Explaining what Critical Social Justice (AKA woke) activists believe can be very difficult. Part of the reason for this is that wokeness pulls so many ideas from so many different thinkers that to the average person wokeness looks like a pile of contradictions. It can be difficult for the typical person to make sense of wokeness precisely because many of the ideas that wokeness uses appear to contradict each other: They claim to be anti-racist but they focus intensely on race. They claim to be on favor of womens’ rights, but their definition of “woman” includes people who have male genitalia. They say not to force your views on them, and then demand everyone accept their worldview and ideology. Given all of this the average person looks at wokeness and often wonders “how can anyone make sense of this?”
I remember a dinner with friends and family. I happened to mention Jordan Peterson. I can't remember why he came up, but I made the profound mistake of not frothing at the mouth and denouncing him.
I'd have had a better reaction if I'd jumped on the table, dropped my trousers, and laid a great steaming fresh one.
It was, in retrospect, a 'learned' reaction - almost Pavlovian. Hearing the words 'Jordan Peterson' triggered a visceral response not based in rationality. This was evident when I asked what he'd said that was hateful, that justified their extreme negativity. There were no concrete examples, just *assertions* that he was a really, really, bad, godawful person.
At one point during the ensuing 'discussion' a family member turned to me and said/shouted "this is why you right wingers always win the debate - you're just so calm and rational"
This was not meant as a compliment because after he said it, he stormed off out of the restaurant to calm down. And I was fascinated by his assertion that I'm a right-winger, not that there's anything wrong at all with being on the right wing, but I have traditionally been more on the 'left' side of things (the old 'left', not this weird fucked-up new 'left').
It was an eye-opening experience for me, and my first personal experience of the difficulty of actually having a fruitful conversation with people who are ideologically possessed (to use a term I learned from JBP).
In other words, they don't care about what is true only what suits their needs in a given situation, even if that requires utterly contradicting a previous position.
Indeed, these race/gender hustling charlatans are like social justice chameleons, bending, twisting and metamorphosing their egregiously contradictory worldviews to accommodate the moment’s most allegedly aggrieved ‘victim’ status. Their entire premise is a tangled web of narcissistic balderdash, eating itself from within...We must fight this malevolent scourge at every port it has affixed itself to, starting with its attempt at corrupting our children’s school system, hastening this corrupt disease along in it’s journey to be excised from our society like a burgeoning cancerous growth deep inside the colon.
Wow, fantastic reading. And it could not have come at a better time, as I'm reminiscing about my Thanksgiving family dinner earlier this evening, when I went to "battle" with one family member about modern conservative VS liberalism thought in our country today and how the latter is doing more harm than good. It got pretty heated at one point, and was extremely exhausting. But lying here in bed tonight - pondering the events of earlier in the evening - reading this article has actually helped to settle my nerves. The last two paragraphs really hit home for me. Thank you.
Important points, getting at the paper tiger that is woke. A good reminder we dealing with paper mache with real teeth that can do damage but the frame holding those teeth can be turned to ash if you have the right flame.
"In practice this often appears to the average person as different standards in different situations and appeals to different theories depending on what is useful at the time, refusal to engage on fair terms, changing the rules of debate, and making use of language games and shifting definitions. As frustrating as this may be, it is important to remember that from within their own system this all makes perfect sense and there is a logic to what they are doing."
I imagined an upside down pyramid built by the academic woke. Ever shifting from one side to the other to keep it from toppling over and the war required to keep it standing on its tip.
"Explaining what Critical Social Justice (AKA woke) activists believe can be very difficult."
I'm not sure this is true, I just think that the most simple straightforward explanation sounds too extreme and conspiratorial to the average person, esp since Social Justice comes wrapped in a package of moral goodness and concern for the downtrodden.
But Social Justice is a child of Marxism and much like its parent has the same basic worldview:
Western liberal democracy is evil and deserves to be destroyed because its economic system (capitalism) makes some people rich and some people poor, because a free society leads to unequal outcomes which are ipso facto oppresssive, and because of other historical crimes. (In Marxism these crimes are class-based, more or less rich v poor, but in Social Justice these crimes are identity-based, committed by straight White Christians vs the "marginalized".)
In place of liberal democracy should come some form of Socialism, which is based on Egalitarianism, and which means a society overseen by a Vanguard class of engaged intellectuals, who will tell us all what to think, do, worship, where we can work and what we can read or publish, etc. all in the name of Justice and Equality. Cf. The Soviet Union
So what they believe is not that difficult to convey: they believe that because they are smarter, better and kinder than you, and blessed w "revolutionary consciousness", every aspect of existence should be remade according to their specifications, and that Utopia is right around the corner as long as they rule and we obey.
There's another aspect to wokeness. If your beliefs are contradictory, you can prove anything. For example, if you believe 0=1, you can prove that you are the pope.
Since wokeness is contradictory and can prove anything, that's why they have all these crazy conclusions. That's why they can conclude that Math is racist, putting violent criminals in prison is racist, etc.
"Now the question remains..." gets to the "intersection" of "Critical Social Justice," Postmodernism and political action. Have you written on "Intersectional" theory? In a way you have, but it deserves its own essay, or discussion which would shed valuable additional light on this essay (and vice versa).
Have I missed your discussion of this? Perhaps I have missed it?
Cordially,
P.S. Very much appreciated your Gramsci Twitter thread - that is why I am becoming a reader.
And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter...
"Now the question remains..." gets to the "intersection" of "Critical Social Justice," Postmodernism and political action. Have you written on "Intersectional" theory? In a way you have, but it deserves its own essay, discussion or elaboration which would shed valuable additional light on this essay (and vice versa).
Have I missed your discussion of this? Perhaps I have missed it?
Cordially,
P.S. Very much appreciated your Gramsci Twitter thread this morning - that is why I am becoming a reader.
Why do you insist on writing about things that you clearly know nothing about, and haven't bothered investigating? I'm not sure that was what the Enlightenment was all about you know?
This gibberish wouldn't even pass muster in a Semester 1 Introduction to Philosophy module, so many and varied are the misunderstandings and ignorances involved.
I wouldn't dream about writing about car mechanics or space travel. Subjects I know equally little about. Bizarre!
I remember a dinner with friends and family. I happened to mention Jordan Peterson. I can't remember why he came up, but I made the profound mistake of not frothing at the mouth and denouncing him.
I'd have had a better reaction if I'd jumped on the table, dropped my trousers, and laid a great steaming fresh one.
It was, in retrospect, a 'learned' reaction - almost Pavlovian. Hearing the words 'Jordan Peterson' triggered a visceral response not based in rationality. This was evident when I asked what he'd said that was hateful, that justified their extreme negativity. There were no concrete examples, just *assertions* that he was a really, really, bad, godawful person.
At one point during the ensuing 'discussion' a family member turned to me and said/shouted "this is why you right wingers always win the debate - you're just so calm and rational"
This was not meant as a compliment because after he said it, he stormed off out of the restaurant to calm down. And I was fascinated by his assertion that I'm a right-winger, not that there's anything wrong at all with being on the right wing, but I have traditionally been more on the 'left' side of things (the old 'left', not this weird fucked-up new 'left').
It was an eye-opening experience for me, and my first personal experience of the difficulty of actually having a fruitful conversation with people who are ideologically possessed (to use a term I learned from JBP).
In other words, they don't care about what is true only what suits their needs in a given situation, even if that requires utterly contradicting a previous position.
Indeed, these race/gender hustling charlatans are like social justice chameleons, bending, twisting and metamorphosing their egregiously contradictory worldviews to accommodate the moment’s most allegedly aggrieved ‘victim’ status. Their entire premise is a tangled web of narcissistic balderdash, eating itself from within...We must fight this malevolent scourge at every port it has affixed itself to, starting with its attempt at corrupting our children’s school system, hastening this corrupt disease along in it’s journey to be excised from our society like a burgeoning cancerous growth deep inside the colon.
Wow, fantastic reading. And it could not have come at a better time, as I'm reminiscing about my Thanksgiving family dinner earlier this evening, when I went to "battle" with one family member about modern conservative VS liberalism thought in our country today and how the latter is doing more harm than good. It got pretty heated at one point, and was extremely exhausting. But lying here in bed tonight - pondering the events of earlier in the evening - reading this article has actually helped to settle my nerves. The last two paragraphs really hit home for me. Thank you.
Important points, getting at the paper tiger that is woke. A good reminder we dealing with paper mache with real teeth that can do damage but the frame holding those teeth can be turned to ash if you have the right flame.
"In practice this often appears to the average person as different standards in different situations and appeals to different theories depending on what is useful at the time, refusal to engage on fair terms, changing the rules of debate, and making use of language games and shifting definitions. As frustrating as this may be, it is important to remember that from within their own system this all makes perfect sense and there is a logic to what they are doing."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Critique_of_Pure_Tolerance
It's all here.
I imagined an upside down pyramid built by the academic woke. Ever shifting from one side to the other to keep it from toppling over and the war required to keep it standing on its tip.
"Explaining what Critical Social Justice (AKA woke) activists believe can be very difficult."
I'm not sure this is true, I just think that the most simple straightforward explanation sounds too extreme and conspiratorial to the average person, esp since Social Justice comes wrapped in a package of moral goodness and concern for the downtrodden.
But Social Justice is a child of Marxism and much like its parent has the same basic worldview:
Western liberal democracy is evil and deserves to be destroyed because its economic system (capitalism) makes some people rich and some people poor, because a free society leads to unequal outcomes which are ipso facto oppresssive, and because of other historical crimes. (In Marxism these crimes are class-based, more or less rich v poor, but in Social Justice these crimes are identity-based, committed by straight White Christians vs the "marginalized".)
In place of liberal democracy should come some form of Socialism, which is based on Egalitarianism, and which means a society overseen by a Vanguard class of engaged intellectuals, who will tell us all what to think, do, worship, where we can work and what we can read or publish, etc. all in the name of Justice and Equality. Cf. The Soviet Union
So what they believe is not that difficult to convey: they believe that because they are smarter, better and kinder than you, and blessed w "revolutionary consciousness", every aspect of existence should be remade according to their specifications, and that Utopia is right around the corner as long as they rule and we obey.
There's another aspect to wokeness. If your beliefs are contradictory, you can prove anything. For example, if you believe 0=1, you can prove that you are the pope.
https://www.nku.edu/~longa/classes/mat385_resources/docs/russellpope.html
Since wokeness is contradictory and can prove anything, that's why they have all these crazy conclusions. That's why they can conclude that Math is racist, putting violent criminals in prison is racist, etc.
"Now the question remains..." gets to the "intersection" of "Critical Social Justice," Postmodernism and political action. Have you written on "Intersectional" theory? In a way you have, but it deserves its own essay, or discussion which would shed valuable additional light on this essay (and vice versa).
Have I missed your discussion of this? Perhaps I have missed it?
Cordially,
P.S. Very much appreciated your Gramsci Twitter thread - that is why I am becoming a reader.
And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter...
"Now the question remains..." gets to the "intersection" of "Critical Social Justice," Postmodernism and political action. Have you written on "Intersectional" theory? In a way you have, but it deserves its own essay, discussion or elaboration which would shed valuable additional light on this essay (and vice versa).
Have I missed your discussion of this? Perhaps I have missed it?
Cordially,
P.S. Very much appreciated your Gramsci Twitter thread this morning - that is why I am becoming a reader.
Why do you insist on writing about things that you clearly know nothing about, and haven't bothered investigating? I'm not sure that was what the Enlightenment was all about you know?
This gibberish wouldn't even pass muster in a Semester 1 Introduction to Philosophy module, so many and varied are the misunderstandings and ignorances involved.
I wouldn't dream about writing about car mechanics or space travel. Subjects I know equally little about. Bizarre!