I’m pretty sure the answer is some variant of “yes,” “of course,” and “what a stupid question,” but the Freethoughtblogs gang will be exploring it on Saturday afternoon, and maybe provide some nuance and depth. You can contribute, too!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
NO! We don’t need no stinkin’ wokeness! We can debunk stupid religious claims in our sleep! Oh wait, we gotta do more than that? Yeah, okay, nevermind…
“But, but, being ‘woke’ might interfere with our insufferable smugness!” – most ‘prominent’ skeptics
I haven’t finished my first coffee yet. Is half asleep woke?
Is that at 5pm Eastern Time?
Whenever someone talks about “woke” in a certain tone of voice I automatically tune out anything they say after that.
Woke? I’m still working on being hip!
Sure, a skeptic can be woke, if that includes being skeptical about the dogmatic parts of woke. Question the authority of reflexive misogyny, and also reflexive misandry. Mock stupidity, and the opposite stupidity.
By the way, the word ‘dogmatic’ sounds like it’s describing a robot canid.
Will they be defining “woke”? Because it’s usually defined as, “something I don’t like”.
Why not be woke?
What’s the alternative? What’s better?
NB. Off topic but Boeing Starliner has lifted off successfully & is en route tothe ISS inLEO now with two astronauts (Butch & Sunny) aboard :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/04/07/infinite-thread-xxxi/comment-page-4/#comment-2223335
As I understand it, the expression “woke” was originally used by African-Americans to mean “being aware of all the systematic racism we African-Americans live with.” This was, I suppose, to contrast with going around assuming your difficulties are all your fault.
From what I can see, the main non-AA people who use the expression “woke” are right-wingers who want to demonize anyone who wants to make things better for less privileged people. I think they also want to poison the use of any anti-racist terms or arguments.
I hadn’t noticed progressives using the term much.
Right wingers don’t need a definition for “woke” because they are not using it as a word. They are using it as a totem to identify their tribal affiliation to strangers.
They don’t.
These days “woke” is simply a right wingnut insult and otherwise meaningless.
It is in the same category as “cultural Marxism” and “postmodernism” as words that might have once had a meaning, but now in the way the right wingnuts use them, don’t even actually exist.
It’s very useful to point out that the pejorative woke is an act of appropriation that turns a word of awareness and defense about racism into a weapon that treats the awareness and defense of bigotry in general as a social threat. The appropriative use isn’t invincible. All the bigots can do is whine while you develop a new political routine.
I think the vast majority of skeptic’s and atheists would qualify as woke. What concerns me is that it seems to me that the rest of the progressive community are turning on us because we have the audacity that the religious are credulous morons who are dragging civilization down.
Can’t challenge the “Progressive” Christians (Now THAT’S an oxymoron.), Wiccans, and zillennial TikTok astrologer despite them poisoning human intellect with superstitious bullshit, can we? In my interactions with them, saying there is nothing “spiritual” or supernatural just as bad to them as calling a Black person the n-word.
Edit: …we have the audacity to point out…
If anyone dares put their sanity to the test James Lindsay had recently spent hours trying to pin something evil on George Soros. I guess he had milked Herbert Marcuse’s woke nipples for all they could produce. I gave up part of the way into Lindsay on Soros. I made it halfway out of just over three frickin’ hours. “The Reflexive Alchemy of George Soros” should be all the warning you need. One of Coyne’s regulars who has gotten sucked into the Lindsay tractor beam was rambling about it a while back and based on that babbling nonsense I was curious, which has been said to be something that will kill the cat.
Soros’s views on reflexivity and markets are a wild enough ride alone, but hearing Lindsay interpret them while he’s stretching another piece of red string across the Pepe Silvia corkboard might put you over the edge. I prefer staying closer to reality myself.
WEIT has gotten stuck in a rut of a very narrow range of topics which are Coyne’s long running obsessions. Student protestors, Gaza, Israel, being canceled in Amsterdam, woke this, woke that. In a nutshell, the kids these days.
At least we have a variety of spiders!
Yeah, I just saw that.
Given Boeing’s recent history, I would not have flown in a spacecraft made by Boeing.
Those two astronauts are exceptionally brave even by astronaut standards.
Congratulations to everyone including Boeing for making a space vehicle that parts don’t fall off of.
Akira, you’re a neverending source of unintentional humour.
raven @12
I think there are people devoted to French post-structuralism and its variations as in Deleuze and Guattari which still seem quite arcane to me. In a book I’ve been reading about revisionist zionism The Jewish Radical Right by Eran Kaplan there is a digression into such stuff in context of what is called post-Zionism and it’s maddeningly convoluted to me in contrast to the New Historians like Avi Shlaim who don’t deconstructively chase their tail.
Also in contrast the German school of critical theory seems quite tame compared to the French school (aside from Debord and maybe some Foucault). Given they (ie- Frankfurt) focused heavily on Marxian superstructure “cultural Marxism” isn’t far off the mark though it has a negative connotation. Much of it was more psychological (eg- Fromm). Habermas broke the mold by applying far more contemporary social science than his predecessors had done though Adorno is known for the F-scale: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-scale_(personality_test)
Woke got ripped from black culture (like that’s never happened before) and morphed into a new bogey label for things that not long before were called “regressive left” or “PC” several decades ago.
OTOH, SWJ has passed into desuetude with its current replacement.
[bah. SJW]
Also besides the French and German schools there’s the African American school which is where CRT comes in. I presume there to be a range of antiracist stuff. Kendi has been a popularizer. He kinda belly flopped in the public sphere recently.
Actual CRT stemmed off legal theory and grandpa was Derrick Bell. His descendants are many but Kimberlé Crenshaw and Michelle Alexander come to mind as most popular since they are the few I’m most familiar with. Intersectionality as argued by Crenshaw seems solid to me but others may have overdone the concept a bit. I suppose the concept is at least CRT adjacent. And for those who think CRT is some esoteric thing confined to the ivory tower, The New Jim Crow was widely read, no? I found it a valuable and eye-opening read. Isn’t that applied CRT?
John Morales @20
Great point. Thanks! Good ole SJW.
I’d rather be woke
than a right winged joke.