Wokeness sounds like some sort of virus … probably because, in a way, it is. Like a virus, wokeness spreads through universities, workplaces, friends, and families, and as it spreads it makes people sick.
Or woke.
Whatever you want to call it.
We see it more and more every day, invading entertainment, sports, and commercials – if only there was a vaccine they could lie about with this virus as well. *cough cough*
Wokal Distance put together an exceptional thread about how wokeness was ‘cooked up’ and gave some pointers for how those of us who are still ‘well’ can actually fight back. Take a gander (get a snack, it ain’t short):
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Explaining what Critical Social Justice (AKA woke) activists believe is hard, partly because wokeness pulls ideas from so many different thinkers that often it looks like a pile of contradictions.So, let's talk about how wokeness got cooked up in universities.
A Thread🧵
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Get comfy.
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Many woke claims appear to contradict each other.
To give just two examples: they claim to be anti-racist but focus on intensely race, They say not to force your views on them, and then demand everyone accept their worldview and ideology.For most people this looks incoherent
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Because it is incoherent … ok, maybe not.
Keep going.
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Part of the reason why wokeness can make use of all these seemingly contradictory ideas is it based on postmodernism. Wokeness uses postmodern standards rather then the standards of reason, rationality and formal logic of the enlightenment liberal tradition of rationality.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Recommended
Aha!
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This means the academic environment in which wokeness developed made use of different academic and intellectual standards than most of us are used to.The reason for this is wokeness developed in humanities departments in Universities, where the blame for much of this lies.
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Freakin’ humanities departments …
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In Critical Race Theory, Women’s Studies, Gender Studies, English literature, Fine arts, Postcolonialism, and Queer Theory, activist scholars were all making use of postmodern ideas. The result is an ecosystem of academic postmodernism working toward what we now call wokeness.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
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Wokeness comes out of an environment of academic postmodernism in which ideas from all over the spectrum of academic disciplines were fused together, not because they fit together intellectually, but because they were useful for the political goals of activist scholars.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Read that again.
… but because they were useful for the political goals of the activist scholars.
Bingo.
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These Activist scholars were not disinterested academics trying to seek truth in as neutral a way as they could manage, these were political activists who were seeking to assemble a set of ideas that they could use to achieve their social and political goals.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
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Physics, math, logic, engineering, technology, philosophy, and biology proceed by studying the world and trying to describe it accurately. Using the facts which can be established intellectuals seek to correct past errors and create better explanations of how the world works.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
That hasn’t stopped many of these yahoos in the woke world from claiming math is racist.
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The process is not perfect, or linear; there are starts and stops as old errors are discovered and need to be corrected, but that is the general shape of what is going on.The academics who developed Critical Social Justice (AKA wokeness) were operating in a different way.
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
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Kelly Oliver said “feminist theories should be political tools, strategies for overcoming oppression in specific concrete situations. The goal, then, of feminist theory, should be to develop strategic theories, not true theories, not false theories, but strategic theories.”— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Being emotionally right instead of factually right.
Sound familiar?
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Kelly Oliver was a feminist working in academia, and she wrote that in an academic journal of feminism, and she is saying the goal of her theorizing is not aimed at truth, it is aimed at overcoming oppression.
In other words, the goal is social justice, not objective truth.
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Duh.
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As such these academic activist scholars are not like builder building a building, attempting to build true theories on a strong foundation of truth. They are like cooks in a kitchen cooking up theories that help them acheive their political aims.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
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You can imagine a chef of wokeness saying “take a cup of Marx, add 2 cups Critical Theory, A gallon of Foucault, 10 ounces of Derrida, a pinch of Gramsci, bake in the universities for two decades and then you get a delicious stew of wokeness!" This is how wokeness developed.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Woof, you KNOW that concoction would give us all food poisoning.
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Now, the question remains “how do these academic activists resolve all the apparent contradictions?” This is a question that deserves it’s own essay. However, a brief answer is twofold:— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
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First, the ideas are repeatedly re-theorised in a way that allows them to be put together so they can be used to achieve their political aims. The second is that because wokeness makes heavy use of a postmodern view of the world, judge their ideas with postmodern standards.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
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As their main standard is “is this idea useful in our struggle to achieve our vision of social justice?” they will often judge the validity of an idea by how useful it is for them to achieve their aims, rather then by the traditional standards of reason, logic, and evidence.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Not if it’s correct, but if it’s useful.
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In practice this looks like different standards in different situations and appeals to different theories depending on what is useful at the time, refusal to engage on fair terms, changing the rules of debate, and making use of language games and shifting definitions.— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
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The way to combat this is to make sure we always make sure that in every debate with a social justice advocate we assert the importance of clear arguments and objective truth.Have the conversation on the ground of objective truth rather than interests, biases, and feelings
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Facts. Truth. Logic.
These are the kryptonite of wokeness.
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Every time it looks like there is a contradiction, a shift in terms, or some other move, ask them to get clear about what they mean and then measure their claims using the standard of objective truth.Do this well and you'll push back in a persuasive and effective way.
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Truth.
Bingo.
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I wrote a whole essay on this over on substack (the link is below). All my substack essays are free for everyone to read. 🙂If you find threads like this helpful, you can support me with either a free or paid subsciption.
Thank you for reading!!!https://t.co/C5IFe4ADMD
— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) November 25, 2022
Yum-o.
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