The new religion of wokeness.
(boghossian.substack.com)
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This falls short in many ways, as other comments here have noted (nothing about sexism/feminism, gays, etc.). And this paragraph betrays the authors' liberal perspective:
No, not really. These "ongoing" problems are perhaps not non-existent, but they are basically irrelevant. For example, objections to trans ideology are rooted in genuine concerns, with "hatred" playing almost no role. And if the occasional person's disgust turns to hatred, that is not "morally abhorrent" but just an unimportant fact of life.
The "taboo facts" are mostly not taboo, and many are even boring ("Deaths from natural disasters have declined 90% since 1900"; who argues about this?). Almost none will get you banned from Twitter. Some supposed taboos basically support the woke agenda by other means: "Trans activism can hurt trans and gender-dysphoric children."
Real taboos would be that black crime and lower achievement is due to genetic differences in behavior and intelligence, as is Asian academic success, or that the "trans children" phenomenon is a fraud and incredibly damaging. Indeed, it is almost taboo to say that Western nations have the right to detain and expel illegal immigrants, much less that they have the right and reason to preserve their original ethnic and racial composition.
So, are they too afraid to endorse an actual taboo fact, or do they endorse the tabooing?
Oh and I've never seen the woke care about the homeless; too white and way too male.
I was essentially neutral on trannies until they made their problems my problem. If I hate them, I hate them for forcing me to deal with them and their bullshit. At the end of the day, I just want to be left alone but the left won’t leave me alone, so I can’t leave them alone.
I just wanted to play videogames, now I'm a soldier in the culture war
Black crime even existing is a taboo. We're not allowed to acknowledge or talk about it and the effects it has on society, let alone the 13/50 statistic, or the culture that it promotes (or which promotes it), which is one laced with naked hostility, violence, promiscuity, and prominent use of the word "nigger." And yet paradoxically, that entire culture, from the rap, the profanity, the gangs, and the crime, is constantly lauded by the entertainment industry. But we're still forced to pretend it doesn't actually happen and that if it does, it's whitey's fault.
Its because the subverted (feminine) culture has pushed the narrative "racism is bad" since "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Those poison seeds sprouted and finally bore fruit in the 60s when our nation allowed black militants to organize and operate openly without mercilessly crushing them.
Once "racism is bad" was accepted then it was only a matter of time before it was twisted into "anything a white person does that a black person doesn't like" is "racist". And that is where we are now, a black ethno-state.
Where black people can do whatever they want without consequence. And if a white person merely defends himself or his community against their opportunism he is demonized in the media and crushed by the apparatus of the state.
The real list wpuld probably send them into a fainting spell
One of the talking points for environmentalism is that more people will die in the increased storms caused by climate change. The decline doesn't disprove climate change or even the idea that more natural disasters are occuring. It could be we're just handling them better these days.
Notice women, gays, muslims, and jews are conspicuously left off the list.
Yeah I noticed that too.
Remember that Boghossian and Shellenberger are classical liberals.
They still support the first two waves of feminism and support same sex marriage.
These people will never acknowledge certain inconvenient truths about certain religious groups.
This chart is clearly not perfect since it purposely omits these four groups who are also part of the intersectionality of wokeism.
so they're egalitarians. equality is an obvious lie. structuring society around such a basic lie is criminal incompetence and willful ignorance. living in fantasy land.
Yeah I used to also be in that camp until World War T made me think things through to their logical conclusions.
Many such cases. And even if you don't think things through, eventually you live long enough to realize that he professional activist class is never going to pack their things and go home. There's always a new fight over the horizon, and they will never stop.
Thinking things to their conclusions is a slippery slope fallacy though. You're fallacying fallaciously and should stop because I said so.
I don't think that they are actually classical liberals. Classical liberals are lib-right like Sargon. I think these guys are just old school lib-left liberals like Bill Maher who recognize the problems with authoritarian leftism.
Not bad, but doesn't focus at all on biological and genetic differences between groups. The primary taboo belief on the left is biological reality exists and that there could possibly be biological differences between people that cause significant differences in outcomes (whether individuals or groups). These two just avoid the most important taboo belief the left has (probably because they also hold it).
This is true, but somewhere along the line I think there needs to be a normie-friendly version of the argument as a "thin end of the wedge". There are a lot of people who are more comfortable speaking in terms of "culture" and the effect that has on outcomes, and for those people I think the point needs to be made where, even if that is true, you are legally prevented from discriminating based on "culture" if those cultural differences correlate to race.
A landlord was prevented from exterminating rats in a building because it would result in an increase in rent which would disproportionately affect the poor tenants who tended to be non-White.. No sane person looks at that and thinks makes any sense, but that is what the Civil Rights Act and Disparate Impact leads to.
Reading The Bell Curve can come as part of a later lesson.
100%! Well-put! The cowardice of people who know better shaming themselves in public by bending over backwards to accommodate this sheer lunacy . . . words fail me.
Bigotry will exist as long as people have free will. Work to minimize it or discourage it or ostracize it, but anyone who proposes the possibility of ending it is dangerous. You will never end domestic violence. You will never end murder or rape. You will never end terrorism or drugs. So long as people possess the freedom to make decisions, people will make mistakes.
You know what does have to end? Taking anyone seriously when they suggest that endemic human issues can be “ended”.
This is an interesting taxonomy chart that summarizes the strange and insane beliefs of the woke.
I think Boghossian and Shellenberger are wrong in one aspect in that they still try to throw the woke a bone by saying "homophobia", "transphobia" and "racism" are still serious problems to address.
Wokeism is an existential threat to society and it must be opposed in every shape and form. People need to understand that sane people will lose if they try to compromise with the woke on anything.
Never agree to their frame.
Both in the same box.
It would be fun to do a meme version of this.
Original Sin, for all categories: X, Capitalism.
Guilty Devils, for all categories: Y, White People.
Sacred Victims, for all categories: Z, Black People, Trans People.
And so on.
For real, though...capitalism and white people did not receive nearly enough blame for this to be an accurate depiction of what the cultists believe.
Not a fan. No such breakdown can possibly be complete without accounting for feminism. In fact it becomes MORE complete by wiping the whole thing clean and just doing the Intersectional Feminism breakdown, which covers most if not arguably all woke stances. The entire idea of intersectionality was to broaden feminist concepts and the white male oppressor grievance framework out to account for every perceived injustice in society.
Those parts of wokeness feminism doesn't specifically cover don't matter, because scratch a wokey deep enough and you'll find they invariably have intersectional concepts powering their core. Thus you can have entirely new dilemmas pop up, like say the vaccine shit, and the Woke will slot it neatly and quickly into their worldview as an issue of white male politicians screwing up everything, toxic male bullies not being obedient or careful enough, and poor oppressed minorities not receiving enough of the holy messaging or lifesaving needles.
Overcomplicating the manner in which wokeness resembles religion just muddies the picture, and some of it's just doesn't ring true to me such as painting psychiatrists as victims of wokeness(??). At worst its a way of accommodating the obvious thesis ('wokeness is a religion') while trying to whitewash some contingent facts that are uncomfortable for the authors (eg. '...and that includes some of the things I've always believed in').
You can always tell a bad religion from it's complexity.
God -- if you acknowledge He exists -- doesn't need to us to systematize Him. Just search for Him earnestly and in good faith and the rest will follow.
Catholicism was the previous political and religious establishment of the western world. The Catholic establishment took something very simple -- the gospel of Jesus Christ -- and layered on all sorts of rules and regulations and practices to create a system that they could manipulate for political and personal gain.
Prior to this, these same people were persecuting Christians because the Christians were stubborn and refused to worship and obey the establishment. When killing Christians failed, they infiltrated them and corrupted them from within, setting up the new church establishment and ruled over people in a different way.
What is happening today is nothing new. The establishment is nothing if not predictable. The challenge is getting people to acknowledge they exist in the first place.
Mental illness is on there at least twice.