I’m a progressive, but we may look back on woke-ism as perhaps overcompensating. I worry about societal division. We can go so far in what appears to be the right direction that we lose sight of the big picture, like narrowly following old driving directions and getting lost when the world changes.
@manton this is you right now. there is no such thing as “woke-ism,” that is a right wing talking point.
@manton Yes. I feel that this is a severe problem these days. And it gives a boost to a lot of dubious and shady political forces at least virtually everywhere in the West. 🙁
@manton I think that’s reasonable and I agree with you, but it seems unfair that conservatives never seem to do self-reflection. At least not in my lifetime. They just continue to tilt harder and harder into unreasonableness, and drags everyone else along.
@manton Ouch. I don't think I've fallen for a talking point but it is something I've been thinking about. Either way I do think "woke" is too broad a stroke, too simple to encompass everything that is happening.
@danimal Totally. Democrats often seem like the only ones who are self-critical, to a fault sometimes, although maybe a little credit to the never Trump-ers too.
@Jonah To be honest I wanted to keep it vague to avoid debates. Just a general feeling, not really one specific thing.
@ronkjeffries I’m really starting to embrace the oscillation, honestly. (Apparently this is “metamodernism”) A lot of these corrections may be over corrections, but they get us closer to the central tenant, which in this case is “treat people like people.”
Or “love your neighbor as yourself”. 😇
@manton yea that’s because it’s rightwing propaganda.
you did fall for it.
exactly what should we stop doing? advocating for trans rights and against genocide?
@manton Youngsters are protesting unjust war and women are fighting for reproductive rights. We won in the seventies and here we are again - don’t you think that the progress we made is something of an illusion? We won in the seventies but nobody is guaranteeing victory today. Keep pushing!
@manton can you define what wokeism is ? The world has regressed so much in the past 12 years we feel closer to 84 than 2024 ! Maybe not for you, but as a gay man I am concerned for the future.
@manton How about you define woke and say exactly which element is too much? It’s nearly always used undefined (and in bad faith) to avoid saying exactly what you’re opposing.
@Geekmoose I am also concerned, even if not everything affects me directly. So much progress we took for granted feels like it is unraveling.
@Geekmoose Sorry, to be honest I wish I hadn't used the work "woke" because just the word itself creates problems. 🙂 To define it I think I would need to write a much longer post.
@manton I think it’s good that people that haven’t had their own voice heard before, are now able, (still with fear of their own security), to be heard. One of the biggest problems now is that there are forces within the country, as well as from other countries, that benefit from division. They will try to amplify the differences and try to get people angry and hurt. 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙
@manton no, I’m intrigued as to what the overcompensation against right wing, fascist, authoritarianism (with a side dose of religious fundamentalism) actually looks like.
I’m also very interested in what the corrective measures to this would look like……
@Geekmoose This is admittedly the problem with me not defining my terms. I agree there probably isn't an overreaction to authoritarianism. Some issues I see very clearly, and some are a little more murky.
@manton I don’t care about division if in order for it to be mended people have to have their life or dignity compromised.
It’s as simple as do you want to be a decent human being or not.
@manton The way Woke is used (and you are using it now) is essentially a propaganda term used by the US far right. If you want to talk about people being overzealous in working for progressive causes you can do that, but that's something else.
As many have pointed out ”Woke” is a nebelous term, which means reactionaries (and conservatives) can use it to slag off anything they don't like without seriously engaging in the argument. I don't think this is your intent here, but it shows have effective this rhetorical trick has been. Stuff like this shows how important it is to understand propaganda and rethorical tricks, lest you become someone else's tool.
Woke did have a meaningful use and definition: as a term used exclusively among black people in the US to refer to waking up how they are being treated there (so, not a word for you or me).
@manton when someone brings up examples of “wokeness gone too far” I often find it clarifying to ask what the actual material impacts are. Are people’s lives impacted, are power structures enforcing the issues, etc. most of the time, I find that in the cases where I am concerned about an overreaction, the example is one that doesn’t have actual teeth, and the backlash from power is both more reactionary than I think is appropriate & has more impact.
