Honest question: Is 'woke' culture a problem?

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I'm asking this question not only hypothetically but also because it's a genuine question that's been on my mind. I myself am in the middle politically. I lean more towards the left, I suppose. I believe taxes should be distributed towards those who need help. I'm autistic myself and rely on support services to some extent because of my challenges. It would make no sense for me to support a right wing system which relies heavily on an unreliable charity system to support people like me. However on the opposite side, I do not feel like the left is anywhere near the movement that it should be ideally.

Many on the left are full of hate, which I can understand. Being hurt often leads to feelings of resentment and hate. However I've been at the end of harassment and hate from both left wing people and right wing people. Both sides can get extremely vitriolic. It's difficult to have rational conversations with people on the extreme end of either side because of their non-nuanced approach to politics. Someone on the right even accused me the other day of being un-nuanced myself because I made one offhand comment that he didn't like, which I felt was a bit ironic. But I don't intend for this to be a vent thread. I'm genuinely curious what your opinions are. I do not like how the right frames' wolk culture' at all because it is often very disingenuous and comes with a bias of its own kind, but I also hardly understand what it means to be 'wolk'.

Is it this virtue signalling, sanctimonious, self righteous approach to ethics that justifies hatred and harassment of those of opposing views? If so I am strongly against it. But I am interesting to know what others think. Maybe there's a lot I can learn, maybe I have a good point. Maybe the truth is as boring as it sounds, that both extreme ends of the political spectrum are just overtly toxic and it's not worth trying to rationalize it too much. If people can contribute to this in a productive manner please do, I'm not very active on this forum but I really enjoy what I've seen so far and most of you seem like very intelligent and thoughtful people.

I think it's very toxic because as you said it's a movement based entirely on hate plus a lot of hypocrisy.

What's worst about it is that these people are pushing for a fight in which everyone will lose in the end. Any kind of civil war, even a cold civil war or "culture war" is always a dangerous warning sign of a society about to collapse.

First of all I would suggest you reformulate the poll question because it's misleading. What do you mean "as framed by conservatives"? Does that mean that there is no actual woke culture but it's a creation of the conservatives? Does it mean there is one but the conservatives attribute to it notions that seek to exaggerate it's negatives? Does it mean that there is a woke culture and the way the conservatives frame it it's correct?

The woke culture is a conglomeration of various philosophical and disciplinary traditions that predominantly are harboured in the social sciences and that their common denominator is their postmodernist epistemology and criticism of the western culture. Prominent among these philosophies are Critical Race Theory and Intersectional Feminism. But they are just the tip of the iceberg if you consider the plethora of pseudoscientific disciplines that is being tought in faculties in the social sciences. Yes woke culture is extremely toxic, especially for those who believe in it. It's a hurtful cult.

Disagreeing with the far-right is a problem. Absolutely unacceptable.

I think a lot of the problems that the right lumps together as 'woke' aren't limited to any one ideology. Conservatives often try to impose their social values on society; they've often engaged in public pressure campaigns to assert those values; they've often sought to influence education and public policy - some how that wasn't a problem.

I think a lot of the problems seen on campuses are limited to them and are just as much a reflection of how college kids are prone to behave as they are of anything else.

Last edited by funeralxempire on 15 Mar 2023, 2:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think there's good and bad in it. Probably best applied in moderation. I don't use the term "woke" myself because it's been co-opted by right-wingers to be a pejorative term to blind us to the good it can do, and because we already have terms for it. I prefer "right-on" or "politically correct."

There are, of course, silly and outright wrong things that people advocate for in the name of social justice.

In practice it seems like the way the right use "woke" is to mean "anyone who disagrees with them about which things are bad or the extent of bad things".

As a centre-right liberal, personally I am much more concerned by the censorious, aggressive, anti-intellectual streak on the right than I am by its left-wing equivalent.

I believe both "woke culture" and how it is being framed by conservatives is very toxic.

I used to hate and fear right wing lunatics because I believe they are turning fascist.

Now I'm starting to believe that left wing lunatics in this country are just as bad but in a different way. And by different way I mean embracing communism.

It's probably going to cause the US to tear in half just like it did Germany during World War 2. And can anyone honestly say they didn't see this coming?

People who are so goddamn stupid as to elect leaders who believe in "Jewish Space Lasers" don't deserve a happy country.

Face it, ALL Americans failed. They're just looking for scapegoats now.

I honestly don't know of any good that woke culture has achieved.

"Woke" culture is no more (or less) toxic than "MAGA" culture.

They are two sides of the same coin.

One could not exist without the other.

^^^^
This

ToughDiamond said it well! By "as framed by conservatives" I was, perhaps poorly, attempting to add clarity by helping us establish some kind of concise narrative or meaning to go off of. As for your understanding of woke culture, I think it's an interesting deep look into it. To me, being woke is mainly an emotionally-charged mentality spurred by feelings of social injustice and group-think. Many people who have this mindset don't actually know much about politics or philosophy at all. However they see what appears like injustice, and in many cases have or know others who have been victims of prejudice. They are influenced by their peers and get too caught up in narratives and whatnot.

Dealing with them myself, the main thing I notice in my experiences is how they will attack you over an innocent disagreement regardless of whether or not you have any malicious feelings towards any group. It's why many people are afraid to speak their opinions in front of a 'woke person'. As a result, people who aren't very interested in politics or social issues in general end up turning less sympathetic towards the left's side, and in some cases may even turn right as a result of their horrific behavior. That's just how I see it at least.

I have met some really intelligent libertarians, who I would assume could be classified to some extent as right wing, at least economically. However the average right wing person I've met seems to be exactly as you describe, as an anti-intellectual aggressive censorious Trump supporter type.

As someone who sympathized with certain right wing ideas, mainly as it pertains to freedom, it was this sort of mentality that really alienated me from many on the right- this idea that political leaders who are so clearly horrendous and corrupt could be heralded not only as a positive force, but even as some type of God like figure, such as in the case of Trump who could lie 10 times a minute and his supporters wouldn't ever question him.

That sort of blind loyalty has always frustrated me. But I have to wonder, and I'm afraid of going off topic, but how could the right improve as a whole? What values could the right espouse that could objectively improve the country? Because that's something that confuses me as I can't really picture a right wing system of any kind doing too much good for the country, at least not without major social change first which could require a very long time to achieve.

I'm guessing the 'as framed by conservatives' is the OP trying to evade attack for bringing up the question.

So to put it this way - when institutions (government, media / press, education) are getting destroyed by a philosophy - whether it's Marxism, wokeism, crony capitalism, etc. and it's putting us all in danger without offering a better replacement, it's really hard to argue that it's not doing significant damage to things we need to have working.

For wokeism I'm mostly interested in hearing the left-wing critics. Louise Perry sounds like she's been staying on top of thing, and listening to her and Mary Harrington talk about it in bits while also discussing Mary's new book on transhumanism really indicated that some on the left are seeing an almost perfect match with things like narcissistic personality disorder, narcissistic supply, and so much of what's being foisted 'from the top', most often by ivory tower white women, at working class people who'd be in places like BLM - ie. a lot of the toxic, disabling 'white knight' behavior is properly getting labeled as predatory.

There's no denying that racism exists (not nearly as overt or bad as it once was, although the hyperfocus has rolled things back some), structural oppression seems like it's more of a problem of historic wealth accrual in some places and lack of it (as well as outright confiscation and sabotage - such as places like Black Wall Street, Roseville, etc.). At the same time on the left - there are a LOT of race-mongers and race-predators. Really when you understand Darwinian game theory and you see anything that's deemed so holy / sacred that it dare not be scrutinized, this ends up being a racket for narcissists, sociopaths, dark empaths, and Munchausen's by proxy.

Woke culture .... hmm.. if you have very much money and possibly even politically connected . It is important to have people of various cultures in one country that your in , be at odds with each other . If they realised as a whole that the top 1% of the people control most everything in anyones life, whether directly or indirectly . Then there actually be a real awakening . Perhaps just people would not stand for the situation . And would actually want wealth distribution , at least through taxation of the ogliarchs of any one country . The right to life would be universal
( ie. universal healthcare ) on a Minimal or Not for Profit base . Right to subsistance allowances And housing .
And obviously psyche care for anyone concerned , even the wealthy , Perhaps to help them understand that absolute hoarding of wealth to the extreme disadvantage of others is morally incorrect .
But if you are in such positions as the uber wealthy. You might want to keep cultural groups throwing stones at each and encourage it .From behind the scenes through such stategies as being woke or of being a divided political party .
Even hiring bad actors to stimulate situations . So noone catches on to the extreme disparities amongst living situations of average people . My group is better than your group , even if we all have to die to prove it .
[ Reflection: Lyrics to the Song "Imagine" by John Lennon] (That guy had to die for spreading Seditious ideas)
had a good melody too .

Accepting the lying by politicians on your side is not a phenomenon restricted to conservatives. Liberals do it too. Right now they have elected a caricature of a president. A demented puppet figure who is a well lnown career politician con artist. Yet, the left seems perfectly content with it. Nobody is asking who is actually making the decisions for that demented old walking mummy. And how is it possible that a person obviously incapable of making sound decisions gets elected to the probably most consequential position on the planet.

The right as it is in the U.S. has it's cons as it's the emphasis on religion, nationalism, probably a historic connection to racist minded folks, some historic rigidity towards changing social norms. But it gets right some important things like the classical liberal ideals of the founding fathers, which is liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of association, the right to property etc. Wich should be also values that the liberals should uphold, but they often don't. Most importantly the right has a better grip of economics, which is the historicaly weak spot of the left.