4 ms·

The structure of a revolution-- it usually begins when the rabble acts up and no authority is willing or able to stop them. So, 1 out of 1,000 users seek quasi

The structure of a revolution-- it usually begins when the rabble acts up and no authority is willing or able to stop them. So, 1 out of 1,000 users seek quasi-religious vengeance on Twitter and the mechanisms that used to inform the other 999 don't work. The NYT picks up toxic views of the rabble and reports them as mainstream, which the rabble have converted to a weapon in itself. Most revolutions I've read about, large and small consist of an authentic breakdown in or reorganization of, society. Here and now, seems like we're actually discussing an antifeature of manufactured social technologies combined with capture or weakening of traditional media.

nine_k 5y ago
I think you mischaracterize these people as "rabble". Many of the vocal "woke" figures are highly educated, highly intellectual, and well-off. Professors, top business officers, high-achieving scientists, writers, engineers. They do it not because they are stupid, for they are not. They truly believe that what they do is right, that it's the shining path to the better future.
- type0 5y ago
  And most of the worlds biggest atrocities has also been done on "the shining path to the better future".
  - nine_k 5y ago
    Exactly my reference :(
  - andrepd 5y ago
    So have the world's biggest advances, from the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, or the advent of liberal democracies in the past ~200 years.
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      This crowd seems to be pretty much against enlightenment values or science or democracy.
    - thu2111 5y ago
      None of those things were really the result of some top down utopian master plan, though. The closest might be the enlightenment if you consider the rewards for book finding granted by wealthy benefactors, but it was fundamentally a backward looking "Revolution" that was based on worship of the ancients. The "scientific revolution", is not really a well known or unambiguous label, the growth of science being a long term trend. And it's worth observing that a major part of the present day corruption of science with the replication crisis, the junk sociological sciences and so on, are the result of an explicit top down utopian plan by governments to make a better tomorrow by funding academics.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > I think you mischaracterize these people as "rabble". Many of the vocal "woke" figures are highly educated, highly intellectual, and well-off. Professors, top business officers, high-achieving scientists, writers, engineers. That is the actual structure of a revolution. Your parent comment is misguided; revolutions that aren't led by elites are rare and, when they occur, generally don't go anywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt
  - Retric 5y ago
    Yes, despite slavery being horrendous and very common there was basically 1 successful slave revolt in all recorded history Haiti. Gaspar Yagna's Rebellion was arguable as they hid and became independent. Spartacus grew to ~120,000 then failed, Zanj Rebellion came closer and still failed. This is also why killing all the intellectuals after a successful revolution is so popular.
  - kingsuper20 5y ago
    https://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/intra-elite-competition-a-key-concept-for-understanding-the-dynamics-of-complex-societies/ https://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/intra-elite-competitio...
- esyir 5y ago
  Or perhaps, they do it because its the ideal weapon and means of control. We've seen that "sociopaths in management studies" bit. Wonder how it'd apply to wokism.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Some are removed from reality that it might seem like a good idea. I believe them not to be too well informed though and much support stems from the fact that these people don't know what is done under their banner. Bipartisanship in the US heavily influences this too. Most intellectuals have identified the problem pretty quickly but they also stay mostly silent. There are also those in high positions without the necessary facilities of course.
- potatoineyes 5y ago
  Well I am well educated, but none of the other categories you have mentioned above and I have reasoned, with continued and constant personal experience reinforcement that a society that tolerates the existence of lgbt people etc, and is also in adherence to liberal principles, is a society that had no future. I have gone from liberal to basically Nazi (with liberal and liberalism replacing the Jew as evil target), and every attempt to see whete I might have gone wrong, for noone else seems to think the things I do, just leads, over and iver again, to reading arguments allegedly for liberal values that seem either orthogonal entirely to the point, or are, to me, arguments against liberal values. Spending my 20s in highly liberal, educated environments has lretty much destroyed all the mainstream base assumptions about people, socjety, and morality that I had and replaced with, to be glib, the sentence "the crazy right wing extremists were actually right about all you people all along". This is an experience that has, in conjunction with a failure to self censor and attempts to ask for people to explain their positions, seek new knowledge, etc led to a near and complete total collapse of my life. Former friends of decades will not speak to me because I genuinely cannot understand why anyone would think e.g. homosexuals are anything other than broken deviants, etc based purely on the fundamental nature of their catwgory classification, fundamental inability to have biological children, the empiral evidence concerning higher disease rates from the type of sex they disproportionately practice relative to the heterosexual population, etc. I do not honestly think any of you here on hacker news are seriously against censorship, because I expect you would be unwilling and incapable of discussing something like this (and there are many other issues too) with me. I have no religious faith, am bot a conservative, was not brought up like that ,etc but have simply followed my own reason, conscience, and the evidence that is available for me to see and read about, yet I get very different conclusions. I will be starting to just lie to everyone about anything and go along with whatever the apparant consensus is, no matter how much harm I think it will do, and not matter how obvious from now on. I am bot stupid, I have leart that social conformity is more important than truth.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Don't try to go in that direction as to define yourself as the opposite of indignant bullshit. A lot of homosexuals don't like that either. As long as you don't hurt or discriminate in a professional setting, you should be fine. Some of this behavior developed because people were shunned. That is no excuse for Twitter woke, that is more an addiction to outrage. Societies can function with homosexual people because they were always prevalent.

nine_k 5y ago

I think you mischaracterize these people as "rabble". Many of the vocal "woke" figures are highly educated, highly intellectual, and well-off. Professors, top business officers, high-achieving scientists, writers, engineers. They do it not because they are stupid, for they are not. They truly believe that what they do is right, that it's the shining path to the better future.

type0 5y ago
And most of the worlds biggest atrocities has also been done on "the shining path to the better future".
- nine_k 5y ago
  Exactly my reference :(
- andrepd 5y ago
  So have the world's biggest advances, from the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, or the advent of liberal democracies in the past ~200 years.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    This crowd seems to be pretty much against enlightenment values or science or democracy.
  - thu2111 5y ago
    None of those things were really the result of some top down utopian master plan, though. The closest might be the enlightenment if you consider the rewards for book finding granted by wealthy benefactors, but it was fundamentally a backward looking "Revolution" that was based on worship of the ancients. The "scientific revolution", is not really a well known or unambiguous label, the growth of science being a long term trend. And it's worth observing that a major part of the present day corruption of science with the replication crisis, the junk sociological sciences and so on, are the result of an explicit top down utopian plan by governments to make a better tomorrow by funding academics.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> I think you mischaracterize these people as "rabble". Many of the vocal "woke" figures are highly educated, highly intellectual, and well-off. Professors, top business officers, high-achieving scientists, writers, engineers. That is the actual structure of a revolution. Your parent comment is misguided; revolutions that aren't led by elites are rare and, when they occur, generally don't go anywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt
- Retric 5y ago
  Yes, despite slavery being horrendous and very common there was basically 1 successful slave revolt in all recorded history Haiti. Gaspar Yagna's Rebellion was arguable as they hid and became independent. Spartacus grew to ~120,000 then failed, Zanj Rebellion came closer and still failed. This is also why killing all the intellectuals after a successful revolution is so popular.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  https://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/intra-elite-competition-a-key-concept-for-understanding-the-dynamics-of-complex-societies/ https://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/intra-elite-competitio...
esyir 5y ago
Or perhaps, they do it because its the ideal weapon and means of control. We've seen that "sociopaths in management studies" bit. Wonder how it'd apply to wokism.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Some are removed from reality that it might seem like a good idea. I believe them not to be too well informed though and much support stems from the fact that these people don't know what is done under their banner. Bipartisanship in the US heavily influences this too. Most intellectuals have identified the problem pretty quickly but they also stay mostly silent. There are also those in high positions without the necessary facilities of course.
potatoineyes 5y ago
Well I am well educated, but none of the other categories you have mentioned above and I have reasoned, with continued and constant personal experience reinforcement that a society that tolerates the existence of lgbt people etc, and is also in adherence to liberal principles, is a society that had no future. I have gone from liberal to basically Nazi (with liberal and liberalism replacing the Jew as evil target), and every attempt to see whete I might have gone wrong, for noone else seems to think the things I do, just leads, over and iver again, to reading arguments allegedly for liberal values that seem either orthogonal entirely to the point, or are, to me, arguments against liberal values. Spending my 20s in highly liberal, educated environments has lretty much destroyed all the mainstream base assumptions about people, socjety, and morality that I had and replaced with, to be glib, the sentence "the crazy right wing extremists were actually right about all you people all along". This is an experience that has, in conjunction with a failure to self censor and attempts to ask for people to explain their positions, seek new knowledge, etc led to a near and complete total collapse of my life. Former friends of decades will not speak to me because I genuinely cannot understand why anyone would think e.g. homosexuals are anything other than broken deviants, etc based purely on the fundamental nature of their catwgory classification, fundamental inability to have biological children, the empiral evidence concerning higher disease rates from the type of sex they disproportionately practice relative to the heterosexual population, etc. I do not honestly think any of you here on hacker news are seriously against censorship, because I expect you would be unwilling and incapable of discussing something like this (and there are many other issues too) with me. I have no religious faith, am bot a conservative, was not brought up like that ,etc but have simply followed my own reason, conscience, and the evidence that is available for me to see and read about, yet I get very different conclusions. I will be starting to just lie to everyone about anything and go along with whatever the apparant consensus is, no matter how much harm I think it will do, and not matter how obvious from now on. I am bot stupid, I have leart that social conformity is more important than truth.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Don't try to go in that direction as to define yourself as the opposite of indignant bullshit. A lot of homosexuals don't like that either. As long as you don't hurt or discriminate in a professional setting, you should be fine. Some of this behavior developed because people were shunned. That is no excuse for Twitter woke, that is more an addiction to outrage. Societies can function with homosexual people because they were always prevalent.