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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29302 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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I strongly dislike this article because it's simply not true

https://compactmag.com/article/woke-ism-is-winding-down

Data on media outputs and “cancel-culture” incidents also suggest that a corner may have been turned. Across a range of datasets, we see apparent declines in “grassroots” attempts to censor uncomfortable speech on campus (even as there are growing attempts to suppress political scholarship from external stakeholders). Media discussion of various forms of prejudice and discrimination also seem to have declined significantly over the last year.

Within the Democratic Party, following anemic 2020 results and recalls of progressive politicians in blue states, there have been efforts to “course correct,” to avoid further alienating normie voters. The Democratic base has moved in a similar direction, broadly rejecting progressive candidates during the 2022 primaries. These countermeasures likely helped the party stave off the anticipated “red wave,” preventing extreme Republican candidates from facing Democratic challengers who were also perceived to be far out of step with mainstream America. Running moderate Democratic candidates against GOP extremists proved to be a winning move throughout the country in 2022.

Even if one can cite evidence of people turning against woke-ism, this does not change the fact that the woke still hold considerable power for a large number of institutions, at work, and various digital intellectual properties. The woke, the DEI people, BLM, etc. do not need to see the huge number of downvotes on their content (such as youtube videos , before downvotes were removed) to know that their ideology is not that popular, but this does not dissuade them: they still persevere. It has never been about popularity but about power.

When workers at Netflix attempted to cancel Dave Chappelle in late 2021, the company didn’t respond by issuing apologies and promising more programming on LGBTQ topics, as it had in the past. Instead, executives issued a memo informing protesting employees that if they weren’t open to publishing content they disagree with, they should quit. When an insufficient number of activist employees took them up on this invitation, the company proceeded with aggressive cuts apparently targeting these employees and the programming they worked on.

Too bad not all of us have the backing of a multi-billion dollar corp like Spotify or Netflix. It's not like Netflix can easily find another Chapelle or Spotify can find another Rogan. Regular people who get banned or suspended from twitter, reddit, etc or fired have far fewer recourse. It's all in the background: no one even notices or cares but the person who is affected. The marginal cost incurred by Facebook deleting an inconvenient account is zero. It has 2 billion users. No skin off its back.

These kinds of articles have been common for years. Two types of authors: woke sympathetics who recognize some of the insanity but want to tone down the opposition, and anti-wokes who confuse what they want to happen with what will happen.

I believe we are still in the early stages of our woke cultural revolution. I think that rising inequality (imagine what AI, automation, and climate change will be able to do in terms of disruption) will create more rage, and the rage will be shunted into wokism, because it has been able to effectively market itself as in opposition to inequality. Unfortunately, wokism provides cover for, and is a tool of the drivers of modern inequality.

I'll attempt to respond to the article's claims, mostly in order:

White liberals, the Americans whose expressed views shifted most radically over the last decade, have begun to moderate their responses to questions, for instance, about the causes and ideal remedies to racial inequalities. There have been shifts in the ways people identify themselves, too. For instance, polling and surveys suggest that “feminist” and related labels seem to have lost some of their luster in recent years

The article doesn't cite or link anything here, but I pay close attention to everything that comes out of Pew and Gallup and I have not noticed this supposed reversal. In fact, I've noticed the opposite. For example, the data in this thread, among others, by Zach Goldberg, which shows white liberals becoming more woke over time on several measures.

As for the feminist label, even if that's true I suspect it has more to do with the TERF wars.

Data on media outputs and “cancel-culture” incidents also suggest that a corner may have been turned. Across a range of datasets, we see apparent declines in “grassroots” attempts to censor uncomfortable speech on campus (even as there are growing attempts to suppress political scholarship from external stakeholders).

This would also be expected if wokeness were still ascendant or peaked, as people realize just how dangerous it is to dissent from the orthodoxy.

Media discussion of various forms of prejudice and discrimination also seem to have declined significantly over the last year.

I'd have to see the data to say more (he doesn't link anything). I'm doubtful it's significant if true.

Within the Democratic Party, following anemic 2020 results and recalls of progressive politicians in blue states, there have been efforts to “course correct,” to avoid further alienating normie voters.

This is among the better evidence, but I don't think it means much. First, the recalls were few and far between, and they happened more in places that had simply gotten so bad that it was not sustainable even for Blue normies. But regardless, I don't think wokeness has ever been that popular with normies, at least beyond costlessly nodding approvingly to right-thinking platitudes to demonstrate they're good people. The problem has never been that wokeness is popular; the problem is that wokeness has implacable and mutually reinforcing power in important institutions.

The Democratic base has moved in a similar direction, broadly rejecting progressive candidates during the 2022 primaries. These countermeasures likely helped the party stave off the anticipated “red wave,” preventing extreme Republican candidates from facing Democratic challengers who were also perceived to be far out of step with mainstream America. Running moderate Democratic candidates against GOP extremists proved to be a winning move throughout the country in 2022.

I don't get the impression that Democratic candidates in 2022 were less woke than in the last few election cycles. I think the results in 2022 were less about any sort of Democratic moderation and more about people being sick of Trump and Trumpy candidates.

According to some accounts, there is a growing appetite among Generation Z for humor and subversion, for a slackening of constraints and an expansion of horizons. The heavy moralizing around identity issues, the constant and intense surveillance and management of self and others, the incessant calls for revolution and reform—these elements of woke culture are running up against a growing sense of nihilism and ironic detachment among young adults.

There is growing discussion of a “vibe shift” among Millennials as well. Many are coming to find the culture wars both unsatisfying and rote. They are exhausted by the relentless cynicism, fear, doomsaying, and impression management that have governed much of their lives—and for what? They recognize the revolution isn’t coming anytime soon. So they are looking instead to have fun, relax, and cut loose a bit. Or, at the very least, to stop having to be so neurotic, guarded, and paranoid.

Admittedly, I don't hang out around anyone from Gen Z, but I don't buy this. I'm open to data (he didn't cite any), but almost all polling I see on any woke-adjacent topic shows younger cohorts identifying more with the woke viewpoint than older cohorts.

Companies are slackening their enforcement of post-2010 norms and expectations on identity issues. For instance, they are growing less likely to rapidly terminate or suspend employees accused of sexual misconduct based purely on the word of accusers.

That's plausible. I do think #MeToo probably peaked and is heading back down from orbit. I don't think it'll land anywhere near the status quo ante, though, for better or worse. But I think #MeToo is at best a subcomponent or offshoot of wokeism and doesn't generalize to the rest.

At the same time, they are walking back their aggressive symbolic commitments to social justice and quietly defunding the financial pledges they made to various activist groups and causes. Many are also making aggressive cuts to the DEI-related positions that ballooned in recent years.

Rather than rapidly caving to employee “social-justice” demands, as they had for much of the last decade, managers at knowledge-economy institutions are increasingly trying to reassert their authority, firing employees who attempt smear campaigns against colleagues and the companies they work for, and imposing new rules on how internal workplace channels are used.

One of the links given refers to the Washington Post firing Felicia Sonmez - a person whose petty Mean Girls-worthy feuding with coworkers spilled out into the public to great embarrassment and popcorn. I don't believe for a second that the Washington Post is becoming less woke, sorry.

A second link is about internal conflict in the New York Times between the old guard and the new woke employees. But the linked article essentially admits that the woke are winning: "On the progressive side of the ledger, the Times has installed a new administrative layer in the newsroom aimed at implementing a modern workplace culture. The new roles are neither reporters nor editors, but university-style administrators, focused variously on culture, careers, trust, strategy and DEI. Their roles amount, as one told me, to trying to enact radical cultural change at the institution — from an old, white conservative institution to a progressive, inclusive one — as slowly as possible." (emphasis mine)

Next linked is Netflix's handling of its employees protesting Dave Chappelle. Netflix essentially said they're keeping him on and employees who don't like it can quit. Admittedly, this was a nice win. But Netflix, like the tech companies the quoted paragraph alludes to more broadly, are facing increasing financial pressure in recent times. Netflix's stock, for example, was cratering for months before the Chappelle controversy came to a head. I don't think it's much consolation to the anti-woke, or much indication of wokeness waning, that companies - who exist to make profit - eventually, might, somewhat, on the margins, cull some of their more useless and obnoxious employees when the company's finances look grim.

And actually, according to another link in the quoted section, it's not clear DEI-culling is as ubiquitous as the author seems to think. The link he gives cites a study which claims that 80% of tech firms "displayed a pattern of very minimal increases in diversity" (read: increased diversity) between 2008-2016, and the remainder were a roughly even split between increased diversity and decreased. Wokeness definitely didn't peak in that timeframe, so I don't know how this supports the argument that wokeness has peaked sometime since then.

He does cite a claim that "listings for DEI roles were down 19% last year [2022]", but later on that cited article claims that DEI job postings jumped 123% after the 2020 protests. You do the math. But, hey, I guess that's consistent with peaking, technically.

[Running out of comment space for full quotes, but he spends a couple paragraphs talking about how Disney changed CEOs after getting into trouble with DeSantis in Florida, and Twitter and Facebook have reinstated Trump.]

I don't know the details of whether or how much Disney has actually changed. But if it has, it was in response to state pressure. That doesn't strike me as evidence of an organic peaking of wokeness (unless you want to cite DeSantis' efforts themselves as evidence of it, which you could). Similarly, I suspect social media companies are afraid that Republicans are going get fed up with the progressive bias and censorship on social media, so I wouldn't read too much into whatever capitulations and bone-throwing they may engage in here.

And Twitter is a terrible example for his case. It only changed because a guy with more money than God was so fucking sick of its bias that he decided to just buy it and try to fix it.

I actually don't fault the author for being unpersuasive. It's really hard to measure something abstract and amorphous like wokeness, especially over time. And the few methods that exist are easy to nitpick, as I've done. A lot of it comes down to anecdotes here and there. But there's no way the author would win a competition where one side of the ledger is anecdotes of wokeness waning and the other side is anecdotes of wokeness run amok. Granted, his claim is that wokeness is merely waning, not that it has lost. But as that aforementioned New York Times admission alludes to with its plan of slow and steady death by progressive transformation, ideologies can remain insidiously dominant in institutions and cultures longer than you or your society as you know it can remain alive, to paraphrase Keynes.

Too bad not all of us have the backing of a multi-billion dollar corp like Spotify or Netflix.

It also is a drop in the bucket. Spotify and Netflix overwhelmingly output woke content. Netflix detonated a nuke on one of their more popular shows (and IP), The Witcher, for seemingly the sole purpose of taking it in a woke direction. The only real source of netflix content that isn't hyper woke is old shows, and subtitled things from East Asia like Anime and Korean dramas.

It also is a drop in the bucket. Spotify and Netflix overwhelmingly output woke content.

It's worse than that: all of those examples are grandfathered in. Netflix & WB aren't making more Dave Chappelles and Joanne Rowlings and, if they ran into one earlier in their career with the same talking points they'd quickly pass on them at best, if not crush them.

I too find the vibe shift where supposedly the Social Justice Advocates are in retreat a little too good to be true. I think we should wait until a few months past the 2024 election cycle and see how we feel then. The DEI march continues in my giant financial institution, but being behind the times is pretty on brand for giant financial institutions. More than anything I'm certain trying to read the direction things are going on a month to month scale using a handful of discrete events seems foolish to me. A lul before we ramp into Trump 2.0/Desantis rise looks pretty identical to a woke disintegration.

Just a quick thought - it seems to me that the fortunes of the woke movement could change very quickly, as with a classic preference cascade, despite the impressive institutional clout that Social Justice advocates have accumulated.

The issue is that SJ is built on the foundations of liberalism, including freedom of religion and ideological pluralism. Wokeness has gotten as far as it has by successfully avoiding being labeled a religion or otherwise as a totalizing ideology, despite being explicitly normative, by framing their values as 'just common decency'. The second that changes, the system's own antibodies turn against it and the edifice crumbles under a tidal wave of lawsuits. (Unless we're at the point where the 1st amendment has been overturned or is no longer enforced, but that still seems a ways off)

I don't know, I think we are reaching a point where the demands have gone too far and gotten too crazy. The mood of ordinary people is starting to shift from "we love and support, wave those Pride flags" to "what the hell are you teaching my kids?"

This doesn't mean all the DEI stuff is going to go "poof!" in a cloud of smoke in the morning, there's inertia and too much of the grift in place. But I do think people are getting tired of being constantly bombarded with lecturing and hectoring, and that means a turning point. It'll take another few years before the changes become visible, but I think it's happening very, very slowly. The presidential election campaign will be a good indicator for this - are the debates between the various candidates looking for endorsements going to be full of diversity'n'inclusiveness, or will the emphasis be on things like the economy etc.?

I don't know, I think we are reaching a point where the demands have gone too far and gotten too crazy.

I've heard this exact sentiment expressed verbatim for the past 10 years.

Big social change movements like this are slow to get going and slow to turn. "Gradually, then all at once" - it seems like it's only a few crazy kids on campus, then it's your workplace, and then - ?

The difference is that the "wokes" who took over the workplace had multiple legal and institutional advantages:

  1. Colleges lean left anyway, specific college departments tied to wokeness (e.g. social science, women's studies) lean veeeery left.

  2. Civil rights law created an incentive to hire a group of workers to manage racism/sexism/anyisms, and those people are overwhelmingly likely to be educated in the aforementioned "woke" spaces.

  3. Those people, once hired, have institutional power to enforce their will. The fact that the company risks being sued if they appear less "woke" than the law gives an incentive to go along with these HR reps and consultants.

Compare this to: "people are getting tired of it", where none of these concrete factors apply.

You might be right that popular will is against it but I don't think it matters, for a variety of reasons:

  1. Polarization. This is the simplest explanation for the adoption of bizarre phenomenon like supporting drag queen performances for children - just to own the cons. As one side sets themselves against something the other side digs in. This prevents bipartisan consensus and coordination, so you can't actually make broad changes easily. It also renders a lot of internal criticism inert - either because they self-censor or are seen as disloyal and expelled.

  2. Anti-democratic institutions: US discrimination law is often enforced by the courts, who are more resistant to public opinion. You can of course fight to pick judges but, not only has wokeness continued while the GOP has had significant control in the Senate, it's not clear that the GOP is looking at this strategically like with the abortion fight. And there's the issue of who is going to enforce your anti-woke dictates. Where did they study? (This is a problem right now with woke teachers wanting to resist government edicts)

  3. The Woke are essentially attempting to secure the original base of their power - the Academy - via requiring faith statements DEI statements for various functions that would weed out both people utterly opposed to wokeness and even those unable to ape the language well.

The fact that it takes the literal mutilation and potential sterilization of kids and the attempt to totally usurp parental authority to get half of the political spectrum to finally react against a wholesale redefinition of basic social norms and ideas is not a sign of hope to me. It is a sign that society's immune system against woke crazes has been so depleted that only the most egregious cases cause a response.

Yeah, "we've surely reached peak woke!" is the mirror counterpart to "it's only a few kids on college campuses!"

So in the spirit of the thread, I'd like to ask everyone what kind of thing would actually signify to them that we've passed "peak woke"?

For me, I think it would be mass abolishment of DEI roles in companies as useless dreck, and the default response to HR complaints about offensive jokes changing from "yes m'lady we'll fire him immediately" to "grow a thicker skin, I'm not your mother, plus he's our star engineer and we need him more than you", for example.

As more intelligent men than me have observed, the culture is controlled by young, attractive, fertile women and the men granted access to their wombs. “Woke” culture only exists so long as it doesn’t obstruct or offend either of these two groups. And we’re nowhere near the point that the college educated, secular, progressive, urban elite are tired of purity spirals.

Just look at what a flaming dumpster fire of propaganda Reddit has turned into since the days of Ellen Pao. This isn’t 2010 when no one knew what a Reddit was and Ron Paul was popular: these are normies posting what normal people think in 2023. The fact that this single, insignificant thread from /r/slatestarcodex has now had to quietly move camp in the middle of the night TWICE, as though we’re some lost brigade of confederate vagabonds being sheparded safely out of Union territory by Stonewall Jackson, is a testament to how deeply unpopular the kind of ideas posted here are.

the culture is controlled by young, attractive, fertile women and the men granted access to their wombs

And this will eventually be the undoing of your culture. Back home the culture is controlled by experienced elders, plenty of women in this group (my grandma is basically the head of my extended family) but they all tend to be 55+ and experienced in how life works, rather than 23 year olds who couldn't tell their ass from their elbow. Overall it turns out better for social cohesion etc. than your system.

It's strange in a way how you people get everything backwards. Back home the culture is controlled by the elders, while money is controlled by the young (parents are dependent on their children in old age, very few have independent pensions of the sort that would let them maintain their lifestyle) but in the west you have the exact opposite situation, culture is controlled by the young but the money is by and large in the hands of the old. This is an unnatural situation and the west is currently tasting its bitter fruit.

If I'm a young person and I control the money, why do I listen to my elders? Why don't I just run away and make a life for myself?

This comes back to bite you in the ass 20 years down the line when the people around you have a strong social network backing them up while you have nothing and society is build upon the assumption that you'll have your personal network as a safety net to fall back on.

Plus you get shunned from society for being a prodigal son who has broken the social contract (parents take care of children then children take care of parents) and you will find it hard to get married, no decent family will let their child marry you without assurances that you won't do to their child what you did to your own flesh and blood, well unless your spouse also shuns their family, but at that point you've put your lot into the 100% individualist basket in a society that inst build for individualism at this level, so naturally you'll face added difficulties (money of course will help with things).

If you have money but shun your parents at best you'll be a rich recluse which gets very lonely into your later years. Money only gets you so far in life, and social relationships are at least as important towards self actualisation.

I assume that, back when society was more unified, the reason used to be that doing so would incur huge social stigma which would make it very hard to maintain or improve your social status. Now if you live in a traditional society you probably can just escape to one of the nearby globohomo beachheads, likely a major city or a neighboring NGO-infested country.

is a testament to how deeply unpopular the kind of ideas posted here are.

This assumes the censors have some sort of democratic mandate, which I don't believe is true.

The Reddit censors have the overwhelming support of the Reddit community. No one misses this place anymore than they miss /r/coontown.

Never said anyone would miss us, we're not big enough for anyone to notice. But I'd need some revealed preferences to buy the "overwhelming support" bit. People were crying about Elon Musk not censoring twitter as much too, threatening to leave, etc. Just generally the overwhelming majority of people are overwhelmingly apathetic.

For me, I think it would be mass abolishment of DEI roles in companies as useless dreck, and the default response to HR complaints about offensive jokes changing from "yes m'lady we'll fire him immediately" to "grow a thicker skin, I'm not your mother, plus he's our star engineer and we need him more than you", for example.

If we're talking about "peak woke", then your standard sounds like it would be the equivalent of getting half-way down the mountain. How would you know if you were, say only a hundred meters down or so?

You don't. The point is that any one loss for the woke is meaningless. It has to be sustained and increasing, and I wouldn't feel safe in definitely saying the sea had changed until I saw something like that.

I almost totally agree, but with one caveat: things have changed in that it's no longer complete suicide to vocalize that the emperor has no clothes.

Take the new Harry Potter game controversy, for example. This is a really recent article:

https://fortune.com/2023/02/08/hogwarts-legacy-harry-potter-video-game-boycott-rowling-transphobia-warner-discovery-avalanche/

Even if this article doesn't completely come down as anti-woke, it most definitely has anti-woke elements. In this article, they point out that there is an industry-wide effort to cast this game as a hugely problematic thing, and that reviewers everywhere are afraid to touch it for fear of losing their livelihoods. They imply that this is a ridiculous situation.

3 years ago, you could never even point out that this dynamic was occurring, and now you can. I see this article as being basically on the side of the true spirit of gamergate (in that is in favor of ethics in video game journalism), whereas for actual gamergate, you'd never get any publication to admit that the other side had any point at all.

This may mean we are past the peak, I really don't know. Maybe we are in a local minimum, but the real peak is up ahead. Or maybe we are before the peak but people at least are noticing it. Who can say? But at least this does seem to be positive in that more people are speaking out against the woke machine.

There's very little evidence that could be more convincing than what we got in the 90s at the last peak of wokism, with Clinton's soulja moment and everyone renouncing the extremists.

And look where that got us in the long run. Every retreat is tactical to prepare for a new attack, every denunciation is just cover for "don't talk about it, but then do while in office,"

You can call out the peak of the wave, but it will only be a local maximum. I won't believe there's no new wave coming until I can see nothing but flat, frozen ocean to the horizon in every direction.

So in the spirit of the thread, I'd like to ask everyone what kind of thing would actually signify to them that we've passed "peak woke"?

I have expressed elsewhere that wokeism is primarily female interests and morality (the quest for securing protection and provision + care ethics) run amok.

I'll believe we have reached "peak woke" once a significant program or policy benefitting women to the detriment of men is axed and this move is met with approval in the mainstream media. Not in a 50-Stalins type fashion where it wasn't trans-inclusive enough or whatever, but because it was unfair to (male) men.

The problem I have with the peak woke narrative is that it acts like this level of wokeness being the new normal is somehow a victory. Like making it to the peak of Mount Everest was somehow a victory even as our oxygen tanks are running dry. Even if we descended down the other side to the Tibetan plateau, we are still way to high up to thrive. It would be like Germans celebrating their defeat in WW1; sure, the war is over; but, at what cost (Though, in this analogy the Germans almost made good use of the reprieve given; so, I guess there is still hope)

Peak woke would be when people who push woke too far actually get punished. It's not enough for people leading cancellation mobs to sometimes fail. The leaders themselves need to be punished for harassment. It's not enough for some college administrator pushing a crazy new DEI initiative to fail at it. They need to get punished for being stupid or for being racist against white people. When people who wish to push woke more to the left are afraid of getting punished for overreach as those those who want to push back things to the right are afraid of getting punished, then we will be at equilibrium.

That woke movement sometimes fails is meaningless. Lot's of cancellation attempts have failed and will fail, lot's of trial balloons will get popped (like that latest outrage from Stanford over inclusive language). But as long as there is no consequence for the attempt, there will be more attempts, some will succeed, and we will continue to ratchet leftward.

Peak woke would be when people who push woke too far actually get punished.

I think that'll be a pretty strong signal that we are past peak woke. Peak woke is not the equilibrium, it is the point where the trend crosses from "things get slightly more woke over time" to "things get slightly less woke over time", and is observable as "I can't tell if the level of wokeness is increasing or decreasing in aggregate".

Also I think peak woke will only be callable in retrospect.

No, "past peak woke" would be when the people pushing woke innovations are getting punished, and the people reversing established woke innovations are not getting punished and sometimes succeeding.

"Peak woke" -- or better, "woke plateau" -- would be when someone pushing a woke innovation or trying to make new offense cancellable is as likely to get punished as someone who is calling out and trying to cancel out existing woke norms is likely to get canceled.

I think that would be true if "people pushing woke innovations get punished" was the main way that woke culture lost traction. However, I think that the change is driven much more strongly by whether people on the margin view these new woke innovations as credible or whether they nod while making snide comments to their trusted friends.

I don't think woke culture dies by a coordinated counterculture pushing back on its excesses. I think woke culture dies by becoming uncool, a sign that you are not keeping up with the modern times.

I actually suspect that the beginning of the end for woke culture was the moment that big banks started making floats for pride parades. Nothing is less cool than a big bank trying to show how cool and with the times they are.

For the record, I think that peak woke was probably about 2 years ago, though the exact timing of the peak depends on which exact part of "woke" you're talking about. Concretely:

  • I think the idea of "colorblindness" peaked a couple decades ago

  • I think the idea of "cultural appropriation" probably peaked in 2018ish

  • Cultural battles over "trans rights" are probably either still on the upswing or near peak

  • I expect that there will be some new "deviant" thing that is currently outside the overton window (e.g. polyamory / furries / etc) that will be taken up by the successors of woke ideology.

Nothing is less cool than a big bank trying to show how cool and with the times they are.

What makes you believe that this is so?

To a normie, banks are just these things that are part of the environment, like trees, grass, and television news broadcasts. A bank supporting something won't make it more cool, but it won't make it less cool, either.

I think television news broadcasts are uncool in the same way banks are, though not in the way that trees and grass are.

My impression of normies, and particularly of the type of normies that exhibit "woke" sentiments, are usually pretty anti-establishment, despite the establishment trying to pander to them. So my judgement about banks is mostly driven by the idea that banks are about as "establishment" as you can get, and when the establishment starts supporting your ideas, you need new, better ideas that the establishment is not willing to support to prove that you are not one of them.

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Channeling moldbug, people won't see the bank as uncool without a concerted effort to smear it as uncool, which people mistake for an organic uncoolness factor after decades of "activism."

Similar to people expecting a wave of youth reaction because "teens naturally rebel against authority," when in reality the media and education industries can and have just flipped the switch from "rebellion is cool" to "total conformity is cool."

Colorblindness has never been acceptable to "woke" and was part of the liberal predecessor before racism became cool again. [...] I'm not sure of the inclusion here. Representing the brief overlap period where colorblindness was collapsing and woke was ascendent?

Yes, you're correct. I don't think "woke" is a new phenomenon, I think "woke" is the way the current young generation shows that they "get it" in a way that the older generation does not. And yes, representing how the current idea of "woke" was ascendant while the previous version of "politically correct" was collapsing. My point was at no point does "we are past peak X" mean "and that means that everything will go back to how it was before", it just means that "X" is now unfashionable and will be replaced by a new, fashionable "Y".

And yeah, the "poly / furries" thing is the classic prediction for what the new "Y" will be, but I'm pretty sure it's actually going to be "etc", because if it were the predictable "poly/furries" then the old uncool people could easily "get it", and that would be terrible.

(As a note, I'm not saying "wokeness is just fashion and therefore has no effects on the real world". I'm saying "wokeness is fashion, and therefore you can predict what will happen with it the same way you predict other fashions". Any real-world consequences of things done for fashion are still just as real as real-world consequences of things done for other reasons)

That is a really interesting perspective, and it makes a lot of sense. I have always viewed it as a fashion, but I hadn't considered the poison pill aspect like that. Ooh, how about instead of poly/trans we go with "chatbots not being real people doesn't matter, they are real enough for me and you disrespect them when you call them artificial". Wrap your head around that Dad!

Perhaps we'll look back at the various discussions that are happening right now about whether or not we've reached "peak woke" and realize that the very fact disagreements were happening (versus agreement all in one direction) was an indication that we had been at "peak woke" at the time, i.e. now. One can only hope.

what disagreements? There are disagreements here, but we're a tiny place. There aren't such disagreements in the places you might expect them to be if woke is winding down.

What does woke mean to you?

If it means that the the current hegemonic values are indeed hegemonic, it's gonna be that way for a while yet probably.

The majority opinion on all 'woke' subjects is reflected by institutions that have a broad base, or who require support from the cultural or financial elite. This is how it has to be in a market system.

IT's why trans issues are so contentious; they haven't been fully integrated into the hegemon yet.

What does woke mean to you?

Applying Marxist-like oppressor-oppressed class analysis to non-economic groups.

What would distinguish Marxist-like class analysis from non-Marxist-like class analysis in your view?

Displacing the discussion to another culture, let's take the example of casteism in India. What kind of arguments against "casteism" would you consider woke, and which ones would you consider non-woke? Are there time periods or particular practices where you would think arguments against "casteism" are more justified, and is there a world state in which you think you could say, "the field has finally been levelled enough once and for all, and caste is practically not an issue for people's life outcomes anymore and all interventions along caste lines should cease"?

What would distinguish Marxist-like class analysis from non-Marxist-like class analysis in your view

Acknowledging the relationship between the classes is more complicated that that of the oppressor and oppressed.

Displacing the discussion to another culture, let's take the example of casteism in India

I'd rather not, I know next to nothing about India.

What kind of arguments against "casteism" would you consider woke, and which ones would you consider non-woke.

A non-woke argument would be one for ending legal and cultural discrimination based on caste.

Woke arguments start around things like Affirmative Action, and we've definitely crossed into them when unequal outcomes between groups are in themselves treated as evidence of oppression.

I'd rather not, I know next to nothing about India.

Fair enough. I thought it might serve as an intuition pump, but if you don't feel comfortable with the conversation, I'll drop this angle.

A non-woke argument would be one for ending legal and cultural discrimination based on caste.

Woke arguments start around things like Affirmative Action, and we've definitely crossed into them when unequal outcomes between groups are in themselves treated as evidence of oppression.

So, do you think in the immediate aftermath of ending some form of discrimination that no activist interventions is justifiable, even on grounds of prudence and support of societal stability after a massive change?

For example, in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War, a lot of Northern Christians poured into the South and started schools for the newly emancipated individuals. Is this woke, in your opinion since it is giving extra support to black people that white people aren't getting? If it isn't woke, is it because black people were genuinely unjustly worse off and this was an effort to redress that imbalance, or is it because it was the actions of private individuals and not the state?

Do interventions only start being "woke" once all major legal and cultural discrimination has been eliminated? If so, do you have a year after which you think it is safe to say, "all activist interventions after this point are woke, in the United States"?

For example, in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War, a lot of Northern Christians poured into the South and started schools for the newly emancipated individuals. Is this woke, in your opinion since it is giving extra support to black people that white people aren't getting?

Would they actually turn away non-black people that wanted to go there?

Do interventions only start being "woke" once all major legal and cultural discrimination has been eliminated.

Interventions start being woke when they begin discriminating themselves.

Interventions start being woke when they begin discriminating themselves.

What are the limits of this?

Imagine a hypothetical situation 70 years ago (or however far back you need to set it to make this an actually interesting question.) Suppose it was the case that all (or the vast majority) of existing college scholarships were de facto limited to white people. Would it be woke for a private individual to create a college scholarship and limit it to black people in this environment? Even if it was woke, do you think it would be a morally justifiable form of wokeness given the larger cultural situation in this hypothetical scenario?

Was Ghandi woke for only advocating on behalf of oppressed Indians in South Africa, and ignoring the plight of Black South Africans?

Would it be woke for someone to spend all of their charity money in third world countries, and not to spend a single dime in the United States?

Is it ever okay to discriminate against/ignore one group, while trying to better the station of another?

Your framing presents a false dichotomy. It would in fact be woke to offer specific black scholarships, the key difference is between fighting perceived discrimination with more discrimination. The non-woke, really liberal, remedy would be opening the white only scholarships to all on some universalist and fair criteria. fighting discrimination with discrimination creates fault lines in our society. If you opened a scholarship to all with a focus on the poor irregardless to skin color you'd be spending most of your time helping black people but not be woke. If you're thinking about it in terms of racial groups being very salient at all that's woke.

Was Ghandi woke for only advocating on behalf of oppressed Indians in South Africa, and ignoring the plight of Black South Africans?

Yes

Would it be woke for someone to spend all of their charity money in third world countries, and not to spend a single dime in the United States?

If they do this because of some universalist reasoning, like I'm trying to reduce deaths to malaria and would help Americans with malaria but there aren't any then it is not woke. If they're trying to reduce opiod deaths and choose to defy universalist reasoning just to spite Americans and spend their money less efficiently elsewhere then yes, that's woke.

I don't mind answering these questions, but before we go on, can we acknowledge that wokeness is a solid concept, no worse that literally anything else that we've come up with to discuss political issues?

I've noticed these kinds of questions are often asked in order to imply wokeness is nebulous, but we've veered so deep into edge cases that I don't think it has any impact on the integrity of the core concept. Literally anything could be deconstructed by asking questions like that, and literally everything outside the world of pure mathematics would fall a apart under the pressure.

I could probably successfully argue that the concept of "chair" is nebulous, because you can't point to the exact limit between chairs and cars.

Would it be woke for a private individual to create a college scholarship and limit it to black people in this environment? Even if it was woke, do you think it would be a morally justifiable form of wokeness given the larger cultural situation in this hypothetical scenario?

Yes, and yes.

Edit: Actually, sorry. The first answer also depends on motivation. In could be woke, or not.

Was Ghandi woke for only advocating on behalf of oppressed Indians in South Africa, and ignoring the plight of Black South Africans?

Did he explicitly advocate against Black South Africans?

Would it be woke for someone to spend all of their charity money in third world countries, and not to spend a single dime in the United States?

Depends on their motivation.

Is it ever okay to discriminate against/ignore one group, while trying to better the station of another?

Ignoring is not the same as discrimination, and both can be ok. The circumstances have to be pretty extreme to justify the latter, though.

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