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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31616 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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I'd see it as a form of peacocking; i.e., we demonstrate our extreme wealth, security and ostensible enlightenment by adopting highly visible, confrontational and unintuitive beliefs that less educated or poorer societies and individuals simply cannot afford to act on.

This may be uncharitable, so I claim no objective truth here, but this seems to me to be the closest analogue to biological phenomena.

I see it more as anti-status quo bias and being prone to anti hierarchy bias. Who benefits from wokeness? Anyone who is lower on the socioeconomic totem pole. You can also benefit as a straight white male by showing wokeness, since it makes you seem generous and humble (although obviously there is a limit where too much wokeness damages you)

Anti-hierarchy bias doesn't seem to fit. The entire thing is used by people with high social, symbolic and cultural capital to legitimize their position of power. It's about claiming that you're selflessly protecting the oppressed and disadvantaged, so very virtuous people like you deserve to be ruling. At the same time, most of the point are straight up "toxoplasma of rage", they are not meant to convince people and, in fact, don't convince anyone outside the bubble. It has no tangible impact on real-world social justice. If it were really about opposing the status quo, the focus would be on important and actionable problems with effective approaches to solve them, not semantics and microaggressions. They may not be aware of it, but it's all a performance.

Who benefits from wokeness? Anyone who is lower on the socioeconomic totem pole.

I would, rather accusatorily, say that a certain class of college educated unskilled white women are largely the benefactors. They get something visible and at least pretending to be important to do in their anti-productive administrative, HR and DEI jobs.

I would say women are lower on the totem pole than men, traditionally speaking, so that’s why they find wokeness appealing. It provides a means to self advocate in order to gain sinecures like what you’re talking about, despite being obviously less productive or useful.

Who benefits from wokeness? Anyone who is lower on the socioeconomic totem pole.

Certainly not in Finland where the study was made. The people lowest on the socioeconomic totem pole are generally the least likely to have woke beliefs, not least because they 1) can't afford to believe in such things as much as more well off people and 2) tend to be much worse educated and thus much more isolated from academic circles and twitter (woke stuff being very much imported from USA here).

Agreed that that is a wrinkle in my theory but I think class needs to be set aside here. Wokeness is not about advocating for those in poverty or the working class, but for other so called marginalized identities.

The most socially attuned straight white men treat wokeness as a man in the 1950s would treat Christianity. Mouth the platitudes, make sure to turn up to the expected group ceremonies, avoid socializing with people who loudly reject it, and certainly don't angrily denounce it yourself. But never go too far in that direction: someone performing a public display of self-flagellation will always be considered a weirdo, no matter how motivated it is by his dedication to righteousness.

Most of my friend groups who were woke (we're talking pre-2015, so before woke meant what it meant now, and before Trumpism) would often denigrate "frat kids" and "the popular kids" as being "country club republicans" etc. These friend groups were very art/theatre-kid-adjacent. I think calling it "top of the pole" or "bottom of the pole" is too simplistic, but there's definitely some pole-stuff going on.

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