> Why does it matter if it's woke? The majority of the points seem to be purely beneficial.
This is a very good point. Let me provide an argument:
The woke ideology/movement does attempt to address some real social issues (e.g. racism, classism, and areas where the disabled aren't served as well as they could be). However, on many of those issues, they either (1) attribute a specific cause to the issue that isn't universally shared (2) attempt to manipulate the language around the issue and/or (3) use unethical means to attempt to fix the issue.
This wouldn't be a problem by itself, but is made into one by the woke movement's totalitarian facets - the redefinition of common words in order to push an agenda, the suppression of dissenting thought (either through censorship or through extra-judicial persecution), and the weaponization of emotion to win arguments.
This means that while basically everyone (aside from white supremacists) can agree that white supremacy is bad, as soon as the woke movement gets involved, you lose the ability to tell what is white supremacy, because participants in the movement actively twist speech around the issue and emotionally attack those calling for reasonable discussion. For instance, in my work organization, a recent internal discussion thread had multiple employees claiming that "white supremacy" was the reason that Black people happened to be underrepresented in specific branches of that organization - and then attacked those who disagreed using emotional language instead of reasoned arguments.
This is why Scott Alexander doesn't like "SJWs" and tries to keep them out of his discussion forums - not because he finds their views bad, but because a core part of the movement is tribalism, censorship, manipulation of language, manipulation of emotion, and other anti-intellectual things that are definitionally unsuitable for the rationalist community (and, topically, Hacker News), and probably unsuitable for liberal democracies like the United States, as well.
> Personally I feel like discourse has grown more toxic.
It has - as a direct, causal result of the woke movement's aggressive propagation of the idea that "everything is political", which necessitates conflict and politics spreading into every area of life where there formerly was none.
That's why you have to be careful to separate the woke movement from the individual issues that they claim to represent - because the movement isn't just about (the very real issue of) racism, it also includes redefining the definition of "racist" to advance a hidden agenda.
I'm not even saying that all of the movement's tactics are bad (I really like some of the community-driven work in accessibility that it's driven, for instance) - just that most of the prominent ones are, to the point where I personally am strongly opposed to the movement itself.
> Again, say what you want about where it's gone if that's your thing, but stripped down the core of wokeness is "people should be more sensitive to marginalized communities" is it not? Once you get the swinging dick culture war BS out of the way, that's the original impulse right?
I'll reproduce my answer here since it goes into detail on why people react badly to wokeness:
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This kind of sentiment gets expressed often, but I'm skeptical of it being the original impulse, given a lot of the woke theory's roots in neo-Marxism and the like. For a lot of the average people who go along with it, that kind of impulse is how it sneaks itself in. People want to be kind, and wokeness speaks of kindness in a way.
But ultimately kind, it ain't. For example, a person who really was concerned about racism would be pleased to hear people were not racist - the world's a better place with a little less racism in it. But that's not the activists' reaction, is it? They vehemently deny it's possible to be not-racist - you have to be actively antiracist (ie. actively onboard with their specific program, other ways of getting to the goal are wrong) or you're a racist (and thus need to be pressured to get on with the program).
Both positions allow the activist control over the other person - them not being a racist would mean the activist can't exert pressure on them, since they're already not racist and there's nothing to fix. The person can go on with their life. But that is not okay to the activist, anything but! It gets spoken against vigorously, and much is spent defining terms and theorizing how that stance of non-racistness is impossible. They also actively disparage and fight against people who try to get to the goal in other ways.
Many think eg. individualism-focused 'colorblindness' works better and makes for more pleasant environments than 'antiracism', but the activists are viciously against this, because meeting people as individuals and trying to not let their skin color influence decision making means the activists are out of a job, and they can't boss the colorblindness advocates around. One thing that clearly betrays their allegiance to their method rather than their stated goal is that they're not interested in whether what they do actually works.
If someone's concern really was ending racism, they'd be very interested in learning things like different methods, comparing them, is the goal ultimately even possible, and if not what's the best that can be done, and so on. 'Antiracists' do essentially none of that. Instead, they try to shut down other approaches, and hold utopian perfection as essentially the only acceptable end-state. This doesn't really fit the profile of someone who really open-mindedly wants to get things done. It fits with a person whose goal is to be able to fight.
Fighting for a righteous cause feels really good, so it's no surprise people want to do that. If you gain earthly power over other people in the process and feel you're a part of something greater than yourself - two deep, primal human motivations - all the better. Fighting or raw societal power to order others around as the actual goals have some very perverse effects on the activists' incentives. It would actually be really good for them to pick methods that intentionally do not work. Why? Because then they never solve the problem. This means they can fight and feel important - how terrible the foe if they and their comrades struggle and struggle and it still just won't be destroyed. Clearly, the activist is very necessary! Power, same thing: If the excuse exists, they can keep using it to boss people.
It's worth noting another perverse incentive too, namely that rebuilding your identity is psychologically expensive. If you build your identity around being an activist, and then succeed on your goal, you get a nice dose of satisfaction but your identity ends up being a fat load of nothing if you have nothing else going on. It's like an athlete getting too old to play competitively and having to transition to a coaching or commentary role. That is hard, and often unpleasant. An eternal cause pursued with ineffective methods is a perfect solution to the issue. A person who set themselves an actual project, like, say, building N wells in Africa, knows that the job is done someday. They build themselves in a way that's capable of moving on to a far greater extent than the warrior who wears an abstract fight as their identity.
And as far as I can tell, this is exactly the pattern of the activist class today: They work in simple good-evil binaries towards a utopian end-state, and are fiercely attached to the methods, not eg. news that the problem is overstated and things are surprisingly good. So even if I can regard most ordinary people as basically motivated by a need to be good, polite and decent, the activists I can't in good conscience think of as being genuine or benign. They use the kindness as cover for less savory ends.
This is a very good point. Let me provide an argument:
The woke ideology/movement does attempt to address some real social issues (e.g. racism, classism, and areas where the disabled aren't served as well as they could be). However, on many of those issues, they either (1) attribute a specific cause to the issue that isn't universally shared (2) attempt to manipulate the language around the issue and/or (3) use unethical means to attempt to fix the issue.
This wouldn't be a problem by itself, but is made into one by the woke movement's totalitarian facets - the redefinition of common words in order to push an agenda, the suppression of dissenting thought (either through censorship or through extra-judicial persecution), and the weaponization of emotion to win arguments.
This means that while basically everyone (aside from white supremacists) can agree that white supremacy is bad, as soon as the woke movement gets involved, you lose the ability to tell what is white supremacy, because participants in the movement actively twist speech around the issue and emotionally attack those calling for reasonable discussion. For instance, in my work organization, a recent internal discussion thread had multiple employees claiming that "white supremacy" was the reason that Black people happened to be underrepresented in specific branches of that organization - and then attacked those who disagreed using emotional language instead of reasoned arguments.
This is why Scott Alexander doesn't like "SJWs" and tries to keep them out of his discussion forums - not because he finds their views bad, but because a core part of the movement is tribalism, censorship, manipulation of language, manipulation of emotion, and other anti-intellectual things that are definitionally unsuitable for the rationalist community (and, topically, Hacker News), and probably unsuitable for liberal democracies like the United States, as well.
> Personally I feel like discourse has grown more toxic.
It has - as a direct, causal result of the woke movement's aggressive propagation of the idea that "everything is political", which necessitates conflict and politics spreading into every area of life where there formerly was none.
That's why you have to be careful to separate the woke movement from the individual issues that they claim to represent - because the movement isn't just about (the very real issue of) racism, it also includes redefining the definition of "racist" to advance a hidden agenda.