6 ms·

Lord…three comments. Three comments in before “don’t be a jerk to people different than you” is called a cult.

by avs733 5y ago

zarzavat 5y ago
Sadly there are many people who preach that without taking their own advice.
freen 5y ago
It always astonishes me the degree to which “don’t be an asshole” is considered a radical position. oh, zarzavat, of course, you are obviously correct: it’s the people who sell “F#%K your feelings” t-shirts at rallies and wave nazi flags at “legitimate political discourse” who really care about others. Trump: truly an empathetic person, deeply caring about others. Assholes never like being told they are assholes. It’s unsurprising that they believe everyone else is just as mean as they are.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  > It always astonishes me the degree to which “don’t be an asshole” is considered a radical position. That is not what wokeism means. Wokeism is about - making boys and men feel shameful for being boys and men - making white people feel shameful for being white - and other such things. What you talk about is not something that any reasonable HNer would call wokeism.
  - antris 5y ago
    If you think this type of "wokeism" exists in this society in any powerful form, you are delusional. You're upset at a few people making hot takes on the internet, while the worlds powerful institutions are built upon white male supremacy.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      > If you think this type of "wokeism" exists in this society in any powerful form, you are delusional. This is lited almost straight from the article isn't it? "If you disagree with our group you are dumb." > while the worlds powerful institutions are built upon white male supremacy. See what I wrote above about trying to make people ashamed to be born white or male.
      - antris 5y ago
        I didn't say you were dumb or that you should be ashamed. I'm just saying such "wokeism" doesn't exist. Interesting how you see this as a personal attack. Also I'm not representing any "group". I'm just speaking for myself. Seems like you see this as some kind of team sports?
        skinkestek 5y ago
        > I didn't say you were dumb or that you should be ashamed. You did say that white males where the root of the problem. I am a white male.
        antris 5y ago
        Where did I say white males were the problem? I said the system is built upon white male supremacy, but I didn't blame anyone for it. The system is the problem, not people of any specific identity. White male supremacy is an ideology, not an identity. Anyone can be white male supremacist, regardless of gender or race. Also, you can definitely be a white male who's not a white male supremacist.
        skinkestek 5y ago
        > White male supremacy is an ideology, not an identity. So where do these have their meetups? Where can I find contemporary writings that explain the superiority of white males?
        5y ago
  - krapp 5y ago
    >What you talk about is not something that any reasonable HNer would call wokeism. Almost no HNer has anything approaching a reasonable, good-faith or even well-informed opinion on "wokeism" to begin with.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      Maybe. Maybe it has just taken a meaning unrelated to the original meaning, just like "evangelical". But I am afraid that just like evangelical, woke has been tainted beyond repair.
  - freen 5y ago
    Ah, yes, at all costs, we mustn’t make white dudes feel uncomfortable. That would be a disaster! They’ve only been running things since the outset of our country, and literally using the force of law and violence to guarantee their social dominance for generations. If we point that out, and how injustice in the past impacts the present, white dudes will feel bad, and that’s intolerable. Edit: I am a white dude. And I don’t feel shame, I feel responsibility. Ask a German how they feel about Hitler.
    - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
      You have no idea how strange your comment sounds in some countries outside of the USA.
      - guerrilla 5y ago
        Can you elaborate on what you mean? This was very vague.
        hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
        This is a complex matter and it's hard to describe adequately in a single comment. In short, the USA has a very specific racial situation: black people had been slaves, and until quite recently (some HN readers may even remember that) there was racial segregation. The consequences of that are omnipresent today: black people are, on average, in a worse social situation than white people. One would hope that with time the situation would get better, but it's not happening at the speed one would hope. Also, for some reason people don't like to mix that much. Black-white marriages are not a norm - and it doesn't look like this is going to change soon. To add insult to injury, the children from mixed couples have another set of challenges: often they are made felt they don't belong to either community. The issue of race does mean a lot in individual and social contexts. Now imagine you are living in Russia. Over centuries you were a poor peasant, always at the mercy of someone. In the end you believe all your woes will end if you join others in yet another attempt to make things right, you kill the tzar, and soon you realized you just exchanged one tyrant for another. This is going on more or less until today. Nothing here has anything to do with race. It's similar in many other countries. But Americans have the tendency to perceive everything through their own context and project it onto the whole world. It makes no sense.
  - IIAOPSW 5y ago
    Wow, you ran out of gas by point 3 and went with "other stuff". Talk about shameless.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      - defund the police / acab - inventing pronouns and demand people use them - modern cancel culture - probably a few more
      - freen 5y ago
        Defund the police: budget allocation. Spend more money on social services so police aren’t the only tool in the govt toolkit. Not controversial. Pronouns: White people used to call black people terrible things too. Things change. Cancel culture is a moral panic like the satanic panic and strangers with candy kidnapping. https://kottke.org/22/02/cancel-culture-is-a-moral-panic https://kottke.org/22/02/cancel-culture-is-a-moral-panic Got more fictions to peddle? GOP introduced bills to make it legal to run over protestors in your car, illegal to teach about slavery, and consider the violent insurrection of Jan 6th “legitimate political discourse”.
        rascul 5y ago
        > Defund the police: budget allocation. Spend more money on social services so police aren’t the only tool in the govt toolkit. Not controversial. Seems quite apparent to me over the last couple years that it is indeed controversial. Perhaps there wouldn't have been protests, riots, etc. if it weren't.
        freen 5y ago
        Maybe controversial is the wrong term. In the age of historical low crime, perhaps we allocate resources elsewhere shouldn’t be a radical take. That some folks consider it to be speaks more about them than anything else.
        5y ago
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Maybe people should stop using inflammatory and ambiguous words and actually bring up those points then. Taking shortcuts is not working and is just causing flamewars.
  - avs733 5y ago
    this is helpful. None of these things are even remotely true, therefore wokeism (by your definition) can be dismissed as nonsense.
anonymoushn 5y ago
I don't think that's what anyone actually means when they say that.
- avs733 5y ago
  You’re right! It is used to play the strategic ambiguity game. Where what one means when they say it is never the same as what it means when they are asked to explain what they mean.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
antris 5y ago
Welcome to HN. And if instead of just a throwaway two-word dig it would be a longer comment with big words and superficially logical-sounding lazy argumentation that has been debunked countless times, it would likely be upvoted.
- iqanq 5y ago
  HN is one of the most echo chamberish communities on the internet and there are people who want them to be even more closed!
thinkingemote 5y ago
Ironically almost every religious cult has “don’t be a jerk to people different than you” as one of it's highest precepts. Cults operate differently - it's not what they believe, it's how they behave in the world. Not saying wokeism is a cult at all, but that religious cults often have Good Well Intentions. Precepts don't make a cult. (A healthy religion encourages love and tolerance to those in the outgroup e.g "love your enemy") But it's good that "people different than you" is mentioned when it comes to cults, but it's the other way around. The group is often labelled as different before it's labelled as a cult. One way to quickly determine if something is a cult or not is if they have isolated themselves from the world, or if it's just those outside people saying "they are different from us". Conspiracy theories are quite common in cults as it's one way for people to define an us/them idea which isolates the in group. In wokeism the theory could be that the outgroup is a conspiracy of crypto-fascist white supremacists. In trumpism the theory could be that the outgroup is a conspiracy of cultural marxist disruptors.
- freen 5y ago
  They aren’t very well hidden: they proudly wave the flag of traitorous slavers. Confederate history month still exists in a bunch of states. Have you seen the nazi flags at trump rallies? Jan 6th?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - thinkingemote 5y ago
    Almost every group has a theory about the people who are different than them. Sometimes the theory is based on some truths, but it's a theory, and a theory cannot represent the whole truth. Often conspiracy theories as a whole are simplified explanations of reality. There may well be based on actual evidence. They are perversely comforting to hold. To know you are in a chosen group who really knows whats going on, that there is a clearly defined enemy that can be hated... That is psychologically comforting compared to not knowing whats going on in life. It's why every political group will define their enemy. It is more scary to not know why the world is what it is. Imagine a world of today where no one is responsible for the state of it! Conspiracy theories in cults increase in-group cohesion and decrease tolerance to those different from the group as those outside the group are often part of the conspiracy. Conspiracy theories are mostly a pattern such as "we see these clear signs and occurrences in the world, therefore people in power are in a secret conspiracy to take over the world to bring in a hell on earth". Conspiracy theories are encompassing explanations of reality too. They can explain missing facts, they can explain alternative explanations, they provide a narrative to unknowns, contradictory facts and evidence can be used to show how the conspiracy is working. It's very hard to see whether one is within the spell of a cult or a conspiracy theory when one is in the middle of one. The best way to crack a cult member is to get them to see their in group / out group behaviour from the outside. So, "Why are you are jerk to people different than you?" is actually a really good question!
kcplate 5y ago
Every person I know who considers themselves “woke” is pretty regularly jerkish to everyone who they consider to be not woke…so I am not convinced your definition is entirely accurate.
robertlagrant 5y ago
At some point I think it's worth considering whether all the massive wealth of evidence that wokeism isn't that has to take effect. I don't think you can forever rely on the idea that "Those people are jerks and I'm not." If you need to stick with "who's doing something; I want to be like them" rather than "what're the facts and beliefs involved", then surely Bill Maher regularly calling out woke mobs has to count for something.

Lord…three comments. Three comments in before “don’t be a jerk to people different than you” is called a cult.

by avs733 5y ago

Lord…three comments. Three comments in before “don’t be a jerk to people different than you” is called a cult.

zarzavat 5y ago

Sadly there are many people who preach that without taking their own advice.

freen 5y ago

It always astonishes me the degree to which “don’t be an asshole” is considered a radical position. oh, zarzavat, of course, you are obviously correct: it’s the people who sell “F#%K your feelings” t-shirts at rallies and wave nazi flags at “legitimate political discourse” who really care about others. Trump: truly an empathetic person, deeply caring about others. Assholes never like being told they are assholes. It’s unsurprising that they believe everyone else is just as mean as they are.

skinkestek 5y ago
> It always astonishes me the degree to which “don’t be an asshole” is considered a radical position. That is not what wokeism means. Wokeism is about - making boys and men feel shameful for being boys and men - making white people feel shameful for being white - and other such things. What you talk about is not something that any reasonable HNer would call wokeism.
- antris 5y ago
  If you think this type of "wokeism" exists in this society in any powerful form, you are delusional. You're upset at a few people making hot takes on the internet, while the worlds powerful institutions are built upon white male supremacy.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    > If you think this type of "wokeism" exists in this society in any powerful form, you are delusional. This is lited almost straight from the article isn't it? "If you disagree with our group you are dumb." > while the worlds powerful institutions are built upon white male supremacy. See what I wrote above about trying to make people ashamed to be born white or male.
    - antris 5y ago
      I didn't say you were dumb or that you should be ashamed. I'm just saying such "wokeism" doesn't exist. Interesting how you see this as a personal attack. Also I'm not representing any "group". I'm just speaking for myself. Seems like you see this as some kind of team sports?
      - skinkestek 5y ago
        > I didn't say you were dumb or that you should be ashamed. You did say that white males where the root of the problem. I am a white male.
        antris 5y ago
        Where did I say white males were the problem? I said the system is built upon white male supremacy, but I didn't blame anyone for it. The system is the problem, not people of any specific identity. White male supremacy is an ideology, not an identity. Anyone can be white male supremacist, regardless of gender or race. Also, you can definitely be a white male who's not a white male supremacist.
        skinkestek 5y ago
        > White male supremacy is an ideology, not an identity. So where do these have their meetups? Where can I find contemporary writings that explain the superiority of white males?
        5y ago
- krapp 5y ago
  >What you talk about is not something that any reasonable HNer would call wokeism. Almost no HNer has anything approaching a reasonable, good-faith or even well-informed opinion on "wokeism" to begin with.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    Maybe. Maybe it has just taken a meaning unrelated to the original meaning, just like "evangelical". But I am afraid that just like evangelical, woke has been tainted beyond repair.
- freen 5y ago
  Ah, yes, at all costs, we mustn’t make white dudes feel uncomfortable. That would be a disaster! They’ve only been running things since the outset of our country, and literally using the force of law and violence to guarantee their social dominance for generations. If we point that out, and how injustice in the past impacts the present, white dudes will feel bad, and that’s intolerable. Edit: I am a white dude. And I don’t feel shame, I feel responsibility. Ask a German how they feel about Hitler.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    You have no idea how strange your comment sounds in some countries outside of the USA.
    - guerrilla 5y ago
      Can you elaborate on what you mean? This was very vague.
      - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
        This is a complex matter and it's hard to describe adequately in a single comment. In short, the USA has a very specific racial situation: black people had been slaves, and until quite recently (some HN readers may even remember that) there was racial segregation. The consequences of that are omnipresent today: black people are, on average, in a worse social situation than white people. One would hope that with time the situation would get better, but it's not happening at the speed one would hope. Also, for some reason people don't like to mix that much. Black-white marriages are not a norm - and it doesn't look like this is going to change soon. To add insult to injury, the children from mixed couples have another set of challenges: often they are made felt they don't belong to either community. The issue of race does mean a lot in individual and social contexts. Now imagine you are living in Russia. Over centuries you were a poor peasant, always at the mercy of someone. In the end you believe all your woes will end if you join others in yet another attempt to make things right, you kill the tzar, and soon you realized you just exchanged one tyrant for another. This is going on more or less until today. Nothing here has anything to do with race. It's similar in many other countries. But Americans have the tendency to perceive everything through their own context and project it onto the whole world. It makes no sense.
- IIAOPSW 5y ago
  Wow, you ran out of gas by point 3 and went with "other stuff". Talk about shameless.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    - defund the police / acab - inventing pronouns and demand people use them - modern cancel culture - probably a few more
    - freen 5y ago
      Defund the police: budget allocation. Spend more money on social services so police aren’t the only tool in the govt toolkit. Not controversial. Pronouns: White people used to call black people terrible things too. Things change. Cancel culture is a moral panic like the satanic panic and strangers with candy kidnapping. https://kottke.org/22/02/cancel-culture-is-a-moral-panic https://kottke.org/22/02/cancel-culture-is-a-moral-panic Got more fictions to peddle? GOP introduced bills to make it legal to run over protestors in your car, illegal to teach about slavery, and consider the violent insurrection of Jan 6th “legitimate political discourse”.
      - rascul 5y ago
        > Defund the police: budget allocation. Spend more money on social services so police aren’t the only tool in the govt toolkit. Not controversial. Seems quite apparent to me over the last couple years that it is indeed controversial. Perhaps there wouldn't have been protests, riots, etc. if it weren't.
        freen 5y ago
        Maybe controversial is the wrong term. In the age of historical low crime, perhaps we allocate resources elsewhere shouldn’t be a radical take. That some folks consider it to be speaks more about them than anything else.
        5y ago
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Maybe people should stop using inflammatory and ambiguous words and actually bring up those points then. Taking shortcuts is not working and is just causing flamewars.
- avs733 5y ago
  this is helpful. None of these things are even remotely true, therefore wokeism (by your definition) can be dismissed as nonsense.

anonymoushn 5y ago

I don't think that's what anyone actually means when they say that.

avs733 5y ago
You’re right! It is used to play the strategic ambiguity game. Where what one means when they say it is never the same as what it means when they are asked to explain what they mean.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

antris 5y ago

Welcome to HN. And if instead of just a throwaway two-word dig it would be a longer comment with big words and superficially logical-sounding lazy argumentation that has been debunked countless times, it would likely be upvoted.

iqanq 5y ago
HN is one of the most echo chamberish communities on the internet and there are people who want them to be even more closed!

thinkingemote 5y ago

Ironically almost every religious cult has “don’t be a jerk to people different than you” as one of it's highest precepts. Cults operate differently - it's not what they believe, it's how they behave in the world. Not saying wokeism is a cult at all, but that religious cults often have Good Well Intentions. Precepts don't make a cult. (A healthy religion encourages love and tolerance to those in the outgroup e.g "love your enemy") But it's good that "people different than you" is mentioned when it comes to cults, but it's the other way around. The group is often labelled as different before it's labelled as a cult. One way to quickly determine if something is a cult or not is if they have isolated themselves from the world, or if it's just those outside people saying "they are different from us". Conspiracy theories are quite common in cults as it's one way for people to define an us/them idea which isolates the in group. In wokeism the theory could be that the outgroup is a conspiracy of crypto-fascist white supremacists. In trumpism the theory could be that the outgroup is a conspiracy of cultural marxist disruptors.

freen 5y ago
They aren’t very well hidden: they proudly wave the flag of traitorous slavers. Confederate history month still exists in a bunch of states. Have you seen the nazi flags at trump rallies? Jan 6th?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  Almost every group has a theory about the people who are different than them. Sometimes the theory is based on some truths, but it's a theory, and a theory cannot represent the whole truth. Often conspiracy theories as a whole are simplified explanations of reality. There may well be based on actual evidence. They are perversely comforting to hold. To know you are in a chosen group who really knows whats going on, that there is a clearly defined enemy that can be hated... That is psychologically comforting compared to not knowing whats going on in life. It's why every political group will define their enemy. It is more scary to not know why the world is what it is. Imagine a world of today where no one is responsible for the state of it! Conspiracy theories in cults increase in-group cohesion and decrease tolerance to those different from the group as those outside the group are often part of the conspiracy. Conspiracy theories are mostly a pattern such as "we see these clear signs and occurrences in the world, therefore people in power are in a secret conspiracy to take over the world to bring in a hell on earth". Conspiracy theories are encompassing explanations of reality too. They can explain missing facts, they can explain alternative explanations, they provide a narrative to unknowns, contradictory facts and evidence can be used to show how the conspiracy is working. It's very hard to see whether one is within the spell of a cult or a conspiracy theory when one is in the middle of one. The best way to crack a cult member is to get them to see their in group / out group behaviour from the outside. So, "Why are you are jerk to people different than you?" is actually a really good question!

kcplate 5y ago

Every person I know who considers themselves “woke” is pretty regularly jerkish to everyone who they consider to be not woke…so I am not convinced your definition is entirely accurate.

robertlagrant 5y ago

At some point I think it's worth considering whether all the massive wealth of evidence that wokeism isn't that has to take effect. I don't think you can forever rely on the idea that "Those people are jerks and I'm not." If you need to stick with "who's doing something; I want to be like them" rather than "what're the facts and beliefs involved", then surely Bill Maher regularly calling out woke mobs has to count for something.