Comment by wrs
5 days ago
Certainly this essay is, mostly, “not wrong”. But I was hoping PG might use his powerful brain and hundreds of words to explain how one should combat structural racism and sexism without the unfortunate side effect of “wokeness”. As far as I can see, he just recommended you do it “quietly”. Disappointing.
Here’s how:
Don’t discriminate on the basis of sex and race.
For sake of argument, what if the answer truly is "do it quietly"?
What if it's most effective to live your life to the best of your ability without prejudice, and instead of preaching about what people should do, you just do what it is that you believe to be right?
I grew up in (and left behind) conservative evangelical christian circles, and the thing that always made me most uncomfortable with "wokeness" is how much it often resembles those holier-than-though people I grew up around.
It's not that I disagree with the underlying ideas behind "woke" positions as much as it is the behavior of the people who want to move those ideas forward.
Whether it's overly pious evangelical christians or "very woke" people, I think there's an underlying belief that transcends particular points of view that there's a particular way people must conduct themselves and that using various tactics ranging from moralizing to public shaming are tactics that are effective.
Except I don't think these tactics are effective at all, and while it may be unsatisfying, "try to be the best example you can be" seems far more helpful than what often emerges when people feel they're morally justified.
There is a particular way people should conduct themselves. For example, they shouldn’t murder other people, damage public property, or systematically discriminate against other people based on gender or “race”. We aren’t “quiet” about the first two.
The trouble is that many of the issues now under the "woke" umbrella are not nearly as simple/obvious as the examples you've chosen.
To raise just one example: for most people, terms like "whitelist" and "blacklist" held no racist connotations. When they uttered those words, they felt no animus towards another person or race. If they were asked to speculate why those words exist or how they originated, there's a good chance they'd point out that "light" and "dark" have longstanding associations often evoking religious imagery of good vs evil. And indeed, if you investigate the history of these words, they don't seem to have a problematic racial history (which can't be said for all words).
But due to the potential for racial connotations, replacing these words was part of a widespread campaign. Resisting the removal of these words would result in someone being labeled a racist/bigot etc.
Personally, I've chosen to remove those words from my vocabulary because they offend some people in neutral settings and it's not a big deal to say "allowlist/denylist". But I'm not taking it upon myself to scold other people for not doing the same thing. On the other hand, if someone started using the n word, I wouldn't be quiet about it.
My general point was that acting as if all "woke" issues rise to the level of murder, property rights or racial discrimination is exactly the problem. People stop taking the "you must live this particular way" people seriously when the issues up for discussion are complex and not obvious.
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> For sake of argument, what if the answer truly is "do it quietly"?
Then why is the richest man in the world buying a social media platform? Why is Bezos buying newspapers?
Why are christian preachers shouting at everyone all the time?
Why are republican think tanks and lobbysits spending their entire career fighting tooth and nail against public education and healthcare?
Why are those preachings not demonised, or considered a problem and why is no one asking them to do it quietly?
> Except I don't think these tactics are effective at all
The loudest president of all time just won re election despite being a convicted felon, he will walk next week into the white house with his wife the ex playboy model voted by Evangelicals who say gay people are the devil.
Idk it seems like empirically the attempts to demonise wokeness as a loud abbrasive movement that "doesnt work" is an attempt to disuade the fact that it DOES work the only issue is one side is much much much louder due to owning the means of communication and can create consent around their behaviour.
Or is Zuck coming out and saying " we need more masculine energy" and removing all DEI iniatives at FB a week before trump takes office not the same kind of pandering behaviour just "anti woke"? Or Elon talking about how we need "Christian values", when he has 11 children from 7 women, 3 of whom worked for him, he has more money than god and wont share it with any good causes, while he buys a social media platform to force everyone to hear each one of his brain farts not the same kind of pandering?
That aint quiet, subtle or living anyones best life. Yet PG is not writting an essay about their behaviour, or calling that pandering and katowing to anti intellectualism which is a much worse cause than social justice btw
> "What if it's most effective to .. instead of preaching about what people should do, you just do what it is that you believe to be right?"
It isn't. See these LessWrong articles[1,2,3] about charitable giving for more reasoning. People take ideas, understanding of the world, behavioural cues, from what we see around us. From the first link, a charitable fund raise over a mailing list involved quiet private donations without fanfare, and public mailing list posts about why (other) people were not going to donate, why it was a bad idea. None of the donators posted publicly in support of donating.
I could make up any number of examples, but here[4] is a recent news article about two young lesbian women living together who "had been spat at in the street and received anonymous messages - including abuse scrawled across their front door on Christmas Day". What good does it do them if everyone who supports them does it quietly, and everyone who hates them does it loudly and publicly? What world does it lead to when spitting on someone in the street is fine, but speaking out against it is "woke leftist moralizing"? What world does it lead to when people who are not involved looking around to see how others are behaving (bystander effect) see LGBT hate enacted, written, spoken, and don't see or hear anyone around them speaking against it?
Would the young women care if someone vocally complaining about it at the pub is genuinely annoyed or just performatively status grabbing?
Seems pretty clear from history that just quietly living your life while horrors whirl around you is a personally comfortable way to live your life, but is not an effective way to change any of the horrors. Whereas taking arms against the horrors can be an effective way to change the horrors regardless of whether you're doing it because you really want to, or because you were peer pressured into it, or because you are just going along with what everyone else is doing.
[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7FzD7pNm9X68Gp5ZC/why-our-ki...
[2] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N6FNkxMJpraMLTPwq/to-inspire...
[3] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KoTCTwmPbEAZTyPbz/why-you-sh...
[4] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgnwqdp7gno?at_bbc_team...