be done properly and in an intelligent manner. Just adding one white dude option into a mix of overly diverse characters, also making them visually very unappealing to not follow traditional beauty standards and then telling the average dude to "Acknowledge their privileged position" is not an intelligent way to handle this. Here, the consequences were quite spectacular. The average gamer who plays hero shooters wants to have their escapism in games and be the great hero that they can't be in real life. This game did not provide that. There are also games that are openly about specific statements, and they openly communicate that. They are also usually niche products because of that because - like I said - the average gamer wants escapism from games.
An example where that's done better is Baldur's Gate 3. The overall game is great, but you also have all the relationship options you might like. I learned that the hard way, when I accidentally broke my carefully created romance between my male avatar and a female party member. I was just being friendly to another male party member, which directly started a gay romance with him. In this case, I would have preferred an option to select the sexual preferences before that happens, but it's nothing that makes the game bad.
> Are you aware of any places where there are fixed quotas and random unqualified people are hired because of their gender or skin colour? I'd be shocked, and all "DEI HIRE" outrages I've seen have been utter nonsense spread by right-wing crisis actors (I've seen it for firefighters, Boeing, Alaska Air and a bunch of other things I can't recall) because it's fashionable to say any non-majority employee was hired only because of their immutable characteristics and is by definition unqualified. Which is, of course, nonsense.
Well, that doesn't look like you are really open to any discussion on this, since you're dismissing anything that's said about this as "nonsense" and you are calling anyone who brings up the examples you just mentioned "right-wing crisis actors" by default. That's not how you discuss this. You bring up your position and already define any other perspective as invalid. But maybe I am wrong, and you are actually willing to change my mind. So, what do you say about this video? It's less than 1.5 minutes and I think it is a good example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghBAcxEMzM
https://it.wisc.edu/learn/inclusive-language-for-it/
It attempts to replace, or offer alternatives to, offensive language in IT. For example "dummy variable" is under the category of "Ableist language" in the website and should be replaced with the term "placeholder value". "master" and "slave" are other examples of language that, apparently, need to get phased out.
I don't see the problem with the comment that you responded to. It's not surprising to me.
[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=woke&year_star...
They literally started sending fake "remigration" tickets to anybody with a foreign sounding family name, exactly what the nazis did to jews in the 1930s.
https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/parteien/id_...
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
I'm calling the nonsense claims nonsense.
> So, what do you say about this video? It's less than 1.5 minutes and I think it is a good example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghBAcxEMzM
It's a good example of grifting, yes. We have an ad by the LA fire department where a high positioned person at it talks about diversity. Considering the high amounts of incidents between police and minorities, and high distrust of officials, having the fire department be diverse and representative of the population it serves is a good idea, no? That being said, that must happen with regards to what their job is. No point in hiring someone who can't do the job. And you'll notice that in the ad (or at least the cut this youtuber has chosen to use for engagement, who knows if it's representative or not) the person doesn't say they'll hire anyone or will have a quota. There's a very dumb and aggressive attempt at a dismissal/joke/I don't even know what about a potentially sexist reaction to the above ("can she carry me"). I personally trust the fire department or medic will be able to do their job regardless of their gender or skin colour or whatever. If they're indeed hiring incompetent people because of quotas or any other reason I'd want to know, but neither the ad, nor the youtuber make that claim.
So yes, thank you for illustrating my point. There's a bunch of outrage about "DEI" and quotas and what not, but when you look at the substance, it's nothing.
> And that's what really pisses off the average guy. It is perfectly fine to have certain statements and to want to raise awareness of specific issues. The main demographic for these computer games is straight white men. So it makes sense to try to insert your views about this in a game if they are your target audience. But that needs to be done properly and in an intelligent manner.
While it's true that that's the main demographic, maybe game publishers are trying to add others as well? Increase their target demographic if you will.
> Just adding one white dude option into a mix of overly diverse characters, also making them visually very unappealing to not follow traditional beauty standards and then telling the average dude to "Acknowledge their privileged position" is not an intelligent way to handle this
You're mixing a lead's personal opinion with what the game's options are. I personally don't consider the characters being ugly to be a game stopper (and I'm not alone, I don't think anyone complained about Travis looking like he did in GTAV), but I can see how that can be a problem for some.
I don't agree that some centrist policies are in the spirit of the Enlightenment. They claim to be, but they ignore empirical observation and they don't question themselves, the latter of which is probably the biggest insight of the Enlightenment. I also don't agree we've had any "post-Enlightenment policies". The Enlightenment is at least as much about an ongoing process of introspection, doubt, and questioning as it is about any fixed directives.
For fun, here's something I read years ago, which I recall to have found quite entertaining. It's a treatment of how the Enlightenment is invoked by people who know little about it and internalise nothing from it: https://thebaffler.com/latest/peterson-ganz-klein Here's a snippet:
The strange paradox we face today is that the Enlightenment is being invoked like a talismanic object to thwart the very questioning of political hierarchies and norms that, for Enlightenment thinkers, was necessary for humanity’s emergence from tradition and subordination.
This is similar to what I claimed is bothering Graham more than the creation of new heresies: the questioning of old ones.
As for "a flood of crime", I'm not sure what you mean, at least in the US (https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...), and as for tribalism, here, too, I think context is necessary. Things may feel more tribal than in, say, the 1990s, but even if that could be quantified, America and other western countries have certainly been more tribal before (a particularly egregious example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States#...), and it may be that if things are indeed more tribal than recent history, it is recent history that's the anomaly.
> do you think you can seriously think your "woke" frameworks can compete?
I don't know what you mean by my woke frameworks (or even by woke frameworks, but that would take much to define, I expect). I've never implemented a DEI process, never seriously studied the effectiveness such practices (and so I cannot have any strong opinions one way or the other about them), never put any kind of banner or flag on my social media avatar, and I've never advertised my preferred pronouns.
My contribution is merely that I spent a few years in a former life academically researching history, and I have little patience for superficial "analyses" by people who have far too little knowledge of the matters they write about, and rather than acknowledge their superficial familiarity, resort to assertions that only show how much context they're missing (and do so with a straight face and no trace of humour). My purpose was only to highlight some glaring flaws in Graham's treatment.
For someone with even some training in historical analysis, Graham's article reads like what an article about the nuances of memory safety in programming written by a historian (and one that doesn't pretend to be even an amateur programmer yet writes undoubting conviction) would read to a programmer. Graham's piece doesn't even rise to the level you'd expect from an amateur. It's more a rant you'd hear from your grandfather about the good old days after he'd seen something in the news that upset him.
As to modernity, much of it was brought about by things that were called the analogous of "woke" by the centrists and conservatives of the time. As I wrote in another comment, claims of empty performance were contemporaneously levelled at the very same movements that Graham now characterises as substantive (radical chic). The way the arguments were presented were also similar: the feminists of the interwar period fought for something real but now it's all a show. You speak of the Enlightenment, but many things we take for granted were heavily debated in the West until the late 1960s at least, and those debates seem to be making a comeback. Many of the places you mentioned certainly have yet to accept some of the most basic ideals of the Enlightenment.
As to whether or not I think wokeness (once properly defined) is purely performative or also contains some substance, I hope to form a reasoned opinion in twenty years' time, but until then, I find it more helpful to discuss these matters with people who actually study the subject more rigourously (and comparatively to historical events with the appropriate rigour) and may have valuable insight rather than an opinion based on gut feelings.
It didn't stop. Republicans have been passing laws requiring identification to access pornography and as a result pornhub is blocked in 16 states currently.
The problem is that you provide other examples and then extrapolate from there that the original comment could be true. However, whether or not you believe it could be true is not serious evidence that it is.
Yes, offering alternative wording to offensive language is a real thing. But notice that the OP is asserting that a facially silly example is real without any support beyond a claim of personal experience. What should matter to you is whether it is real or not as opposed to whether it is surprising or not.
Fake silly examples like this are meant to sit on the line between believable and absurd specifically to make certain ideas seem ridiculous. Making up silly examples of real things is a specific technique to undermine them. It is a propaganda tool not a good faith attempt at dialogue.
C.f., people making up stories about litter boxes in schools to try and undermine efforts to protect the rights of gender non-conforming children (https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/30/how-furries-got-swept...)
It's truly hard to imagine allies more "dangerous" (per the parent) than those who obstruct the vital "freedom of expression" that is... teachers talking to children about sexuality.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/719685/american-adults-w...
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...
This article explains why.
https://thecritic.co.uk/dylan-mulvaney-did-not-share-our-gir...
It's not priggish to take a stand against misogyny, is it?
Have you read his defence of Rachel Dolezal? https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/15/jenner-dolezal...
It doesn't directly address the question you are asking, but maybe it will give you some idea how he would answer it
I've talked about it before. I came to HN because of the Tim Peters suspension, which was related to my situation. I have archives of my related post content (since much of it got deleted) on my blog. Regardless, the burden of proof would be on them to establish that I made any such accusations (the fact of those accusations is clear: https://discuss.python.org/t/im-leaving-too/58408/11 ).
The first that sprung to mind:
> An update by the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom recently released preliminary data stating, "between January 1 and August 31, 2023, OIF reported 695 attempts to censor library materials and services and documented challenges to 1,915 unique titles - a 20% increase from the same reporting period in 2022." Many of the book titles targeted were BIPOC and LGBT groups. The book bans are largely the result of laws passed in Republican-led states.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_S...
[0] Here in Canada, as far as I can tell "Hispanic" is the accepted term - but it's rare for people to identify that way generically (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_origins_of_people_in_Ca...). People here far more often attribute their ethnicity to a specific country of origin rather than to some generic grouping.
You almost got it. Not "some developer made some ill-considered tweets 4 years ago", but the Lead Character Designer. That is the person who is responsible for the whole character design concept. And because you're so focused on the Tweet being from was 4 years ago: That game did not magically appear a few months ago. 4 Years ago, it was deep in development and that person was already very publicly apparent about their opinion regarding the main target audience. The characters in question were being formed at that time.
And it was also the first hit I got on Google with my search query. It's not that I dug really deep. It was literally the first result I got.
People like these are what the average guy calls "woke" nowadays. This person has a very toxic agenda and is still put in a lead position for a project with a budget that - according to some sources - may have been up to 400 Million USD. And that is an example on what is considered problematic regarding the DEI topic. If you think that this is not a problem and not even a part of the reason why games like these fail; fine. Then we agree to disagree on this point. You could also look at the game "Dustborn", if you want something that you could find in the glossary next to "woke game". I don't even know what to say about that mess. But that game at least was openly marketed for it's woke target audience.
> Indeed, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld that racial quotas (of any stripe, but especially "hire more minorities") are illegal. I don't like this Dave Rubin guy, but this video sums it up pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwwjREOWtm0
In the comments, you can find plenty of people who tell their own stories matching the one told in the video. So, this apparently does happen. People see that and they're angry. Normal, simple people see that. Some of them, who were neutral before, now look at these minorities with distrust. That's what I mean when I say that these practices sometimes increase racism in the end. That's normal human behavior. If you say those things and are called "racist" in response, that doesn't help. Instead of a proper discussion and trying to find solutions on how equality can be reached without creating these issues at the same time, people need to get together and find solutions. Calling each other swear words and continuing as planned does not help, but worsens it.
> that video, I see that as less of a policy fail and more of a marketing fail. Like, everybody producing that video understood that as "when a firefighter, ANY firefighter, is physically carrying somebody out of an actual fire, a great number of things have already gone VERY wrong, and being a racist prick about the exact race/gender/etc while a rescue is underway is severely missing the point". Wow. I have to admit that I did not manage to get to that train of thought. So, they created a narrative that people care how their rescuers look like, and then they call the people in their story "racist pricks"? How often does this happen that somebody complains about who they were rescued by? I haven't heard that before. So either you know of some of these cases - in that case, please enlighten me. Or are you already conditioned to see racism everywhere, even in made up stories? Honestly, how did you manage to interpret racism into that video?
That is precisely the problem that I mean. People call out an obviously bad video. Instead of saying: "Oh boy, they messed up there. Let's see how we can fix that." the people criticizing it are being called "racist prigs". That will surely improve the situation! Well, shit. If that's how people "discuss" things nowadays, society is really doomed.
The only thing that I know average people complain about is when anyone considers lowering the criteria for physically demanding jobs specifically for women. And that is precisely what this question is about. "Is that woman able to carry a man out of a burning house?". If the answer is "Yes, she has to meet the same physical requirements as the men", then that is the answer that should make everyone happy. To answer "It's his fault to get into a fire anyway" is the worst answer anyone could give. And this went through numerous hands before it was published. So either no one involved realized that this spot could be a bad idea, or there was toxic positivity involved again. Things like these push people further apart when we should be working together. But, I forgot. Nowadays, one also gets called a "racist" for listing biological facts like "women have different bone structure, average muscle mass and hormone levels than men".
Yeah, I can't see why the average person would have anything against the woke people.
In Dec 2022 he suspended the accounts of several left-leaning journalists without providing a cohesive justification: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/technology/twitter-suspen...
Posting about Ukraine is categorised as misinformation and downranked: https://x.com/aakashg0/status/1641976925064245249
Suppression of tweets in India and Turkey: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/twitter-takes-down-po... https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/05/twitter-musk-censors...
P.S. Seeing that you are still posting in this thread, I'm keen to find out whether you can support your asssertions as per my comment here: >>42708660
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In the meantime, I've been wrestling with difficult feelings around Donald Trump's inauguration and the TikTok ban. This is the darkest time in America that I've experienced since 9/11. As a whole, we made the wrong choice then, a series of wrong choices, that sent us down the wrong path onto this timeline. Now we have a chance to avoid similar mistakes, but with the powers that be asserting their dominance over us at the worst possible time by plunging us into darkness through censorship, I worry that we'll sleepwalk into a new era of regression.
I've lost respect for the elected officials who voted for the TikTok ban, that I thought were on my side. Just like I lost respect for the ones who voted to invade Iraq after 9/11.
Before I answer, let me give you an example of what it is to be truly woke:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrVF_ijzbIs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3DEmzXNn0w (alternate link in case of censorship)
https://voyagecomics.com/2020/11/03/this-captain-america-quo...
Now let me give you an example of what it is to be asleep but not realize that you are dreaming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5S8rhNCBnc (specific derogatory language at 5:15)
If Bill Maher's message resonates with you, take a moment to note the sensation of the feelings you're experiencing. That little tingle of endorphins is your ego. The ego evolved as a survival tool to keep us alive during adversity. The ego grows more powerful with every win. A win often means a loss for someone or something else. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, the place we live, exists because life, energy and time were taken from people, living things and the environment. The rush you feel is you taking some measure of power from the protected groups that Bill Maher admonished by claiming that they got preferential treatment instead of focusing on the true causes of the disaster.
To blame the failed LA fire response on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is particularly offensive. It doesn't matter if there is an element of truth to anything he's saying. Because there are higher principles to aspire to.
The fires were caused by global climate change, decades of poor urban planning, greed in construction where improper materials were used to save costs, building in areas that should have been left wild because there isn't enough water, past leadership incompetence, and most importantly a lack of empathy that led to unprecidented wealth inequality which drove the tendancy to live in ivory towers as well as the lack of sympathy from spectators.
In fairness, Bill Maher mentioned these causes. But to give air time to criticizing DEI, without criticizing the criticizing of it, is ignorant. Enough so that it drove me to write this essay when some might say there are better uses for my time. Which is exactly my point. The strongest argument against wokeism is that there are more important things to do, making it appear performative. Which is no argument at all.
Ah, CNN just said that the TikTok ban has been lifted as I write this, and I see that it works again. It may seem silly to post this now, since there was optimism that the ban would be suspended. But that's not the point. Which is, that it never should have been banned in the first place.
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Continues ->
That's a fair question, and I'll answer it. Admittedly, I thought-policed Paul Graham when I said that he had the wrong take on wokeness, taking exactly the stance that he called out. I must choose my words carefully here, because whatever I say is likely to offend someone. I'll get to that in a moment.
But first, let's look at the literal definition of woke, to try to avoid misinterpretation:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke
1 chiefly US slang
a: aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)
b: reflecting the attitudes of woke people
2 disapproving: politically liberal or progressive (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme
Before I knew what woke meant, I thought it was a reference to the Matrix movies. That awakening was about seeing the simulation, how all of this is a construct of the human mind with its habits and traditions, completely arbitrary but with subjugation as a primary goal. And that people who haven't awakened yet are effectively non-player characters (NPCs), instruments of the status quo who unwittingly perpetuate it and its inequities.
That probably came from my roots growing up in a small town of 10,000 people in the northwestern US in the 1980s. I was a computer geek who got bullied by athletes and children of ranchers who didn't know what to make of me. I felt profoundly alone and alienated. But I wasn't wrong, I just felt like a loser. And they weren't right, they just felt like winners.
When we look around at our leaders today, who do we see? Are they people who came from adversity and now pay it forward for others? Or did they win the internet lottery and pull up the ladder behind them? The important question here is: are they right, or do they just assume they are because they won? The answer to this defines the status quo.
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So I feel that the right take on wokeness is to quite literally be woke and not act like an NPC on the side of the oppressor. A person can write in the most eloquent fashion with an air of impeccability but still be tactless. Which is just exactly what pg did.
I've never met him, but I'm certain that for the most part he's a decent person. I'd even wager that there's no discrimination in his hiring practices, for example. But he's the beneficiary of privilege as a middle-aged white man. There is power imbalance at play in his status. To pretend otherwise is an insult to people who have experienced discrimination or been otherwise suppressed in achieving their own success.
Specifically, the right way to practice wokeness is to conduct oneself in a manner which recognizes injustice without perpetuating it. What does that look like? It means never mentioning aspects of someone's personal identity or things about them that can't be changed, while being an ally to reform the systems of control that undermine them for those traits anyway.
For example, in a group with multiple races, creeds, genders, sexual orientations, differing physical abilities, ages, etc, in polite conversation one should never mention anything having to do with those things. No assumptions should be made about someone's familiarity with or stance on an issue simply because of their demographics. Everyone in the group should be given equal respect for their dignity. The group achieves power that overcomes injustice against any one member.
The key is not to concern ourselves with maintaining our image if we fail to conform to contemporary etiquette around wokeism, but to treat others as they wish to be treated and practice the golden rule so that we don't have to.
How is that different than what pg said? After all, treating everyone the same way is admirable. Why might he feel like he's walking on egg shells while I don't share his cognitive dissonance? Because I don't feel threatened by wokeism or its implications for how I got to where I am and why that might drive a need in me to project my criticism of it.
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It's important here to distinguish between equality and equity. For example, if a company board has 9 men and 1 woman, but there are an equal number of men and women working for the company, then giving the woman 10% of the speaking time may be equal but probably isn't equitable. If I'm a board member, I'm going to put effort towards giving the woman more speaking time. I'll likely sacrifice some of my own time to achieve that. And most importantly, I'll call out other members of the board who talk over her or otherwise treat her disrespectfully, so that anyone on the fence about an issue can consider my offering in their own vote and hopefully join us in overcoming inequity.
Let's talk about why I didn't say 9 women and 1 man in my example. It's because the realities of the world in these times may make that come across as condescending. Injustice is asymmetric. This is why "both sides" and "not all men" statements may have some basis in fact but carry prejudice. Maybe men are underrepresented in other places, but in most cases the board room isn't one of them.
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Here's where we get to the part where I've offended someone. There are countless hardworking white men who feel like they got a raw deal in life, and I'm one of them. Life can be brutally hard and unfair. My demographic shoulders insults and injustices that too often lead to a lifetime of self-doubt and self-harm. We can't always articulate the mental, emotional and physical pain we endure. That can cause us to become self-absorbed and ego-driven. Diving deep inside our misfortune and letting ourselves be vulnerable feels undignified, so we put it behind us and do our best to provide for our families, to work hard and be happy.
But it's precisely for those reasons that I speak out against injustice. Because as hard as I had it, it could have been worse. Why should it be worse? Why in the world would I want to inflict injustice on others? Revenge? A sense of control? That feeling of control would be me feeding off the same emotional energy that others used to hurt me.
That's what I meant about losing my heroes. People who I thought would work to change the status quo just sold out. Being woke means promoting self-awareness and changing one's mind when presented with new information. If the people we hold in high regard were to read all of this and still subscribe to the idea that wokeism is bad like pg was suggesting, then do they really deserve our esteem anymore?
Hey sorry for my late reply, I really didn't mean to waste your time, I just got super busy and spun a bit responding. Honestly I haven't read as much as I'd like to after discovering the internet around 1995, so this is mostly what I've picked up online.
To me, wokeism is fundamentally about stuff we can't unsee. It's like being friends with someone in an abusive relationship, where the other partner takes us aside and tells us that if we knew what they knew about our friend's behavior, we might not want to be friends with them anymore. The more we learn, the more that America's origin story becomes a twisted fable of revisionist history, written by the winners to cover centuries of oppression and violence. These stand out to me:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_slavery
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_(1781_ship)#/media/File...
I went to South Carolina a few years ago and stood on a small plantation cotton field they keep preserved for tours. It was suffocatingly hot, felt like 100% humidity under intense sun, and not even the hottest time of the year. I just imagined people forced to pick cotton all day, every day, their entire lives. It was soul-crushing.
Then the tour guide called the Civil War the Northern War of Aggression and my eyebrows raised. Reality shifted and I suddenly saw the feelings from that time still running strong today.
Maybe I can relate my experience better through pop culture references..
I grew up on movies like To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple, Do the Right Thing, Glory, Schindler's List and Amistad, to name a few. I never read Black Like Me and never saw Soul Man. I think I may start with these, regardless of if they aged well, to get an impression of where my head is at now vs then.
This search brought back a memory, that in Short Circuit (one of my all-time favorite movies), I didn't know that Fisher Stevens wore brownface to play Indian engineer Ben Jabituya until maybe the 2000s:
https://ew.com/movies/short-circuit-fisher-stevens-regrets-p...
This just goes to show how ignorant people were (including myself) as recently as a couple of decades ago. I think that the makeup in Soul Man is forgiveable because it's explicit and the subject of the film, much like Dustin Hoffman dressing as a woman in Tootsie. Whereas Short Circuit did it for convenience, without considering that it might be offensive.
I also grew up playing with the toy car with the rebel flag on it from the Dukes of Hazzard, completely oblivious to any racist connotations.
And sexual harrassment was so prevelant that we had never even heard of it until Anita Hill vs Clarance Thomas in 1991 before he was appointed to the Supreme Court. I remember that we were really appalled by that, because it was so obvious that he was guilty of the harrassment, even if that didn't bar him from being appointed. This was just after the Rodney King beating and LA riots, but a few years before the OJ Simpson case if I remember right. Racial tensions were running high, but also there was a feeling that minorities were being kept from positions of power, so there was a lot of cognitive dissonance. There was no Me Too movement and we didn't have a words like cancel culture yet. I didn't feel at the time that he should have been appointed, because he gave me creepster vibes. I think his decisions in the time since have shown that he is very, let's just say tempted by financial favors.
> This is sort of like the concept of "original sin", isn't it? The notion that certain people have a debt that is so big that it is impossible to ever be paid back, and so they must forever remain burdened with the guilt of the sin that their ancestors committed. The scale can never be zeroed. The guilt can never go away. The transgression can never be forgiven, because the effects linger down to our day.
Ya that's a good point, I hadn't considered that. It reminds me of how young people in post-WWI Germany felt that it was impossible to pay back the war debt that their elders faced when they lost the war. So they felt oppressed by who they viewed as Jewish elites in banking, eventually using them as scapegoats and starting WWII against the countries whose loans they were defaulting on.
Which has eerie similarities with the dissilusioned feelings of young men in America today, who due to wealth inequality can't earn the level of income needed to provide for a spouse or family, as they watch women and minorities rise without them. Blaming liberal and Hollywood elites, as well as immigrants, for bruising their egos instead of the real culprit, late-stage capitalist patriarchy.
I think what we're talking about is: how can the rights of individuals be upheld when our debts to previous generations are so high that we'd lose ourselves in an attempt to pay them back?
I guess my only counter to that is, if winners and losers resulted from the inequities of previous generations, leading to the vast wealth inequality we see today, then what would healing look like? Letting it go without making ammends, or going too far with violence as a result, both seem extreme.
I feel that affirmative action and taxing the wealthy are two solid approaches. But I don't feel that either have been tried to a degree nearly approaching reparations. Because if they had, then Congress might be 50% women, we wouldn't have such a large national debt or high poverty rate, etc.
> In the case of the LA fires, and for the additional reasons you've given, I agree, DEI was not to blame and is being used as a scapegoat. I wonder, if the fire chief were instead a straight white male, and if there was no firefighter that "looked like you" but instead, was capable of saving your life, would people still have blamed DEI, or would they instead shift their focus towards the "real problems" that you mentioned? Perhaps if these people weren't in these highly visible positions to begin with, DEI would not have been undermined as it was.
Ya, DEI probably wouldn't have been blamed had the people involved in the response fit prejudiced notions of what they should look like.
It seems that we both agree that DEI wasn't the cause of the fires. But maybe we should ask if putting such priority on DEI is undermining the cause of reaching equality. With so much political manipulation happening these days, it makes for an attractive scapegoat for those wishing to distract us from the real issues.
I don't know the answer, or if DEI should be put on hold temporarily. What I do know is that with controversial issues like gun control, we can find ourselves on hold indefinitely. So I am suspicious of calls to halt DEI when the problem of discrimination in hiring still exists. It feels too opportunistic IMHO.
> preface: I would like to think that everyone on the board has in mind the good of the entire company, and that the men don't just have in mind the considerations of men, and that the woman is not the only advocate for all the women of the company.
> Given the above, what injustice is there? Assuming that everyone earned their seat on the board fairly, without nepotism, sabotage, or shady backroom deals, why do you consider there to be an injustice happening here?
> The only way I can see there being an inherent injustice in a board room like this is if my initial assumptions aren't true, and that the men aren't advocating for the concerns of the women. But that would be to assume the worst of people. That sort of thinking is racist and sexist. That leads to tribal thinking, where people think that people from other demographics are similarly only looking out for "their own group".
Ya good point about the dangers of tribalism, since that is the single greatest threat facing the US today. We've grown so divided and provincial that we can't seem to work together, and that's undermining our credibility in the eyes of the world.
And I agree that people don't just work towards their own best interest, and that assuming they do is putting them in a box.
What concerns me though is that some people only respond to authority, not what society deems common decency. So without a law in place, they will return to discriminatory practices.
Trump just issued an executive order revoking Lyndon B. Johnson’s Executive Order 11246, promoting affirmative action in federal contracting:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/23/trump-rev...
Even though this move claims to encourage merit-based hiring, it will undoubtedly have the opposite effect. Because authoritarian-minded people will no longer be forced to practice nondescrimination. So they will hire candidates who appear to fit their own projections and stereotypes, causing them to overlook similarly-qualified candidates from other demographics.
When the laws aren't there, companies have a track record of accepting a certain level of human cost if it raises profits. Seatbelt laws, pollution laws, etc reflect the need for those regulations.
Now, we can argue whether the free market would take care of discrimination on its own. But in these times of little or no antitrust enforcement, often workers have few alternative employment options, so are at the mercy of employers. I'm not seeing politicans in favor of deregulation also calling for antitrust enforcement, so they are having their cake and eating it too, making this argument suspect.
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> That anyone is nervous in this situation is already kind of ridiculous to me. I am black (but grew up with African-American), and if it makes people nervous to just pick one of the words... that's just sad. If this is what goes through the heads of certain people, the need to be lovingly reassured that they should not be made to feel this way, and that anybody who did is in the wrong.
> If this is how you feel, I am sorry. This isn't how it should be. Neither should you be made to pay for the sins of your father.
I have inadvertently mansplained before, but I certainly did not expect to be talking at someone who is black about wokeism! I really have egg on my face. This is one of those teachable moments, and I certainly learned a lesson here.
This is as good a time as any to bring up white savior complex:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_savior
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_savior_narrative_in_film
Talk about performative.
I should clarify that I'm not uncomfortable with wokeism or my interactions with people outside my demographic. What I was trying to say there was, we should be confident going into any encounter if our intentions are genuine. We shouldn't be afraid to use the wrong word. Because we shouldn't let our ego get in the way if/when we are corrected. And we should stand up for ourselves if we get attacked for innocently using the wrong word.
I'm disappointed in political correctness for creating a climate of uncertainty. But I think that's a small price to pay if it gets us to the point that everyone feels included. I don't like to see crocodile tears for the people who now have to watch what they say. Because they should have already been treating people respectfully.
> Honestly? It seems that I benefit from the status quo just fine. I don't feel oppressed. I don't feel like a debt needs to be repaid to me. I'm typing on my computer from the comfort of a electrically-heated room. I don't blame anyone for what I don't have, and I would feel hurt if what I do have was given to me by someone who felt that I needed a handout.
> I am part of a religion that teaches that all mankind faces, and will continue to face, suffering and injustice, and that all men are limited and inherently flawed. Though some have less than others but we are all equal. What we have does not matter since we can not take it with us. If one among us is suffering or lacks sufficient food, clothing, or shelter, of course we should help them out.
> Where we differ is that it seems like you are working towards a certain 'utopia', where the various 'debts' of sin you've incurred have been paid off. In contrast, we have already been forgiven, and have already arrived at our utopia.
I'm going to defer to you on this. If that's how you feel, that society has reached a level of equality where affirmative action has become counterproductive, then who am I to argue?
I'm willing to acknowledge that maybe the situation has changed and I am out of touch. My embarrassment and regret over being around blue humor in my youth, and using slurs before I even knew what some of them meant, haunt me. I had horribly negative experiences working in a warehouse in my 20s where I saw people at their worst. And I've witnessed discrimination and harrassment at office jobs. Despite a lifetime of hard work, I don't feel nearly as successful as I wanted to be at this age, and I wonder where I'd be if I hadn't been held back by ageism and the mistreatment of neurodivergents by neurotypicals.
That working class hero mentality mixes with the injustices I saw and creates a kind of acquired oppression in me. Where I see my failures as handed down from oppressors instead of being due to my own lack of discipline or perseverance, or just bad luck. I see that rebelliousness reflected in the eyes of the people who voted against democrats that they see as elite for their DEI priorities. Their logic doesn't make sense to me, but their feelings do.
While I can't agree that all of this is utopia, I do want to say that I'm happy that you're able to feel creation's grace and be thankful for your blessings. I believe that the world is what we make of it, and that prayer/manifestion or whatever we call it is moving us towards forming a more perfect union.
I'd like to give you the last word, if you're inclined to share one. Otherwise I wish you well, thanks for being patient with me and taking the time to write such thoughtful responses.
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