• The Christian narrative
    God is on my side. — Banno

    Three persons, on one side?
  • The Christian narrative
    Talk of the properties had by some individual in every possible world is much clearer than… — Banno

    No it’s not. We need all of the different ways to talk about this shit we can get. They are all insufficient.

    Talk of the properties had by some individual in every possible world is much clearer than… — Banno

    What does “properties had by” mean?
    What does “properties had by some individual” mean?
    How does some individual “have” properties?

    Can you answer any of these without any reference to essence? You already mentioned “properties had by some individual…..” so you’ve as good as shown something participating in the forms, just with a new element of “possible worlds”. A new context, or, muddle, for the same phenomena of what it is to be whatever it is.

    Nothing about “essence” is much clearer once you’ve used “some individual” to fix “properties” across all possible worlds…..

    Plenty of room to insert some muddle, at least possibly. Might as well give @Count Timothy von Icarus and @Wayfarer the same benefit of the doubtful muddle. Like I said “is-ness” helps complete the picture as much as statements like “some individual in every possible”.

    ——

    Camus is only existentialist because what else would he be. He’s a way better read than Heidegger. But Being and Nothingness is existentialism defined if you ask me. Nietzsche and Kierkegaard sort of built the house and opened the door, Satre moved in and set up all the furniture, Camus is hanging out back on the porch. ADDED (He’s sort of a stranger to his own genre.) Heidegger lives next door but never really visits. Dostoyevsky lives in the basement and scares everyone.
  • The End of Woke
    knowing where to draw the line — Tom Storm

    Always.
  • The End of Woke
    having children usually changes this bent from Left to Right — AmadeusD

    Interesting. Makes some sense.

    recent convert is Whitney Cummings — AmadeusD

    Interesting. She’s funny.
  • Social Media and Time Appreciation
    I suspect it all provides more content for people to apply their well-developed or undeveloped judgment. There is no resolution better than the present moment’s resolution, and people get these present things wrong often, so with more and more content to sift through and learn from, I agree there is an opportunity for broader and just better thinking, but who among us will learn how to take advantage of that? We have to think well at all to think better with more content to think about. Will we just spend more time looking for that cat video?
  • The Christian narrative
    ask if the idea of essences is worth keeping — Banno

    Do you mean like you and Frank “asked” for an explanation of the Christian narrative?
  • The End of Woke
    If that is intended to trivialise people’s position, then not exactly. — Tom Storm

    Not to trivialize. I literally typed out the “if not liberal when you are young you have no heart, and not conservative when older you have no brain” but took it back because I didn’t think people knew that phrase.

    everything is about feelings, isn’t it? — Tom Storm

    Maybe, many things involve feelings. But don’t we need to scrutinize and dissect feelings from logic from biases, from theories and propositions - everything isn’t about feelings. Although I think there is a case to made that wokeness is all about feelings - it is for the sake of feelings and driven by emotions.
  • The End of Woke
    I'm curious what you mean by the younger being more values led. — praxis

    I’d take this to mean more led by feelings, much in line with @Number2018 thesis of the OP.

    ↪Tom Storm
  • The End of Woke
    a large part of the country that would have had no inkling the ad was offensive (me, for example) — Hanover

    Right. So people like you (and me) are either racist due to our biases and we don’t know it (so, asleep), or we are way above the fray and just color blind to race. (But that is probably a dream I’m having because I’m actually sleeping. Like Martin Luther King Jr apparently was.)

    @praxis
    trying to get you to see your biases, and pointing out that AE's plan, if there was one, was to get you to do exactly what you're doing. — AmadeusD

    Yes, exactly. You need to come to the ad with certain biases to find it outrageous. Maybe those biases serve a beneficial purpose. But outrage? If one thinks outrage over racism is justified because of that ad then one is sleeping on their own biases.
  • The Christian narrative
    People and especially cultures cannot do a 180° reversal in a day, — Leontiskos

    Yes.

    I see Nietzsche as providing one of these pivotal moments - he trashed everything. Made it fun to trash all that was supposed to be good. And it changed many things (philosophy, ethics, culture, influenced politics). It still wasn’t “a day” of course.

    We need to course correct again.

    It's almost as if the rationalistic context must be abandoned for a time — Leontiskos

    Yes. For sake of reasonableness. For sake of truth and wisdom. And good. And happiness and peace. The forgotten pursuits of philosophy.

    I completely agree. I think we have much to learn from mystics and novelists regarding the best way to clarify “what it is” and “how it is” and why it matters, and, here is something people today overlook, what doesn’t matter.

    We need the anti-Nietzsche. A prophet of the “under-man”, who always, all-along understands truth, eyes fixed on light, delivered as eternal gift, not merely constructed as temporary will.

    We don’t need to clarify what Lois was really saying about Superman anymore. That’s all grave digging work. Necessary, but completely turned away from the dynamic and the living.
  • The End of Woke
    But you could be right. And if so, i don't see the issue. That is what advertising does. And it worked. — AmadeusD

    I agree - the intent behind the ad campaign and predictive measures of its success is a whole discussion. And facts from that would be helpful to understand how people and society are grappling with wokeism - but who really knows? Those are facts, and our assumptions may be wrong.

    Part of the issue the woke should reflect on here is the fact that unless you assume the AE marketing team had some sort of malicious intent, the ad is perfectly normal. You have to bring your own assumptions to the table to read into the ad how unwoke is is. Good genes might refer to her hot figure. Good genes may refer to her success as an actress/model/person. We have to say “bullshit, they meant her blond whiteness.” AND we have to bring to the table that blonde whiteness America is a nod to Nazis and racists, because in another century and another land, there is nothing inherently supremacist about white genes.

    Point being, the woke have to bring their own facts to the table, and they don’t seem to care about or need real proof.

    I’m not trying to be naive or blind myself, I’m just saying that often woke people make something that seems to come out of thin air, and then the thing they make is all that matters and they forget about the thin air (which includes the facts).

    If wokeism wants to survive better, it needs to improve its choices of hills to die on. Good genes ads ain’t and should not have hit Colbert’s radar.

    that AE manipulated the right into promoting the campaign, — praxis

    No that’s backwards. That would mean AE manipulated the appearance of woke outrage in order to then cause their real target audience, the right wing to be interested in news stories about woke propel flipping out. That is too far fetched.
    The point about the media still being in the pocket of the left is that, the woke people who flipped out are being protected by the mainstream media - there are now news articles about how the ad was never really a thing for the woke, and that the right media and Trump are making it seem like the woke care about the ad just so they can brag about how woke is dead and they get to talk about white genes now with white pride I guess. I’m sure there is a little of that because people are pigs, but that is also the woke failing to take responsibility for screaming about spilled white milk, which they often do and fail to learn from.
  • The Christian narrative
    How does 1+1+1=1? By misunderstanding either "1" or "+" or "=", or using at least one of them in a way that is not in accord with their usual use. — Banno

    Right, so 1+1+1=1 can’t possibly be right, and/or, if it is forced to be right, there is a misuse of "1" or "+" or "=".

    So we have to get back to that, because that is a huge pickle.

    Forget the Trinity pickle for a second. You have to, in order to re-approach the life inside God and ask about the math of it. You need to start over because those are the wrong starting questions.

    Let’s just say there is one God. And let’s just say this one God is called the Father, and he created all things.

    There is nothing heretical about that being full stop who and what Catholics believe in.

    God the Father is all 4 year old kids think of when they say they know God. Those kids are right, and in full alignment with the Catholic Church, and full agreement with the life and example of Jesus, who taught people to pray the Our Father, which makes no plain reference to the Son or Holy Spirit. You can refer to the whole and to all of the one God by simply saying “Father.” That is not heresy.

    Period. End of Catholic narrative.

    Also sounds like the Jewish narrative, but they didn’t use the name “Father.”

    We have a long way to go to get back to asking “so what is the math of it?” So far, the math is simple. We can get there, but you don’t really participate in my posts…

    Do you want to grow into the fourteen year old God, the Son? Ask, why did he call God “Father” in the first place, and not just something like “Lord” or some name, like Elijah?
  • The Christian narrative
    :rofl:
  • The Christian narrative
    ↪frank

    I’m not exactly sure what you are saying to me.

    you're right where we all are. None of us have final answers. — frank

    I agree, I think?

    Final answers.

    When it comes to the Trinity, like most meaningful things, knowledge increases (for fools like me), but is never final.

    So did we just become best friends or something?
  • The Christian narrative
    End of discussion.
    — Fire Ologist
    Unfortunately not.     — Banno

    Hmmm.

    Is this a reluctant way of saying you are still mildly interested?

    You haven’t given any new effort to show me some pretenses.

    Isn’t life in general full of muddle to be sorted out? Then we try to communicate what’s been sorted tk some other person, who adds their own muddling influences.

    Muddle doesn’t raise any new critique.

    I think there is plenty unaddressed in the above pages directed to you by me - pick something if interested in proceeding.
  • The Christian narrative
    This is now the bit where you pretend that you and Leon pretend to have answered the problems raised. You haven't. — Banno

    Ok. To make one of the issues real clear (as it did for Claud), let’s put the issue as follows.

    Trinity lovers think they can say this:
    “One plus one plus one equals one.”
    And/Or maybe it should be said, “one equals three.”

    But that makes zero sense, is contradictory and incoherent.

    You want an answer to the above math problems.

    Well that answer will never come. So if the above two statements are each a key important (dare I say essential) facet of the Trinity, and there is no answer coming, then you are done. Trinity is incoherent. All you see is people papering over this basic math inconsistency with pretense.

    Right? End of discussion.

    Trinity means one plus one plus one equals one, and that’s impossible to even conceive as a coherent thought so discussion never really started. Right?
  • Free Speech - Absolutist VS Restrictive? (Poll included)
    ↪NOS4A2


    Michael, Amadeus, me, Mijin, others - all totally different people who take radically different approaches on other issues, and who are all able to articulate complex ideas - all of us have said the same things in response to you.

    There is something wrong with your position. You may still be right. None of us can see it. (Has anyone? It’s kind of stoic in a sense, is that what you are trying to say?). But nothing you are saying makes sense to anyone else.

    That should give you some pause.

    How can you be so obstinate and unreflective?

    You are trying integrate:
    1 personal autonomy
    2 causally determined necessity
    3 speech

    You can’t have autonomy without both your own mind (which is where words live and breathe and are understood) and a world to be autonomous over, to have causal effect in.

    Me slapping my hand across your face. That is not an effect in the world until your face resists my hand and your brain makes that slapping sound and sensation for you to enjoy as your own experience.

    You are saying my slapping you across your face did not cause you to feel and hear a slap. You are saying your own brain caused these things and it is fully up to your free self to feel the slap, and/ or slap me back. Me, I am utterly not responsible for what happens in your experience.

    That is what you are saying. Whether you like it or not.

    To you words are just another slap in the face.

    That is actually more coherent than what you are saying but is basically the best light Incan give your argument.

    But none of this explains human behavior towards each other, because we seek to cause specific effects in others with words and slaps everyday, and so it makes no sense to try to figure out how we are NOT doing what we seek to do, and what is done to us, all of the time, namely cause various effects in others’ minds and actions.
  • The End of Woke
    The incorporative mode ("Yes, now I see the error of my ways") requires an extended forestructure of understandings (i.e. a history which legitimates the critic's authority and judgment, and which renders the target of critique answerable).

    See, I disagree. I think this is basically treating adults like they are irresponsible children. It doesn’t require “extended forestructure” - it simply requires you make the case.

    Basically, the highest elites have to realize they are proportionately not that far from the basest deplorables. People need to start with that humility. From there require of themselves that they respect different people’s dignity as fellow people, and THEN hash out the arguments as humble respecting adults.

    The preoccupation with bias and forestructure creates a diminishing return. Forestructure building and bias recognition are important. But I’ll grant they represent 20% of a fruitful conflict resolution.

    I… am arguing that the intellectual ideas which both wokism and postmodern approaches draw from need to be assimilated in order to get to a politics beyond the wokist practices which you reject. — Joshs

    This sounds positive. Can you put some real flesh on this as a for example?
    1. A sample woke specific intellectual idea
    2. What do you mean by “assimilated to get beyond”
    3. Why beyond a wokeist practice?

    If the woke idea was so good, why do want to end up beyond a wokeist practice?

    Is this like desegregation?
    1. Diversity is good.
    2. Force diverse people together from segregated areas.
    3. Have a new society that loves diversity and there is no need to look for segregated groups anymore because they are all integrated now, thanks to woke ideas and woke solutions (that we now no longer use as no longer needed).

    Is that an example? I’d rather hear yours. I think there is a massive gap between 2 and 3 here.
  • The End of Woke
    ↪praxis


    The math according to you is:
    1. Ad shows white girl saying “my genes” meaning AE jeans.
    2. Woke folks will blow up in rage and thunder.
    3. Because the tide has turned against them, anti-woke will blow up in a fit of ecstasy.
    3.a. Woke folks sublate the whole dust-up as the right wing making something bigger than it really was, so woke needs take no blame or responsibility for 2, when they….made something bigger than it really was. (this is still possible because the woke still own the major media).
    4. The words “AE jeans” will be a household name for years.
    5. We will get rich.

    New 3.a. Points to lack of self-reflection.
  • The End of Woke
    I can’t name even one wokeist or liberal that helped to promote it. — praxis

    So you are saying the woke’s reaction to the ad had nothing to do with the extra mileage the ad achieved for AE.

    No self-reflection.

    The math according to you is:
    1. Ad shows white girl saying “my genes” meaning AE jeans.
    2. Woke folks will blow up in rage and thunder.
    3. Because the tide has turned against them, anti-woke will blow up in a fit of ecstasy.
    4. The words “AE jeans” will be a household name for years.
    5. We will get rich.

    That’s your math. Thought the woke being played like a fiddle (2) was obvious part of it.

    No self-reflection.
  • The End of Woke
    I think this campaign shows how much the tide has turned against the woke. — praxis

    You aren’t looking at the right thing. It’s not the campaign that teaches the lesson (so you don’t get the lesson). It is how the woke reaction to the campaign has been so soundly mocked and done zero to promote woke agenda that shows how much the tide has turned. Woke needs to turn inward and reflect on how it is often full of unsound, incoherent , contradictory bullshit baby feelings. The substance of wokeness is no longer being ignored and thoughtlessly forced upon culture at large.

    They don't deserve all the credit. — praxis

    You literally quantified the credit in dollar amounts.

    Just admit it, wokeness can be easily played like fiddle.

    Don’t know how you think it’s so obvious that some marketing team could predict a positive return playing that fiddle. I’m sure there are white people who will purposely not buy AE jeans now - woke won’t support them, and anti-woke won’t want to look like they are making a political statement by wearing them (like driving a Tesla) inviting retaliation from woke kooks).

    But you do think that they predicted a positive return from looking racist. You seem to have the sleepers all figured out just like the accounting..
  • The Christian narrative
    Don't shoot the messenger.

    4. When one is offended by another person, whose fault is that feeling of offense? The hurling of insults is certainly the fault of the one hurling insults, but the feeling of offense, who is responsible for that?
    — Fire Ologist     — Banno

    Do you think I am offended?

    Or were you offended by me?

    Heated rhetoric need have no relationship to any offense or insult.

    No insult intended, and all due respect but, it may actually be the case that you might be slightly full of shit sometimes. If you really think the God who is a trinity of persons is like the person who is suffering from DID, then I take it back and apologize if any offense was taken.

    So were you full of shit? Or was your DID observation meant to advance the discussion. I hope so, because I think a discussion about how any human person (DID or not) relates to the Trinity could be instructive towards the Christian narrative, which you seem interested in to some playful extent. (I’m guessing you were just shitting me. Good one. Me and myself - we both saw the humor in it, although one of us was also a little disappointed. But haha.).
  • The Christian narrative
    Let's just leave it at this: on it's face, the Catholic Trinity appears to be contradictory. Catholics are aware of this, but deny that it's a contradiction, because the truth is beyond human comprehension. If we were enlightened, we would see that it's not a contradiction. — frank

    Trinity “appears” to include specific contradiction. Yes.

    The rest of the quote is muddled but may be accurate. It is better restated:
    Catholics see the apparent contradiction, and we see that the depths of the Trinity will proceed beyond full human understanding, but we also believe we will forever understand more and more about the Trinity because it is not a contradiction - we will learn more about God, like God knows himself.

    So you could say “if we were enlightened we would see that it’s not a contraction” because though it appears contradictory to simple logic, it still appears, so it must have some accounting, and this will take further “enlightenment”.

    I wouldn’t really say “the truth is beyond human comprehension” but if all you mean by that is the fullness of all there is to know about the Trinity is infinite and so never finite as we humans like to make things, then sure, I can leave it at that.

    The "sensus fidelium" could not exist if what is agreed upon were truly incoherent. — Leontiskos

    That should be a huge flag for those who say things like “Trinity is a contradiction” that is beyond comprehension. It can’t possibly be the case where two people independently come to the same conclusions that there is nothing coherent to the Trinity in itself for us the determine for ourselves. (Unless maybe we are both saints! :lol: )

    a "slave to sin," beset by the "civil war in the soul" of Romans 7 and The Republic is to be less a person, more a mere jumble of external causes. Indeed, to be irrational is to be less fully anything at all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

    Good stuff. This is about the old relationship between change/becoming (irrational) and permanence/substanc (fully thing). The problem of how particulars actually participate in the forms; and the ontology of these.

    ——

    Some people think it is rigorous to leave personhood undefined but analyze what persons do. When, somehow, what we do IS who/what we are, and it is impossible to analyze either one without the other. We, as persons, are more like a “Trinity” than they will allow themselves to admit. (Resorting to psychosis without realizing that is again, more apt to describing the human condition than they would like to admit. The analysis of it is too confounding and preposterous. (Like so many other things about experience and being a person, although they are less fun to mock than God and those who say they believe such things.)
  • The End of Woke
    Will you now admit — praxis

    Will you admit you are theorizing about AE marketing folks’ intentions and predictions? This whole admission doesn’t matter - you are asking the wrong person. There is no point to your question or me answering it ( :lol: which I did!).

    Here is what happened. The AE marketing team totally botched their intent, thinking they were ushering in a new era of “Beyond Good woke and Evil Woke” - a utopia where genes are now “blue” and can cover over all races and colors of skin.

    But they botched their post divisiveness delusions, by picking a white girl for the ad campaign - the world was not ready for their equitable vision…..

    Who the hell really knows. The wokesters have made it into a whole new thing completely unconnected with denim clothing marketing anyway.

    I know, admit it: you pissed AE played progressives like a fiddle. :lol: They got all this free publicity by having a great looking white girl say “genes”, because the woke are so predictably shallow and loud the words “AE jeans” would surely take on a life of their own. They probably seeded the outrage by planting some comments on the right twitter feeds.

    As usual, the woke focus on non-issues, the unimportant. And self-contradict. If woke thinks AE was evil whitey, then ignore it and be silent so that it goes nowhere. Don’t seek validation of your feeling by asking for others to make admissions for you.

    What is interesting about the ad for woke culture is that it was so clearly wrong to them to highlight the word “genes” with a white woman. If they used a white man instead of Sweeney, the ad should cause even more outrage right? AE at least checked the woke “empowered woman” box - but then there is the extra cleavage, just another patriarchal male gaze opportunity setting women’s empowerment back (because Sydney is incapable of making her own decisions and showing her own cleavage because she wants to - she only wants to because men have made her that way….)

    So many unanswerable, contradictory, layers of bullshit comprise much of the woke picture of reality.

    Where are the positives? Where are the achievements specifically tied to woke?

    You aren’t advancing any arguments.
  • The End of Woke
    ↪praxis

    Why, what color/race is Beyonce and why do you notice that first and foremost?

    Seems to me the goal of wokeness should be that absolutely anyone on earth could replace Sydney Sweeney and the ad should be viewed with equity and inclusiveness.

    But wokeness can’t help creating exclusive categories for privileged or victim members, and seeing things skin deep to form those categories. And imputing ill-intent behind anything “white” with “genes” in it.

    I know you don’t see the contradiction. You just see that I don’t see all of the ill-intent that is so obvious to you because you are not asleep. Or because you are careless and shallow in your reasoning on this issue.
  • The Christian narrative
    [Deleted]
  • The Christian narrative
    See, here it is again. This should be intriguing to an analytics first philosopher.

    When Catholics say the Father is God, they are not predicating. They aren't saying God is a category the Father belongs to. It's an identity statement. The Father is not a section of God. The Father is fully God. Whatever God is, the Father is equal to that.
    — frank

    No, this is not right. I would go back to my posts where I quoted the Catechism of the Catholic Church. We can say that the Father is God (in the Triune sense), but by that we include the Son and the Spirit with the Father, for they are never apart     — Leontiskos

    I said this:

    When Catholics say the Father is God, they are not predicating. They aren't saying God is a category ….
    — frank

    No. Actually they are both predicating and identifying. That’s part of the uniqueness of God being three persons.

    The father is a god. Predicate.
    It just so happens that there is only one god and that god is father son and spirit. Identity.

    Or, the son is a god. True statement. Predicate.
    It just so happens that there is only one god and that god is three persons. True statement of identity.

    Etc………     — Fire Ologist

    Here is the question for the analytic mind who thinks the Trinity is just an incoherent idea, and contains too many contradictions:

    How are me and Leon identifying the same flaws in @frank reasoning about the Trinity, and able to put into totally different explanations, different words, our reasoning and logic as to why and how Frank blew it? How are our separately developed explanations reflective of the same reasoning and conclusions? How did we both see franks flaw?

    That must mean there is something objective and particular about the concept of the Trinity (besides dogma and what someone else says about it.). Leon and I each separately worked out and expressed the same conclusion in our own ways. That requires logic and facts, sorted from franks illogic and wrong facts. About the Trinity.

    So @Banno and frank, how is that possible?

    The OP asked for an explanation of the Christian Narrative.
    Then Frank admitted (by his actions) he didn’t think such explanation was even possible.
    What Leon and I just did is evidence that there is a logic and reasoning going on that therefore might allow for an explanation of the Christian narrative.

    So @frank, was your OP in earnest?

    ↪Count Timothy von Icarus
    Good to see you back.
  • The End of Woke
    with a blonde, blue-eyed white woman — praxis
  • The End of Woke
    They’re in business to make money. — praxis

    :up:
  • The Christian narrative
    in a sense, we are all “mental patients” so long as we identify with the ego and remain ignorant of the Self. — Wayfarer

    Sure, we are the metal patients maybe because of our disassociation between Atman and Brahmin.

    metaphor for the relationship between individual minds and what he calls “mind at large.” Just as each dissociated identity experiences itself as a separate person, we experience ourselves as separate individuals—when, in his view, we are all expressions of the same underlying mind manifesting in different ways. — Wayfarer

    Good stuff.
  • The Christian narrative
    Are they also full of shit? — Banno

    Im talking about you comparing God to a mental patient. And you, totally incurious about personhood and its disorders and explanations.
  • The Christian narrative
    When Catholics say the Father is God, they are not predicating. They aren't saying God is a category the Father belongs to. It's an identity statement. The Father is not a section of God. The Father is fully God. Whatever God is, the Father is equal to that. If this sounds like a mystical multiplicity, that's because it is. — frank

    No. Actually they are both predicating and identifying. That’s part of the uniqueness of God being three persons.

    I know you don’t understand.

    The father is a god. Predicate.
    It just so happens that there is only one god and that god is father son and spirit. Identity.

    Or, the son is a god. True statement. Predicate.
    It just so happens that there is only one god and that god is three persons. True statement of identity.

    Etc………

    You almost have it now? It’s actually easy to show you you are wrong about it, once you have it. It’s a “mystery” to me how you can’t see it sometimes.
  • The Christian narrative
    Banno is one of the things that is a man, so is Bob and so is Frank. Three different things that are all men.

    So Jesus is one of the things that is god, and the holy spirit is another, and the father, another. Three different things that are all god.     — Banno

    Men is plural. God isn’t.

    You must do better.
  • The Christian narrative
    Sounds not unlike Dissociative identity disorder. — Banno

    How is something like “disassocistive identity disorder” even possible to imagine as a coherent thing? What creature can make that category and what creature might live it!?

    You are so full of shit sometimes.

    And
    ↪frank
    sounds about right.

    Can’t help yourselves.

    Now you annoyed @Wayfarer enough to want out.
  • The Christian narrative
    That's not how the Trinity works. — frank

    How does the Trinity work? :lol:
  • The End of Woke
    But controversy acts as a force multiplier. Criticism over pairing the “Good Genes” slogan with a blonde, blue-eyed celebrity spurred news coverage, reaction videos, and social media debate, generating an estimated 3× more earned media than a safe campaign — roughly $21M in extra exposure, for a total media value near $28M. Even a small conversion rate (0.1% of 500M impressions) could drive $30M in denim sales, delivering around a 4× ROI and cementing AE’s cultural relevance for months. — praxis

    Good lord - that sounds so sleazy.
  • The End of Woke
    Joshs,

    Great post. Something positive and thoughtful.

    Implicit bias, the idea that people’s perceptions and decisions can be unconsciously shaped by stereotypes, even when they consciously reject prejudice. The value here isn’t in “shutting people down” but in cultivating awareness so we can interact more fairly. — Joshs

    Implicit bias, is real, and important for people to understand about themselves. So if wokeness can take credit for that, then that is a positive contribution.

    I see “bias” as the “implicit”. It’s the prior lens through which we view. People have the ability to self-reflect and must recognize how their own upbringing will shape what the see now and tomorrow. But people have the ability to see this bias, in themselves, and honestly confront it.

    So bias is an important discussion for people to come to be able to respect each other despite biases. Since we all have biases, AND since we can all see around them if we self-reflect and try to look at things differently, we should respect each others differences and forgive their struggles with their biases as we need to be forgiven for our own.

    But honestly, what I see the woke doing with the notion of bias, is using it to control people. Woke says people are doomed and chained to their biases, and have to be told by the enlightened what their real motivations are. One day people might see their own biases, and maybe even overcome them, but I don’t see woke people treating biased people as whole human being who are more than their biases. The woke just tell you want new biases to make so you can be biased right, not free from all bias. I see the woke showing how the biases of white people create an exclusive privilege for white people, fostering more bias in white people, and whether they know it, or worse intentionally, oppressing non-white people. I see the woke manipulating from on high an otherwise bleak world to control with bias.

    Individuals are not just the sum total of all of their biases. And to the extent they are, no one is better than anyone else. That is both the starting point and the goal when it comes to bias.

    Intersectionality is another woke concept. It is a way of understanding that people’s experiences aren’t shaped by just one identity category (race, gender, class, etc.) but by overlapping ones. It’s not a mandate to divide everyone into rigid groups, but a reminder that context matters in how people experience opportunities or barriers. — Joshs

    Yes. People’s experiences are each unique to them and only each one. As you say “people’s experiences aren’t shaped by just one identity category (race, gender, class, etc.) but by overlapping ones.” I take this to simply mean, we are each unique.

    You say that woke is saying we are unique blends of many “overlapping categories”. I think this has it backwards. The categories come second, not first. Each unique individual can be lumped into different categories we learn about after meeting many unique individuals. We aren’t merely categorizable. We aren’t even merely unique overlapping categorizable things. Some parts of each of us defy categorization, at least not so easily and not politically useful. There are crazy combinations that make up some individuals.

    Turning individuality into intersectionality is just a new way of saying individuality, but one that, to me, downplays the individual.

    And again, if wokeism means respect for each one as a unique combination of whatever combines to make a person, then great. I think intersectionality is a smaller part of what makes people great. Mostly because we have too few categories. Race, gender, class, education, ethnicity, region, urban, rural, progressive, conservative, etc - way too small to define a person. We should add inquisitive, smiles a lot, anxious, energetic, methodical, whimsical, and so many more. Then we might be able to make boxes people could fit in.

    how laws and institutions have embedded racial disparities over time, not as an accusation against individuals, but as a way to ask, “If these patterns exist, what’s sustaining them?” — Joshs

    This is another reference to the implicit. The systemic. The predisposition of our economic and legal system and institutions.

    This is a very practical topic. You said “these patterns”. We need specifics to know where to look to ask “what is sustaining them.”

    I would start that due process under a constitution legislated and enforced by elected and later ousted representatives isn’t embedded with any disparities at the outset. And our economics - capitalism - doesn’t seem essential to any particular race. We can theoretically all agree regardless of race, to build a capitalistic world.

    There is much to debate, but it requires significant specifics and lists of fact gathering to really play out. It requires something equivalent to the constitutional congress that started before 1776 and culminated in a solid constitution by 1787.

    I think we can work more to reform what we have then we need a new system.

    But I am open to learning about what is bad about the current system and what could be better about a new one.

    So many new woke institutions seem divisive and unsustainable to me, but I’m sure there are more positive things about wokeness.

    I do believe that the heart of many woke people is with true victims of injustice. But I believe the heart of many conservative people is with true victims of injustice. So that’s a wash - good intentions pave the road to ruin - and none of that saves either side.
  • The End of Woke
    ↪praxis


    :lol:
  • The End of Woke
    Do you think the controversy may have been intentional on AE’s part?
    — praxis     — Fire Ologist

    I don’t think this controversy could have been predicted. — Fire Ologist

    Three times now.

    What do you think about the intentions of some people you don’t know?
  • The End of Woke
    I find it interesting that there appear to be energetic culture wars around that seem to reflect Fox News and the Murdoch agenda. — Tom Storm

    I don’t watch Fox News. Mostly vacuous cheerleading. CNN is smoke and mirrors. But if something big happens, I flip between them for the live stuff.

    I have to piece together facts from all over the place, left and right.

    I’m not a big fan of conspiracy and hidden governmental agenda analysis from here on the outside. My main issue is incompetence, not bad intent. We don’t need inside information to see which politicians simply stink at getting anything done, and yet we reflect them anyway.
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