I am not disagreeing with you or with the excerpt.

This is a language problem, not a misconstruing of what things are (and what things are not).

We should not say “the” mind.

We should say “minding” as a verb, or gerund.

The saying “make up your mind” is when or how (not what) a mind is.

Mind comes to be, thinking about.

See the seer of seeing.

Mind the minder of minding.

We cannot do it, yet here we are doing it.

Mind, as thing, is paradox. Impossible, in the act of constructing this impossibility.

They will complain of straw men, of trolling, or simply of rudeness, apparently being astonished that folk could be so discourteous … — Banno

Or they will say thank you…

A similarity in the two is that both a surfer and a board can decide to hang 10. — praxis

Next top surfer title has to be - “The Chairman”

Or do we allow men and women to compete together and name the victor “The Chairperson”.

The trophy can be someone standing on a conference room table, hanging 10.

How can life be justified in spite of all the suffering it entails? — kirillov

I don’t know - if there is no miracle coming, and life was intentionally inflicted on us, then maybe it can’t be justified. If life is a big accident, then it doesn’t have to be justified.

But I don’t know, besides God.

Do you wish you never suffered at all, and no one else did, or do you wish that you and everyone else never suffered again?

If you only wish you had suffered less, that is not the question and so not an answer. We already do suffer less, and more, as each comes and goes.

But do you wish to never have suffered at all, or do you wish to live with relief that is permanent and thorough?

We can also abandon the experiment, if that’s what this means; or just try it out. Your call. — Antony Nickles

I didn’t mean to imply abandoning the experiment.

I guess I’m saying it needs more structure (in my eyes) to ensure it is even related to wokeness, and the way I propose giving it that structure is with a bit of dialectics - adding some Yang of goals, to the Yin of assumptions and criteria, to then come back with a new synthesis and re-inquire about the assumptions and criteria (the experiment).

But to recap progress (I’ve asked the secretary): we are seeing criteria reflecting assumptions in the identification of: general lived experience, leadership, practical task at hand experience, moneymaking/fundraising, goal setting. I see some methodological awareness of a distinction between judging, and understanding, and some thing understood. (But we haven’t really fleshed that out yet).

That’s all mostly Yin. Method. Criteria. Not many assumptions made explicit.

I’d like to provisionally “cash out” this just to see what happens - to see if the experiment is going to help us at all to understand wokeness. I am losing sight of that. OR maybe there are tons of assumptions YOU have in mind that make all of this clearly about wokeness. Please put them on the table.

But to continue building the experiment I’ll call “How to Build a Better Board”:

What kind of company? This will matter. Is it an American based for-profit, publicly traded mineral and mining company with 5,000 employees whose business model involves trashing third world resources? Is it a non-profit think tank aimed at educating HR departments in how to foster DEI? Let’s go more neutral, and say it’s a small business (200 employees), that makes low cost baby and children supplies (whatever that means, doesn’t matter to me more than manufacturing/selling kid stuff). So a nice little retail/manufacturing start up, privately held corporation, struggling to grow in today’s marketplace. (Or you tell me if this kind of detail is not necessary and I’m way outside the intended experiment.)

Do they currently have 5 board members or 12? This matters because a board of 5 members leaves no room for error and each member will have hands pretty full or all will share all duties (just operate differently than a board that has room for sub-committees). Lets say they have 7 members, all of them have some degree of ownership (profit share) in the company, but there are more employees who own some of then company that are not on the board, and the Board is looking to add an 8th board member, and don’t care if they are an owner or not. (Will this new even number of 8 members allow for stalemates in voting? so do they need to consider adding 2 members and bringing the Board to 9?)

And how about this specific - which brings up age-ism - the current Board and leadership recognize the company needs a bigger and better online social media presence. Want to almost become a baby-stuff influencer as a company. Do they make someone young and fluent in social media a board member? Even if a candidate happens to be great at social media, if they are over 55, it just won’t give the appearance they want for the role. They want a mom or dad, not grandparent type, dare I say. This new board member is going to develop initiatives that involve both their employees internally (stuff to post about in the company) and they have a lot of young employees, and they will have a bit of a marketing role themselves, be a face for the Board, so a younger face makes the sense (but no one is sure it’s necessary).

Am I getting us anywhere?

An object, exists.
An object has an ontology.

The mind knows objects, so it makes sense to say the mind is therefore other than objects; the mind is not an object but an objectifier of sorts.

But holding that thought, could the mind be a different type of object?

'It is never seen but is the seer; it is never heard but is the hearer; it is never thought of but is the thinker; it is never known but is the knower'. — Wayfarer

I think the above mystical quote is more about epistemology than it is ontology. It is both. But the ultimate point may be that when we take the mind as an object, we have to actually make something other than a mind to retake as an object, so that we might know the mind indirectly. (Like we know all things indirectly. — epistemology…).

the unknowable nature of mind is something it is important to acknowledge and be aware of — Wayfarer

If you read this all together it makes sense. If you break it into parts, it becomes impossible to form a single sentence out of it.

You said “mind is something”. In order to show mind is not some thing.
You said it is an “unknowable” something, and that this unknowable nature must be “acknowledged”.

This reflexivity about impossibility is ubiquitous when speaking about the mind. Acknowledging something about the unknowable, with the mind, that is that same unknowable thing, and with the mind that is not a “the X”.

It makes it impossible to speak of without mystical non-linear reasoning. Or metaphor.

Mind is like an unmoved mover; once we say something about it, we’ve made a move, and so moved away from it.

You’ve heard it said that thoughts are in the mind - well I say it is the same thing to say that the mind is constructed by its thoughts.

To say the mind is empty is the same thing as to say there is no mind whatsoever.

It could be said that the mind is where knowledge resides. It can equally be said that the object that is known is where the knowledge was drawn from by the mind. Knowledge, in the mind, is always knowledge of something that is not the mind. (This is why knowledge of the knower is so elusive.)

Like looking in a mirror - we see it is us, as it is a reflection from us, as so it is not us, but it is a reflection of us. So not one of these, without all of these.

I find it is just as hard to accept both or either truths: that the mind is not an object, and the mind is an object. Because the mind is the object that is

the ground of experience, — Wayfarer

So I don’t want to disagree with anything you said about mind; I think, mysteriously, maybe paradoxically, I want to add knowledge of the mind that somehow there is an object there when the mind is being a thinking mind.

It’s like you have to know both that thinking itself is never an object of thought itself, but also, like Parmenides would say “it is the same thing to think as it is to be” such that thinking is the only object.

Ontology and epistemology overlap in the act that is mind.

Overlapping is like reflection.

Reflection is the best single noun.
Because reflection is many moving (conjugating) parts, but one part.

I say these things hoping better minds can make use of them.

the source from which knowledge arises. To mistake it for an object among objects is to lose sight of the subjectivity that makes knowledge possible in the first place. — Wayfarer

Does, per Kant, knowledge only arise because of the mind? Isn’t is also knowledge of some thing? Admittedly that thing is first shaped by my senses and by the conditions of experience, but it is still an experience of some thing (not pure idealism - in which mind is the only thing).

I think that it is right that calling a mind a thing is to lose sight of subjectivity. But that is the thing about the kind. It is like a mirror but a near letter t mirror, meaning when one looks at oneself, when the mind reflects its contents, the mind sees both the contents and itself, like looking in a window and seeing yourself on the other side as if it was a mirror.

The mind is both subject and object, when the mind thinks about itself.

It is not perfect - we don’t know ourselves completely. But we know some thing when we know our own minds.

A board hires someone who will best contribute to their goals
— Leontiskos

Okay, but how they decide (what is important in deciding) is based on criteria. Contributing to their goals is one criteria (do we have a goal that each other criteria satisfy? — Antony Nickles

Okay, but you need to cash this out. What does this have to do with wokeism? Are you demonstrating how woke thinkers think, or are you coming to a woke conclusion, a woke thought, somewhere in there?

I don’t think this expressly needs to have anything to do with woke yet.

A board hires someone who will best contribute to their goals. The rest of your post is based on assumptions about the different kinds of goals different kinds of boards would have. But like my other questions, I don't know why we are pretending — Leontiskos

A few posts back I raised as an interest or goal that all people are individuals, that kinds of people or groups are less important than any single individual that might be placed into the group for sake of argument.

This to me is an unwoke interest. Nothing came of it because you wanted criteria and underlying interests.

Now with the Board example, as with my individual example, I will still prioritize the particular when seeking the criteria and/or the interest/goal - I sort of, assume a criteria and find some particular with it and augment the particular by expanding the criteria.

So I can’t even begin to balance Board criteria without just discussing the particulars.
What kind of company/entity does this Board lead? For profit or non-profit? What is the product or service?
Who is on the board already? Who is being replaced, or is the new person being added?

These particulars are mostly external to the new potential Board member. The criteria you mentioned are mostly internal to the person:

history of leadership, subject-matter or practical experience, the ability to contribute to the board's goals (say, fundraising, lobbying), connections (political, celebrity). We may need to elaborate how judgments are made on those criteria with examples — Antony Nickles

These are about the new individual. Before I can start to prioritize and identify these people factors, I need to know the company, service, physical pieces…

But let’s look at what you said. One thing is the different notions “leadership, experience, moneymaking, goal setting. The other thing is “how judgments are made.”

@Leontiskos mentioned a third thing about making judgments, or understanding.

So in another prior post I talked about doing two things at once (like answer why and how, or clarify goals and criteria as @AmadeusD mentioned.”

Now in this post here, the method now becomes doing three things:
Criteria. (Substance based X)
How judgements are made. (Reasoning).
Judgment. Or understanding. (The particular truth, universalized, or simply what is now known.).

So we have some criteria and underlying bits. Now let’s talk woke or not-woke with these bits in mind.

Is your point with the board that if the company serves some group—say a minority—then that minority should be represented on the board, and that this therefore has something to do with DEI? — Leontiskos

@Antony Nickles Is there a way to promote inclusion, without first dividing different exclusive groups and identifying types of people to be included and represented, and others to be excluded as already represented enough?

Is there a way to promote equity without blindness to particulars?

Is there a way to promote diversity without recognizing all of the inequities that make things diverse?

When are we going to cash this out in terms reflecting the woke?

Let’s just pick something important, say what and how that is the case, and see what criteria emerge in the process, so that next time when we pick something else important again, we’ll have stronger criteria. Let’s go back to the topic, criteria be damned )before we damn the toooc and review the criteria again…)

His argument might be <There is a communication breakdown; if we take a step back and re-evaluate our interests we might overcome the communication breakdown; therefore let's take a step back and re-evaluate our interests>. Or if we are going to set an issue before a board or group of people we might want to establish criteria beforehand according to this argument: <If we explicate our criteria for a decision beforehand, then we will be fortified against post hoc rationalization once the arguments begin; it is good to be fortified against post hoc rationalization; therefore we should explicate our criteria beforehand>. — Leontiskos

@Antony Nickles. I think we are trying.

this meta-topic, because it is quite prevalent on TPF. Much of this will build on what AmadeusD has been getting at. Often on TPF people of a certain stripe try to talk about criteria, or frameworks, or something else as if they are presenting a wholly neutral starting point — Leontiskos

Yes. Instead of talking about some thing, we end up talking about how to talk.

I fully admit the criteria and the step back is important. It’s like putting all of the products on the shelves and giving them a price and having a cash register and hiring the employees and planning for opening day. All vital. But we never get to opening day and to cash out any of the criteria or see what products sell and which don’t and see a customer smiling as they say “thanks”.

We never conclude something together.

It’s all back-office paperwork.

I think it’s unconscious.

I also think it is a characteristic of woke - if the other party doesn’t appear to agree with you, they must need to reevaluate their whole approach so let’s talk about that instead of whatever thing we both disagree with.

But, I would rather discuss whether woke avoids direct confrontation every time - meaning argument (the woke obviously love a good protest, but they seem to hate a good disagreement.)

Or how about whether woke or traditionalists seek to verify the facts more. Both sides accuse the other of making up facts - does either side do this more often than the other (both accuse or actually use, false “facts”)?

Or we can start with a traditionalist thing - Leontiskos called wokeism heresy, and @praxis saw this as counterintuitive since woke and Christ seemed to both root for the little guy, the down-trodden. How can Leon’s heresy claim be consistent, or how come the religious are not more woke?

My point is that the idea that hierarchical thinking is an evil bogeyman is a strawman. Anyone who admits that some values are higher than others is involved in hierarchical thinking. It's just not about power stratification. The power hermeneutic is something that the woke imposes on everyone and everything. — Leontiskos

That’s what I was saying.

and simply acknowledge the absence of a state and organized religion, yes? This, in my opinion, loosens the rigidity of the bishop's hierarchy of values — praxis

I don’t know that we have any idea of what people did in a time before political and moral interaction, community narratives and stories of the dead and the invisible but apparent forces. There has always been a type of political state as soon as more than one family create a clan, and there has always been a type of religion as we see burial rituals going way back in time.

Plus you are placing an interest in egalitarianism over and above an interest in hierarchy - thereby creating a hierarchy.

So why fight the hierarchy itself? How about instead we focus on setting the right ideals and goals at the top?

What do you have to say about the fact that for 95% of human history — praxis

I’d say 95% of human history covers hundreds of thousands of years possibly, and we have scant evidence of what the moment to moment lives of those individual people were like, other than, if they were people, they found themselves dealing with hierarchy everyday. How certain are you about egalitarian hunter/gatherers? You don’t think some people consistently gathered more food than others, and stratification wasn’t considered all of the time??

I didn’t listen to the bishop.

Well since you say things you don’t mean like “humanity is evil by nature” and then don’t explain why anyone needs to know that or how it might relate to you OP, I’ll let you you know, since you don’t know, I am right. You aren’t serious. Not so much “all is lost we are doomed” serious, but sort of “this is interesting” serious…which you are not. I was right.

So I was right. :up:

Humanity is evil by nature and must atone for its sins. — frank

That’s a funny joke. Right? I mean, not so much “haha!” funny, but sort of “hmmm, I think he is kidding around” funny. It’s a form of mockery, if you will.

Because “evil” and maybe “by nature” and “atone for sins” are figments, right? Or am I the stupid one here?

Or are you the reincarnation of John the Baptist, if I may mix religious imagination (which I can’t see why you would mind that)?

Because humanity is not evil by nature. That’s just stupid. You’d have to explain how that is possible or what that means. Sounds dumb to me though, I’ll be honest.

You may need to see a psychiatrist. Because I never would have predicted such behavior as this post if you are serious. (I’m kidding of course. You’ll be fine.)

Or are you sane, and serious and you have really sinned…? In which case, I’m sorry for your loss, and you may be in big, big trouble…

:up: You can always look on the bright side of death… I hope.

My claim was the mind is not a thing. Doesn't mean it's nothing. But it's not a thing, it's not an object. Your 'experience of the mind' is not an experience at all mind is that to whom experiences occur, that which sees objects, and so forth. It is not itself an object. That's one of the things that makes philosophy of mind such a big and elusive topic. — Wayfarer

I don’t know how to deny any of that, but then there is the notion of self-reflection. Experience is what the mind does, and in that sense the mind must be unlike any of the things are experienced. But then, one of the things the mind does is reflect on what the mind does (which is unlike any other things too).

I think philosophy of mind is so elusive because the mind is at once a thing and, not like any of the other things it minds (it thinks about).

They way to experience a mind in the world like we experience other things in the world my be to experience the mind of another person. For some projects we want the minds of certain people, but for other projects, we want other peoples’ minds - these different minds are real objects distinguishable because of real experiences. And we get real results from our awareness of different minds as if they were different things.

So maybe mind or soul, to be a thing, must be bound up in a community that helps carve out and distinguish all of the different minds as now things to be experienced like other things are experienced.

I self-reflect and can find my mind needs the help of other people to figure something out, or I find my mind is sufficient to figure out this other problem.

So mind is like a thing, but not like a thing, at that same time.

But the positive contribution here is that, in order to discuss what a mind is, the notion of reflection has to be incorporated. There is something unique going on that is mind, and in every mental happening, there is a reflection involved.

Let’s pretend the mind is muscle, or a thing. When the mind does its thing I think it simultaneously does two things - it spins itself up into existence, and it fills itself up with what it is minding (thinking). So the function of mind is to self-animate, and at the same time, self-animate for a purpose or with something in mind.

This is just a theory I throw out there to hopefully make this discussion more frustrating and complex and raise more questions than answers. :grin:



I know you asked about the soul and not the mind. Soul to me is a word used as a unifying principle to integrate everything about your personhood. (What is that?). Meaning it’s like your living personality, which includes your emotions and passions and dislikes and physicality/body, and intellect and will and heart and mind - soul is all of you that matters to yourself and to anyone. Any changes made to who and what you are, are changes made to your soul, or in your soul, o by your soul. Your soul shapes your body while your body shapes your soul because you are neither of these alone both both of them at once - you are living a particular life, and that particularity is of your unique soul.

So animating principle (psuche) is a type of unifying principle. Your soul is you living, what moves you and you moving whatever you move. Soul is what is loved most in other people, and it is what enables people to love.

Other Greek words are helpful - there is nous or “mind” which is more tied to knowing and thinking (I believe), and there is daemon (from which we get demon) which is more tied to like a Freudian id, or underlying impulse and sub-conscious passion (I think).

This raises the notion of consciousness. All animals with senses display a type of conscious awareness. People are aware of their consciousness - so what appears unique to me about people is that consciousness itself is an object of human consciousness (we notice the subjectivity of others and ourselves), but other animals don’t do this (not like people do).

And this, I think, raises the fact that language itself is tied up in the soul or mind. There is something going on with the fact that only human beings, the ones who can wonder and do wonder about minds and souls, have true language. A word is a thing that reflects something else; it represents something else; it points to what the word means or names or is is used to say. So like the mind is reflection, the words the mind uses to organize its thinking, are never alone in themselves but referential and reflective of things. @Wayfarer Words, like minds, are not things. And Language is tied up in Logos (the word) which is the root of logic, which we have been using all along here to read to this post. Words only present their souls (to speak metaphorically), their meanings, in a mind. My dog doesn’t see this post has any different meaning than your original post or anyone else’s post, because my dog’s “mind” may not be a true proper reflecting mind at all.

And @Null Noir, I agree I want all of this to matter. I cannot pretend that any meaning I make for myself actually matters to me. It just sucks all the soul out of these discussions to think no one need care about anything I think, about my life. I don’t know why I would care about other people’s lives if they had no reason to care about mine, because I had no reason to care about mine, other than as a distraction from this whole question.

I’m not afraid of death - I won’t be dissappointed because when I die, I either won’t know it (because I’ll never dead) or I will learn I have been saved somehow from death.

But I believe my life matters to God. And I agree that without something more to life than birth to death, there is no real meaning to this thing. We might enjoy it anyway, but that doesn’t make it meaningful, just enjoyable. But it is because my life is enjoyable to God and other people, that it can be said to be objectively, truly good. Not because I like myself, but because am likable at all as proven because I am liked by others.

So in the end, you are meaningful, whether that means something to you or not. I hope it does.

This inversion where one places secondary things into the first place is key to wokism. -Leontiskos

Rather, the fixed hierarchy is key to power stratification that wokeness aims to reduce. — praxis

@Leontiskos

Huge.

So secondary things placed first is key to wokism.
Or, wokeness aims to reduce fixed hierarchical power stratification.

So much work to do.

I’ll start with “power stratification”.

Why does wokeism assume it must be reduced?
Is there something inherently always oppressive about hierarchy; or can hierarchy be compatible with, or even necessary for freedom and justice?

Can we question this interest first:
If “the fixed hierarchy is key to power stratification that wokeness aims to reduce”, then let’s see if that is a good goal, if that is supported by valid criteria?

My sense is wokeism judges hierarchy inaccurately as oppressive.

I can’t create an argument to prove this (someone else might), but I can give an example that allows me to judge hierarchy as neutral whereas oppression is negative, so by inference, if hierarchy is neutral, it need not be oppressive, so no need to assume so.

Hierarchy is woven into the fabric of everything and speech itself. By positing a “reduction” we still must see the higher has been make lower, and so there is simply a new hierarchy, not a non-existent “power stratification,” merely a new one. So wokeism can’t simply “aim to reduce power” (as if all power over another must be bad). If a woke person, or anyone, wants to realign power stratification, they must do just that - realign it, not simply and abstractly seek to take down all the powerful. We have to live with hierarchy and need have no interest in defeating hierarchical thinking and power structures - but we may instead need new representatives of the ideals or the high, and more humility from the ones who are led or the low. We aren’t just to embrace hierarchy either.

I’m not saying there is never a time to fight the power, to take down the man. Because there certainly is. But I am saying there is also I time to set up on high, to uphold a positive structure, and build up. So if reducing hierarchy is an essential part of wokeism, wokeism is doomed to be incomplete. It’s not a good enough goal.

The criteria are already laid out when our goals are sufficiently articulated. — AmadeusD

That’s akin to what I am saying here:

I propose we do both at once:
1. posit an interest (make a clear start - cut the “way in”)
2. say how to posit an interest (say how it is cutting and not slicing or breaking.) — Fire Ologist

I see both of these as an example of doing precisely what Antony is asking for here:

Not to judge the criteria (first) but as a means to see what the possibly unexamined interests are — Antony Nickles

The means to see what the possibly unexamined interests are is to articulate the goals while we lay we lay out the criteria these goals are articulated in/with.

Right?

We can all consider ourselves on the exact same page methodologically, and that me and Amadeus have taken a first step at a new criteria with the goals/criteria, posit a ‘what’ while saying ‘how’ method.

Can we work on method WHILE we work on goals?

Or here is a different goal:

A better life and society for everyone, wokists included. To disagree with someone is not to treat them as a means to an end. To disagree with someone implies that they have intrinsic worth. — Leontiskos

I am merely suggesting that it might be helpful to look at what is at stake, how that is… Not to judge the criteria (first) but as a means to see what the possibly unexamined interests are. — Antony Nickles

“What is at stake.” My own assumptions are at stake, and I might find my current conclusions are incoherent, unsound, factually inaccurate.

“What the possible…interests are.”

I keep hoping you’d posit an interest. And we could pick at that for criteria…but I’ll keep spit-balling.

I understand the only reason at this point to posit an interest is “Not to judge the criteria (first) but as a means…”

That’s perfectly fine. But still, I keep trying to step off of the starting line, to make my cut so we have something to contextualize again…

But let’s just say I am willing to put enough at stake to learn I was wrong - I (we) have to be honest with ourselves throughout the discussion, and be as clear as we can to each other when talking of the honest conscious thoughts.

There is criteria - at least honest opinion.

So do we have to now figure out what I mean by “honest” and “opinion” first, or do we just pick one and “Not to judge the criteria (first) but as a means…”

I am willing to look foolish here. I’m begging you make your own cut to take the heat off me with all of my…“

That was a lot of argument based on principals (like the above), which I get, but is not what I was thinking of
— Antony Nickles — Fire Ologist

Just stick with me.

discussion where we are talking about how to move forward in a situation where no one has more authority to what is right. I am suggesting that we may not see beforehand what the criteria are that we use in that scenario — Antony Nickles

So above I said what is at stake is being wrong in my own understanding or better put, learning something new that replaces what I thought I knew but did not. This is a situation where I concede my authority to something else “where no one has more authority.” Even if it is you who I say corrected me, that doesn’t matter. It is an openness to something new that must be part of the criteria, not something we thought of “beforehand.”

Now we could say:
We put X interest at stake as method, to see what “put at stake” means, and then get back to analyzing X interest with a new sense of what is at stake and a first sense of what was the criteria.

Right? Are you at least with me, if I’m not with you, which I think I am with you. (I don’t think we are getting very far yet, but want to keep reveling the engines here at the starting line.)

new or different criteria would look like, as a method, a way in — Antony Nickles

I’m already ready to jump in.

I’m willing to figure out the criteria, live in action, while floating some arguments and interests about what to do and what there is to bother to talk about.

I propose we do both at once:
1. posit an interest (make a clear start - cut the “way in”)
2. say how to posit an interest (say how it is cutting and not slicing or breaking.)

2 is how you are suggesting we do it.
1 is what I am saying we do.

We can do what and how and the same time.

I think as my first NEW assumption of method, I am positing that we address what and how at the same time as much as possible.

We can bounce between them as we actually do either one. (I posit this, because I think we are already do it, and it has gotten me this far, it is there functioning already..

But even though positing 1. above might go first, I’d rather you positi something of the criteria that you think I might speak to as well. We don’t have to start with my interest in honest opinion with a how/what method.

I keep asking - just throw an example out there.

I think I will give something else a chance (in response to Fire) since we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. — Antony Nickles

This is abstract stuff - not easy to color your thoughts into my head or worse my thoughts into your head. But I think I’m with you. If you don’t see it and that’s surely my fault - I admit I need much more editing than I give these posts, so apologies.

But I hope you see we have at least a little further to go.

rational—emotional (a version of “objective”—“subjective”) which is one thing that gets in the way, philosophically, — Antony Nickles

So do you mean 1.) is subject-object to be taken as meaningless/useless discussion, or 2.) does what subject-object mean not matter, has no needed use here and gets in the way here, and we will just get back to subject-object later?

The idea that wokeness is heretical is intriguing, especially since, on the surface, both wokeness and religion share a common concern for supporting disadvantaged communities. — praxis

So let’s say religion is concerned with supporting disadvantaged communities, those communities being people born on earth. Religion should see us all in the same predicament, all in need of an Ark to ride the storm.

This shows you the heresy. Wokeness divides us all up into privileged and oppressed. As if one group was more moral than some other. Religion, or Christianity, should find this heretical, or at least, too small minded.

The way to help the poor isn’t to take down capitalism and educate people about privilege and social construction - it’s to go out and help the poor. Woke religious folks now get to sit on their asses and argue with republicans, or maybe interfere with some rich person’s activities, or yell at a protest with a bunch of people who already agree with you, (which is way more fun than going to a soup kitchen and doing the dishes.)

That was a lot of argument based on principals (like the above), which I get, but is not what I was thinking of — Antony Nickles

That’s why I hoped you would start the interests/criteria method you propose (and which sounds good to me).

before argument, we try to figure out what interest there could be in changing and in how (to judge differently) — Antony Nickles

“Interests there could be in changing.” So when I hear that, I immediately think there is some particular thing that someone see needs to change and you are looking for what “interests there could be in changing”. Or are you asking “do you have any interest in changing any thing at all?” Like “what is your interest level in making some changes?”

Can’t you lay out some interests some criteria, sort of play this out a bit more?

I think an example always helps, even if manufactured at first) — Antony Nickles

I do too. Here we need an example of how to start the ball rolling toward the conversation you want to have. I am failing to do so.

I also don’t understand the current criteria that are used to judge a person as a unique individual — Antony Nickles

So now it seems you are playing along with me anyway, which I appreciate, but I don’t know if I respond to this I won’t be just taking us further down a direction you were not intending to go.

But I will say, it’s a good question- I didn’t say how to judge a person as unique. I was hoping we could just stipulate something like that, kind of like how @Leontiskos is using not treating people as a means with @Joshs. Thought it was easy starting point. But like I said, instead of digging into this more, can you start with something more like what you have in mind?

(Sometimes I don’t want someone unique, I just want a soldier.) — Antony Nickles

(I’d love to get back to this though. And I’d love to get back to the reasoning that says white privilege allows for white racism towards blacks, but black oppression disallows them from racism towards whites.)

But that may be too substantive as we are looking for interests and criteria for discussion.

My interest was in protecting the unique value of each individual person. This seemed too argumentative to you - what do you have in mind?

I will admit that, supposing there is a problem with wokism, the specific remedy is not obvious. Similarly, the remedy and the critique must be proportionate. For example, if a problem is intractable then a heavy-handed critique will be unfitting and hazardous. — Leontiskos

I agree with all of that.

if one tells their interlocutor that sufficient understanding has not taken place (or implies it) then they must provide their interlocutor with some means for seeing why sufficient understanding has not taken place. — Leontiskos

I call that a discussion. Which we are all having.

Hoping for more meat, so we can make a judgment about woke, or not-woke, or woke versus not-woke, or traditional conservatism, or traditional conservatism versus non-traditional/non-conservative, or how best to even frame the discussion, and why the judge is sound or better than other judgements…

in my opinion wokism is also a Christian heresy, — Leontiskos

That is interesting. It is like a new religion, and has been embraced by Christian and Jewish leaders and congregations.

what do you understand? (is it high noon?) And here I am not talking about a “position”, either in whole or in part, as in, the argument for, but the underlying interests, the difference in criteria, i.e., what matters and how are we to judge? — Antony Nickles

Ok, I’ll go first.

1. All people are different, unique individuals. (Putting people in groups, is secondary, and often just for ease of argumentation and generalization purposes). All people are unique, with particularities that deserve respect, charity, and that come from a whole person deserving love.

That is what matters about people. When there is injustice, it is a particular injustice. When there is something good, it is from one person that such good comes.

We can talk about groups and make generalizations for the sake of argumentation, but when discussing people, it is vital, essential, paramount, to remember always, the generalization and category is less than, smaller than, any single individual we might put in that box.

I don’t care about the difference between “white” and “trans” as much as I care about the positive features of a person who calls them self “white man” or “trans woman”. I just think most of the time we argue in generalities about people in order to talk about how white men are different from black men - we are mostly full of crap, because we are ignoring the important differences between this black man and that black man, or this white man and that white man. I just think honest white and black men cringe about most woke generalizations.

For instance, racism used to mean judging another by the color of their skin. (Racism was always wrong because much like I think, you can’t form a truly meaningful judge of character of an individual by judging him from the racial box he is in.). Now, due to CT and woke, only those in power can be racist. So racism doesn’t mean judging another by the color of his skin, it means when a white guy judges another by the color of his non-white skin; it means a black person in America isn’t equal to a white person and a black person can’t be racist even if he wanted to be.

That’s the kind of incoherent, self-contradictory reasoning, that harms people, and makes problems worse, and that underpins many woke positions.

I’m going to stop there.

I’d rather someone who likes wokeism tell me something essential to it that I need to understand. But I’ve talked about one of my principles that resists incorporation into woke ways of thinking and speaking, so have at it.

So yes, there is a scale of understanding and that has to do with the "extent" to which it is understood, but there is no such thing as judging something that is understood to zero extent. — Leontiskos

I agree. If I say “I know nothing about brain surgery” I am exaggerating the fact that I know very little. If I knew absolutely nothing about it, I couldn’t even call it “brain surgery.” And I would argue that I used judgment to admit I know very little about brain surgery - judgment of what I do know, and judgment of what brain surgery is.

So part of our initial criteria can’t be not to judge at all. We need some judgment to progress through a discussion, to define, to identify, to finish with a thought and judge its safe to move on to the next.

That sort of thing is precisely what is needed in order to go beyond a mere assertion of an insufficient understanding. — Leontiskos

It is time for some meat on the bone, right? I asked @praxis before and now @Antony Nickles, what don’t I understand about wokeism, or a key woke position - be it a whole position of just a key underlying interest, criteria, etc.?

I think in the end you will find that we have different interests, that maybe we can agree on criteria, and that we won’t get to the substance of an actual issue. To each of us it will look like bad-faith in the other. I hope not, but that has been my experience. If we are too careful we get frustrated before getting anywhere, and if we are not careful enough, we yell at each other instead of conversing.

So to start over:

Over-arching rule of engagement: goodwill towards the others in the discussion, and good-faith in all things proffered in the discussion. I will assume you what you say and you can assume I do as well.

Interest 1: the well-being of strangers
Criteria 1: we all know something of what it means to care for the well-being of strangers.

Interest 2: rule of law
Criteria 2: law/policy as an end in itself, and a means to effectively enforce the interests protected in individual laws.

Interest 3: reason
Criteria: use argumentation that allows for verification in fact and in validity of logic

What needs revision above and what else do we need to set the stage for a reassessment of wokeness?

I would argue that our goal is not “judgment”. In a moral situation like this, it comes down to whether we see that our (once drawn out) interests are more alike than apart, that we are able to move forward together, extend or adapt our criteria, reconsider our codified judgments, — Antony Nickles

Who wants to go first? Dig up an interest or set a criteria.

let Bud Light drinking be taken over? — praxis

I meant trans promotion had taken over bud light promotion. It wasn’t clearly stated. But not too important. @praxis is kind of running with it.

that they do not mind causing easily predictable social dis-ease. — AmadeusD

It was a predictably stupid business decision.

it wont work. It'll either tank the company, or make people vastly more abrasive to the "trans agenda" such as it exists — AmadeusD

If we make drinking alcohol legal and socially acceptable, do we have to push alcohol to all people of all ages in all settings, or is there any value to arranging a decorum and propriety surrounding alcohol consumption? Same thing with transgender. Time and a place, and read the audience. If bud light started marketing to kids and heavy machinery operators you might see kid rock shooting up cases of beer too.

we can probably both drop this example - it was cynical regardless — AmadeusD

At least we (me and praxis included) should be more clear about what we are trying to use it for.

You asked me if resistance is essential and I said that I wasn’t sure how to answer. I think it’s a good question, if extremely broad in scope. I tried to narrow the focus to the Bud Light fiasco and asked, if you regard it as a form of resistance, whether or not pushing back on that was essential. I didn’t think that I needed to say that the gesture was inessential.

Do you think the pushback was essential? — praxis

I’m not exactly sure if you are asking this of the woke or anti-woke ideologue.

One could say that Bud Light using a trans spokesperson was an act of pushback against a cisgender status quo, but I don’t think you are talking about that.

I think you mean whether the pushback from Kid Rock and all he represented was essential. So now I have to ask essential to what - is pushback essential to a traditionalist, anti-woke position? I’d say no. Traditionalists are the ones who don’t move and so they are the one’s progressive movement pushes up against.

Kid Rock was pushing back, but I think that was a sign of frustration that nothing else was working - no laws, no politicians, no arguments or discussions - just frustrated people showing off in their own bubble. I’m not sure it was activism or true policy making push back.

But you could also see it (and I think you did) as a reaction to seeing wokism as the institution and the entrenched position, so entrenched it took over Bud Light drinking - on that case, it was activism and pushback.

Last though, if you just look at what is at the essence of woke, I think activism and pushback are essential to it. Woke is more of a negative deconstruction, than it is a positive construction. We don’t need to know what gender means or is or can be, just that 3000 years of male-female binary dominance is over. We don’t need to know if African or Asian or Middle Eastern cultures belong on a hierarchy, just that White European culture should be on the bottom. Pushback is essential to how wokeism seems to express itself. It needs the big bad wolf first, to then mount its attack.

Maybe?

:up:

There are right-wing descendants of Nietzsche who also draw from Derrida, Deleuze, etc. as well as critical theory, although they tend to also mix in influences no one else pays attention to…
they have been influential through other avenues, particularly in the right wing media space and through their evangelism of Big Tech leaders. Here, the groundlessness of hierarchy and values are precisely why they need to be forcefully asserted (not made known, but constructed and endorced).

There are also some eliminitive materialists (analytics) who pick up on post-modern theory. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That makes sense it has to be the case.

I still think it is worth considering why such pluralist sources such as CT and post-modernism, vastly lead to the same progressive conclusions. If it was even 59% it wouldn’t be a good question, but it has to be more like 90% or more. Something is off about the PM and CT methodologies, where all of these more relativist/ pluralist thinking structures, like a funnel, yield the same societal conclusions.

(The pluralist/relativist baseline is why they avoid any sense of self-awareness of their own brand of facism and absolutism that can result when they have power and seek to impose these vastly uniform progressive conclusions.)

what I am addressing is the judgment I’ve seen that these moral claims are irrational, emotional, personal, etc. to point out that it is possible to get at the so far unknown interests and different criteria, apart from judging the means or even judging what we are told, as we do not yet understand the terms on which to take it. — Antony Nickles

Sounds like you are saying fruitful discussion needs to first level set the playing field. Bring all the assumptions to the surface. Or that there is a pre-discussion about “unknown interests and different criteria” and “the terms on which to take it.”

That sounds right, but would also require good-faith.

Because it also sounds like a search for dog-whistles and unconscious shortcomings and ill-motives. We have to assume good-will in a person even like Trump (because he’s president, probably should be especially like Trump), when seeking to uncover the “so far unknown interests and different criteria, apart from judging the means or even judging what we are told, as we do not yet understand the terms on which to take it.”

Is that something like what you mean?

among Critical theorists, why does Habermas reject Adorno’s negative dialectical realism in favor of a positive hermeneutic model of communicative action? Why does Rorty believe that Habermas’s reliance on Kantian categorical norms of rationality is to metaphysical? Why does Deleuze attack Rorty’s pragmatism as plaronist dogmatism? — Joshs

Do you think there is something internal to Critical Theory that would adjudicate between these many divergent views? Can CT tell us whether Rorty or Adorno or Habermas is the better way? Or is indeterminacy inherent to CT, and we will always need to wait for something even better, and/or always return to something left unfinished?

even resistance (wokeness) can be turned into a commodity — praxis

I wouldn’t say “even wokeness” - I would say clearly wokeness is a money maker. It is highly funded, lobbied, commercialized, packaged, tee-shirted, gas-masked, etc etc….

Is that a CT insight? Or just an insight? Or even just a disinterested observation?

Interesting you said wokeness is resistance. Can you elaborate - is resistance essential, like awareness is?

But this is different in that we have a known issue, a clear view of the interests, and are just debating competing criteria for a decision about what to do. And yes, we do need to also conduct such a discussion ethically as I have suggested, but I don’t take the description to be about your reasoning, as if you are unaware as in uninformed — Antony Nickles

I offered it as an example of how I reason. Maybe you personally don’t take it as a sign of me being asleep and unaware, but generally, people who talk like me are seen to be driven by unconscious fears. We are unaware of the real and whole persons affected by my policies. I dehumanize humans, by default. I am therefore a sub-human class of sorts - just deplorable. This is all packed into someone who reasons “we need stronger borders and to deport illegal immigrants.” This is packed into statements like “DEI doesn’t work.”

What I am saying is, part of the woke methodology of reasoning seems to be avoiding anything on its face that appears anti-woke, and instead analyzing for sub-text, the dog-whistle, looking for virtue signaling or lack thereof. Maga types and conservatives and tradition-lovers, are objects of incredulity, whose behavior and speech can only be examined from the outside, not engaged with directly, (as we are engaged here so you are the exception).

See my conversation with Praxis - that is how it typically goes.

Woke doesn’t clarify what their virtues are. Not to anyone perceived as anti-woke.
Woke doesn’t address what a border is and why it exists.
It doesn’t believe that the race and nationality of an illegal immigrant has zero to do with the issue. Such notions are lies and cover.

The woke person knows immigration policy is about white nationalism, racism and oppression - it’s about winning political campaigns. No need to say “border” at all.

This is one example to demonstrate what I (and others here) see as a pattern, a way of woke argumentation and thinking.

Maybe, over time, and with much more discussion, it will help Mexico and Mexican people if we secure the border. That is an insane and insensitive statement to a woke person, a lie to hide hatred and fear, a careless indifference to the suffering of human beings. End of discussion. Before any discussion starts.

I am willing to debate and be educated, but such debate almost never, in good faith, happens. My opinion is discounted by the woke from the start. That has been the case all of my adult life (since the 80s). Trump and Trumpism hasn’t fixed any of this - he’s just shown the world how there has been no conversation at all before so many changes, wanted by a few, have been forced upon everyone. And to show that, he’s forced changes on everyone - using a bludgeon, like Kid rock used gun, to restart the conversations.

Let’s pretend we are all reasonable human beings who want what is good for all human beings. Even Trump. Even Maga. (Imagine that!!). Wokism, generally, wouldn’t allow any discussion on such grounds. By definition, if I don’t already agree with what is woke, I am asleep and unable to have a reasonable conversation.

That is the problem with wokeism to me - its inability and unwillingness to debate and address reasonable challenge. (That’s what praxis said about me, as he shut down the discussion.)

And I mean no disrespect by not engaging more. — praxis

I appreciate the recognition that I could feel disrespected. A gesture of respect would have worked too, but telling me what you don’t mean by your disrespectful posts says maybe there is hope in the future for an actual conversation.

I don’t want to trash the topic further with useless bickering. — praxis

But you just did.

You could have cleaned it up by offering something of substance.

Enjoy yourself and your woke jokes!

It takes an effort to see someone as a person, as someone different than me, perhaps with competing interests, different measures of importance. In being asleep, perhaps we are not making that effort, perhaps in only looking for, or considering as valid criteria, hats and coats. — Antony Nickles

I agree with you fully about persons. Each of us are worth the effort to be seen and taken as unique and individual persons. Period.

I also think we don’t have a country without a border and we don’t have a border without telling the world to honor our rules at the border, and we are not honorable if we don’t seek to lawfully enforce those rules fairly, with no regard to race or religion or gender.

How is all of that unaware and asleep, at least how is that any more unaware than thewoke” person who thinks America will always be here for the immigrants of the world seeking to better their lives.

That is just one issue to put some minimal flesh on a bigger complex conversation. But one step at a time.

Am I deplorable and not even worth talking to? That has been the first question for the past 15 years or so before engaging any anti-woke argument. Did Trump make it all worse for those who never wanted to argue anyway, or is there anything the woke need to learn that they do not seem to be aware of?

You can’t reject what you don’t know exists — praxis

Is that a way of saying you can be woke, but I wouldn’t know it?

Just like I can be anti-woke and not even know what that means?

You could just talk to me like I’m talking to you, saying what you think yourself about the value of wokism and the situation with bud light.

Another non-conversation underway.

You have no idea if maybe “wokeness” is a type of sleep. Do you? I mean, how could you, right?

I am unaware to the extent you haven’t said what you think. That’s for sure.

Here, I’ll give you one more opportunity to tell me what you think - I’ll show you how speaking your own mind is done. I hear Cisgender versus transgender bud light drinkers? And I think that is not as meaningful as what Kid Rock said with a gun and a case of beer - which had more to do with people not wanting to make every single thing a political statement. Maybe CRT is misguided, fetishizing the political too much.

Everything does not have to be that deep - have a few beers once in a while and you might wake up to what Kid Rock was saying to all you serious politicians who know what is best to to be aware of.

If you know better, I want to wake up.

You can still be the bigger man here. I’m not that hard to talk to. All you need to do is extend half amount of thought on the issue than I’ve shared. You said the response to a transgender bud representative was unconscious reaction to a power challenge. You said a few other things. Is that it?

Is there anything at all that if made into a political issue would annoy you? Is there anything positive at all one such as yourself might draw from opposition to Bud’s ad campaign? Maybe this opposition might have less to do with cisgender normativity, and more to do with being forced to learn the meaning of “cisgender normativity” from a beer ad? Are you getting the other side at all, or must we talk about what you want to talk about only, after the beer ad plays.

You are making @AmadeusD point about how hard it is to talk to proponents of wokism (which Instill have to assume you are one, because you won’t just talk to me and tell me what I asked.)

The water is physical, and the cold temperature is physical, and the ice is physical, but is the relation that describes and accounts for the transformation itself physical? — Leontiskos

That seems straight out of Hume to me. And I see his point.

And consider the world in which water never freezes. Surely that world has one less physical thing than our world, given that it lacks ice. But does it lack a second physical thing, namely the causal relation described by the consequence? — Leontiskos

But water mixed with cooling temperature followed by its becoming frozen water or ice…

Maybe we can say that like we sense water and then sense ice, causality is something we sense over time, it’s a name for the “and then” when we mix water with cold air over time. So like the other physical things causality isn’t just a mental relationship, but the motion of objects. Causality is a type of motion like icey or liquid are types of water depending on the temperature.

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?

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.

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.

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…

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.

The wishful thinking about wanting to remove disparities has been, and I think will continue to be, wholly destructive. People do different shit. Grow up. — AmadeusD

Yup.

Well, there was no "anti-woke crowd" before wokeness, and wokeness ironically created much of the sentiment that it claimed to oppose, such as racism. — Leontiskos

I agree with that. I don’t know how best to characterize the anti-woke. It’s like a tradition-first crowd. It’s not that they are pro-badness conducted in the past, but pro-the goodness that got us to the present.

Wokeness sees the dirty bath water and wants to throw out the dirty water while overlooking the baby.
Traditionalists want to preserve the baby, but overlook the dirty water and would rather keep it all.

Wokeness is worse, which is what I hope the current moment in history teaches us.

But the bath water is still dirty..