I think the question would be significantly improved by adding some specific examples of what Valentine considers to be “leaning hard woke”. A couple of people have responded along the lines of “what you call hard woke is just being decent / being inclusive / not trying to hide the existence of people who are gay or black or whatever”, which might be a highly informative response if what Valentine is referring to is (say) the existence of gay couples in Disney movies or an entirely unhelpful one if it’s something very different.
Terminology in this area is a terrible mess, because the same thing can look like obvious common sense and decency to one person and like extremism to another. There probably isn’t any nice concise term Valentine could have used in place of “wokism” that wouldn’t have annoyed someone, but by giving concrete examples it’s at least possible to enable people to tell what sort of things are being asked about.
Relatedly, in view of Valentine’s complaint that one answerer is “forcefully asserting one side of a culture war debate as fact, in content and in frame”, I think it’s worth pointing out that the question is doing a fair bit of that itself. Leaving aside the fact that these days “woke” is a pejorative term that signals a particular tribal affiliation, which Valentine says he didn’t know, note that “hard” as a modifier is also a pejorative in this sort of context (if someone calls someone else “hard right” or “hard left” you can make a pretty reliable guess at their own leanings) and that the term “ideological capture” also assumes the wrongness of the ideology in question and so far as I can tell is in fact used exclusively to refer to the specific case of social-justice ideas taking root in institutions.
I don’t mean that it isn’t possible in principle for someone to use the term “hard X” or “ideological capture” about something they don’t disapprove of. But in practice it’s very rare, and using those terms as Valentine has used them is in effect a framing/slanting of the question, and will tend to make anyone who isn’t on the same side of the culture war as (I take it) Valentine is on feel like they’re not supposed to belong in this discussion.
I mostly just agree. I definitely thumbs-up the spirit you’re bringing in this comment. I really like your contribution here. Thank you.
I did in fact mean “hard” and “ideological capture” as handles for a process, not as embedded insults or dismissals. Some group being ideologically captured doesn’t mean the ideology is wrong. It’s a hint of the mechanism of spreading. And I’d picked up “hard” as something like “far, but with intent to go far”. Like the difference between “far left” and “hard left” (or “far right” vs. “hard right”) lands for me as a matter of how much fight energy there is in going that direction. And the thing I’m looking at is definitely a matter of something that looks to me like fight energy pushing far left.
But I hear you, apparently these descriptors are signals about the speaker’s position on the ideology spectrum. I didn’t intend that. Alas. Language itself has been more attacked than I’d been aware of.
But to your main point: I agree, concrete examples would have been more helpful as a way of pointing at the thing I was trying to ask about. I’d hoped that there was enough grounding in rationality here, and enough anti dark arts collective skill, that the communal behavioral prior was exactly on looking for and naming Gears instead of resorting to memetic slap-fighting. That was in fact why I asked here instead of somewhere else! But it seems I missed in my guess. Not totally. But enough to be noteworthy.[See reply thread with gjm below for scratch context.]
For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t describe myself as leaning right. I think the right makes an analogous error. It just sounds different. So I don’t think this is me slipping in hidden rightist bias. I’m just honestly trying to look at how the world works.
I don’t claim to know what your political position is, but as regards the last paragraph I think it’s worth remarking that it is not at all uncommon that two people both think their own political position is kinda in the middle, but A thinks B is way over on the left and B thinks A is way over on the right.
(Also, I wish people didn’t write things like your fourth paragraph. “I’m sorry you took offence at what I said.” “This is all my fault: I should never have thought I could trust you.” “I handled this badly—I hadn’t appreciated how limited your understanding is.” Bleh.)
(Also, I wish people didn’t write things like your fourth paragraph. “I’m sorry you took offence at what I said.” “This is all my fault: I should never have thought I could trust you.” “I handled this badly—I hadn’t appreciated how limited your understanding is.” Bleh.)
Uh, yeah. Oops. I didn’t mean it to come out that way, but rereading it it really does. Sorry about that.
I meant it honestly as “I misread the context. Mea culpa.”
I also feel some snark toward rationalist culture that slips in sideways. It’s obvious that’s what happened here. That’s an unkindness that really doesn’t belong there.
The fact that you didn’t actually add the examples is one of the key factors in how I detected agency here; see my recent comments, I do believe you now that you’ve directly asserted non-agency, since I’ve known you long enough to trust you wouldn’t lie about that level of direct statement. I’d still love to see examples of the behaviors that characterize patterns you want to understand, if you’re willing to add them. I don’t think any label will fully substitute for examples, because we all have such different reads as to what examples might be referenced, especially since you’ve used the word “woke” which is in fact generally a pejorative in current usage as far as I’m aware.
Yeah, this was a meaningful update for me in this area. The importance of concrete examples in areas where the info commons have become a memetic battleground. It seems kind of obvious once said but I’d never thought about it this way before. I just wanted to point and ask “Why does that thing move the way it’s moving?”
…especially since you’ve used the word “woke” which is in fact generally a pejorative in current usage as far as I’m aware.
I think I said this somewhere else, but you might find it a helpful aside anyway:
I originally learned the term “woke” from skater kids who would probably have identified with the left. I watched as the term morphed from a “awaken from the Matrix” kind of thing to “seeing the racial inequality that’s baked into culture” and then into a more general intersectionalist framing — all from people who stood out clearly to me as being on the political left.
I’d known the right sometimes used “woke” mockingly, but they also use “pro-choice” mockingly at times too.
So the main surprise for me here was in discovering that the left has apparently started interpreting anyone using “woke” as being on the right and meaning it mockingly.
It’s an odd level of memetic forgetfulness, resulting in an actual change in what the term means and signals, that I hadn’t expected. It’s weird to me on the level of if “Black lives matter!” were to evolve to be a KKK slogan. Not impossible but definitely not what I’d expect by default.
What I’m saying here doesn’t detract at all from what you’re saying. I just thought you’d find that snapshot into why I’d used “woke” interesting and possibly helpful to know.
Huh! I had heard it in passing before the past 6 years, but over the past 6 years is when I started hearing it enough to get a binding for “wokism”, which I think is a keyword that had a strong binding for me. My intuition wants to round it off to “I hadn’t heard it until the recent definition”, which I think is technically wrong, but still matches my perceptual data fairly well. Shrug, it’s not actually that important; one could add some connecting words that would make it clearly a description of something bad, even as someone who strongly approves of large swaths of what the right would label “woke” I do think that there’s a kind of performative wokeness that fails to be actually awake in the ways I care about and thereby fails to implement the coprotection of beings that I’d want people to wake up to in the first place.
I think the question would be significantly improved by adding some specific examples of what Valentine considers to be “leaning hard woke”. A couple of people have responded along the lines of “what you call hard woke is just being decent / being inclusive / not trying to hide the existence of people who are gay or black or whatever”, which might be a highly informative response if what Valentine is referring to is (say) the existence of gay couples in Disney movies or an entirely unhelpful one if it’s something very different.
Terminology in this area is a terrible mess, because the same thing can look like obvious common sense and decency to one person and like extremism to another. There probably isn’t any nice concise term Valentine could have used in place of “wokism” that wouldn’t have annoyed someone, but by giving concrete examples it’s at least possible to enable people to tell what sort of things are being asked about.
Relatedly, in view of Valentine’s complaint that one answerer is “forcefully asserting one side of a culture war debate as fact, in content and in frame”, I think it’s worth pointing out that the question is doing a fair bit of that itself. Leaving aside the fact that these days “woke” is a pejorative term that signals a particular tribal affiliation, which Valentine says he didn’t know, note that “hard” as a modifier is also a pejorative in this sort of context (if someone calls someone else “hard right” or “hard left” you can make a pretty reliable guess at their own leanings) and that the term “ideological capture” also assumes the wrongness of the ideology in question and so far as I can tell is in fact used exclusively to refer to the specific case of social-justice ideas taking root in institutions.
I don’t mean that it isn’t possible in principle for someone to use the term “hard X” or “ideological capture” about something they don’t disapprove of. But in practice it’s very rare, and using those terms as Valentine has used them is in effect a framing/slanting of the question, and will tend to make anyone who isn’t on the same side of the culture war as (I take it) Valentine is on feel like they’re not supposed to belong in this discussion.
I mostly just agree. I definitely thumbs-up the spirit you’re bringing in this comment. I really like your contribution here. Thank you.
I did in fact mean “hard” and “ideological capture” as handles for a process, not as embedded insults or dismissals. Some group being ideologically captured doesn’t mean the ideology is wrong. It’s a hint of the mechanism of spreading. And I’d picked up “hard” as something like “far, but with intent to go far”. Like the difference between “far left” and “hard left” (or “far right” vs. “hard right”) lands for me as a matter of how much fight energy there is in going that direction. And the thing I’m looking at is definitely a matter of something that looks to me like fight energy pushing far left.
But I hear you, apparently these descriptors are signals about the speaker’s position on the ideology spectrum. I didn’t intend that. Alas. Language itself has been more attacked than I’d been aware of.
But to your main point: I agree, concrete examples would have been more helpful as a way of pointing at the thing I was trying to ask about.
I’d hoped that there was enough grounding in rationality here, and enough anti dark arts collective skill, that the communal behavioral prior was exactly on looking for and naming Gears instead of resorting to memetic slap-fighting. That was in fact why I asked here instead of somewhere else! But it seems I missed in my guess. Not totally. But enough to be noteworthy.[See reply thread with gjm below for scratch context.]For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t describe myself as leaning right. I think the right makes an analogous error. It just sounds different. So I don’t think this is me slipping in hidden rightist bias. I’m just honestly trying to look at how the world works.
I don’t claim to know what your political position is, but as regards the last paragraph I think it’s worth remarking that it is not at all uncommon that two people both think their own political position is kinda in the middle, but A thinks B is way over on the left and B thinks A is way over on the right.
(Also, I wish people didn’t write things like your fourth paragraph. “I’m sorry you took offence at what I said.” “This is all my fault: I should never have thought I could trust you.” “I handled this badly—I hadn’t appreciated how limited your understanding is.” Bleh.)
Uh, yeah. Oops. I didn’t mean it to come out that way, but rereading it it really does. Sorry about that.
I meant it honestly as “I misread the context. Mea culpa.”
I also feel some snark toward rationalist culture that slips in sideways. It’s obvious that’s what happened here. That’s an unkindness that really doesn’t belong there.
Thanks for naming it.
(I feel like I should mention that none of the downvotes on the comment I’m replying to is from me.)
The fact that you didn’t actually add the examples is one of the key factors in how I detected agency here; see my recent comments, I do believe you now that you’ve directly asserted non-agency, since I’ve known you long enough to trust you wouldn’t lie about that level of direct statement. I’d still love to see examples of the behaviors that characterize patterns you want to understand, if you’re willing to add them. I don’t think any label will fully substitute for examples, because we all have such different reads as to what examples might be referenced, especially since you’ve used the word “woke” which is in fact generally a pejorative in current usage as far as I’m aware.
Yeah, this was a meaningful update for me in this area. The importance of concrete examples in areas where the info commons have become a memetic battleground. It seems kind of obvious once said but I’d never thought about it this way before. I just wanted to point and ask “Why does that thing move the way it’s moving?”
I think I said this somewhere else, but you might find it a helpful aside anyway:
I originally learned the term “woke” from skater kids who would probably have identified with the left. I watched as the term morphed from a “awaken from the Matrix” kind of thing to “seeing the racial inequality that’s baked into culture” and then into a more general intersectionalist framing — all from people who stood out clearly to me as being on the political left.
I’d known the right sometimes used “woke” mockingly, but they also use “pro-choice” mockingly at times too.
So the main surprise for me here was in discovering that the left has apparently started interpreting anyone using “woke” as being on the right and meaning it mockingly.
It’s an odd level of memetic forgetfulness, resulting in an actual change in what the term means and signals, that I hadn’t expected. It’s weird to me on the level of if “Black lives matter!” were to evolve to be a KKK slogan. Not impossible but definitely not what I’d expect by default.
What I’m saying here doesn’t detract at all from what you’re saying. I just thought you’d find that snapshot into why I’d used “woke” interesting and possibly helpful to know.
Huh! I had heard it in passing before the past 6 years, but over the past 6 years is when I started hearing it enough to get a binding for “wokism”, which I think is a keyword that had a strong binding for me. My intuition wants to round it off to “I hadn’t heard it until the recent definition”, which I think is technically wrong, but still matches my perceptual data fairly well. Shrug, it’s not actually that important; one could add some connecting words that would make it clearly a description of something bad, even as someone who strongly approves of large swaths of what the right would label “woke” I do think that there’s a kind of performative wokeness that fails to be actually awake in the ways I care about and thereby fails to implement the coprotection of beings that I’d want people to wake up to in the first place.