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Comment by grahamj

5 days ago

> i.e. the morality of homelessness and not having a disdain for them but empathy for them instead.

> people on the American political right see it as what this website describes it as “ A self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others.”

I think those are just two perspectives on the same situation. “wokeness” is realizing we should be treating people better and “anti-wokness” is people feeling called out by that.

People tend not to like it being pointed out that they are assholes, especially when they know it’s true. That’s pretty much the whole “anti-woke” thing in a nut.

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grahamj

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StanislavPetrov  5 days ago

>I think those are just two perspectives on the same situation. “wokeness” is realizing we should be treating people better and “anti-wokness” is people feeling called out by that.

>People tend not to like it being pointed out that they are assholes, especially when they know it’s true. That’s pretty much the whole “anti-woke” thing in a nut.

I think this is an example that accurately sums up with most normal, non-partisan people mean when say say "woke". The smug self-righteousness exhibited by those who believe themselves morally superior to others is "woke". The suggestion that somehow you are an asshole if you don't sign on completely and without question to the bizarre social and political agenda of self-appointed word and thought police. The people that you avoid like the plague because they are constantly searching for something to be offended about or some way to chide you about having transgressed against some ever-changing lexicon of acceptable terms and phrases. The people that think the world is neatly divided between "oppressors and the oppressed" and that where you fall on this insurmountable divide is based almost entirely on who your ancestors were or what your skin-tone is rather than anything you've actually done in your life. The people that think they have a monopoly on deciding what is right and wrong, and that they have been appointed the moral arbiters to decide what everyone is allowed to say.

bpt3  5 days ago

You missed the point of the article completely. Wokeness (as PG defined it, which I would agree is the most commonly used definition today) isn't merely realizing we should be treating people better, it's realizing that people should be treated better and focusing on being a "prig" about completely inconsequential and tangentially relevant concerns as a result of that rather than taking meaningful action.

  • grahamj  4 days ago

    No. “Anti-woke” people have latched onto the “prig” aspects of social justice because being against what it’s actually about would highlight what they really have a problem with: equality.

    If someone says “hey you can’t say the n-word, that’s racist” and someone’s reply is “don’t censor me!” the latter isn’t advocating for freedom of speech, they’re advocating for racism.

    Defining what “woke” means in terms of the fake justifications of the “anti-woke” crowd is BS. What people labelled as “woke” want is for people to treat people better. “Anti-woke” doesn’t want that.