What is woke?

[mrPixel]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Wokeness is whatever right-wingers happpen to be in denial about at the moment.

That is not true. You can be a lefty and not woke

[mrPixel]

I should amend my last statement. You can be a lefty and still protest against wokeism.

But like I said earlier, it will be a difficult term to define until there's some agreement on what it actually means.

[Yimpa]

6 minutes ago, mrPixel said:

But like I said earlier, it will be a difficult term to define until there's some agreement on what it actually means.

That day won’t come until the left and the right start holding hands.

[Nivsch]

This video of Teal Swan summarizes very well the problems and immaturity of the "woke" culture. Most of them are even not really stage green especially the young activists who appeal to this out of a desire to be different and "special" in all cost or even worse, from a sub culture conformism.

 

Edited February 29, 2024 by Nivsch

[mindfulstepz]

11 hours ago, bebotalk said:

Woke is a perversion of egalitarianism.

It calls for things that are loosely based on an egalitarian angle but are twisted with neo-Marxist theory.

It's woke that calls for university safe spaces, for anti-abortion speakers on campuses and other such evils. 

It calls for cancel culture, because a content creator said a usually bigoted term in a non-bigoted context. Because banishment is always an effective tool of social regulation. 

It calls for xenogenders, and twisting people into extreme trans ideology.

it says that any edgy humour, even if done by people of a group that it supposedly hurts, is evil and bigoted. Disabled people cannot make edgy jokes about disability, since it's harmful. 

It calls on saying people who lived long ago, who lived in times when bigotry was more common, should never, ever, be highlighted due to their beliefs. Why not tear down the Abraham Lincoln Memorial in DC, since whilst he was an abolitionist, he wanted to take the freed blacks back to Africa?

It calls for making historical figures that were proven to be white non-white in popular media. And refuses to make media of prominent non-white figures, since it's "punching up". 

The fathers of contemporary egalitarianism, in spirit anyhow, are Gandhi, Dr. King, and Malcolm X. They wouldn't agree with contemporary wokeism. 

Wokeism isn't the same as standard feminism, anti-racism, etc. It's a distortion of such which causes division and is not actually egalitarian. 

Woke isn't just being radical for a given time. It's imho at least a specific interpretation of egalitarian thought that seeks division and not inclusivity. 

The 1990s was the ideal balance. One can call out and condemn bigotry, but not censor comedians who say edgy jokes, since nuance is lost in the human condition and anybody who is ever edgy is inherently bigoted and only ever using such as a mask for their negative views. Chris Rock, a black man no less, couldn't do his famous "ns vs. black people" set today - he'd be called racist when he's black himself, and that was a sentiment that many successful and productive black Americans believed. And still DO BELIEVE. 

 

This is the closest approximation of what woke culture is that I’ve seen in thread, by a long shot. 
 

woke culture is the west’s flavor of  neomarxism, it’s Maoism for the 21st century. Anyone curious of how that went, it would serve you well to understand what happened under Chairman Mao’s regime in China.  It did not end well, particularly for the red guard & youth guard - who are playing the role of activists in today’s culture. Their destabilizing effects will not be needed once objectives are achieved, in fact they will become a hindrance. 
 

anyone here saying that woke is just old people telling at the sky, or another word for kindness, are either blissfully unaware or willfully ignorant, and that goes double time for Leo. 

[Basman]

19 hours ago, Girzo said:

Disagree. Through all the Woodstock festivals and Vietnam war protests, the atendees were mostly stage Red, Blue and Orange folk who liked to party and didn't want to get sent to a war. Really developed hippies have been a drop in the water, as they still are today.

To argue that they were more developed on other lines of development than values underlying their decisions, you would need data that I am unsure of even existing. I haven't researched the topic of counterculture deeply.

It is like with Burning Man festival where many attendees dump their trash and litter in the towns in the vicinity despite the "leave no trace" motto.

[Girzo]

1 hour ago, mindfulstepz said:

woke culture is the west’s flavor of  neomarxism, it’s Maoism for the 21st century. Anyone curious of how that went, it would serve you well to understand what happened under Chairman Mao’s regime in China.  It did not end well, particularly for the red guard & youth guard - who are playing the role of activists in today’s culture. Their destabilizing effects will not be needed once objectives are achieved, in fact they will become a hindrance. 
 

anyone here saying that woke is just old people telling at the sky, or another word for kindness, are either blissfully unaware or willfully ignorant, and that goes double time for Leo. 

This is the closest approximation of what personal bias is that I’ve seen in thread, by a long shot. 

[Kid A]

2 hours ago, mindfulstepz said:

This is the closest approximation of what woke culture is that I’ve seen in thread, by a long shot. 
 

woke culture is the west’s flavor of  neomarxism, it’s Maoism for the 21st century. Anyone curious of how that went, it would serve you well to understand what happened under Chairman Mao’s regime in China.  It did not end well, particularly for the red guard & youth guard - who are playing the role of activists in today’s culture. Their destabilizing effects will not be needed once objectives are achieved, in fact they will become a hindrance. 
 

anyone here saying that woke is just old people telling at the sky, or another word for kindness, are either blissfully unaware or willfully ignorant, and that goes double time for Leo. 

You're making the same mistake as Jordan Peterson. The level of development of the woke movement is at SD stage green, not blue. Take the examples of woke that you get served through news, youtube etc. with a big grain of salt. They will give you the worst and most dramatic examples and this will brainwash you into believing that woke is much, much worse than it actually is. 

[Rafael Thundercat]

 

 

[bebotalk]

People who conflate wokeism and standard egalitanrianism are being disingenuous. 

A lot of things that wokeists advocate for are entering the mainstream and they aren't healthy. These are things that egalitarians of the past didn't call for. They wanted all of the rights and responsibilities that majority groups held without special favours. 

It also is stepstepping the issue that what these wokeists call for is toxic. 

So by this logic, it's OK to say that we shouldn't discrimiate against people in the workplace based on race, religion, sex, gender, etc. But then we should have a safe space for university students who are upset that the administration invited a Christian anti-abortion speaker to present a lecture. Haven't they heard of Christianity and/or anti-abortion points before? And this isn't a strawman. The distortion of safe spaces from their original context is a common thing in many Western universities now. So those who are conflating wokeism with egalitarianism are saying young people aged 18-22 should be herded away from views they dislike, even though they are somewhat mainstream? Many think abortion is wrong, and many are Christian. 

 

[bebotalk]

On 28/02/2024 at 1:07 PM, Leo Gura said:

Hippies qualify as woke. It just not commonly applied to them because woke is a new term and hippie is an old term so they are from different cultural generations.

But when a hippe says "love one another and world peace", right-wingers would consider that woke.

I respectfully and strongly disagree. Hippies didn't have much societal influence then. They may have been radical, but their effect on social discourse was minimal. Once these people entered the 1970s, they entered into adulthood and the free love movement died out. They were always a fringe. 

[bebotalk]

4 hours ago, mindfulstepz said:

This is the closest approximation of what woke culture is that I’ve seen in thread, by a long shot. 
 

woke culture is the west’s flavor of  neomarxism, it’s Maoism for the 21st century. Anyone curious of how that went, it would serve you well to understand what happened under Chairman Mao’s regime in China.  It did not end well, particularly for the red guard & youth guard - who are playing the role of activists in today’s culture. Their destabilizing effects will not be needed once objectives are achieved, in fact they will become a hindrance. 
 

anyone here saying that woke is just old people telling at the sky, or another word for kindness, are either blissfully unaware or willfully ignorant, and that goes double time for Leo. 

It's also a dishonest and lazy reading. 

[mindfulstepz]

16 minutes ago, bebotalk said:

I respectfully and strongly disagree. Hippies didn't have much societal influence then. They may have been radical, but their effect on social discourse was minimal. Once these people entered the 1970s, they entered into adulthood and the free love movement died out. They were always a fringe. 

Ironically they didn’t quite disappear, a large majority still down for the cause  moved into education, both formative & higher education, and began changing policy towards focus on critical Marxist theory.   They realized Americans, we really like our capitalism, so education would be the best route to take to institute change, since the progressive & hippie movement had largely fizzled out. 

This was stated goal and agenda in numerous Marxist texts, and we are now seeing the fruits of it throughout education as critical Marxist theory has firmly taken hold in many forms (DEI, SEL, queer theory, critical race theory). 

kids can barely read or write anymore, but they make great little activists as they mature. 

Edited February 29, 2024 by mindfulstepz

[bebotalk]

4 minutes ago, mindfulstepz said:

Ironically they didn’t quite disappear, a large majority still down for the cause  moved into education, both formative & higher education, and began changing policy towards focus on critical Marxist theory.   They realized Americans, we really like our capitalism, so education would be the best route to take to institute change, since the progressive & hippie movement had largely fizzled out. 

This was stated goal and agenda in numerous Marxist texts, and we are now seeing the fruits of it throughout education as critical Marxist theory has taken hold in many forms (DEI, SEL, queer theory, critical race theory). 

kids can barely read or write anymore, but they make great little activists as they mature. 

Hippies were fringe though, as were beatniks. By themselves, they didn't impact much. the comparison is very thin between them and modern wokeists.

 

[mindfulstepz]

10 minutes ago, bebotalk said:

Hippies were fringe though, as were beatniks. By themselves, they didn't impact much. the comparison is very thin between them and modern wokeists.

 

Agreed, they were a very small minority. Hence why they changed strategies and concluded  that changing policy within the school systems was their only viable route to success & proliferation of their objectives. When society has stability, the chances of raising a generation of radical progressives & activists is slim to none. 

It’s been a 40+ year project, that is repeatedly stated in source texts, and they have been very successful. “Gotta teach em young”.  
 

they planted seeds, and we are now discussing the fruits of their labor. In this forum, in prestigious universities, and all over the world. 

Edited February 29, 2024 by mindfulstepz

[Kid A]

2 hours ago, mindfulstepz said:

kids can barely read or write anymore, but they make great little activists as they mature.

The only way you can sound more stereotypically conservative here is if you also complain about them not staying off your lawn.

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, bebotalk said:

Hippies didn't have much societal influence then.

All that means is that wokeness (Green) hadn't gone mainstream back then. The difference is today it's mainstream and now the conservatives are butt-hurt that they lost that culture war. Conservatives want to return to the pre-Hippie era.

Btw, the Hippie movement had quite a big impact on mainstream culture, but some of the impact was subtle and took decades to blossom.

Edited February 29, 2024 by Leo Gura

[Bobby_2021]

wokeness is being ideological about green stuff.

[BlessedLion]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

All that means is that wokeness (Green) hadn't gone mainstream back then. The difference is today it's mainstream and now the conservatives are butt-hurt that they lost that culture war. Conservatives want to return to the pre-Hippie era.

Btw, the Hippie movement had quite a big impact on mainstream culture, but some of the impact was subtle and took decades to blossom.

What we need is the hippie movement. What we need is conservative ways to die. They’ve held society back too long with their grasping and fear and insane attachment to the old ways of doing things. Leaving little space for evolution, new ideas, change, love and freedom 

[Yimpa]

1 minute ago, BlessedLion said:

What we need is the hippie movement. What we need is conservative ways to die. They’ve held society back too long with their grasping and fear and insane attachment to the old ways of doing things. Leaving little space for evolution, new ideas, change, love and freedom 

Not so fast. Conservatives do have legitimacy in striking a balance in society. If we had LSD for All, I don’t think you’d be in favor of that, as beautiful as it sounds on paper.