woke

How should society be organised, if at all?

Moderators: AMod, iMod

User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: woke

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:56 pm
commonsense wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:42 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 5:53 pm
Actually, there isn't.

Point to the "conservative" group that today has any power at all to enforce a political correctness. There's none...at least, none in the developed West. But I can point you to dozens of Leftist groups who employ vicious means to punish dissent, and they all do live in the developed West.
The Religious Right
There's no such organization. I named a bunch of organizations specifically. Can't you?
Stop referring to wokism as 'the left' you idiot. What do you gain by doing that? How do you define 'the left' anyway? What is YOUR definition of 'the left'? As a matter of fact wokies have more in common with your lot than 'the left'. Fanatics who take the moral high ground? Hmmm? Two sides of the same coin?
User avatar
Immanuel Can
Posts: 22140
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:42 pm

Re: woke

Post by Immanuel Can »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:01 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:56 pm
commonsense wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:42 pm

The Religious Right
There's no such organization. I named a bunch of organizations specifically. Can't you?
Stop referring to wokism as 'the left'...
That's what it is. It's all Neo-Marxism. Read Lindsay.
Gary Childress
Posts: 7966
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:08 pm
Location: Retirement Home for foolosophers

Re: woke

Post by Gary Childress »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:31 pm
Gary Childress wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:26 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 9:51 pm
Well, Gary, "like" or "not like" is not the issue.

I'm just asking what "right wing" group would have comparable power.
At the moment, I don't think any right-wing groups have the leeway that left-wing groups are given with regard to issues.
More than "leeway," you would have to say.

Some Leftist groups get an open license to bully, rage, burn, suppress, exile, silence, shame, disemploy, dox, rob and threaten the loved ones of their various detractors.

So what "right wing" group has anything like that?
I see people on the left who are vitally concerned about serious problems our whole world faces and doing some crazy stuff in the face of some crazy policies. I can't say I blame some of them too much. Meanwhile, the right doesn't seem to be all that concerned about anything except very narrow or selfish concerns. If the right started going around terrorizing people for what are largely personal goals, then I would say they were being even more immoral than leftist activists because they're acting for purely selfish reasons. Should leftist groups play nice too? Ideally, yes. But it seems to me that they are dealing with more troublesome and universal issues.
Gary Childress
Posts: 7966
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:08 pm
Location: Retirement Home for foolosophers

Re: woke

Post by Gary Childress »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:04 pm
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:01 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:56 pm
There's no such organization. I named a bunch of organizations specifically. Can't you?
Stop referring to wokism as 'the left'...
That's what it is. It's all Neo-Marxism. Read Lindsay.
What is "neo-marxism"?
User avatar
vegetariantaxidermy
Posts: 13983
Joined: Thu Aug 09, 2012 6:45 am
Location: Narniabiznus

Re: woke

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:04 pm
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:01 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:56 pm
There's no such organization. I named a bunch of organizations specifically. Can't you?
Stop referring to wokism as 'the left'...
That's what it is. It's all Neo-Marxism. Read Lindsay.
Bloody idiot. I'm left wing. Do you consider me a wokie? Lose the meaningless buzzwords and try to engage your brain for once (I realise that's next to impossible considering the early religious brainwashing). I'm sure you can do it with a bit of effort.
commonsense
Posts: 5087
Joined: Sun Mar 26, 2017 6:38 pm

Re: woke

Post by commonsense »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:56 pm
commonsense wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:42 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 5:53 pm
Actually, there isn't.

Point to the "conservative" group that today has any power at all to enforce a political correctness. There's none...at least, none in the developed West. But I can point you to dozens of Leftist groups who employ vicious means to punish dissent, and they all do live in the developed West.
The Religious Right
There's no such organization. I named a bunch of organizations specifically. Can't you?
Oh, there’s a difference between a group with like ideas and a group with like ideas and an organizational constitution?
User avatar
Immanuel Can
Posts: 22140
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:42 pm

Re: woke

Post by Immanuel Can »

Gary Childress wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:04 pm I see people on the left who are vitally concerned about serious problems our whole world faces and doing some crazy stuff in the face of some crazy policies. I can't say I blame some of them too much.
There are problems with that.

One is that, given a complex system, your chances of creating a worse situation rather than a better one, if you meddle with it, is astronomically high. So you have to have the best possible information, the purest data, the clearest motives, and all the right help if you want to safely "improve" society on the large scale, or an economy, or a complex set of institutions. Good wishes are not only not enough, they are incentives to meddle where one has limited or no competence...and thus to harm, not help people.

The second problem is that being "vitally concerned" about "serious problems" is not a qualification of efficiency or competence. One can have both, and be the absolute worst at making things better. And being driven by something like Socialist ideology is the absolute worst -- it's proved to be utterly incompetent in relation to every society where it has been allowed to run free. It does nothing but tyrannize and kill people, while collapsing economies and making every possible institution inefficient. So that direction is the fast road to Hell.
If the right started going around terrorizing people for what are largely personal goals,
What, in their beliefs, would ever induce them to do that? I can't see why a classical liberal or centrist conservative would ever have any reason at all to attempt that. They just want everybody to have the freedom to succeed or fail on their own two feet, and they don't look to any collectivist plans.
User avatar
Immanuel Can
Posts: 22140
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:42 pm

Re: woke

Post by Immanuel Can »

Gary Childress wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:06 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:04 pm
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:01 pm

Stop referring to wokism as 'the left'...
That's what it is. It's all Neo-Marxism. Read Lindsay.
What is "neo-marxism"?
Today's Marxists refer to old Marxism as "crude Marxism," because it's already failed, historically, and been demonstrated wrong. They don't want to have to answer for that, or to associate themselves with that. In a bid to sever themselves from that legacy of failure, and to distinguish themselves from Marx's errors, they have resorted to calling themselves "Neo-Marxists," meaning "new Marxists." And they want people to believe that where Marx failed, they will succeed; so they don't think that pointing to Marx's failures is any stroke against them.

Very convenient. The problem is, they're no better than Marx was. But they organize their program not around "class," which is a failed critical category, since "classes" in the West have proved so mobile and not at all inclined to "class struggle," as Marx hoped. Instead, they work along the axis of race, or sex, the environment, or sexuality -- or, to a lesser extent, along lines of fatness, disability, ageism and other less-popular lines of dissent. But "class" is a "crude Marxism" category. They've pretty much abandoned it, except for their rhetoric in labour relations.
Gary Childress
Posts: 7966
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:08 pm
Location: Retirement Home for foolosophers

Re: woke

Post by Gary Childress »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:13 am
Gary Childress wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:06 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:04 pm
That's what it is. It's all Neo-Marxism. Read Lindsay.
What is "neo-marxism"?
Today's Marxists refer to old Marxism as "crude Marxism," because it's already failed, historically, and been demonstrated wrong. They don't want to have to answer for that, or to associate themselves with that. In a bid to sever themselves from that legacy of failure, and to distinguish themselves from Marx's errors, they have resorted to calling themselves "Neo-Marxists," meaning "new Marxists." And they want people to believe that where Marx failed, they will succeed; so they don't think that pointing to Marx's failures is any stroke against them.

Very convenient. The problem is, they're no better than Marx was. But they organize their program not around "class," which is a failed critical category, since "classes" in the West have proved so mobile and not at all inclined to "class struggle," as Marx hoped. Instead, they work along the axis of race, or sex, the environment, or sexuality -- or, to a lesser extent, along lines of fatness, disability, ageism and other less-popular lines of dissent. But "class" is a "crude Marxism" category. They've pretty much abandoned it, except for their rhetoric in labour relations.
So everyone on the left is a "neo-marxist"?
User avatar
Immanuel Can
Posts: 22140
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:42 pm

Re: woke

Post by Immanuel Can »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:10 pm I'm left wing. Do you consider me a wokie?
Not necessarily. You could be something like an old-style Marxist, or you could just be unaware of the connection between Leftism and wokism. I can't say what you are. You'd have to tell us.

But if you were a wokie, you would, for sure, be on the Left.
User avatar
Immanuel Can
Posts: 22140
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:42 pm

Re: woke

Post by Immanuel Can »

Gary Childress wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:14 am So everyone on the left is a "neo-marxist"?
Not necessarily. Some people are just knee-jerk collectivists, who have no particular grasp of Socialism or its history. Some are just folks who want freebies, and think a benevolent big government would be likely to give them to them. It depends. Not everybody is a philosopher: some never stop to think why they believe what they believe, or whose ideology they might be channelling. They don't know.

But all Neo-Marxists are Lefties, and Socialists.
User avatar
Immanuel Can
Posts: 22140
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:42 pm

Re: woke

Post by Immanuel Can »

commonsense wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:28 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:56 pm
commonsense wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 10:42 pm

The Religious Right
There's no such organization. I named a bunch of organizations specifically. Can't you?
Oh, there’s a difference between a group with like ideas and a group with like ideas and an organizational constitution?
There's no such thing as "the religious right." That's a collectivist bogeyman made up of cobbling together every "religious" person they don't like.

But if you think otherwise, please give me it's head office, its membership card, its union, its media outlet, its last public demonstration or riot, its political arm, the name of the organization one has to join, or what institutions this bogeyman controls...

Hey, I've done that for you...why can't you do it for me, if the Right is such a clear and present danger as the Left wants us to think?
Gary Childress
Posts: 7966
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:08 pm
Location: Retirement Home for foolosophers

Re: woke

Post by Gary Childress »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:18 am
Gary Childress wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:14 am So everyone on the left is a "neo-marxist"?
Not necessarily. Some people are just knee-jerk collectivists, who have no particular grasp of Socialism or its history. Some are just folks who want freebies, and think a benevolent big government would be likely to give them to them. It depends. Not everybody is a philosopher: some never stop to think why they believe what they believe, or whose ideology they might be channelling. They don't know.

But all Neo-Marxists are Lefties, and Socialists.
Well, I don't want to be a "leftie socialist" so what should I do? Should I stop advocating for the governments of the world to address environmental issues? Should I shun peace demonstrators and wave picket signs that say "support our troops?" What can I do to avoid this connection with evil neo-Marxism?
User avatar
Immanuel Can
Posts: 22140
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2013 4:42 pm

Re: woke

Post by Immanuel Can »

Gary Childress wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:38 am Should I stop advocating for the governments of the world to address environmental issues?
The environment is a great example of a complex system that one should be careful not to monkey with. The stakes are too high.

But let's start with this: which government can you identify as having taken rational steps, and thus changed the global climate situation?
Should I shun peace demonstrators and wave picket signs that say "support our troops?"
It would depend on the war, wouldn't it? I'm sure you wouldn't want to be opposed to people resisting a Hitler or a Stalin, would you?
What can I do to avoid this connection with evil neo-Marxism?
Avoid Socialism. That's a good start. Don't ever trust big government, anymore than you would trust big business. Support freedom, opportunity, personal rights, and personal responsibilities. Don't think in collectivist ways, or vote by collectivist values.

How's that for a start?
Gary Childress
Posts: 7966
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:08 pm
Location: Retirement Home for foolosophers

Re: woke

Post by Gary Childress »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:52 am
Gary Childress wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:38 am Should I stop advocating for the governments of the world to address environmental issues?
The environment is a great example of a complex system that one should be careful not to monkey with. The stakes are too high.

But let's start with this: which government can you identify as having taken rational steps, and thus changed the global climate situation?
Should I shun peace demonstrators and wave picket signs that say "support our troops?"
It would depend on the war, wouldn't it? I'm sure you wouldn't want to be opposed to people resisting a Hitler or a Stalin, would you?
What can I do to avoid this connection with evil neo-Marxism?
Avoid Socialism. That's a good start. Don't ever trust big government, anymore than you would trust big business. Support freedom, opportunity, personal rights, and personal responsibilities. Don't think in collectivist ways, or vote by collectivist values.

How's that for a start?
I guess if I want to avoid collectivist ways I'll need to not vote anymore. I'm sure only collectivists participate in the voting process.
Post Reply