Absolutely. I wrote an article a while back that World War II has become the "founding mythos" of modern liberalism. In doing this, it has made (generally manichean) conflict and struggle a bedrock part of identity formation in a way that is unhelpful. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree, and I still find the article I mentioned here useful:

In a related vein is a very good recent piece in First Things, "The End of the Age of Hitler." I thought about posting it in Baden's thread on methodological naturalism given that it is a kind of moral parallel to the fact that a metaphysical vacuum is ineluctably filled. — Leontiskos

-

It's made for plenty of great media, but the problem comes when transgression is valued for transgression's sake. That's how you get caustic, counter-productive, purely performative activism. I'd also argue that it's how we got a real resurgence in unapologetic fascism and neo-Nazism. Hitler became the face of evil, the ultimate taboo, and so of course those who value transgression cannot keep themselves away from Hitler, even if only ironically at first (e.g., the Sex Pistols used to parade around in swastika shirts). But the "taboo appeal" of Hitler and fascism seems to have actually transformed into a potent recruiting tool for unironic Nazis. I'd argue that at least some of the continued appeal of the Confederate flag has similar roots. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Interesting. I don't really disagree with any of that, but I want to say that the problem comes even earlier. It is a disproportion akin to C. S. Lewis' idea of "putting second things first." Quoting from the thread of fdrake's I mentioned above:

--

While this is correct, appealing to the inherent mismatch of ideals with reality is a cop out, and serves as an explanation for any impermissible act consistent with the operative principles of a society that allows it. Which is to say, it exculpates any moral evil imaginable. — fdrake

Sure, but aren't we ignoring the other side of the coin? Namely that appealing to the inherent mismatch of ideals with reality is a cop out, and serves as an explanation for any act inconsistent with the operative principles of a society that disallows it? As in, there was a downside to the French Revolution, and I'm not convinced your construal is able to come to terms with that downside. The promotion of an ideal is not unobjectionably good, given both that there is moral worth to the stability of the status quo, and that false ideals are very often promoted. — Leontiskos

--

...That is something like the confrontation between the progressive instinct and the conservative instinct. The question is something like this: How promising is this or that progressive ideal, and what cost should we be willing to incur in order to achieve it? My view is that to value every newfangled ideal above the status quo is to put second things first. Why? Because the novel ideals aren't worth much, and they are a dime a dozen. They need to be tested rather than trusted.

A terrible line has been crossed when transgression is valued for transgression's sake, but I want to say that the precursor is the undervaluation of the conservative instinct, or the status quo, or tradition (or whatever else one wants to call it). I don't think that line ever gets crossed without this preliminary error.

I don't think I'd say that we necessarily ran out of issues to champion. I'd say the larger issue is that every issue tended to take on the urgency and Manichean dimensions of the Civil Rights Movement. For instance, migration has obviously often been reframed as simply a continuation of the Civil Right Movement, where opposition to a maximalist immigration policy becomes a sort of explicit racism in the way Jim Crow was. Or Ta-Nehisi Coates (among plenty of others) looks at the Arab-Israeli conflict, and sees the Civil Rights Movement as the obvious analog. Some environmental issues disproportionately impact some minority populations, and so it becomes a Civil Rights-style issue, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, spot-on. :up:

I don’t know how best to characterize the anti-woke. — Fire Ologist

Most concisely would simply be what the term implies: asleep or unaware.

Take the controversy surrounding Bud Light and transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for example. The anti-woke reacted unconsciously to reassert cisnormativity and the status quo. They didn't concsiously realize that their status or power was being challenged and yet reacted with shows of power, perhaps most famously with Kid Rock blasting cases of Bud Light with a semi-automatic assault rifle. Of course it could be that Rock was also acting in bad faith (like Bud Light) and capitalizing on the culture war, but either way the anti-woke drank it up heartily, the video having been viewed over 11 million times.

But I think wokeness is correctly construed as wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater. — Leontiskos

And I think the superficial characterizations of the grounding presuppositions of wokeness i’m seeing in this thread are also wanting to throw out the baby with the bath water. And what is the baby? if one remains at the surface level of ‘things wokists do that annoy us’, the baby is nothing but these arbitrary and wrongheaded actions. In the hands of the better journalists delving into this socio-political phenomenon, the baby is a spectrum of philosophical positions, bookended on the right by Hegel and on the left by 1960’s French thinkers like Foucault. Throwing out the baby then means that one refuses to accept that reform of wokist excesses can take place within the bounds of these philosophical grounds, that these philosophies were unnecessary in the first place given that there are already perfectly workable, intellectually superior ethico-political frameworks to guide action. Much of the critique Ive read so far ranges from ad hominem attack on character flaws in the activists ( status seeking) to historical regressiveness ( it’s a return to fascist thinking or a twisted variant of Romanticism.

But let’s say for the sake of argument that wokism’s roots contribute nothing innovative or valuable to the canons of philosophical thought. Arent development and innovation qualities to be expected of political thinking? Doesn’t progress in thinking about justice move in continuous cycles from counterculture to mainstream culture? Isnt it a sign of progress that what was once deemed
socially acceptable is now considered cruel and unnecessary? And if so, what contemporary counterculture would you point to as superior to wokism? Or are we supposed to rely on tradition rather than evolutionary transformation in considering how to think about justice?

A terrible line has been crossed when transgression is valued for transgression's sake, but I want to say that the precursor is the undervaluation of the conservative instinct, or the status quo, or tradition (or whatever else one wants to call it). I don't think that line ever gets crossed without this preliminary — Leontiskos

Antony’s contributions to this thread I think exemplify the kind of thinking that doesn’t throw the baby out, but instead occupies a position (later Wittgenstein) within the philosophical spectrum that includes wokism, from which vantage he can reform and moderate its excesses.

@Number2018@Joshs@Leontiskos

which are routinely not taken seriously on expressly moral grounds. Again, i'm not saying anything moral about the two possible outcomes, but I'm trying to show that most 'moral' positions cannot be made to be sensible to others who don't intuitively get the point of the moral claim being made. — AmadeusD

The former concept (i.e policy considerations, or instantiating social norms) doesn't seem to accept this type of assessment without falling into totally irrational nonsense in fairly short-order. — AmadeusD

Thus the importance, which I discussed above here and here, of our making the other’s claim as intelligible as possible by getting at their interest in it on their terms (getting at why different criteria are important). The responsibility to make that effort is each of our duty as moral agents, as citizens of a democracy, even the work of philosophy. Merely having a reason to dismiss the other, even on “moral grounds”, because you don’t believe they are “rational”, don’t meet your requirement for justification, etc. is to shirk that responsibility.

The legitimate concerns underlying the urges of woke political correctness will need to be addressed if any real cultural progress is to become of these urges, but the manner by which the proponents of wokeness have been trying to cause progress has allowed their passions and emotions to over-power rational assessments and discussions. — Fire Ologist

I agree with this need to go deeper; I would only suggest that we have not drawn out and made explicit for consideration these “urges” (I would say taking them as “legitimate” would be to treat them as the concern of a serious, intelligible person; not just a feeling, or fleeting desire). The fact that they are “underlying” is because we have not yet made the effort to look past our own criteria and (perhaps also unexamined) interests to see theirs, treat them with the respect of being able to be different but equally able to be considered once understood. In this way, they are unexamined, still hidden by our current practices, culture, language, and, philosophically, because of our desire for only certain kinds of (criteria for) “rationality” (generality, abstraction, etc.)

To even get to where we can decide what to do, what we have to “address” is that we do not yet understand, or even recognize, these concerns, their interest in them, how they are important to them (make explicit the criteria that would matter), and that claiming they are irrational is judging them before this work, and dismissing them because of the worst case, bad actors, resorting to force over the equal duty to answer for themselves, choosing “coercion” as you say, over a persuasive description, etc. is to despair of a rational society and forego our duty to it. Ergo:

The point is that I am not sure if philosophy matters a great deal in this struggle. It is political more than philosophical, and a matter of mobilization and counter-mobilization of resources of power. — Tobias

[Irrationality is] the inability to legitimize one's moral positions to others. — AmadeusD

This is to put the responsibility on them to meet our (society’s) requirements and criteria, when the whole point is that those are what are up for discussion because of interests and reasons we do not yet understand (and fear, belittle, dismiss, claim are irrational, destructive, etc.) or even made explicit; as you say, without which we can’t even get started “I have no place to judge it that way”.

Now, as I have said, doing a poor job in presenting the claim, refusing as well to explain the interests in changing criteria or practices, engaging in moralizing, power struggles, “coercion”over etc., is of course equally detrimental, thus why we may even have to imagine for them, take them as someone with serious, important interests not currently recognized in our society. If we grasp at something like this with our terms for judgment, we only see what we want.

We do not accept that 'lived experience' is a good metric for an accurate appraisal of anything — AmadeusD

"valuing" opinions is insane, on a policy level, unless we're talking expertise. Life Experience is not expertise, in any sense, to my mind. Maybe there's a disconnect there. — AmadeusD

It is not a matter of being a metric (a criteria for accuracy—which is judged differently), but an expert as a valued source of evidence of what matters, perspective on our current criteria. An attorney is an expert, but only gives us advice, suggested criteria (factors to judge on, like risk). You can still decide to do whatever you want based on whatever you feel is important (like “accuracy”). I believe the claim is that in certain situations (as I discussed), it matters to have input from someone who has lived through something. It is a claim for us to re-evaluate our interests, what we consider important (not definitive) in a decision.

In the hands of the better journalists delving into this socio-political phenomenon, the baby is a spectrum of philosophical positions, bookended on the right by Hegel and on the left by 1960’s French thinkers like Foucault. Throwing out the baby then means that one refuses to accept that reform of wokist excesses can take place within the bounds of these philosophical grounds, that these philosophies were unnecessary in the first place given that there are already perfectly workable, intellectually superior ethico-political frameworks to guide action. — Joshs

The Philosophical Roots of Wokeism with Bishop Robert Barron

Left and right with Andrew Breitbart:
https://youtu.be/ftZfdrqVpOk?si=2ZxxQ3vVX16y4xwW

Most concisely would simply be what the term implies: asleep or unaware. — praxis

Hence “awoken”.

But your analysis of why you think the “anti-woke” didn’t like what Budweiser was doing is not precise.

The anti-woke reacted unconsciously to reassert cisnormativity and the status quo. — praxis

I don’t think it was unconscious what happened there, nor about any cultural/ideological status quo. That’s university-speak, or secular church speak. There are times and places for everything. Time for preaching and a time for… not-preaching. We all need to read our audience. Budweiser leadership was willing to overlook the average Bud consumer and his reasons for purchasing Bud, to basically ignore the obvious shock of their cultural/political/ideological lesson. Fine. If they think that is good business for Budweiser. Fine. Turns out it wasn’t. Was it unconscious disdain for their own consumer demographic by an enlightened and awoken upper leadership? Probably not that either - just a bad idea for an ad campaign. (Now a bad idea for a political campaign.).

I agree with this need to go deeper; I would only suggest that we have not drawn out and made explicit for consideration these “urges” (I would say taking them as “legitimate” would be to treat them as the concern of a serious, intelligible person; not just a feeling, or fleeting desire). The fact that they are “underlying” is because we have not yet made the effort to look past our own criteria and (perhaps also unexamined) interests to see theirs, treat them with the respect of being able to be different but equally able to be considered once understood. — Antony Nickles

I agree - racism, sexism, and many societal ills championed by the proponents of wokism are true ills. Those who want to utterly downplay and de-prioritize them (from the right) should not get away with it. But those who want to destroy perfectly good institutions because they aren’t improved enough for them (from the left) should not get away with it either.

Both sides of the issue are disrespectful and over-confident in their righteousness.

Take the heat and venom out, and look for the facts and the arguments - and most of all, show good-faith and assume good-faith in others first (until proven otherwise - sort of due process for a respectful disagreement).

I think most people fear giving the other side of the argument any points or even admitting their facts because in doing so, they will lose some perceived ground - so we all can’t simply be reasonable and go where the facts and arguments lead us. Instead we all have to frame and reframe the issues to keep control of the conversation and force our own conclusions. It’s all coercion first and we’ll sort out the facts later. (For many…not all.)

Like just above, @praxis had to make sure there was nothing productive and positive to learn about the Budweiser affair, because you can’t give deplorables like Kid Rock an inch or the slippery slope will take us all down. The reverse is true for me, I can’t assume there is nothing for me to reassess about Kid Rock and Bud drinkers whatsoever because they were unwilling to support a transgendered Bud representative.

There are legitimate points to be made from all different perspectives and directions. I risk sounding like a relativist saying this, but it’s true, and that is the point - we need to admit the truth both sides see between them. It’s not relativism to recognize diversity has value; but it is not equitable or inclusive to assume Kid Rock didn’t have a point about what Bud is supposed to be if you want the average Bud drinker to pay you for it.

I don’t think it was unconscious what happened there, nor about any cultural/ideological status quo. That’s university-speak, or secular church speak. — Fire Ologist

I was attempting to adopt woke-speak or what the anti-woke decidedly don't speak. I thought that was clear.

How would you view the incident through the lens of wokeness or critical theory?

if one remains at the surface level of ‘things wokists do that annoy us’, the baby is nothing but these arbitrary and wrongheaded actions — Joshs

I, again, am wholly convinced you're trying to have a different discussion, and save the term from what is clearly a current actuality under its banner. I do, fully agree with this, though:

There are legitimate points to be made from all different perspectives and directions. — Fire Ologist

The issue is that plenty of points on the 'woke' side are clearly illegitimate and I think that's what's being discussed. Even if we (those of us who are clearly critical) were to accept the underlying basis for "woke" as it was throughout the 70s and 80s, we can still make all of the criticisms we're currently making. That there's some coherent underlying idea doesn't change anything about these critiques. We're talking about what is/is happening - not what should be/be happening.

The responsibility to make that effort is each of our duty as moral agents, as citizens of a democracy, even the work of philosophy. — Antony Nickles

I do not thikn I agree there's any responsibility to interrogate prima facie irrational positions in hopes to find something interesting to the other person. But i understand that there's a moral/co-operative dimension to this which I agree with.

The fact that they are “underlying” is because we have not yet made the effort to look past our own criteria and (perhaps also unexamined) interests to see theirs, treat them with the respect of being able to be different but equally able to be considered once understood. — Antony Nickles

The seems to be hte exact opposite of what, in practice, occurs. I do not (almost ever) see rejections of calls for parity, equity, inclusion etc.. on emotional grounds.
I see the reverse constantly, in the face of rational argumentation.

The other problem is this(anecdote):

I have spent years trying to get rational, well-grounding and intelligible responses from the 'woke' about why they do what they do, or want what they want.

"injustice makes me feel bad" seems to be the bedrock of 90% of these people's thinking. I spent years (a decade maybe) in that exact headspace: My feelings matter. They are reasonable. They are important. Others need to take me seriously.

I then realised that was horsecrap. No one needs to take me seriously. No one has to respect my positions.No one needs to even hear my positions. If the urges are to be heard/seen etc.. then they are misguided. If they are to ameliorate ones emotional distress, they are misguided. If there are, in some sense, to do with a high-level discussion of justice, then they are misguided. Anecdote, definitely. But I have since then, approached the 'woke' with extreme sympathy because of my journey, as it were. I have never been met with reasonable discourse or sympathetic interlocutors. They notice I am not the same as them, and its over, in terms of respect. Its higihly ironic, hypocritical and gives the distinct impression the "underlying urges" are as irrational as the manifestations (wholly reasonable and expectable that they would be).

reform of wokist excesses can take place within the bounds of these philosophical ground — Joshs

They can't, it appears. Theory isn't particularly of any moment here. Those frameworks are what drives the more ridiculous of the manifestations some would critique (like a lot of University administration behaviour around DEI). I think it might a "You just don't understand" to take this line, myself. We are not ignorant to this and the surrounding development of thought - we just reject that this saves anything, i'd say.

This is to put the responsibility on them to meet our (society’s) requirements and criteria — Antony Nickles

Yes, and that is because we actually do understand

interests and reasons — Antony Nickles

by speaking to these people and reviewing what they cite as influences. This can easily be done, and regularly is done by critics. It is not a reflection of reality to suggest we don't understand their motivations, desires or needs. That is special pleading of a kind.

If we grasp at something like this with our terms for judgment, we only see what we want. — Antony Nickles

I disagree. You might. But besides this, I see no problem. That's their problem at this point of the journey. If they refuse to become either explicit, rational and intelligible, I can't do anything with that. I can only do something with what I am given. This isn't to dismiss the point you've actually made - it may well be hte crux of the tension. I just don't see this as at all incumbent on my or my "side" as it were.

It is not a matter of being a metric (a criteria for accuracy—which is judged differently), but an expert as a valued source of evidence of what matters, perspective on our current criteria. — Antony Nickles

I can't make heads or tails of this. It is a metric for valuing those opinions. And the metric is amorphous, indefinable and obviously impossible to arbitrate in that lane (lived experience). There is no way to value an opinion over another outside of actual expertise, as you then go on to outline. A "legal opinion" is not a personal opinion.

I believe the claim is that in certain situations (as I discussed), it matters to have input from someone who has lived through something. — Antony Nickles

Yes, i understand the claim. I largely reject it. It is almost entirely impossible to give a reasonable, helpful account of osmething one lived through because we cannot extract ourselves from the effects we are experiencing. People experience things so radically differently, there's simply no way to choose which opinions can be called "important" and to what end. I think.

Was it unconscious disdain for their own consumer demographic by an enlightened and awoken upper leadership? — Fire Ologist

Yet, a company like Jaguar has conscious disdain for their consumer demographic and reduced their sales by 90%. Because no one likes the product. No one wants a can of Bud with a clear male dressed as a woman(i'm happy to call Dylan she, I'm just making the point). That's odd, irrelevant and off-putting, even if you're fine with transwomen. Dylan, particularly, appears to be a mentally ill narcissist. Nothing to do with cisnormativity. That type of claim (made by praxis, not you) is tantamount to saying "the reason I need to support my position is the one which is true". But given praxis wasn't in the boycott group, that seems a little off. Someone in the boycott group can easily give explicit reasons, and they mostly amount to the above (when asked by me, or what i've seen online, anyway).

Those who want to utterly downplay and de-prioritize them (from the right) should not get away with it. — Fire Ologist

They don't. They say they are not the problems the Woke present them to us as. Is racism extant? Yep. Is it systemic?? Almost certainly not. The law doesn't allow it. Yet, any perceived disparity will be held up as an example of it. We can play that game in the reverse, and support hte idea that hte USA is highly sexist against Men, for instance.

I'm going to give praxis' challenge a go from the post below also:

I would say that the only "woke" way of looking at this is that there's a tension in language, and that the cis-normative men were threatened by a feminine spokesperson, and particularly a male who is so feminine, she's a woman, representing them. That discomfort must be borne of homophobia and transphobia because there aren't other rational reasons (or, alternately, they are all what's called "dog whistles").

Just so you're aware, this is what I was told. Not what I am imagining.

I was attempting to adopt woke-speak or what the anti-woke decidedly don't speak. I thought that was clear. — praxis

I missed it.

How would you view the incident through the lens of wokeness or critical theory? — praxis

Through the lens of wokeness - probably exactly like you did. Maybe add homophobia to the analysis. I don’t know if bud light is sold at Disneyworld, but if so, it was probably all part of a planned conspiratorial attack…

There are legitimate points to be made from all different perspectives and directions.
— Fire Ologist

The issue is that plenty of points on the 'woke' side are clearly illegitimate and I think that's what's being discussed. — AmadeusD

I guess part of my point is that neither side will hear the other, certainly not hear arguments against their own position coming from the other, unless and until they perceive a good-faith willingness of the other side to accept points in favor of their own side.

But it’s a small point I guess, and is not really any different about any discussion between entrenched sides on any issue, so maybe not needed.

This said, i think the most intuitive problem is that, generally, the 'woke' claim that morality is rational, but relative. If so, they have absolutely no place to make moral commands of others, even in their own culture. That is to say: one ought not throw stones once one denounces stone-throwing. — AmadeusD

Another problem is that many of the woke claim that everything is just a power game, a jockeying for power. The wokeness of such a person is apparently just a power game, just a jockeying for power. There is good independent evidence for this too, for example in the way that reasons run short when one wants to know why something like inclusion should be elevated above all other values.

So I think that if we read such people according to their own hermeneutic, then we also come to the conclusion that their philosophy is a power grab driven by primarily emotional factors.

:up: Yeah. I think that's quite important though. Bad faith is the most common currency at the present time (maybe, always).

So I think that if we read such people according to their own hermeneutic, then we also come to the conclusion that their philosophy is a power grab driven by primarily emotional factors. — Leontiskos

Seems to me to be true, empirically. That is to say, not a comment on Joshs' position. There may well be underlying reasons that support that type of behaviour without it being a power-grab.

However, like Terence McKenna once said "There wasn't much Stalin could do about Stalinism once it got going".

Probably a lot of ground-team type personalities reject current "woke" but still stand ten-toes deep on the original concept. Which I think its "correct" morally.

I’m watching the Bishop Barron video. The first factual error I noticed is that he claims Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault belong to the Frankfurt school of critical theory (he says Derrida is the patron saint of critical theory) , which is not true. Instead, they were critical of Marxism and the Frankfurt school. Deconstruction overturns the assumptions of Marxism. The second one is where he says that critical theory privileges the subject over the body in a radicalization of Descartes. On the contrary, critical theory moves away from Cartesianism by showing the subject to be formed through structures of bodily, material and social interactions. Postmodernists like Derrida and Foucault go much further, making the subject nothing but an effect of these worldly interactions. Barron also claims that gender theory privileges subjectivity over the body, as when someone claims that they were born in the wrong body. But at least some within the transgender community accept the biologically-based theory that psychological gender is a function of brain ‘wiring’ that one is born with. Furthermore, as someone who is apparently so concerned about protecting the truths concerning the body, Barron should know that many of today’s leading theorists associated with the new synthesis approach to evolutionary biology as well as embodied approaches to cognitive science are sympathetic to critical theory.


Barron also argues that Critical theory is radically relativistic. It isn’t. It adheres to a form of realism and as a result believes in the notion of social progress and emancipation. Only postmodern writers like Nietzsche, Foucault and Derrida reject realism and grand narratives of emancipation, but wokism embraces these narratives and their accompanying moralism.

Barron blames Derrida’s use of binary oppositions for the sorts of black and white oppositions used by wokists (oppressor/oppressed, master/slave, privileged/marginalized), but unlike in Crrical theory, Derrida’s binaries are not dialectical oppositions. Deconstruction shows what continues to bind together groups on either side of an oppositional divide, so one can never simply overcome what one opposes.
Finally, he asserts that for Critical theory power is the central principle of society, and that it supersedes truth (such as that 2+2=4). But there is no central tenet of wokism arguing that 2+2 can equal anything we want it to (in spite of a handful of wokists who may or may not have made that claim), because critical theorists are realists, not radical relativists.

wokists who may or may not have made that claim), because critical theorists are realists, not radical relativists. — Joshs

I think you may be missing a trick wihch is implicit in all our comments here... These are not synonymous. At all.

I think you may be missing a trick wihch is implicit in all our comments here... These are not synonymous. At all. — AmadeusD

Then you’ll need to inform Bishop Barron of your tricks, because apparently he hasn’t gotten the memo. It’s clear from the video that he believes Critical theory is, if not synonymous with, then the basis of wokism. He specifically states that Critical theory has expressed itself as wokism (24:54). If what is implicit in “all your comments” is something contrary to this, then I’m not sure why Leonstikos directed me to this video.

Through the lens of wokeness - probably exactly like you did. Maybe add homophobia to the analysis. I don’t know if bud light is sold at Disneyworld, but if so, it was probably all part of a planned conspiratorial attack… — Fire Ologist

I almost added homonormativity but thought it superfluous to the point. Anyway, wokeness critiques visible social structures. You’re employing culture war rhetoric, not CT.

But I have since then, approached the 'woke' with extreme sympathy because of my journey, as it were. I have never been met with reasonable discourse or sympathetic interlocutors. They notice I am not the same as them, and its over, in terms of respect. Its higihly ironic, hypocritical and gives the distinct impression the "underlying urges" are as irrational as the manifestations (wholly reasonable and expectable that they would be). — AmadeusD

That is my experience too. Anti-woke people who want to discuss these issues with the other side have to be practiced in tolerance and always looking for the best light possible just to have conversations that last longer than 4 minutes. Otherwise, there is no actual conversation that ever happens. I have close friends and family that are fully woke and liberal, whereas I am more libertarian/independent but leaning conservative. They think because I want to enforce immigration law I must simply be a racist. They are basically waiting for my true racist colors to show and don’t really understand how I might not actually give a crap what race people might be. We love and respect each other (on other grounds and because I don’t mind people who are ironically intolerant and uncritically prejudiced), but mostly steer clear anymore of real conversations. I’ve spent hours in conversations about politics and we maybe come together on one small point about the media, or about Chinese freedom of speech - like the lowest hanging fruit. That’s as far as it ever got.

critical theory moves away from Cartesianism by showing the subject to be formed through structures of bodily, material and social interactions. Postmodernists like Derrida and Foucault go much further, making the subject nothing but an effect of these worldly interactions. — Joshs

I just wonder why this process which sounds like it should be neutral as to outcome always yields the same political conclusions. Liberal wokism is the only result of postmodernism - how is such uniformity of outcome possible given such undefined unformed clay as “bodily, material and social interactions.” Why is there no legitimate facist dictator, but there can be a legitimate woke pontificator?

Thought experiment - if all maga, all racist, all conservative, all anti-woke people just left the planet, and all rich people (top 5%) all gave away all of their money and property to the poor and left the plant too - how long before the remaining population became divided along the same lines as it is today? How long before the upperclass formed and oppressed the rest? How long before inequality and injustice weren’t as ubiquitous as they are now? A month? 5 years? How long before there was a war?

How many thousands of years will the self-reflective creature that we are ever really admit that it is mercy and forgiveness, not justice and equality, that are our only hope of progress? How many times will we hear the word “fight” from every single political leader before we realize we have no idea what peace would look like anyway? Trump gets shot and stands up and says “fight” (maybe give him a pass because he just got shot); Harris just gave a speech to youth this week and in her concession speech after the election, she said “fight” - everyone always says it. Like jihad - that’s our basic modus operandi - jousting with words.

You’re adopting culture war rhetoric, not CT. — praxis

I went to college too long ago I guess.

Probably a lot of ground-team type personalities reject current "woke" but still stand ten-toes deep on the original concept. — AmadeusD

True, and that seems to be one of the elephants in the room. I wonder if any within this thread would say that wokeness never got off the rails?

I went to college too long ago I guess. — Fire Ologist

Rather, your unwillingness to to employ CT expresses your anti-wokeness.

- I think you're reading a lot of things between the lines that aren't there at all. For example:

he asserts that for Critical theory power is the central principle of society, and that it supersedes truth (such as that 2+2=4). But there is no central tenet of wokism arguing that 2+2 can equal anything we want it to (in spite of a handful of wokists who may or may not have made that claim), because critical theorists are realists, not radical relativists. — Joshs

Where does Barron claim that power supersedes truth for Critical theory? He points to the way that it can do that, and does do that for some Critical theorists. You seem to agree but want to dismiss that "handful of wokists."

Read more charitably, his point is that the broad genealogical lineage of wokism—especially its voluntaristic roots—is ordered towards the very things that we see in wokeism today.

Deconstruction shows what continues to bind together groups on either side of an oppositional divide, so one can never simply overcome what one opposes. — Joshs

Now apply that to your post, because you transgress this principle multiple times. You say, for example, that Derrida was critical of Marxism and therefore Marxism cannot be used to explain his thought. On the contrary, a critic of Marxism is by that very fact informed by Marxism - especially one who holds that one can never simply overcome what one opposes.

The first factual error I noticed is that he claims Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault belong to the Frankfurt school of critical theory (he says Derrida is the patron saint of critical theory) , which is not true. Instead, they were critical of Marxism and the Frankfurt school. — Joshs

Here's Wikipedia, which sort of sums up the way in which your post is filled with half-truths:

Critical theory continued to evolve beyond the first generation of the Frankfurt School. Jürgen Habermas, often identified with the second generation, shifted the focus toward communication and the role of language in social emancipation. Around the same time, post-structuralist and postmodern thinkers, including Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, were reshaping academic discourse with critiques of knowledge, meaning, power, institutions, and social control with deconstructive approaches that further challenged assumptions about objectivity and truth. Though neither Foucault nor Derrida belonged formally to the Frankfurt School tradition, their works profoundly influenced later formulations of critical theory. Collectively, the post-structuralist and postmodern insights expanded the scope of critical theory, weaving cultural and linguistic critiques into its Marxian roots. — Critical Theory | Wikipedia

As someone who began studying for his doctorate in Paris in 1989, Barron knows a fair bit about figures like Foucault and Derrida. He is probably not as up to date on your wheelhouse of "enactivism" given that that is a more recent movement, but I doubt his genealogy requires such a thing.

It's good of you to watch the video, and I would be interested to know if you think he identifies a philosophical root of wokeism that is inaccurate. But the things you are bringing up now read like quibbles, such as the idea that Derrida is not central to Critical theory because he did not formally belong to the Frankfurt School.

Edit:

critical theorists are realists — Joshs

This seems highly inaccurate to me, so after finding no evidence of this I queried Perplexity.ai:

Are critical theorists realists?

Critical theorists and realists are distinct groups, but there is overlap between some critical approaches and a philosophical position known as critical realism. In general, most critical theorists are not realists in the traditional philosophical sense—especially within the Frankfurt School tradition and related approaches, which often critique the very idea of objective reality and emphasize the role of social constructions and power in shaping what counts as "truth"... — Perplexity AI

So my intimation that your claim is highly inaccurate is now stronger. Note too that the folks on TPF who gravitate towards Critical theory generally do not consider themselves realists.

I do not (almost ever) see rejections of calls for parity, equity, inclusion etc.. on emotional grounds. I see the reverse constantly, in the face of rational argumentation. — AmadeusD

Another rejection is in limiting what counts as “rational” “argumentation”. Wittgenstein points out that there is not one standard but that each practice has different criteria for what counts, with a discussion of norms different from a point at which there is no given authority for the determination of what is right, different from a political debate, etc.

There is no way to value an opinion over another outside of actual expertise, as you then go on to outline. A "legal opinion" is not a personal opinion. — AmadeusD

I don’t think it is valuing one opinion over another, but valuing one person over another. We are not at this point judging their evidence in the decision but their value at the table. However, to call what someone says an “opinion” is to miss that we do have criteria for judging what is said based on the situation, type of decision. etc.; and calling (just some?) opinions “personal” is to imagine the world of rational discourse (already) exists apart from our efforts in making it so.

It is almost entirely impossible to give a reasonable, helpful account of something one lived through — AmadeusD

It is not the account of their lives that is valuable, it is their having lived in the context, been affected by the current criteria/practices, etc.

Rather, you unwillingness to to employ CT expresses your anti-wokeness. — praxis

You got me.

You said anti-woke means asleep and unaware.

I guess as analogously (because I mange to wake up, and navigate the city streets). Or what exactly do you know I am unaware of? Should we both just assume the rest about me? Do you have all you need to know already now that I failed a CRT test?

I am not unwilling.

I may be unable. But I willingly tried. I wrongly, according to you, brought in ‘homophobia’ much like self-described formerly woke @AmadeusD did, after my post. So you accused Kid Rock of bad faith - are you hinting at some sort of bad-faith on my part because of my “unwillingness”?

Could there be anything you are unwilling to do or say towards me, the now anti-wokist?

I willed an attempt in good faith.

I was attempting to adopt woke-speak or what the anti-woke decidedly don't speak. I thought that was clear. — praxis

Now it’s not clear to me. Are you “pro-wokeness”? Or are you something else, and just “attempting to adopt” for sake of argument, someone else’s speak? I am not accusing you of bad faith, I am just saying I am not sure about you being woke-leaning or not anymore.

And if you are woke, what do you think, personally. In any speak. Since you raised Bud Light, who were the good guys and bad guys, if any - what’s a better CRT answer if that is what you think?

Most concisely would simply be what the term implies: asleep or unaware. — praxis

Cf:

...it is also worth noting that wokeness is not inherently reactionary, at least in one particular sense. The name conveys this, "woke." "Awake." It is styled as a project to awaken the slumbering, not to chastise the aberrant. Obviously that didn't last long, but it does point to the idea that the genesis of the movement was not a reaction to something like the "anti-woke." — Leontiskos

From the moment I heard about "woke" I thought about the way that Buddhists use the same metaphor of awakening. Yet with time the gulf between a Buddhist approach and a woke approach has proved remarkably wide, and I think the Buddhists leverage the metaphor much more consistently. The repudiatory nature of wokeness is inconsistent with the metaphor of waking from slumber.

@Joshs @Number2018

But then there is also the disparagement of custom that is so obvious in thinkers like J.S. Mill, which has become almost a heroic virtue in contemporary society. It's a sort of trope of modern hero narratives that the heroic protagonist has no time for custom and "paves their own way." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I want to say that the precursor is the undervaluation of the conservative instinct, or the status quo, or tradition (or whatever else one wants to call it). — Leontiskos

A breath of fresh air to have actual political philosophy come up (even if peripherally). Mill, Emerson, and Rousseau (even Nietzsche, more controversially) all define the political as a relationship between the individual and our culture. Emerson will say we at times need to be “adverse” to it, Rousseau that we withhold our consent to the social contract. What gets overlooked in the push back and distance is that we push from our current practices and judgments; our new claims are intelligible in relation to our present culture. Wittgenstein will discuss this as extending a series. A moral claim is in an area we are at a loss as to how to continue, and I argue that we do not yet understand the criteria and interests for moving forward, but where we go is structurally tied to our history (despite my call to see the other on their terms). Nietzsche criticizes the stasis and implementation of deontology, but he does not abandon norms and morals, only pointing out their death and bringing life to them, that they exist in time, subject to our revision.

@Joshs @Leontiskos @Fire Ologist @Number2018

I would never dismiss anyone’s beliefs and concerns so long as he was talking about them. But activism is not conversation. It is anti-social, ill mannered, and unethical behavior, in my view, no matter the intent, no matter the politics. I would likely dismiss it and ignore it. — NOS4A2

This is going to be tricky so grant me some leeway (if I haven’t asked enough for philosophers not to jump to judgment). I’ll caveat that no one wants discourse to break down into, say, worst case, violence, and this also will not be a justification of what I’ll just call poor manners. However, to take the extreme example, although violence is unintelligible on its face, we can—only in that it is possible to—discover interests that we may not recognize as our culture stands (even if we have to imagine those for others). Just to say that seeing what is important to the other may not be given to us, handed to us on our terms. We may not first understand how to see their interests, but that does not preclude us methodologically, epistemically.

@NOS4A2 said that activism is not conversation. I think that's basically correct. Activism is focused on an outcome:

Activism: the use of direct and noticeable action to achieve a result, usually a political or social one — Cambridge Dictionary

Activism: a doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue — Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Activism: the policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change. — Oxford Languages Dictionary

Generally activism is not an attempt to rationally persuade others to adopt a particular view. So if the wokist is an activist, then their activity is not aimed at rational persuasion. What follows is that to try to agree or disagree with an activist is a category error. The "game" that the activist is playing requires others to either support and ally with them, or else to oppose them (and because of this activism has a lot to do with "material positions"). The activist wants to achieve an outcome, and they aren't overly scrupulous about how that outcome is secured.

The question arises: Should we attempt to understand and sympathize with activists? And, supposing we want to play their game, should we attempt to understand and sympathize before we choose to either support or oppose them? I think some will say, "Yes, because we should always try to be compassionate and understanding, and therefore we should try to be compassionate and understanding towards the activist."

This gets complicated, but with @NOS4A2 I would say that the act of activism precludes this response to one extent or another. The activist is treating everyone, friend and foe, as a means to an end. Even if we grant for the sake of argument that we should prefer compassion and understanding, the advice that we should treat everyone with an equal amount of compassion and understanding turns out to be false. It is false because it is fitting to treat those who are attempting to use us as a means to their end with less understanding and compassion—and more suspicion!—than those who are treating us respectfully, as autonomous persons. It is no coincidence that everyone tends to treat activists with less compassion and understanding than those who engage them as equals, utilizing forms of persuasion rather than forms of coercion.

So I see 's response as appropriate. We can of course treat the activist as if they are not an activist, or ignore the activism that they are currently engaged in, but it is eminently reasonable to treat the activist as an activist and to recognize that they are attempting to use you as a means to their end. Incidentally, this is why one with the virtue of modesty will be averse to publicizing even true virtue, much less virtue signaling or engaging in activism. They will not be comfortable with achieving an end via improper means. Cf. Matthew 6:16-18.

Being "awake" used to be a reference to the Matrix movie, in which the lead character swallows a red pill and gets to see the world for what it really is.

It's about the dynamics of power.

Woke-ism cleverly shifted the spotlight from the elites, which are the actual problem, in favor of scapegoating average (white) Joes.

Gee, I wonder why the political class loved woke-ism so much.

I wrongly, according to you, brought in ‘homophobia’ — Fire Ologist

I said that I almost included it myself but didn't think it necessary to make the point. That's not saying you were wrong.

From the moment I heard about "woke" I thought about the way that Buddhists use the same metaphor of awakening. Yet with time the gulf between a Buddhist approach and a woke approach has proved remarkably wide, and I think the Buddhists leverage the metaphor much more consistently. The repudiatory nature of wokeness is inconsistent with the metaphor of waking from slumber. — Leontiskos

Awareness is the precondition for both rejection and liberation. You can’t reject what you don’t know exists, just like you can’t escape a cage you don’t realize you’re in.

Gee, I wonder why the political class loved woke-ism so much. — Tzeentch

The same reason the political class loves anti-wokeism.