Reminds me of the early 2010s when everything from Obamacare to gay marriage was called “socialism.” I remember asking some conservatives at the time what exactly marriage equality had to do with the means of production or the relationship of labor to capital, but they mostly just got mad and yelled slurs at me. Still haven’t figured it out.
Woke is a wonderful word. I was asleep, but then I woke up. I was lost but now I’m found. I was sick, but now I’m healed. These words are often used in religion. They feel religious, don’t they? They are deep old words. They have instant psychological heft. I’m always pissed when the far right appropriates our best language. They don’t care about language except to abuse it. Excellent article
I had this exact sense of the word “woke” and am glad you could articulate it so clearly. Many thanks. If I ever get some more $, yours will be the first Substack I subscribe to.
I had made the woke-SJW connection before, but perhaps because I am terminally online I had never considered the idea that SJW (and now woke) is what makes stodgy old-fashioned racism/sexism palatable to the politically unengaged.
It reminds me how all the most brutal dictatorships have "Democratic" in their names. Since WWII you just can't call yourself a dictatorship any more and have to make some appeal to the consent of the governed even if in totally bad faith. This is a real victory for the legitimacy of democracy because even non-democrats have to put on a show.
Anti-"Woke" is the same thing. "Well of /course/ racism and sexism are very very wrong (wink)" -- this is conceded despite not being what they believe -- "but it's just the excesses of the woke Left that are the problem these days." It's really pretty transparent, except then we have these g*mers eating it right up. Ugh.
My definition involves the imposition of certain types of morality on other people (meaning, when it's acceptable and when it's not).
Conservatives think this is only permissible when the morality in question comes from the bible, from "family" or from blind patriotism (meaning, "America love it or leave it" type stuff from the Vietnam era that has its roots in opposition to the IWW's protests against WWI). If the question is abortion or gay weddings you are absolutely permitted to dictate how others live their lives because it's the Bible.
But the imposition of earthly authority — morality based not on religion or patriotism (or "family" which is a euphemism for both) — then you're intruding on the "freedoms" of others and you must be stopped; it's not your business; it's "liberal fascism" or "communism" (or both, somehow). Even if you're Michelle Obama urging Americans to eat heathier food, you're "telling them what to do" and that is not allowed — again, unless the roots of your proselytizing are biblical, in which case, go right ahead.
So, being anti-woke is a direct refutation of the basic ideas of Enlightenment and civilization.
I hadn't heard the explicit connection to entertainment before, but that seems right to me. A lot of the heat in those conversations seems to be centered around being bothered. Like, "just leave me alone and let me run my model trains," but with whatever their preferred hobby / passion is.
A woke person is a social justice warrior (SJW). That's what I would have said from the start. And it is certainly connected to the original woke. Originally woke was an adaptive cultural evolutionary trait (link1) that has become maladaptive. After the Civil Rights era, black people increasingly did not live in the world of the Scotsboro boys and being woke increasingly meant seeing annoying things like traffic stops and microaggressions as threats, culminating in the BLM movement. This was an example of a radical belief taking root in the CPP or Creedal Passion Period (link2) getting started around then. Critical race theory (CRT)is an radical academic concept developed in the 1980's that formed part of the "reservoir" of radical memes that exists in between outbreaks of radical ideation that form CPPs. CRT is form a microaggression/injustice that one might "stay woke" to, although I don't think Leadbelly had any idea of this sort of thing. But it deals with subtle forms of injustice along the lines of what the Scotsboro boys (or Emmet Till) faced. So CRT slides right into the original concept of woke as does BLM.
But woke as social justice warrior has different etiology. One is the atheist community that contained a lot of libertarians, who the 1980's joke goes are conservatives who smoke pot. Ans what do conservatives believe in? Hierarchy, that all men are not equal, some are better than others and deserve to be treated so. Hence the adage, scratch a libertarian and it reveals a racist/sexist/homophobe. So, you get guys like youtuber Sargon of Akkad (the dude in the picture) describing himself as a liberal (libertarian--he's British) but expressing a litany of right-wing views.
And around the same time, you had Gamergate, with a similar thing happening among gamers. Note, the atheists and gamer communities refer to YouTube and other social media communities dominated by men. The Gamergate bros were mostly fixated on attacking women in games, seeing women entering the gaming world as an intrusion into a space where guys felt free to be guys in the sort of way you used to see in Junior High boys, who then grew out of it. Except these Gamergate guys were older.
There may be other online communities in which things like this happened. I find it interesting that the timing was all about the same as when the CPP was starting up. When I say this, I am referring to a math model calibrated on data over the 18th through 20th century being used to forecast a 21st century event.
Anyway, the CPP should be winding down now (at least that is what the model; calls for). If this is right we can reassess how much (if anything) of "woke" will even exist five years from now. It is the simultaneity of radical right-wing opposition to SJWs in the atheist and gamer communities and the rise of radical "woke" ideas in BLM and CRT at the start if the CPP, that forged the connection between woke and SJW over the next couple of years, which was accelerated by the rise of Trump as an ideological focusing agent.
Blacks do bad because of Bell Curve genetic reasons. If you deny the Bell Curve genetic reasons, you need a bunch of wacky nonsense to explain it. And that wacky nonsense justifies all sorts of totalitarian tendencies.
You can apply the same logic to anything. Communism denied that the working class was dumber than the capitalist class. Hence we've got to execute the Kulaks.
I know you probably deny the Bell Curve stuff, so you can't understand what people mean by woke. But it's true, it's all true.
Like all cultural and political movements, people are attached to it in various ways. Some deeply and some shallowly. Some genuinely and some hypocritically.
The bottom line its that its just wrong. Factually wrong, which is why it keeps failing to make lives better.
I love it. Sargon was one of the very first YouTube video I found after my grandson turned me onto it. If was his takedown of starship troopers, in which I caught just a whiff of the rightwing crazy. When YouTube offered me another Sargon vid my right-wing crazy alarm in my brain yammered loud and that was the last of his vids I ever saw. He soon disappeared from the feed, and he hasn't made a reappearance in the four years since.
And the funny thing is I'm not progressive, I'm a New Dealer. But these anti-woke guys move so rapidly into Bircher territory it will make your head spin.
Reminds me of the early 2010s when everything from Obamacare to gay marriage was called “socialism.” I remember asking some conservatives at the time what exactly marriage equality had to do with the means of production or the relationship of labor to capital, but they mostly just got mad and yelled slurs at me. Still haven’t figured it out.
The only thing capitalists understand less than socialism is capitalism
Is this yours? I really want to steal it. Ignorance is the root of all cultural constructs.
Now *that* is a bumper sticker
Woke is a wonderful word. I was asleep, but then I woke up. I was lost but now I’m found. I was sick, but now I’m healed. These words are often used in religion. They feel religious, don’t they? They are deep old words. They have instant psychological heft. I’m always pissed when the far right appropriates our best language. They don’t care about language except to abuse it. Excellent article
Not sure I'm any the wiser... 🤔😬
Aha - but that is precisely the crux of it!
I had this exact sense of the word “woke” and am glad you could articulate it so clearly. Many thanks. If I ever get some more $, yours will be the first Substack I subscribe to.
Great piece. Very on point. I laid out my similar objections to all this "woke" silliness here: https://godofthedesert.substack.com/p/im-sick-of-the-phony-woke-vs-anti
I had made the woke-SJW connection before, but perhaps because I am terminally online I had never considered the idea that SJW (and now woke) is what makes stodgy old-fashioned racism/sexism palatable to the politically unengaged.
It reminds me how all the most brutal dictatorships have "Democratic" in their names. Since WWII you just can't call yourself a dictatorship any more and have to make some appeal to the consent of the governed even if in totally bad faith. This is a real victory for the legitimacy of democracy because even non-democrats have to put on a show.
Anti-"Woke" is the same thing. "Well of /course/ racism and sexism are very very wrong (wink)" -- this is conceded despite not being what they believe -- "but it's just the excesses of the woke Left that are the problem these days." It's really pretty transparent, except then we have these g*mers eating it right up. Ugh.
My definition involves the imposition of certain types of morality on other people (meaning, when it's acceptable and when it's not).
Conservatives think this is only permissible when the morality in question comes from the bible, from "family" or from blind patriotism (meaning, "America love it or leave it" type stuff from the Vietnam era that has its roots in opposition to the IWW's protests against WWI). If the question is abortion or gay weddings you are absolutely permitted to dictate how others live their lives because it's the Bible.
But the imposition of earthly authority — morality based not on religion or patriotism (or "family" which is a euphemism for both) — then you're intruding on the "freedoms" of others and you must be stopped; it's not your business; it's "liberal fascism" or "communism" (or both, somehow). Even if you're Michelle Obama urging Americans to eat heathier food, you're "telling them what to do" and that is not allowed — again, unless the roots of your proselytizing are biblical, in which case, go right ahead.
So, being anti-woke is a direct refutation of the basic ideas of Enlightenment and civilization.
Wow, Peter, I am so out of my league here. I am just going to keep on calling myself woke and wait for the incoming.
I am also a liberal, conservationist, capitalist, environmentalist, anti-fascist, Episcopalian, who would argue all day long that Jesus is a Buddhist.
I hadn't heard the explicit connection to entertainment before, but that seems right to me. A lot of the heat in those conversations seems to be centered around being bothered. Like, "just leave me alone and let me run my model trains," but with whatever their preferred hobby / passion is.
A woke person is a social justice warrior (SJW). That's what I would have said from the start. And it is certainly connected to the original woke. Originally woke was an adaptive cultural evolutionary trait (link1) that has become maladaptive. After the Civil Rights era, black people increasingly did not live in the world of the Scotsboro boys and being woke increasingly meant seeing annoying things like traffic stops and microaggressions as threats, culminating in the BLM movement. This was an example of a radical belief taking root in the CPP or Creedal Passion Period (link2) getting started around then. Critical race theory (CRT)is an radical academic concept developed in the 1980's that formed part of the "reservoir" of radical memes that exists in between outbreaks of radical ideation that form CPPs. CRT is form a microaggression/injustice that one might "stay woke" to, although I don't think Leadbelly had any idea of this sort of thing. But it deals with subtle forms of injustice along the lines of what the Scotsboro boys (or Emmet Till) faced. So CRT slides right into the original concept of woke as does BLM.
But woke as social justice warrior has different etiology. One is the atheist community that contained a lot of libertarians, who the 1980's joke goes are conservatives who smoke pot. Ans what do conservatives believe in? Hierarchy, that all men are not equal, some are better than others and deserve to be treated so. Hence the adage, scratch a libertarian and it reveals a racist/sexist/homophobe. So, you get guys like youtuber Sargon of Akkad (the dude in the picture) describing himself as a liberal (libertarian--he's British) but expressing a litany of right-wing views.
And around the same time, you had Gamergate, with a similar thing happening among gamers. Note, the atheists and gamer communities refer to YouTube and other social media communities dominated by men. The Gamergate bros were mostly fixated on attacking women in games, seeing women entering the gaming world as an intrusion into a space where guys felt free to be guys in the sort of way you used to see in Junior High boys, who then grew out of it. Except these Gamergate guys were older.
There may be other online communities in which things like this happened. I find it interesting that the timing was all about the same as when the CPP was starting up. When I say this, I am referring to a math model calibrated on data over the 18th through 20th century being used to forecast a 21st century event.
Anyway, the CPP should be winding down now (at least that is what the model; calls for). If this is right we can reassess how much (if anything) of "woke" will even exist five years from now. It is the simultaneity of radical right-wing opposition to SJWs in the atheist and gamer communities and the rise of radical "woke" ideas in BLM and CRT at the start if the CPP, that forged the connection between woke and SJW over the next couple of years, which was accelerated by the rise of Trump as an ideological focusing agent.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/social-consequences-of-economic-evolution#:~:text=%E2%80%9Cwokeness%E2%80%9D%20was%20originally,to%20individual%20flourishing.
https://mikealexander.substack.com/p/cycles-of-radicalization
A+ for great use of Google Trends amazing dataset...
Woke is Christianity + Denial of Statistics
Blacks do bad because of Bell Curve genetic reasons. If you deny the Bell Curve genetic reasons, you need a bunch of wacky nonsense to explain it. And that wacky nonsense justifies all sorts of totalitarian tendencies.
You can apply the same logic to anything. Communism denied that the working class was dumber than the capitalist class. Hence we've got to execute the Kulaks.
I know you probably deny the Bell Curve stuff, so you can't understand what people mean by woke. But it's true, it's all true.
Like all cultural and political movements, people are attached to it in various ways. Some deeply and some shallowly. Some genuinely and some hypocritically.
The bottom line its that its just wrong. Factually wrong, which is why it keeps failing to make lives better.
Everyone is pointing and laughing at your incoherence but go off
We've got a 19th Century thinker in the house! Congratulations, pal — you're lecturing us about phenology. What's next, Witchcraft?
You're mom called. The meat loaf's ready.
Unfortunately there's no "blur NSFW content" thing on here!
I love it. Sargon was one of the very first YouTube video I found after my grandson turned me onto it. If was his takedown of starship troopers, in which I caught just a whiff of the rightwing crazy. When YouTube offered me another Sargon vid my right-wing crazy alarm in my brain yammered loud and that was the last of his vids I ever saw. He soon disappeared from the feed, and he hasn't made a reappearance in the four years since.
And the funny thing is I'm not progressive, I'm a New Dealer. But these anti-woke guys move so rapidly into Bircher territory it will make your head spin.