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I find, most discussions on "wokeism" stay too much on the surface level. There is a really interesting postmodern bit of epistemological philosophy underpinnin

I find, most discussions on "wokeism" stay too much on the surface level. There is a really interesting postmodern bit of epistemological philosophy underpinning the whole intellectual edifice. Bear with me for a second: Imagine I’m holding an apple in front of you. What do you see? “An Apple” - you answer. But how do you know? Seeing is just the act of light reflecting off an object and hitting the receptors at the back of your eyes. From there, your optical nerve transports a blurry and upside down set of individual RGB information. The rest is up to your brain. And your brain is doing much more than just putting the pixels together into a shape.. It identifies that shape as “apple”. And it knows things about apples. They’re good for you. They are a common fruit. They’re inexpensive. But here’s the thing: You didn’t invent the word “apple”. You didn’t discover that they’re healthy, common or cheap. Instead, someone told you. By teaching you the context to an apple, that person, school, institution or culture wields power. A power to shape your thinking and thereby your world view. And that power is what much of the culture war is about. That’s why so much of it is focused on speech. Speech is violence. (And so is silence). Speech is dangerous (boy, is it ever). Speech has to be controlled. You may disagree with the content the left wishes to fill the speech with. (I certainly do in many instances). But I believe they are fundamentally right about the underlying premise - and the leverage gained by winning the struggle about contextualisation.

ashton314 3y ago
> Speech is violence. No it isn't. Speech can be refuted by other speech. If you offend me, I can decide how to internalize it. If you do real physical violence to me, I don't have a choice. Yes, there are dangerous ideas, but I don't want to trust anyone to tell me (or worse, the public at large) what I can and cannot say or think. I want good ideas to win out by persuading me and others, not by being handed down from on high as dogma.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >If you offend me, I can decide how to internalize it. No you can't. Millions of emotional abusers have caused harm strictly through speech. You can't "control" how a hunk of fat doing a bunch of chemistry reacts to sound waves because that hunk of fat explicitly evolved to react to sound waves in physiological ways! Trauma is a real thing. People can be harmed in medically discernible ways through nothing more than words. Those words represent a thought in the head of whoever spoke them, and your brain knows that. Your brain knows words are more than "just words" and reacts accordingly.
  - vacuity 3y ago
    It's at times like these that I wish we could somehow evolve past our fragile psychology soon. There's only so much theory that can overcome human limitations. I do think everyone should have a platform online, but there would be robust filtering capabilities so people can hear just from who they like. In person, restraining orders and the like seems reasonable. Implementation is a different matter, but I think that's a reasonable balance between free speech and abuse prevention.
rizzom5000 3y ago
| By teaching you the context to an apple, that person, school, institution or culture wields power. Not if you are capable of critical thinking.
- wolframhempel 3y ago
  But you're thinking doesn't happen in a vacuum. If you grow up in a Marxist society, "critical thinking" means applying critical theory and a framework of class conflict to new problems. In traditional east Asia, critical thinking might mean reflecting on a problem through a Confucianist or Taoist lens. In the West, critical thinking means approaching problems through natural philosophy and the scientific method.
  - rizzom5000 3y ago
    That's not how I define critical thinking at all. Blind adherence to Marxism, Taoism or any other ideology is the antithesis of critical thinking. Science is not like these things, and I believe that Marxists and Taoists would also consider science as separate from the ideologies they espouse. I honestly don't know how someone could be simultaneously scientifically illiterate and capable of critical thinking.
Boogie_Man 3y ago
I have had this discussion with my friend several times. Our differences in opinion on the subject generally boil down to a fundamental disagreement. To one of us, a "sin though inaction" with the same consequence is never as bad as a "sin though action". To one of us it's identical. It relates directly to your conception of "duty". We also fundamentally disagree on how much of this "cultural context" you reference is natural and organic, and how much of it is entirely socially constructed. We both agree that there is some biological origin and near universality to much of the cultural context, but dispute how pertinent that origin is. I urge you to consider how "speech and silence is violence" may be a "cultural context" manipulation, and how frightening it might sound to many people working with the "legacy (default?)" cultural context.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
> You didn’t discover that they’re healthy, common or cheap. > Instead, someone told you. What I "know" is generally the same as what I've experienced. Someone can tell me their opinions about something but it doesn't make it true to my experience. How "cheap" is an individual apple to a 12-year-old compared to the 20-something professional with a regular income? > Speech is violence. (And so is silence). Speech is dangerous (boy, is it ever). Speech has to be controlled. I do not understand this point of view. This post seems to assume that Alice's speech needs to be controlled because Bob can only believe the things that Alice tells him. But Bob can think for himself, yeah?
acover 3y ago
It's entirely possible to discover an apple is cheap, common or healthy. You can literally go to an orchard and pick your own apples, see how they are stored to last past the season. Healthy is harder to measure, but often you'll feel better eating healthier foods in moderation - if you try to make a meal out of apples you'll just make yourself sick.
waterheater 3y ago
>Speech is violence. Why do you believe that "the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words" is "injury by or as if by distortion, infringement, or profanation"? Speech is violence. Speech is calm. Speech is war. Speech is peace. Speech is restrictive. Speech is freeing. Speech is hate. Speech is love. I could go on, but the point is that speech is a tool like any other. We don't allow tools to be used to injure another, and we also don't allow people to provoke an attack and then claim they're the injured party. We also don't hold a tool to someone's body and prevent them from using their own tools, because that's called "oppressive power".

ashton314 3y ago

> Speech is violence. No it isn't. Speech can be refuted by other speech. If you offend me, I can decide how to internalize it. If you do real physical violence to me, I don't have a choice. Yes, there are dangerous ideas, but I don't want to trust anyone to tell me (or worse, the public at large) what I can and cannot say or think. I want good ideas to win out by persuading me and others, not by being handed down from on high as dogma.

mrguyorama 3y ago
>If you offend me, I can decide how to internalize it. No you can't. Millions of emotional abusers have caused harm strictly through speech. You can't "control" how a hunk of fat doing a bunch of chemistry reacts to sound waves because that hunk of fat explicitly evolved to react to sound waves in physiological ways! Trauma is a real thing. People can be harmed in medically discernible ways through nothing more than words. Those words represent a thought in the head of whoever spoke them, and your brain knows that. Your brain knows words are more than "just words" and reacts accordingly.
- vacuity 3y ago
  It's at times like these that I wish we could somehow evolve past our fragile psychology soon. There's only so much theory that can overcome human limitations. I do think everyone should have a platform online, but there would be robust filtering capabilities so people can hear just from who they like. In person, restraining orders and the like seems reasonable. Implementation is a different matter, but I think that's a reasonable balance between free speech and abuse prevention.

rizzom5000 3y ago

| By teaching you the context to an apple, that person, school, institution or culture wields power. Not if you are capable of critical thinking.

wolframhempel 3y ago
But you're thinking doesn't happen in a vacuum. If you grow up in a Marxist society, "critical thinking" means applying critical theory and a framework of class conflict to new problems. In traditional east Asia, critical thinking might mean reflecting on a problem through a Confucianist or Taoist lens. In the West, critical thinking means approaching problems through natural philosophy and the scientific method.
- rizzom5000 3y ago
  That's not how I define critical thinking at all. Blind adherence to Marxism, Taoism or any other ideology is the antithesis of critical thinking. Science is not like these things, and I believe that Marxists and Taoists would also consider science as separate from the ideologies they espouse. I honestly don't know how someone could be simultaneously scientifically illiterate and capable of critical thinking.

Boogie_Man 3y ago

I have had this discussion with my friend several times. Our differences in opinion on the subject generally boil down to a fundamental disagreement. To one of us, a "sin though inaction" with the same consequence is never as bad as a "sin though action". To one of us it's identical. It relates directly to your conception of "duty". We also fundamentally disagree on how much of this "cultural context" you reference is natural and organic, and how much of it is entirely socially constructed. We both agree that there is some biological origin and near universality to much of the cultural context, but dispute how pertinent that origin is. I urge you to consider how "speech and silence is violence" may be a "cultural context" manipulation, and how frightening it might sound to many people working with the "legacy (default?)" cultural context.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago

> You didn’t discover that they’re healthy, common or cheap. > Instead, someone told you. What I "know" is generally the same as what I've experienced. Someone can tell me their opinions about something but it doesn't make it true to my experience. How "cheap" is an individual apple to a 12-year-old compared to the 20-something professional with a regular income? > Speech is violence. (And so is silence). Speech is dangerous (boy, is it ever). Speech has to be controlled. I do not understand this point of view. This post seems to assume that Alice's speech needs to be controlled because Bob can only believe the things that Alice tells him. But Bob can think for himself, yeah?

acover 3y ago

It's entirely possible to discover an apple is cheap, common or healthy. You can literally go to an orchard and pick your own apples, see how they are stored to last past the season. Healthy is harder to measure, but often you'll feel better eating healthier foods in moderation - if you try to make a meal out of apples you'll just make yourself sick.

waterheater 3y ago

>Speech is violence. Why do you believe that "the communication or expression of thoughts in spoken words" is "injury by or as if by distortion, infringement, or profanation"? Speech is violence. Speech is calm. Speech is war. Speech is peace. Speech is restrictive. Speech is freeing. Speech is hate. Speech is love. I could go on, but the point is that speech is a tool like any other. We don't allow tools to be used to injure another, and we also don't allow people to provoke an attack and then claim they're the injured party. We also don't hold a tool to someone's body and prevent them from using their own tools, because that's called "oppressive power".