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What is "Woke"?

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I'm curious to see what people on OO would define "wokeness" as.  What is "woke"?

Here are a few of my own thoughts which I think are relevant to the question.

 

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The simplest and most succinct summary of wokeness I've ever heard before is "race communism". It's Communism, but since America doesn't really have any classes in the way most other countries did it substitutes race and sex for class. The Kulaks aren't defined by whether or not they own their own cow; they're defined by whether or not they can pass as cis-het straight white men. But nothing else has been altered in the basic assessment of what should be done by the oppressed group to the oppressing group.

 

It's worth noting that there was another variant of Socialism that arose in Weimar Germany which could also be accurately summarized as Race Communism. The oppressed race in this case was the German people (as opposed to the proletariat or the blacks) but the ultimate goal and the moral reasoning behind it are all identical.

 

The Woke delenda est.

 

PostScript:

 

For God's sake, is there STILL nowhere one could obtain an audiobook of the Ominous Parallels?! I STILL have yet to hear what in the Sam Hell Peikoff says there and it's really starting to bother me.

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I went to High School in a suburb of the Twin Cities in the early 2000's.  At this school, most of the kids were not white; whites were a sizeable minority (there were more white kids than black) but most of the kids were Hmong.  The first day of every February was spent, in every single class, having one group discussion after another about "white privilege".  We learned that life is automatically easier for everyone whose skin is white; that there's a wide range of problems other people suffer from that we don't.  I was the only person in any of these discussions to point out that some of the things being said were obviously and demonstrably not true; that not all white people are rich (for several of these years my parents were struggling to find ways to pay their mortgage, often making ends meet only with the charity of the local LDS ward, and it made me absolutely furious to hear that particular allegation tossed around so lightly), that we have to work hard just like anyone else and that police did not simply allow us to commit whatever crimes we pleased.  In particular, every once in a while someone would casually mention that all white people are racists, which I knew for damn sure was a vicious lie.

I had never heard of the Tulsa massacre or Black Wall Street, but I did know a few things.  I knew that most of my black and Hmong classmates had access to far nicer things than my Goodwill clothes and busted-up portable CD player.  I knew that my parents were not racist and had not raised me to be racist.  There was a conversation my parents had with me when I was very young in which they made it clear "we don't care about the color of peoples' skin.  We don't care if they're white, black, yellow, brown or purple with pink polka-dots.  We don't care about the color of the girl you'll marry, someday - so long as she is a girl."  If I remember correctly I'd asked the girl next door (who was 16 when I was 6 or 7) to be my girlfriend, and she'd responded that she couldn't because she was a Jew and I was not.  I didn't understand what skin color had to do with the incident (hers was also white, so I didn't see what that had to do with anything) and my parents didn't elaborate further than that.  But it was an incident that really stuck with me.

In these High School discussions, when I protested that it was fucked up to say that someone was a racist because of the color of their skin (it would be many years before I would learn the term "stolen concept" but I knew it was totally out-of-bounds in some weird way) most of the kids laughed at me.  The teachers took their side, if they had any comment to make at all.  They could never give me clear or coherent explanations for why I was wrong about "white privilege" (there are no clear reasons to be given) but they would say things like "that's a very simplistic way of looking at it" or "it's not as black-and-white as that" or "someday you'll learn better".

 

The point was not to feel guilty about the sins of the past.  That issue came up once or twice in Social Studies; not frequently, and the time that I mentioned how stupid it is for anyone to feel guilty about the actions of anybody else, the conversation pretty much ended at that.  The point was for the white kids to accept an unearned guilt for this privilege which nobody could even clearly define, let alone demonstrate, and for the nonwhite kids to accept an unearned sense of grievance.

I can't say for sure what the overall effect on the other kids was, in the long run.  A lot of them became anti-white racists.  A lot of them won't talk about race at all.  At least two grew up to be pretty virulent white supremacists; taking every single thing that was said in those discussions as true and simply adding "and that's why whites are so great!"

 

In my junior year a white kid was stabbed to death.  He had made a racist joke about Hmong people in class one day.  I never learned what the joke was, but he died for it.  One of his classmates overheard the joke, went home and told his brother about it.  His brother was either a Blood or a Crip, but I can't recall which.  His brother figured out which school bus the kid rode home on and the following day, when this kid climbed off the bus at his stop, he stabbed him repeatedly in the stomach and chest, in broad view of every other kid on that school bus.

In response to the stabbing, we got an unscheduled day off of school and several lessons on racial sensitivity.  The problem was apparently not the gang member who murdered a kid over a joke; the problem was that it's not okay to make racist jokes.

 

This took place about twelve years before the Twin Cities burned down in the George Floyd riots.  When our dear leader Walz had outlawed work while endorsing robbery, arson and assault.

 

Fuck the woke mind virus.

 

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A person is “woke” when they are aware of and adhere to the progressive ideology w.r.t. social matters (which turns out to be "everything"). The foundation of that ideology is the split between the ruling class and the ruled class, woke ideology sees the ruled class as the victim of oppression by the ruling class. The ruling class is the set of white males (in all senses of the word) who are rational and successful in their lives (therefore generally over 30), the ruled class is everybody else. The axiom of woke ideology is that the ruling class oppresses the lower classes, a corollary of which axiom is that all problems of the lower class are imposed on them by the ruling class. The metaphysical force that enables this is “privilege”, which comes in many flavors. Generally the kind of privilege that is invoked in an accusation is the broadest unchosen characteristic of the alleged oppressor that cleanly divides the oppressed vs. the oppressors. If the oppressed can be characterized in two ways (“black” and “female”), an attack on white males could be based on “white male privilege”, “white privilege” or “male privilege”. One has to think strategically about whether an accusation of “white privilege” will piss off white female would-be supporters. It is primarily a racial ideology but has been co-opted to analogs w.r.t. every other demographic you can imagine.

The exact extent of the woke ideology is highly fluid. On average, Black culture is not highly tolerant of homosexuality and there are also issues with women. This defines the fundamental challenge for currently-woke blacks, that they must toe the line on sexual issues. That, or they have to challenge a fundamental axiom of the ideology. The BLM ideological statement has been fluid, at times denouncing sexism. Their resolution of that contradiction has been to focus on “systemic” problems with the system being undefined. This allows a woke black male to harbor anti-queer sentiments, because they are the result of “the system”, not an individual choice.

As we know, a further consequence of wokism is that it is not to be questioned, defined, or resisted. Blacks have largely been left behind in the expansion of woke ideology, and I think this is largely because the specific content of the ideology is not to be discussed or questioned, it is taken to be axiomatic what constitutes social justice.

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There's no general and consistent definition of what 'woke' means, because people who often use that term want it to apply only to leftists but there can be no general definition of being 'woke' that excludes the right.

The term as it's often used means: being politically aware and conscious of how politics impacts everyone's daily interactions. However, this applies to the right wing as well (with complaints about how they have to regulate their own behaviour due to political principles that are broadly accepted by society or complaints about workplaces or about how teachers teach students, not being able to say the n-word, etc).

However, right-wing wants the word 'woke' to only apply to leftists, so there's no general and consistent definition of the term that doesn't explicitly denote it as left ('communism', 'progressive', etc).

1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:

The exact extent of the woke ideology is highly fluid. On average, Black culture is not highly tolerant of homosexuality and there are also issues with women. This defines the fundamental challenge for currently-woke blacks, that they must toe the line on sexual issues. That, or they have to challenge a fundamental axiom of the ideology. The BLM ideological statement has been fluid, at times denouncing sexism. Their resolution of that contradiction has been to focus on “systemic” problems with the system being undefined. This allows a woke black male to harbor anti-queer sentiments, because they are the result of “the system”, not an individual choice.

There is no woke ideology (as used by the right) since leftism isn't an ideology but a political faction. There are contraditions within the right as well (for example, in relation to immigration, or being secular when talking about Islam but not when talking about Christianity, being pro-LGBT when talking about "outsiders" (for example, other countries) not when it applies to their own lives, etc).

Edited by human_murda
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1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

Does that make Tories anti-woke, analogously?

I don't really know, I'm not English. It would be reasonable to say that MAGA Republicans are anti-woke because there is a certain scent of ideological essence behind MAGA Republicanism, which is lacking in simple "tends to vote Republican". I can't say whether "Tory" is a brand name like "Republican" is a brand name (a type of Demopublican). Also, I have no clue about Canada which also has Tories. Canadians seem to be much more woke than Americans, but maybe that's just the Canadians that I know.

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I meant Tory in the American historic sense. The colonists that sided with / were more sympathetic to the idea of not dissolving the relationship/ identity of "Englishmen".

The independence movement was motivated by identifying as the ruled class by the ruler class and unfairly in that they should have their rights as Englishmen recognized, ie No Taxation without Representation.

So tongue in cheek as the Tories were anti-identifying as oppressed or anti-woke.

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8 hours ago, human_murda said:

There's no general and consistent definition of what 'woke' means, because people who often use that term want it to apply only to leftists but there can be no general definition of being 'woke' that excludes the right.

The term as it's often used means: being politically aware and conscious of how politics impacts everyone's daily interactions. However, this applies to the right wing as well (with complaints about how they have to regulate their own behaviour due to political principles that are broadly accepted by society or complaints about workplaces or about how teachers teach students, not being able to say the n-word, etc).

However, right-wing wants the word 'woke' to only apply to leftists, so there's no general and consistent definition of the term that doesn't explicitly denote it as left ('communism', 'progressive', etc).

Huh.  Can you give me an example of a "woke" right-wing sentiment?

I'm aware that there are connections to the right which most rightists aren't comfortable with (primarily in its ethical roots, which are all straight out of the Bible) but I have yet to see something distinctly right-wing that I would call "woke".  Do you mean something that's common to both political factions?  What are you pointing to?

 

As for "not being able to say the n-word" yes; I think that's part of wokeness.

It's a rude word, to be sure, and not one that should be used in the workplace (or any other formal setting) or really in most circumstances.  But there have been attempts to remove Tom Sawyer from school libraries over that word and in Great Britain a white girl went to prison for quoting rap lyrics which used that word.  According to ChatGPT if a nuclear bomb was about to kill every single person in New York city, and the only way to disarm it was to pronounce the word "nigger", the morally correct thing to do is to let everyone in New York city die.

I'm sorry, but there is no word and can never be a word so rude that its utterance is worth a single human life.

Furthermore, the conventional wisdom is that it's a word of hate (sort of a magic word which contains every bad thing in American history within it) and that any use of it is automatically meant to convey all the distilled racial hatred of the confederacy - and that's simply not the way that words work.  Meaning is not to be found in individual words, but in how they're combined with each other.  There are plenty of rap lyrics which use that word more than any other and convey no such hatred.  I used the word just above this - did it imbue the sentence it was in with contempt for anyone at all?

The usually unadmitted thinking behind this (the reason why it's perfectly fine in rap) is that it means different things depending on the skin color of the speaker.  And this is specifically what's "woke" about that particular issue.

 

9 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Does that make Tories anti-woke, analogously?

Hardly.  There are a few British political commentators I like to listen to from time to time (it's always interesting to know what's going on across the pond) and from what I hear, the Tories are almost as woke as Labour.  Just yesterday I heard about an attack ad the Tories were broadcasting about how Labour is "too old, too white, too male".  True enough, in its own way (Labour does have significantly less sex- and race-diversity in its representatives) but it's an extremely woke point to try to make.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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5 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

in Great Britain a white girl went to prison for quoting rap lyrics which used that word

No.

5 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

Can you give me an example of a "woke" right-wing sentiment?

Look at Oklahoma's new "pro-American" curriculum. From a history book related to Christianity and Colonialism:

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A lot of this is false. There was no free trade in British India (India was an extractive colony that existed to serve British mercantilism). There's no evidence of economic improvements in British India. In the 1600s, British banned the import of Indian textiles into Britain through multiple acts known as the Calico Acts. They were later repealed a century later, but the tariffs still remained. Only the exports of raw materials (from India) were legally allowed. Current knowledge about the world's economic history suggests that the average person in India was richer in the 1600s than in 1947 (independence). India only caught up with the India of 1600AD in 1967 (20 years after the British left, roughly 370 years of economic stagnation). There was also a sharp decline in urbanization in India after the 1600s. This was because India fell into feudalism after modernizing in the 1500s under the Mughal Empire because India became a supplier of raw materials (cotton, coal, steel) to British industries after the decline of the Mughal Empire and since colonialism began. The British did build canals and railways, but only to grow cotton and opium and ship it to UK/China. India only caught up with the India of 1600s in 1950s in terms of urbanization since feudalism was (partially) abolished only in the 1950s and 60s after the British left and India no longer had to supply raw materials to UK. Some places in India and half of Pakistan is still feudal.

Rational thinking isn't really Western (or necessarily Christian). For example there were concepts about valid knowledge, logic, proof, etc in ancient India, among other things.

There's this general idea of associating everything good with Western (and Christian) history but everything evil with Eastern history. The idea of Eastern ideas being always evil and Western ideas being always good is pretty much the American default, not just among Christians but also among atheists. You think White privilege is a new original sin? Considering everything non-Western to be an original sin was always the American default. If teaching about White privilege is woke, how is this not woke? Because it's not leftist?

Edited by human_murda
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"Wokism" is a derogatory term used by right-wingers to disparage people who correctly recognize the fact that white supremacists did not simply disappear into the void when the Civil Rights Act passed, but instead weaponized supposedly color blind economic, legal, political, educational, and other social institutions to perpetuate the white, christian, male, heteronormative supremacy that explicitly and openly dominated American life for 300+ years.

Said right-wingers are simply living in ignorance of or even straight up denial of reality.

Edited by SpookyKitty
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12 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

. . .

As for "not being able to say the n-word" yes; I think that's part of wokeness.

It's a rude word, to be sure, and not one that should be used in the workplace (or any other formal setting) or really in most circumstances.  But there have been attempts to remove Tom Sawyer from school libraries over that word and in Great Britain a white girl went to prison for quoting rap lyrics which used that word.  According to ChatGPT if a nuclear bomb was about to kill every single person in New York city, and the only way to disarm it was to pronounce the word "nigger", the morally correct thing to do is to let everyone in New York city die.

. . .

Harrison, the N-word is still used here in Virginia in its usual traditional derogatory, racist way. I've heard it only from white men in one-on-one conversation with me. Naturally, their option of association with me is then over. And not because of "political correctness," which is principally a term of cover for resisters of moral progress (such as the progress we made towards Black-White racial equality in America in law and in hearts and minds since I was growing up in Oklahoma in the 1950's.) The N-word was incessant in my childhood household and in the homes of my classmates. It was said (and learned to be said) with hatred and reiterating of inferiority, except in the phrase "I've been working like a N . . . er" said after doing much hard manual labor. The children had vocabulary in which the N-word was used in the name of things (and for which they had no other name): such as N . . . er-Toe for a Brazil Nut or N . . . er-Shooter for that Y-shaped shooter you make from the fork in branches and rubber from an inner tube. The N-word was not merely rude. It was part of keeping the iron hot for segregation and whippings and mutilations and lynchings. Across the South, including the "Little Dixie" area of Oklahoma where my father grew up (his country town is called Caddo), the proud common slogan among Whites was "The sun never sets on a live N . . . er in Caddo." Or whatever was the name of your town.

I certainly do not approve of altering one word of Mark Twain's books. Besides, let the common White bigotry and boot of that time hang out there plain as it was, and still is the festering soul of people who pretend racial moral decency only by "political correctness", i.e., only for fear of the social consequences for themselves of blurting out their depravity.

Edited by Boydstun
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Where a modicum of rational consideration and, sure, empathy, for "the other's" past would quickly or gradually adapt most of society to behaving better i.e. more sensitively and aware -- backed with laws against racial/homophobic/etc. assaults --would suffice in a free society  - first, remember the intent of Wokeists. Listen to what they say and watch their actions.

No, it's less their innocent purpose that we should never forget "the reality" of our joint history. (And if repression or displacement were all they had, go back a bit into history: there's not a human, tribe or 'group' on the planet whose forefathers didn't suffer those, at some time).

No. We are directed to THEIR 'suffering'. Compassion and guilt -must- be held and shown for their (recalled) group's plight. 

Their aim plainly is naked power lust. Not to elevate all citizens in personal liberty, but to reduce the privileged, 'previously advantaged' to the lowest status. Not parity, but supremacy, they desire. Not reconciliation, but punishment.

That particular American independent self-confidence, they know, is what has to first be undermined.

Shortly, it's a "selective empathy" we are supposed to feel. (Well illustrated once more by the zero empathy shown by every wokeist (far as I can tell) for the productive Jews/Israelis - who should "return to European ovens" - and reserved solely for the Palestinians who, in their hatred, have done little to nothing to better their conditions).

Sacrifice others to oneself, as you yourself, or your grandad, etc., supposedly, were sacrificed to others. The anointed ones again have the self-righteous 'moral' high ground, and Objectivists would know it is altruism.

The quasi-socialist apologia naively miscomprehending (or consciously concealing) the ~philosophical~premises and blatant aims of Wokeism, is quite disturbing. 

America is the best exemplar we have, looked up to by even its foes. The "good" society and nation: never, the mystical "perfect" - ought to be the single objective. You can't get these things right there, the world is in deep trouble. 

Edited by whYNOT
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“Right”-thinking people – especially Objectivists – tend to think of “free speech” as the political question of government force being used to suppress the expression of a viewpoint, so we will immediately respond that “Only the government can censor”. It is appropriate to reserve the term “censorship” to government action. Every individual has the political right to respond to disagreeable speech in whatever way they deem appropriate, up to but not including violation of the rights of another person.

It is well-established within Objectivism that “tolerance” is a fundamental evil. Just to be clear, “tolerance” refers to the suspension of moral evaluation of evil, the evasion of fact in deriving values – the granting of sanction to evil ideas. A child may be ignorant of an inherent evil because children are generally ignorant, until they become educated. I did not know the N word so when I was around 4 I uttered a child rhyme about catching one by the toe, and was informed that it is a rude term referred to “colored people” (a concept that I didn’t understand, I thought it meant people with colorful stripes). The (understandable) failure of that early childhood lesson is that I only learned a rote fact, that uttering the N word is evil. Likewise I learned later, still as a child, that Nazis are evil, but not why Nazis are evil.

Many of the evils which wokism opposes are indeed evil, indefensible, and not to be tolerated. Wokism itself is an inherently dishonest idea and fundamentally evil approach to moral judgment: it is the mindless acceptance of moral dictates, rejecting the need to reason to choosing a moral code, and to use that moral code to guide your life choices. The most offensive and evil moral principle of woke ideology is the absolute intolerance of expressions deemed to be evil. Can one honestly say that an adult in the US can be “ignorant” of the evil of using the N-word? Of course you can! Some people understand the logic of consigning the N-word to the “evil act” trash-pile. Too many people treat the issue as being above the level of reasoning, as being a self-evident moral law unrelated to general principles and specific facts of history. Did you know that there is another N-word, “Navajo”?, do you know and use the preferred term? If you are ignorant of this fact, shouldn’t we condemn you as being evil? I claim that it is not reasonable to expect normal people to know these facts, but it is reasonable to expect every adult in the US to understand why using the original N-word is evil.

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Well, "tolerance", by non-O'ists and specifically Christians, is considered a virtue. But even they wouldn't brook intolerable acts and speech--nor tolerate Gvt. restrictions. And they are practised at detecting hypocrisy.

It is my experience with the hate-filled in-tolerance (not to be confused with the O'ist  position) plus hypocrisy of those on the hardcore Left, the Woke, etc. which I have a problem with. One accepts few people are and will be Objectivists, the question is, who'd you rather have mostly around you in business and other normal activities? The tolerant conservatives or intolerant Left? 

Edited by whYNOT
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9 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

One accepts few people are and will be Objectivists, the question is, who'd you rather have mostly around you in business and other normal activities? The tolerant conservatives or intolerant Left? 

False dichotomy. I prefer the competent regardless of ideology. I would have to suppress the expression of irrelevant ideologies in a business context for custom-relations reasons. Tolerant conservatives are as rare as hen's teeth, at least out here.

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1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:

“Right”-thinking people – especially Objectivists – tend to think of “free speech” as the political question of government force being used to suppress the expression of a viewpoint, so we will immediately respond that “Only the government can censor”. It is appropriate to reserve the term “censorship” to government action. Every individual has the political right to respond to disagreeable speech in whatever way they deem appropriate, up to but not including violation of the rights of another person.

Except apparently to say that some speech is racist?

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It is well-established within Objectivism that “tolerance” is a fundamental evil. Just to be clear, “tolerance” refers to the suspension of moral evaluation of evil, the evasion of fact in deriving values – the granting of sanction to evil ideas. A child may be ignorant of an inherent evil because children are generally ignorant, until they become educated. I did not know the N word so when I was around 4 I uttered a child rhyme about catching one by the toe, and was informed that it is a rude term referred to “colored people” (a concept that I didn’t understand, I thought it meant people with colorful stripes). The (understandable) failure of that early childhood lesson is that I only learned a rote fact, that uttering the N word is evil. Likewise I learned later, still as a child, that Nazis are evil, but not why Nazis are evil.

This is a problem with your own education (and American public school education in general) not "wokism". In many states, the history of racism is barely covered if at all. And often times, said "education" includes defenses of slavery.

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Many of the evils which wokism opposes are indeed evil, indefensible, and not to be tolerated. Wokism itself is an inherently dishonest idea and fundamentally evil approach to moral judgment: it is the mindless acceptance of moral dictates, rejecting the need to reason to choosing a moral code, and to use that moral code to guide your life choices. 

No, this is just psychologizing.

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The most offensive and evil moral principle of woke ideology is the absolute intolerance of expressions deemed to be evil.

How can that be evil when you just said an individual is free to respond to disagreeable speech in whatever way they deem appropriate, and especially when you also claim that one should not tolerate evil?

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Can one honestly say that an adult in the US can be “ignorant” of the evil of using the N-word?

No.

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Some people understand the logic of consigning the N-word to the “evil act” trash-pile. Too many people treat the issue as being above the level of reasoning, as being a self-evident moral law unrelated to general principles and specific facts of history.

That's you. We want to avoid that word precisely because of its vile history.

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Did you know that there is another N-word, “Navajo”?, do you know and use the preferred term? If you are ignorant of this fact, shouldn’t we condemn you as being evil? I claim that it is not reasonable to expect normal people to know these facts, but it is reasonable to expect every adult in the US to understand why using the original N-word is evil.

Yes, actually. You would have too if your education had been worth a damn.

It is precisely because of the anti-woke crowd that you have been ignorant of these things for so long. They create the ignorance they wear as a shield.

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1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:

It is well-established within Objectivism that “tolerance” is a fundamental evil.

The problem with "tolerance" (and with trying to say whether one supports or opposes it) is that it leaves open the question of what we are supposed to be tolerating. Some things are tolerable and others aren't. For example, murder and assault are clearly intolerable.

Speech, on the other hand -- setting aside threats or fraud -- is just speech, and it should be tolerable as such. Failure to tolerate speech is not an argument -- it means that argument has been set aside -- and makes it impossible for reason to ultimately prevail. (However, in some cases it's already impossible for reason to prevail; it is futile to argue with somebody who is already not engaging in reason, so it is not always improper to set argument aside. The real question is who was first to set reason aside, not argument per se. There are also cases where it can be a judgment call whether somebody can be "led back to reason" or not and whether it's worth trying.)

If people don't get along, it is sometimes possible to put a wall between them: those who can't work together can work separately. However, this doesn't work if the wall cuts someone off from necessities like food and water (which is why Russia will go to war if you try to cut them off from the Black Sea, etc.)

It used to be that doing business didn't mean you agreed with your customers about everything. It was like having an implicit disclaimer to the effect that "Our views are not necessarily those of our customers / suppliers / shareholders / employees / etc." You could sell someone milk without having to know their political party. I think it's a bad thing that the implicit disclaimer is going away, and maybe a good solution is to have an explicit disclaimer, but really, it should be implicit.

This recent phenomenon of "de-banking" is doubly bad, first because it implies that banks can only do business with those that they (or the regulators, which is to say, the regime) agree with, and second because it does amount to putting a wall between people and their food and water.

There are some cases where moral sanction is important, for example, if you own a grocery store you wouldn't want somebody loudly grandstanding about an issue in the middle of it. If you allow it, people would presume you agree with it. So you don't have to allow it. But generally you probably wouldn't allow it even if you did agree with it, since a grocery store is a place where people shop for groceries and not ideas.

There should be some reasonable standard as to whether moral sanction has been granted or not, and it should be explicit rather than just an assumption. It's fashionable among the Left to assume for example that if I fail to punch you in the face I'm granting your ideas moral sanction, which explains Will Smith, but I don't think this kind of assumption is appropriate for a civilized society.

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19 hours ago, human_murda said:

Rational thinking isn't really Western (or necessarily Christian). For example there were concepts about valid knowledge, logic, proof, etc in ancient India, among other things.

Yes, and great advances in mathematics and astronomy were made in the Muslim world until they decided that rationality was a sin (I believe after the writings of Al-Ghazali).  Are you really denying that ancient Greece is the birthplace of our modern conception of rationality?  Sure, Western knowledge of the writings of Aristotle would not have been possible if they hadn't been preserved and transmitted by the Muslim world - but it was Aristotle that it all came from, wasn't it?

That's one Hell of a departure from what I would have assumed.  Please elaborate.

 

19 hours ago, human_murda said:

A lot of this is false. There was no free trade in British India (India was an extractive colony that existed to serve British mercantilism). There's no evidence of economic improvements in British India. In the 1600s, British banned the import of Indian textiles into Britain through multiple acts known as the Calico Acts. They were later repealed a century later, but the tariffs still remained. Only the exports of raw materials (from India) were legally allowed. Current knowledge about the world's economic history suggests that the average person in India was richer in the 1600s than in 1947 (independence). India only caught up with the India of 1600AD in 1967 (20 years after the British left, roughly 370 years of economic stagnation). There was also a sharp decline in urbanization in India after the 1600s. This was because India fell into feudalism after modernizing in the 1500s under the Mughal Empire because India became a supplier of raw materials (cotton, coal, steel) to British industries after the decline of the Mughal Empire and since colonialism began. The British did build canals and railways, but only to grow cotton and opium and ship it to UK/China. India only caught up with the India of 1600s in 1950s in terms of urbanization since feudalism was (partially) abolished only in the 1950s and 60s after the British left and India no longer had to supply raw materials to UK. Some places in India and half of Pakistan is still feudal.

Let's say that's all true.  Let's assume that Britain robbed India for several centuries and that they still haven't recovered from the mass theft.  Just for the sake of argument.

 

You do know what the traditional Indian custom was to do with the widow of a man who had died, don't you?  Hell, considering some of the practices that still persist in modern India, it's a real shame there wasn't a bit more imperialism exercised there.

"It was suggested that her brother could be cured of a paralytic stroke if a young girl was sacrificed for him - and who are you to tell them they're wrong?"

Rationality, indeed.

 

19 hours ago, human_murda said:

There's this general idea of associating everything good with Western (and Christian) history but everything evil with Eastern history. The idea of Eastern ideas being always evil and Western ideas being always good is pretty much the American default, not just among Christians but also among atheists. You think White privilege is a new original sin? Considering everything non-Western to be an original sin was always the American default. If teaching about White privilege is woke, how is this not woke? Because it's not leftist?

Because it's largely true.

 

Human history is mostly made up of bad things.  Many bad things happened in the West (indeed, more bad than good, and primarily because of Christianity) but there were periods of real progress.  There is hardly anything outside of the West throughout all of history except the bad.  Even the Islamic golden age (which is probably the best example of non-Western progress one could ever find) lasted for what - was it even two centuries before it'd been snuffed out by mysticism?  And it's not going to return within any of our lifetimes.  Even today - as much as we all complain about Western countries, is there anywhere besides Japan (which has been so thoroughly Westernized since WW2 that I would consider it one of us, now) that is better to live in?

No.  We are the source of plenty of bad things, certainly, but there are no good things that come from anywhere outside of the West.  This is demonstrably true.

 

Now, do you think it is true that all white people are inherently racist?  Is this a demonstrable fact that you're ready to defend?

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23 minutes ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

No.  We are the source of plenty of bad things, certainly, but there are no good things that come from anywhere outside of the West.  This is demonstrably true.

Nothing except:

Agricultural revolution

Civilization

Astronomy

Wheel

Arithmetic

Geometry

Metallurgy

Masonry

Philosophy

...etc.

Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China had been leading the world on all fronts for at least 3000 years before Aristotle wrote down even a single word. You just made a claim so buffoonishly ignorant that it boggles the mind.

Edited by SpookyKitty
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12 hours ago, SpookyKitty said:

"Wokism" is a derogatory term used by right-wingers to disparage people who correctly recognize the fact that white supremacists did not simply disappear into the void when the Civil Rights Act passed, but instead weaponized supposedly color blind economic, legal, political, educational, and other social institutions to perpetuate the white, christian, male, heteronormative supremacy that explicitly and openly dominated American life for 300+ years.

Said right-wingers are simply living in ignorance of or even straight up denial of reality.

OOH, boy.

 

"weaponized the supposedly color blind ... social institutions to perpetuate the white, christian, male, heteronormative supremacy..."

Firstly, the law no longer allows people to make hiring, firing, legal or any other decision on the basis of race - at least in the case of black people.  If you're making such decisions to disadvantage white (or, as was the case for quite a few colleges recently, asian or Jewish people) then it's still fine.  What, aside from an equal protection for ALL races, could you want before we consider them officially "color blind"?

Why did you put "allegedly" in front of that?  Explain.

Secondly, as an atheist I'm goddamn glad to live in this allegedly "christian supremacist" country.  There are still some things the Christians do that annoy me now and then, but I can openly talk about my atheism and the reasons for it and nobody will ever attempt to stone me for it.  I am grateful for that fact, as you should also be - not every country in the world recognizes the rights of atheists.

Thirdly, if the white supremacists who still exist (and they certainly still do) are relegated to keeping their white supremacy out of the legal system, out of their businesses and out of any other arena of public life except shit they might say at the bar now and then - what's the issue?
Yeah; there are plenty of Commies and environmentalists, too.  They bother me, but it's not something for the federal government to deal with.  It's just one of those things.

 

11 hours ago, Boydstun said:

Harrison, the N-word is still used here in Virginia in its usual traditional derogatory, racist way. I've heard it only from white men in one-on-one conversation with me.

Ah.  You need to meet some more black people.

 

Come spend some time in Minnesota.  You might get mugged, but you'll hear a wide variety of new uses of that word.  It's almost as versatile and multifaceted as "fuck".

 

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Naturally, their option of association with me is then over. And not because of "political correctness," which is principally a term of cover for resisters of moral progress (such as the progress we made towards Black-White racial equality in America in law and in hearts and minds since I was growing up in Oklahoma in the 1950's.) The N-word was incessant in my childhood household and in the homes of my classmates. It was said (and learned to be said) with hatred and reiterating of inferiority, except in the phrase "I've been working like a N . . . er" said after doing much hard manual labor.

Well - exactly.

"Working like a nigger" actually means working very hard; an admirable thing to do.  Something the next generation could probably learn a thing or two about.  That's another case in which the word is used to mean anything but its usually alleged meaning.

 

As for not associating with people who use it in a derogatory way - that's laudable.  Racism is a bad thing.  I'm curious, though, when I repeat the phrase "working like a nigger" is that also demonstrating any amount of racism on my part?

 

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The N-word was not merely rude. It was part of keeping the iron hot for segregation and whippings and mutilations and lynchings.

What?

 

Can you please explain the causal connection between repeating the word "nigger" and literal murder?  Did I just contribute to another murder, just now?  Please help me.

Quote

I certainly do not approve of altering one word of Mark Twain's books. Besides, let the common White bigotry and boot of that time hang out there plain as it was, and still is the festering soul of people who pretend racial moral decency only by "political correctness", i.e., only for fear of the social consequences for themselves of blurting out their depravity.

Amen.  Even if it does mean what most people take it to mean (in defiance of how any actual words work) sunlight would still be the best disinfectant.

Quote

Across the South, including the "Little Dixie" area of Oklahoma where my father grew up (his country town is called Caddo), the proud common slogan among Whites was "The sun never sets on a live N . . . er in Caddo." Or whatever was the name of your town.

Yeah.  I'll have to tell you about what some of the homeless population in the Twin Cities thinks the word "caucus" means, I guess.  It's some of the most virulently racist stuff I've ever heard before, but I don't take the ravings of homeless racists as my definition for the word "caucus".

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8 minutes ago, SpookyKitty said:

Nothing except:

Agricultural revolution

Civilization

Astronomy

Wheel

Arithmetic

Geometry

Metallurgy

Masonry

Philosophy

...etc.

Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China had been leading the world on all fronts for at least 3000 years before Aristotle wrote down even a single word. You just made a claim so buffoonishly ignorant that it boggles the mind.

My dear - China had been leading the world in what kind of philosophy?

I've heard some people claim that Daoism is sort of pro-individual and pro-reason, and having read some of it for myself I think that's being extremely charitable.

 

But let's say that every single one of those, including philosophy, came from China before the West did anything with them.  That's not too big of a stretch; China did come very close to having an age of discovery and colonization about a century before Europe did.

 

What comes out of modern day China besides TikTok?

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