The counterfactual point is an important one. Where does wokeness sit on the spectrum of possible egregores from 'benign' to 'catastrophic'. Certainly not at either far extreme, but I could easily see it being much closer to 'benign' than otherwise.
And the point about allowing the woke to sterilize their own children is another salient one. If the anti-woke reaction isn't careful (as it often isn't), it will deliberately undermine parental rights in ways which will soon be used against it... there are a lot of Christians in the US who are attached to male circumcision as a practice (despite St. Paul being extremely specific about this being unnecessary for Gentiles).
I love how the Matrix of Oppression lists it as "*temporarily* abled-body people". Remember -- if you currently enjoy good health, that is just an accident. It has nothing to do with exercise or eating habits. Striving to become a strong and useful human being is an offensive act.
Apr 11, 2023·edited Apr 11, 2023Liked by Handwaving Freakoutery
This is such a well-written and documented piece I feel like I’m not worthy to comment, as I don’t have such a command of those 26 Roman characters that we call the Alphabet as the author does. But I must. Here’s why: I’m a 52 year old black dude and although I wouldn’t consider myself Woke, I am fully sympathetic to the term and sentiment behind it. While some may have trouble defining it, focusing on the word itself should lead to a basic definition. Not all-encompassing but basically the word “woke” as it’s used today in noun form is a cultural euphemism for “being awake”. And it gained ground because it inherently states that the person in a prior time and place was asleep. Simple, no?
Just some basics: On many many many occasions as a youngster, I’ve daydreamed about being white. I recognized the value of being white. The access; the approval that is automatically assigned to that ethnic group, etc. self-loathing for having big lips or less than Euro-typical physical traits and wishing my hair was straight and a host of other things that most black people probably won’t admit to. I spent most of my adult life attempting to fashion myself into a linear-thinking, white-sounding, and white-dressing individual with moderate success because I realized the importance of assimilation. I recognized how poorly ghetto blacks were estimated and had the capacity to make changes where needed. I essentially ran from my “blackness” because I believed it was bad and unworthy.
Most of the adult spaces and institutions I belonged to were predominantly white and I stuck our like a raisin in a pound cake!
Then 2020 came (I know, you were waiting for this) and the time at home the reflection and learning that ensued from that period cannot be overstated for me. For instance, I learned that the version of the history of the United States that was handed to me by the US Public School system was only a partial telling. I learned that there is a hidden half of the story that for very obvious reasons, had been suppressed. (Where I may disagree with many is that I don’t believe that the current narrative needs to be abolished, but it certainly needs to be augmented)
Sounds like Critical Race Theory to you?
I thought it would.
When I hear white people make laws or protest curricula that make them and their children feel bad for simply being white, my response is always “the bad people are making you feel bad because of your skin color?…Aww, tell me what that feels like”
Dude, to properly teach that Columbus was equal parts visionary and whoremonger, and animated by predatory lust, is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
To teach that the George Washington and the nation’s founding fathers were complicated individuals (like you and everyone reading this) and while they praised the virtue of liberty, thought little about enslaving other human beings, is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
To teach that the United States potentially faced a stalemate in the forming of the union because of the Southern lawmakers and the topic of slavery, is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
To teach that many US lawmakers wanted to expand slavery into deeper parts of Mexico and other Central American countries, is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
To teach that the King Cotton and the sugar industry enriched the Southern and Northern states and other industrialized countries in Europe and that the sole machine employed was unpaid labor, is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
To teach that when the Transatlantic slave trade was outlawed, a sinister process was instituted to breed existing slaves and forcibly remove the offspring to continue the lucrative endeavor and create laws that state that the fruit of the womb will be under the same status as that of the mother; well, that is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
Obviously, these lesser-known historical items weren’t congruent with the exceptionalism and Judeo-Christian virtues that was promoted to the stars. With the white man at the center and front and all other ethnicities regarded as lesser, it was an easy narrative to follow. Up until now, or up until relatively recent years, these other peoples have come to realize that they are not somehow lesser than the white race or ethnicity or whatever is the proper way to call whiteness.
To digress again, I dream of what it might have looked like when the religious people and the the non-religious (who were in the majority) alike had descended from the Mayflower, respected the natives and created something that looked more like synergy than rape, plunder, and deceit. I wonder what it may have looked like if Conquistadors hadn’t destroyed the wonderful cities and cultures that they found in Mexico and Central America. I wonder what would’ve happened if they saw beyond the visible; saw beyond the bare breasts and lack of Euro-centric clothing styles and instead of regarding the natives as inferior and ripe for subjugation, saw them as human and equally worthy as the Bible they carried under their arms taught.
Speaking of Bibles, here’s yet another aside: I often hear about how barbaric the Aztecs and others were with their human sacrifices, as if Europeans with their countless bloody human sacrifices that they performed on each other in the name of orthodoxy and interpretations of their faith (and I’ll limit the carnage to just the Christian religion) was somehow less senseless and brutal in scope and nature. But we know all better. (I hope we all know better).
Again, thank you 2020!
I could go on and on as I’ve learned so so many well-documented facts that can’t be twisted for any political or cultural aim. But amazingly, these are facts that never made it to the Blue Back Speller & Reader and every other US textbook that followed.
Not gonna lie, I only skimmed the surface and didn’t quite respond to the thrust of your article. I’m not even equipped for that type of technical stuff. I’ll admit it. Just wanted to speak from personal experience as I value it more than a million beautiful words. And I’m sure many others can share this sentiment. And especially since I haven’t seen anything from a similar perspective here in the Comments section.
Let the off-topic, ad hominems, and non sequitors fly. Fly high!
I recall the antitheism-sphere morphing once people started saying "oh look, my interlocutor is making the deonotological argument for the billionth time." Religion was killed on the internet, but lots of people had still been raised in stuffy, angst-inducing Christian households.
Wokeness seemed to spring from there, a continuation of trying to scourge boomer bullshit. Boomer-ite reality must be entirely rewritten to prove they were, in fact, assholes who made their kids sit through Sunday school to absorb hateful beliefs.
Once a younger generation takes up the torch, they get the fervor without the explicitly Christian angst. Plus an ever-growing online life and pre-existing activist institutions marking targets.
I guess in terms of damage, could wokeness be compared to historical eugenics? Wikipedia says in the US, at least 64K people sterilized in the 56 years between 1907 and 1963, so ~1142/yr. Ostensibly, the majority were criminals or other forms of "defective."
According to Reuters, in 2021 1390 people between 6-17 years were on puberty blockers in the US. 2017 was 633. Also in 2021, same age bracket saw 4231 on hormone therapy (No clue on overlap). Not trying to make a conclusion here, just considering your question of "how bad is it, really."
"Karen is a pejorative term used as slang for a white woman perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is normal. The term is often portrayed in memes depicting white women who use their white privilege to demand their own way."
In other words, anti-woke, judging others as inferior or not deserving of respect.
My understanding of "woke" is people trying their best to treat others with respect, based on the others' terms. It can certainly be self-righteous, as can any movement (talk to any Trumpers lately?)
As a liberal living in a liberal city, the only people I've met who are really invested in preaching their beliefs have been TERFs; so if wokeness means insisting that others agree with you, they fit that definition better than most. (Obviously, liberals here would be preaching to the choir, so that tips the scales of my argument a bit.)
I’m all for letting them sterilize their own kids as long as me and mine are left alone. Within a generation maybe the problem would take care of itself?
In the absence of effective hands and feet for God, society will find other cults to belong to. The churches have fallen down on the job. Not all of them, but enough that we've given current society very little reason to seek answers that have stood the test of time. How we (a very atomized "we" that may no longer have a comfortable center ground) once again become relevant is not wholly evident. I think we should stop directly fighting the cultural wars and work on building up institutions within the churches that offer alternatives to the woke-overtaken institutions that can no longer be salvaged. Yes, we can speak to the insanity of our current culture, but foaming at the mouth on the internet will be far less effective than building a Christian hangout space that appears to center around skateboarding and foosball, but provides the organizers with an opportunity to shared Jesus with the kids.
Yes, I'm speaking of a real-world initiative that is apparently working in my town -- that took 15-years of hard work to begin to produce a harvest. Same with the recent signs of improvement in the Christian-focused film industry. Christian music made that leap several years ago, now if books and movies follow -- Well, there's hope. Maybe not in my remaining lifetime, but hopefully within my kids' -- there'll come a time when whatever that generation's version of irrational wokesters won't matter because sane people have created their own institutions so there are alternatives to the insanity.
Woke is an attempt to 'prove' the unfalsifiable through Lived Experience. If their college professors were doing their job they should have taught them the plural of anecdote is not evidence.
> We accidentally created a deep well of unaligned moralistic judgmental asshats at exactly the same time we invented the internet.
I would **not** assume these two things are unrelated.
The counterfactual point is an important one. Where does wokeness sit on the spectrum of possible egregores from 'benign' to 'catastrophic'. Certainly not at either far extreme, but I could easily see it being much closer to 'benign' than otherwise.
And the point about allowing the woke to sterilize their own children is another salient one. If the anti-woke reaction isn't careful (as it often isn't), it will deliberately undermine parental rights in ways which will soon be used against it... there are a lot of Christians in the US who are attached to male circumcision as a practice (despite St. Paul being extremely specific about this being unnecessary for Gentiles).
I love how the Matrix of Oppression lists it as "*temporarily* abled-body people". Remember -- if you currently enjoy good health, that is just an accident. It has nothing to do with exercise or eating habits. Striving to become a strong and useful human being is an offensive act.
Pleats never went out. I defy the mandates of fashion through the sheer power of faith.
This is such a well-written and documented piece I feel like I’m not worthy to comment, as I don’t have such a command of those 26 Roman characters that we call the Alphabet as the author does. But I must. Here’s why: I’m a 52 year old black dude and although I wouldn’t consider myself Woke, I am fully sympathetic to the term and sentiment behind it. While some may have trouble defining it, focusing on the word itself should lead to a basic definition. Not all-encompassing but basically the word “woke” as it’s used today in noun form is a cultural euphemism for “being awake”. And it gained ground because it inherently states that the person in a prior time and place was asleep. Simple, no?
Just some basics: On many many many occasions as a youngster, I’ve daydreamed about being white. I recognized the value of being white. The access; the approval that is automatically assigned to that ethnic group, etc. self-loathing for having big lips or less than Euro-typical physical traits and wishing my hair was straight and a host of other things that most black people probably won’t admit to. I spent most of my adult life attempting to fashion myself into a linear-thinking, white-sounding, and white-dressing individual with moderate success because I realized the importance of assimilation. I recognized how poorly ghetto blacks were estimated and had the capacity to make changes where needed. I essentially ran from my “blackness” because I believed it was bad and unworthy.
Most of the adult spaces and institutions I belonged to were predominantly white and I stuck our like a raisin in a pound cake!
Then 2020 came (I know, you were waiting for this) and the time at home the reflection and learning that ensued from that period cannot be overstated for me. For instance, I learned that the version of the history of the United States that was handed to me by the US Public School system was only a partial telling. I learned that there is a hidden half of the story that for very obvious reasons, had been suppressed. (Where I may disagree with many is that I don’t believe that the current narrative needs to be abolished, but it certainly needs to be augmented)
Sounds like Critical Race Theory to you?
I thought it would.
When I hear white people make laws or protest curricula that make them and their children feel bad for simply being white, my response is always “the bad people are making you feel bad because of your skin color?…Aww, tell me what that feels like”
Dude, to properly teach that Columbus was equal parts visionary and whoremonger, and animated by predatory lust, is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
To teach that the George Washington and the nation’s founding fathers were complicated individuals (like you and everyone reading this) and while they praised the virtue of liberty, thought little about enslaving other human beings, is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
To teach that the United States potentially faced a stalemate in the forming of the union because of the Southern lawmakers and the topic of slavery, is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
To teach that many US lawmakers wanted to expand slavery into deeper parts of Mexico and other Central American countries, is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
To teach that the King Cotton and the sugar industry enriched the Southern and Northern states and other industrialized countries in Europe and that the sole machine employed was unpaid labor, is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
To teach that when the Transatlantic slave trade was outlawed, a sinister process was instituted to breed existing slaves and forcibly remove the offspring to continue the lucrative endeavor and create laws that state that the fruit of the womb will be under the same status as that of the mother; well, that is not CRT. It’s just the truth that hasn’t been widely known.
Obviously, these lesser-known historical items weren’t congruent with the exceptionalism and Judeo-Christian virtues that was promoted to the stars. With the white man at the center and front and all other ethnicities regarded as lesser, it was an easy narrative to follow. Up until now, or up until relatively recent years, these other peoples have come to realize that they are not somehow lesser than the white race or ethnicity or whatever is the proper way to call whiteness.
To digress again, I dream of what it might have looked like when the religious people and the the non-religious (who were in the majority) alike had descended from the Mayflower, respected the natives and created something that looked more like synergy than rape, plunder, and deceit. I wonder what it may have looked like if Conquistadors hadn’t destroyed the wonderful cities and cultures that they found in Mexico and Central America. I wonder what would’ve happened if they saw beyond the visible; saw beyond the bare breasts and lack of Euro-centric clothing styles and instead of regarding the natives as inferior and ripe for subjugation, saw them as human and equally worthy as the Bible they carried under their arms taught.
Speaking of Bibles, here’s yet another aside: I often hear about how barbaric the Aztecs and others were with their human sacrifices, as if Europeans with their countless bloody human sacrifices that they performed on each other in the name of orthodoxy and interpretations of their faith (and I’ll limit the carnage to just the Christian religion) was somehow less senseless and brutal in scope and nature. But we know all better. (I hope we all know better).
Again, thank you 2020!
I could go on and on as I’ve learned so so many well-documented facts that can’t be twisted for any political or cultural aim. But amazingly, these are facts that never made it to the Blue Back Speller & Reader and every other US textbook that followed.
Not gonna lie, I only skimmed the surface and didn’t quite respond to the thrust of your article. I’m not even equipped for that type of technical stuff. I’ll admit it. Just wanted to speak from personal experience as I value it more than a million beautiful words. And I’m sure many others can share this sentiment. And especially since I haven’t seen anything from a similar perspective here in the Comments section.
Let the off-topic, ad hominems, and non sequitors fly. Fly high!
I recall the antitheism-sphere morphing once people started saying "oh look, my interlocutor is making the deonotological argument for the billionth time." Religion was killed on the internet, but lots of people had still been raised in stuffy, angst-inducing Christian households.
Wokeness seemed to spring from there, a continuation of trying to scourge boomer bullshit. Boomer-ite reality must be entirely rewritten to prove they were, in fact, assholes who made their kids sit through Sunday school to absorb hateful beliefs.
Once a younger generation takes up the torch, they get the fervor without the explicitly Christian angst. Plus an ever-growing online life and pre-existing activist institutions marking targets.
I guess in terms of damage, could wokeness be compared to historical eugenics? Wikipedia says in the US, at least 64K people sterilized in the 56 years between 1907 and 1963, so ~1142/yr. Ostensibly, the majority were criminals or other forms of "defective."
According to Reuters, in 2021 1390 people between 6-17 years were on puberty blockers in the US. 2017 was 633. Also in 2021, same age bracket saw 4231 on hormone therapy (No clue on overlap). Not trying to make a conclusion here, just considering your question of "how bad is it, really."
This is your best essay yet.
You do realize what a Karen is?
"Karen is a pejorative term used as slang for a white woman perceived as entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is normal. The term is often portrayed in memes depicting white women who use their white privilege to demand their own way."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wiki
In other words, anti-woke, judging others as inferior or not deserving of respect.
My understanding of "woke" is people trying their best to treat others with respect, based on the others' terms. It can certainly be self-righteous, as can any movement (talk to any Trumpers lately?)
As a liberal living in a liberal city, the only people I've met who are really invested in preaching their beliefs have been TERFs; so if wokeness means insisting that others agree with you, they fit that definition better than most. (Obviously, liberals here would be preaching to the choir, so that tips the scales of my argument a bit.)
I’m all for letting them sterilize their own kids as long as me and mine are left alone. Within a generation maybe the problem would take care of itself?
In the absence of effective hands and feet for God, society will find other cults to belong to. The churches have fallen down on the job. Not all of them, but enough that we've given current society very little reason to seek answers that have stood the test of time. How we (a very atomized "we" that may no longer have a comfortable center ground) once again become relevant is not wholly evident. I think we should stop directly fighting the cultural wars and work on building up institutions within the churches that offer alternatives to the woke-overtaken institutions that can no longer be salvaged. Yes, we can speak to the insanity of our current culture, but foaming at the mouth on the internet will be far less effective than building a Christian hangout space that appears to center around skateboarding and foosball, but provides the organizers with an opportunity to shared Jesus with the kids.
Yes, I'm speaking of a real-world initiative that is apparently working in my town -- that took 15-years of hard work to begin to produce a harvest. Same with the recent signs of improvement in the Christian-focused film industry. Christian music made that leap several years ago, now if books and movies follow -- Well, there's hope. Maybe not in my remaining lifetime, but hopefully within my kids' -- there'll come a time when whatever that generation's version of irrational wokesters won't matter because sane people have created their own institutions so there are alternatives to the insanity.
Woke is an attempt to 'prove' the unfalsifiable through Lived Experience. If their college professors were doing their job they should have taught them the plural of anecdote is not evidence.