Woke was a word that came out of the Black Community Woke Originally intended to mean "alert to civil rights issues" or "takes an enlightened approach to civil rights", its meaning has changed. It is now associated with adopting an obsessive, blinkered or deliberately obtuse approach to certain civil rights, particularly in relation to equality. It refers to an approach which is overall and on balance harmful to society, ignores context and counterpoints, and is ignorant of the wider ramifications of the position taken. Under the pretense of being politically correct, the "woke" person is, ironically, asleep, in that they are ignorant of or unconcerned by the harms caused by their actions.
False. Woke has multiple roots, and your use of the term 'community' is a reflection of your collectivist ideological bias. Your claim is nothing but a racist fantasy. Grow up.
@alex Yet more alert to their environment than their previous state of slumber. But I believe that's not intended herein. Then again, a useful definition was not gained by this.
6:19 in listening and Susan Neiman still hasn't said anything useful I gave up. She is left and she does not want woke to be left. That was the only thing I learned from this. Edit: By reading the comments I learned way more. for example this one with 42 likes: "It means I feel safer because I get to control your speech so my sensibilities are not offended."
thanks for listening to her so I don't have to. what you said is just what I expected. here's another related quote: "Totalitarianism is the world as safe space."
@Robert Stephenson There are plenty of Christian sects that claim revelations apart from standard scripture. That's why we have heretics and inquisitions.
That's becoz you've been listening too much to Right Wing Media. Basically it's a definition by People who want to decide for you what you want not representing what the people want. For Example, Last Year, The Anti-Woke Movement claimed Cracker Barrel's gone woke becoz they introduced a new Plant Based Sausage. That doesn't make them happy. What they want is to make sure that somebody else doesn't get what they want. They are not concerned about their own sausage they're concerned about somebody else enjoying their own sausage. Anti-Woke means Anti-Freedom. New Options become available and they are decried as 'Woke' becoz they are afraid of new things becoz they have a narrow scope of reality. In other words they the Anti-Woke gets to decide what's right for you and the same ideology goes to the Anti-Abortion/Anti-Choice Movement, Anti-Climate Change. The Right Wing in General craves for Authoritarian leadership threatening Civil war while their base are made to think that they are opposing some form of Tyranny completely unaware that that's how historically authoritarian regimes get their foot at the door
It means being aware the Iraq war where human beings were slaughtered every day until 2013 raged because of obsession, revenge, imperialism, money and oil.
@@geekylove3603 lol, that is not beign woke, that is just following the facts, m8. woke hate facts, like, iraq war hidden motives, the maidan coup, the gasduct sabotage incident and so on... woke is the lgbq+ antihuman agenda, the population relacement plot and the brown and MAP bias doublestandards of the justice system. also, woke is the garbage idea that people's gender is unrelated to biology and that governament should pay people an univerasl income. it's all insane crazy stuff m8.
So, in other words, "woke" is a catch-all insult for people who disagree with you. Unless, of course, you also think MAGA supporters are also woke, as in insane. In that case, I'd be on board with that definition.
Hold your horses. We need definitions BEFORE we get into analysis. James Lindsay provides a good definition of woke on his New Discourses which I've pasted below. But he's also got a shorter version which is something like: "Its just Marxism, but with race, gender etc instead of class" - which is a good place to start I think. "In brief, “woke” means having awakened to having a particular type of “critical consciousness,” as these are understood within Critical Social Justice. To first approximation, being woke means viewing society through various critical lenses, as defined by various critical theories bent in service of an ideology most people currently call “Social Justice.” That is, being woke means having taken on the worldview of Critical Social Justice, which sees the world only in terms of unjust power dynamics and the need to dismantle problematic systems. That is, it means having adopted Theory and the worldview it conceptualizes. Under “wokeness,” this awakened consciousness is set particularly with regard to issues of identity, like race, sex, gender, sexuality, and others. The terminology derives from the idea of having been awakened (or, “woke up”) to an awareness of the allegedly systemic nature of racism, sexism, and other oppressive power dynamics and the true nature of privilege, domination, and marginalization in society and understanding the role in dominant discourses in producing and maintaining these structural forces. Furthermore, being woke carries the imperative to become a social activist with regard to these issues and problems, again, on the terms set by Critical Social Justice. This-especially for white people-is to include a lifelong commitment to an ongoing process of self-reflection, self-criticism, and (progressive) social activism in the name of Theory and Social Justice (see also, antiracism)..."
It means being aware the Iraq war where human beings were slaughtered every day until 2013 raged because of obsession, revenge, imperialism, money and oil.
An intellectual pontificating about Karl Schmidt and Martin Heidegger whilst skirting around the issue and failing to provide a definition for Woke. Many of the comments are far more insightful.
She was quick to show us her left wing paid up socialist party membership, even though giving the appearance of herself basking in considerable comfort. She euphemistically referred to it as social cooperation, which is an oxymoron, and not a source of progress, any more than a flock of sheep achieve progress. It is creative individuals that achieve progress in an environment of relative libertarianism, as we can clearly see in societies since Ancient Greece, that have been most unfettered.
I despise Woke ideology and respect Prof. Nieman, but I also think Schmitt and Foucault made valid points about liberalisms’ hypocrisies and failures. And yet Woke has been adapted by liberals - not just the left - to cover for those same failures and perhaps even justify oligarchic class power. I’ve come to the conclusion that State Socialism with traditionalist-informed characteristics, as in China, is probably the only existing system that’s truly workable long-term right now.
Woke originally comes from the black American community. It’s meaning is intended to remind the black community to be aware of our issues and to honor our culture. It’s hard to define as left or right. I have seen many families have that member we call woke. This person typically encourages the family to remember where they came from and the struggles we’ve had over the years. …. Another way it’s used is STAY WOKE.
I am grateful to Good Vibes for what I guessed was the origin of the term. It seems to have been appropriated by some people as a substitute for activism. Stay Woke to injustice makes total sense, Taking dubious moral high ground instead of engaging in important consciousness raising discussion is a distortion and is eagerly seized on by those in power to divide us further. We are so susceptible to divide and rule.
Her expertise fell apart on the 1st point of her 3 principles that leftists and liberals have in common for me - that apparently being universalism - believing in respect for everyone and not tribalism - that shows a complete lack of understanding of the people she's talking about as leftists and liberals I have known in my wide ranging social experience, and that's many, were and are by far the most tribal cliques of people I've met - they're prone to damn another simply for the clothes they wear - e.g. wearing a suit - and never mind anything else. As for the universalism - where do we start? They may SAY that, but its blatantly nowhere to be seen in their behaviour, they live and breathe judging books by their cover and discriminating based on those judgements, just a load of tosh. Aye. I've heard enough there.
@@xouat yes but this has now been perfected and evolved requiring a term to be applied to categorise it. You can almost trace it back to 2016 when trump came to office. The liberal left lost so they doubled down and vowed not to let this happen again by any means. The individual is no longer sacred, facts and logic don’t count for anything, institutions and corporations have been captured by this mind virus. An it goes further, the youth of today are being indoctrinated into the ideology. The lib left have over reacted big time!
Hard to take your argument seriously with that double grammatical whammy of "lossed". By the way, what's that reality of humanity you're talking about?
I have a very high IQ. So do some of my friends. I can take my very dim friend (IQ 80-ish) to the National Gallery, and show him a Constable. He looks awestruck, and moved by the humbling talent on display, and inspired by the majestic beauty. I take him with my high IQ history-of-art friend to the Tate modern, and show him a poo on a plate.... the high IQ history of art guy can talk for ten minutes..... my dim friend looks at me and laughs, and says "what a load of bollox, it's a poo on a plate." I then spend twenty minutes discussing this with my high IQ history-of-art friend, and then five minutes carefully articulating in a very high IQ university way, what I think. But really it just took me twenty five minutes to reach the same conclusion my dim friend arrived at in two seconds. I'm now 54, and realised I should have listened to that dim guy in the pub in the 1980's who said "it's all bullshit mate, you need a university degree to come up with that crap".
Nothing wrong with intellectual inquiry itself, it's the process of critical testing before popular adoption that's failed. ... If you just asked ordinary people: we'd still have chattel slavery, accepting much needless suffering and we'd be perceiving the physical world in a wildly less accurate manner. Much improvement is possible through intellectual inquiry... But it can lead to foolish harms as well. In particular watch out for those who claim their understanding must be protected from critique because of some sacred sentiments or moral righteousness.
@@explrr22 Actual intellectual inquiry is one thing. Intellectuals' ideas and ideologies are another. And if we asked ordinary people about the meaning of the word woke, no we would not still have any of the above stuff you mentioned (chattel slavery, etc). You'd just get a short down to earth answer that probably makes a good deal of sense.
@@just_another32I agree that today's ordinary people seem unlikely to regress to the commonly accepted perspectives from the past. I just want to observe, it was often intellectual inquiry and argument that advanced and changed those perspectives to where we are now. That's something intellectuals by definition do. Sometimes they have a culture that's doing it productively and other times poorly to the point of harm. But it doesn't seem to me that it's the exercise of the intellect that's useless, it's doing it poorly, or supporting a culture that's doing it poorly that's damaging. ... Just reflecting...
For sure. I replied in a literal rather silly way. But I'm sure you see my point. And I do see yours. Absolutely. I would not want to live in a world without doctors, scientists, etc. It's just that I work in academia and am sick to the teeth of this extreme ideology which most of my colleagues seems to believe / support or will not speak out against if they don't (so they may as well support it). I'm just disillusioned. Don't mind me. :]
Her analogy is pornography? Hmm, pornography is quite easily defined. Certainly not sold on her book based on her interviewing. It can be hard to give up things we cherish, but to define the modern day political left as separate from wokeism is quite laughable.
Can I also add , it is my observation that "woke" has effected many left leaning university educated women that I know in a negative way , Ive seen 6 breakup-ups with long term partnerships in the last 5 years.
"Woke" broke their relationship? Are you seriously arguing that? 😂 Not to mention that bringing up anecdotal evidence as proof of anything is pointless.
I would say an example of woke would be the opposite of the jordan peterson answer to cathy newman which was "in order to get to the truth you must risk causing offence" where the woke answer would be "so as not to cause offence to someone you must not tell the truth".
"In order to get to the truth you must risk causing offense" In order to get to what/whos truth of what question though? That quote is an ideological platitude that doesnt portray one ounce of profound sentiment... Particularly because the quote is so vague, that it could be used by both opposing sides of an argument to describe their counterparts.
@@LD-tn6ffhis is one of the notions at the root of Woke. That people have their own truth according to their identity, that truth is subjective. It confuses wish and belief with truth. In fiction anything can be true. Sorry but in the real worlld 1+1=2, 2+2=4, if you do x and y then z will happen regardless of what you believe or might wish for. Religions have served civilization well for centuries in encouraging people and society to forego immediare convenience, pleasure and reward for future benefit and a stable cohesive society with minimal enforcement. The Woke religion dreamed up over the course of a couple of decades thats currently preached throughout major establishment institutions, with its simple notions of good and bad, blasphemy and excommunication of unbelievers is doing the precise opposite. Truth, or the nearest we can get to establishing it in complex matters is that which can be seen and demonstrated to work predictably, consistently and repeatedly over time.
Or, maybe, "....so as not to cause offense or discomfort by altering the truth and/or bending reality." The WOKE love to manipulate language and create new meanings of words to fit their often ludicrous ideology. Challenging norms is a phenomenon that has been around for eons. But this use of language to seemingly manipulate reality is what is, in part, so chilling about WOKE. For instance, the way we hear it insisted that we can identify as whatever or whomever we want in regards to gender, race, or even any animal we desire. It is positively bizarre, odd, baffling, offensive to us normies, and even sometimes depraved.....among other things. By the way, it should be obvious that I am not an academic or intellectual. But I have been studying this trend a lot the past couple years. It's the weirdest thing I have seen in my 61 years, and it is a difficult matter to define and understand in totality. But as Neiman said, "Like with porn, people know it when they see it". People don't always know how to define it. But that doesn't mean it is nothing to worry about, as I have heard the WOKE assert when they demand someone define it and it cannot easily be done. It'a way for the WOKE to be dismissive of the concerns people have about what the movement's motives and goals are. I have heard many intellectuals try to tackle what it is and what are its origins, and some do a good job, while others simply describe it in packaged sound bites for their audience.
@@LD-tn6ff that it's a vague platitude would depend on what you mean by 'truth'. I would argue that truth - while not always being a fixed, singular thing - is at least approached by having an evidence base in material reality. Having had many social media discussions with people I consider to be woke, I can attest to their disregard for evidence unless it supports their worldview. When you try and debate with gender-identity ideologues, for example, you quickly realise that they have very little grasp of or regard for material reality. I've often come across people for whom basic statistics are considered harmful because they provoke in them a painful cognitive dissonance. This is what it means to be 'offensive' when trying to get to what is truth. Offence is also something that is taken - it's subjective and often irrational. It might be accurate to say that the quote could be used by opposing sides of an argument. I don't think that's a problem, in circumstances where both sides use evidence to make a case towards a truth, and perhaps fail to agree. What *is* a problem - in respect of 'wokeness' - is where evidence is deemed irrelevant and 'the truth' is something that can just be ideologically asserted and imposed. That's authoritarian.
Really? It just struck me that most of the UnHerd tribe are uninterested in engaging with complex ideas and it’s just yet another circlejerk of people hoping to have their existing simplistic beliefs confirmed. Neiman’s ideas are perfectly clear.
Yes. Amazing that they call this hack writer of pop bestsellers a "philosopher." Check out, say, Giorgio Agamben in Italy or Alain Badiou in France. Those are actual philosophers, and they are, let's say, more than a tad more nuanced than this creature of the publishing world, who, while she is actually right about a few things, makes the profound mistake of assuming the phenomenon she is discussing is organic and arose by itself, when in fact it--or at least its ubiquitous presence in our society for the past 6-8 years--is the direct product of the strategies of the ruling structures: media, government, think tanks, academia, etc. The fact is, THEY WANT this confusion. If they didn't, they would just ignore it and send in the goons to crush it, as they did with Occupy Wall St., which, for its part, was a far more genuine phenomenon.
She is strangely naive about the BLM protests. She said that people out there protesting "in the middle of a plague!" were showing how much they cared by taking such dire risks. This was the tipping point for many who might have otherwise been sympathetic; if this "plague" were so serious as it had been made out to be, so serious that it justified locking us in our homes and letting the elderly languish in care homes alone, no social cause justified massive congregations in numbers. That point was the moment when many liberals lost faith in their leaders, as the same leaders who scolded them for taking a reasoned approach to the pandemic and shut their schools and trails and playgrounds then happily celebrated thousands congregating. Very strange blind spot on her part, and unfortunately somewhat disqualifying to many of her subsequent stances.
"Woke" is not a definable concept so much as it is a state of mind, and an attendant form of behavior. The 'woke' are triggered by certain ways of speaking and respond with vociferous censorship and ostricision ('cancelation'). In form and behavior, it is very similar to religious fanaticism.
No one gets to define a label owned by another group. When the group who coined the term - for themselves - now refuse to accept the idea ever existed. I think Susan N is right. We need to analyse woke. It's history, connections, political uses, ...
wokeism is a racist, divisive and oppressive gaslighting that uses victimhood to paint the complete opposite. So it allures the most impressionable people.
So glad to see you press on the "woke" definition. And may I say, it's far too convenient for her to never define "progress." We have all struggled under the yoke of "progress" for generations, and all we ever get is an observation of what it might be, but never an actual definition of what it might look like when it is achieved.
Progress in the liberal democratic terms is kind off just another word for the pursuit of happiness. Trying to find a better solution for something that is not working well now. The idea that if we work together to try and find solutions to the problems we are facing we will eventually stumble on a way, system, method that works better or at least is less problematic than the previous approach. If it is utopian… be ware ;-)
@@sgjoni "Progress in the liberal democratic terms is kind off just another word for the pursuit of happiness. " According to woke people, it is "progress" to medicalize young people who are confused about their gender and make them lifelong healthcare users, although their only problem is emotional. Just imagine those Trans people in Ukraine and who are dependent on drugs, hormones, and healthcare in general. Woke is dumb.
It means being aware the Iraq war where human beings were slaughtered every day until 2013 raged because of obsession, revenge, imperialism, money and oil.
@@nonfictionone "Progress far too often is measured in GDP." Economic progress, yes. But the so-called Social Progress, is kind of arbitrary. Many times it means stopping discrimination, which in the case of Trans Ideology, progressives want to medicalize people who have Body Dysmorphia. Is increasing the number of people dependent on the healthcare system for life progress?
No. It’s not productive to look for some intellectual culprit. If anything, it’s rather Sartre and Beauvoir rather than Heidegger or Schmitt to blame. The problem is precisely the current hypermoralism.
This explanation might be interesting in a pure academic setting where we can turn theoretical ideas over in an abstract way, but is pretty useless in the real world where there are concrete consequences to these ideas and we need clear definitions.
I did not understand what this guest speaker was trying to express. Some people articulate their topics very well,and are,therefore,easily understood. This does not apply to this woman. Also,EVERYONE in the Public Eye writes books(Non-stop). Many of these books are created to discuss horrible human problems. Who among those many,many people, (that have horrible human problems),have the time to read all of those books?
“Woke” means different things to different people. The word became popular during the George Floyd protests as many street activists (who constitute no organized political force anywhere) used it frequently. It was depicted in tv and the internet as being a term that black activists used in particular. Right wing people see that as the origin and view to very negatively. All it originally referred to was been aware of injustices. That’s it. Right wingers have redefined politically incorrect and liberal to mean “woke”. They are all bit hysterical in the apoplectic use of the word. It’s an idiotic debate being used for political purposes.
Philosophically, the act of defining has many functions both restrictive and useful, and yet is the basis for any meaningful discussion. Without definitions, the landscape can become like quick-sand that leads to impasses, leaving at least one side dissatisfied. Regardless of the merits of defining, we are stuck with it, with further clarification capable of broadening the initial terms of reference. So avoid anyone who can't give a meaningful/logical definition of the subject at hand as they are just playing with you. Wokeness and it's purposeful avoidance of definition is the most slippery snake that middle class Anglophones have come up with for a long time to distract us from thinking.
"Left" and "Liberal" mean vastly different things to different people. Clearly "Woke" is just another word without inherent meaning and such terms can often mean their opposite.
woke is not equal. It created preferential treatment and another discrimination. svb didn't hire with skill. It is composed of people who have had a woke experience. Those who have studied and worked hard in that field for the rest of their lives were excluded. Is this considerate and equal?
@@gguitar2438 That's what anybody with a smidge of critical thinking abilities thinks. Libertarians and those in the left have irreconcilable views in terms of the role of government and social services. How can you possibly adhere to both ideologies? Also, does anyone in this day an age consider CNN to be leftist or something? 😂
@@Trunchisholm Political compass tests are quadrants- Left/Right, Authoritarian/Libertarian. If you are in the extreme corner of the Left/Libertarian quadrant you are basically an Anarchist. I'm moderately Left Libertarian and there's nothing about wokeness that fits with that worldview. In fact I don't think that philosophically wokeness is Left at all. The obsession with hierarchies of racial groups is literally closer to National Socialism.
I know we don't generally read much these days... The message or idea here is much more clearly made in the linked article. It addresses many of the criticisms made in comments left here. This isn't a hot take or a quick hit, but a critical observation regarding confusion and sloppiness in popular current discourse and ideologies.
I think we should replace the word “woke” with the older terms “political correctness” or “identity politics.” It’s more specific. And not all identity politics is bad. It’s normal to love your own people. It’s only bad when you create a friend-enemy distinction between two groups (like white vs nonwhite) haphazardly. If anything, the true friend-enemy distinction should be bankers and the military-industrial complex vs the rest of humanity.
Internet had caused a hall of mirrors. We are more self conscious than ever in history. We struggle internally with inner hypocrisy and inconsistencies. We blame, we group, we signal.
It didn´t cause anything, it is us who are showing who we are more, and it's there for everyone to see, like a mural. We have the right to choose whether and how to use the Internet, and we deliberately do this.
I would argue your friend is correct. I think the Left-Right dichotomy is changing from the 20th century social and economic spectrums to a new philosophical one: A postmodernist (or “woke”) new left and a fractured right that has yet to restructure itself fully for this divide (but even in the US we see younger Republicans who have started to embrace ideas that were not too long ago progressive and are wary of capitalism, though still wary of socialism). The new right, I think, will eventually be a metamodernist response that embraces democratic deliberation and rationalism, and will encompass previous Leftists. The longer the Right resists this change, the more powerful the new Woke Left will become, and they are fundamentally a danger not just to democracy but also to civilization and humanity itself.
Bull more bull more bull. Nothing worthy of a reasonable person’s attention (in my opinion) yes I have an opinion but I don’t as nobody else, own the truth .
Woke is what happens when religious moralism, “the personal is the political”, safetyism, and post-structuralist language games merge into one unholy sh*tstorm.
What definition starts with "X is what happens when..."? That's some useless description there. How about you express it in terms of "X is Y"? You know, like every single dictionary definition.
@@tankiebot704 I would agree. Look at Foucault and the influence of Nietzsche on him with his biological reductionism and lack of a metaphysics. It tuns into a 'non essentialism' that denies the ground of being. You give up on religion, but still have the desire to be perceived as a good or virtuous person and for that you need your devils..
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Nice quotation, even though it has FA to do with this topic. Unless, of course, you see the so-called woke peeps as your enemy rather than as fellow humans. That would be extremely sad.
@@winstonsmasterplan I've already answered that Walshy question, mate. I guess you can't be arsed to read? Also, you still haven't defined "woke" for me 😉
@@Trunchisholm what an absolute let down, we have been debating for days now and you still won’t openly admit your true position. You wouldn’t be this passionate and persistent if you wasn’t trying to defend the position of the speaker. Power of deduction. What is it that you stand for, maybe I can learn something today.
@@winstonsmasterplan We haven't been debating. You've merely been asking pointless gotcha questions copied and pasted from frigging Matt Walsh of all people. And I've indulged you. Only you seem to be too lazy to read my answers. Also, I've no idea what you want me to say. That I'm pro-woke? WTF does that even mean? At the very least, tell me what you mean by "woke". I'll be more than happy to answer once you come up with a definition 😉
Yes. She's just old and feeling her dinosaur form of communism is out of fashion, getting replaced by another version of leftist revolutionary ideology (wokeism). She senses something is wrong and yet she can't put the finger on it and define it.
I once had a boss - bar manager - who was useless. The head barman and the rest of us had to fix everything. Best boss I ever had, learned pretty much everything about how to manage a bar.
Andrew Doyle, Helen Pluckrose, and Joanna Williams have written excellent books on the division between Woke, on the one hand, and my generation's versions of leftism and liberalism. What we have today is not something that many of us older leftists can recognize, and we certainly can't join it. I hope that Ms. Neiman's book is more clear than her presentation during this interview.
I'm 71 and have always aligned with liberal, progressive, feminist viewpoints and I no longer recognise that landscape. I'm faced with the prospect of voting with the right wing most of whose beliefs I am inherently opposed to or I don't vote at all, which is something I've always considered a sacrilege.
Woke: someone who believes they do not have to abide by natural laws such as biology and human nature. But even more to the point, someone who wants freedom for themselves, but not for other people.
For me woke refers to childish entitlement, pandering to simplistic emotive response, superficial identity, and/or vacuous virtue signalling, whilst denying cost, consequential impact, fact, rational, or others right to differ.
Agreed 👍 This , albeit short , interview was not of the highest quality or sophistication we are used to following on this channel 🤷 Very second-rate stuff
She is referring to a critique of definitions which says that definitions are always second-rate tools of analysis because they are abstracted rather than analytical (i.e. they focus on arbitrary groupings, rather than describing and figuring out what's actually going on)
I disagree. Although I had a similar reaction at her initial struggle to define the phrase, I found she did quite well in her following summary. Prof Norm Finkelstein is the only other academic I’ve heard describing it the way she does so hopefully you all listened to this in its entirety.
Thank you Ellsworth Toohey. I got as far as point 3 and gave up. Progress only ever comes from the individual, not the collective. The stupidity of collective action is the precise cause of (imho) 99.99% of the problems in the West today. The good lady would also be well advised to read Nobel prize winning Von Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” to see why no matter WHAT the collective throws at the market, the market always wins through eventually. Dismissed.
I agree it was difficult to watch. When Susan started listing things that Woke and Left have in common it sounded like she was saying... 1. @3:50 the Right doesn't believe that people should be judged by the principles they stand for... 2. @4:26 the Right doesn't make a distinction between justice and power.... and is therefor corrupt by default? 3. @4:51 and the Right doesn't believe that progress, thought large groups (corporations) is possible. I'm pretty sure the Right would believe in some, or all of these and this is not the view of the Left exclusively. Therefore, after 18 minutes of "deep philosophic nonsense" doesn't explain why or how the left appears more woke then the right. I want my 18min back....
@@patusoro4781 good comment. I was thinking along similar lines myself. I am neither right nor left but 1. Believe every individual has rights that should be protected, sadly all too often shouted down by the left - e.g. Covid vaccines and mask wearing 2. Believe that justice is something that is often been wholly abused by the left. We have seen this virtually non stop over the past five years from Russiagate to (in all likelihood) Nordstream. 3. Elon Musk must surely be the best example of a left wing cooperative woke success story that has changed the course of humanity … I jest of course! 😊
@@rogersinger3757 Elon Musk is not a Left Wing Coop nor 'woke'. He is a hardcore Capitalist. He is not the Founder of Tesla Industries. Just like Trump he used money he got from his already rich dad and bought Tesla company then promoted his name as it's branding. He used his Professional Marketing skills and stunts to reach a demographic that was largely ignored - the left and became their branding. The whole point was to exploit that market. Otherwise he is Pro-Authoritarianism, Anti-Union, Pro-Corporate Establishment. Russia has not been a left wing country in a very long time. Its run by the Oligarchs who control everything. As for the Covid and Vaccine mandates are basically biblical and also came from the right wing libertarian ideology. Personal responsibility is the cornerstone of a lot of different schools of thought. The general idea is that if we exercise personal responsibility we will end up being more free when we as individuals do what’s right then there’s no need for gov’t intervention, there will be less laws contrary to liberty and gov’t intervention so we become more free. You can swing your fist as long as you want so long as it doesn’t hit somebody else’s nose. The foundational element of small gov’t libertarian side of the right wing is beautiful in it’s simplicity. We hear the same thing from small gov’t conservatives, right wing media, libertarians and politicians ‘You can’t make me wear a mask’ If you're a believer in Personal responsibility school of thought then that is half a sentence claim. ‘You don’t need to make me wear a mask because I’m already doing it’ because I’m exercising that personal responsibility because I understand that when I’m walking around unmasked unvaccinated that the stuff that’s coming out of my mouth every time I cough or sneeze that that is hitting somebody else’s nose and they might be infected by a deadly disease that can cause them injury and death'. Otherwise screaming that you're not going to wear a mask in the middle of a Deadly Pandemic does not show 'Personal responsibility'
Roger Singer that's not True. You reason like this becoz you are a victim Corporate monopoly which excludes all other viable competitors which basically restricts choice for consumers, basically hinders growth of local industries and kills free market. Because of this in today’s society despite your hard work you’re less likely to grow out of your socio-economic status because someone at the top is busy hindering you while selling you that kind of propaganda yet ironically they get huge Gov't bailouts whenever they fail by bribing Politician's through 'Donation' to push their interests forward thus they never fail becoz they rig the system. They Decry Socialism but never seem to have a problem with Gov’t handouts to huge Corporations. They want socialism for the Rich but Capitalism and Individualism for the Poor. Progress does not come from Individual. It comes from collective action. The Fact is that you have only been exposed to a Capitalist corporate monopoly environment that tells you repeatedly that a functional society is that only driven by the Oligarchs so you should give all your money to the rich thus you have never been exposed to other options. The Free Market doesn't exist today becoz it's been rigged by the Oligarchs who will buy that Idea and place it like its their own preventing growth of other options. Just like Elon used funds from his already rich father and bought Tesla with it marketed it and now presents himself as if it were his idea. US history’s greatest moments were during the age of invention & during those times the gov't made a huge investment in the middle class during the 1945's to 1950’s. The GI Bills, Subsidized Mortgages, Education became valued and a strong manufacturing base that saw massive marriage and household formation some men were seen as economically and emotionally viable. This was before the lobbyists bribed the politicians to change it. The reverse happened with the offshoring of our manufacturing base to make more profits with a society that doesn’t value young men. I guess you attempting to say that Standard Response policies like Universal Healthcare, Affordable housing, Better Wages, Unions etc make you a dependent of the state with no rights as depicted in Von Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”. This is BS straight from the Right Wing Propaganda Channel. People in Prison are those that the society has deemed worthy of throwing in a cage and stripping away most of their rights yet they get shelter, food and healthcare because it is a basic human right and something that is required to live. Prisoners get it yet the average person in your free society doesn’t. In the military they provide these things because it makes the soldier more productive, effective and able to focus on the mission. Imagine if all of society was more productive and effective if they were committed in a mission of making the world a better place. Reality is your beloved corporate lobbyists capitalists don’t want these because they want the warning there.’ If you don’t do what you’re told, If you don’t tore the line, If you don’t go to work and engage in the Financial transaction that they suggest, If you want to quit because the working conditions are unsafe or because your boss is harassing you, well you better give it a second thought. You better just do what you’re told coz you may end up hungry or out in the street.’ This seems awful coercive too. They care about power and keeping working class commoners in their place. They need to keep you down so they can sit there and say work harder don’t worry the American dream is right around the corner for you. It's clear that’s how you want the society to function. The carrot is that you may be that one in a million shot. The stick is that you may end up being one of those that everyone looks down upon. This is not a good standard response. It would be great if you stopped focusing on motivations that were handed over to us. We weren’t there when these rules were made. The society and the world at large has changed a whole lot. Maybe the way you look at things should change too and be focused on building that society where people do have a mission. Where we are all united behind an idea or principle and that the mission is making this a better place for everyone not just making sure our betters stay in power.
I bet the left wing philosopher wouldn’t be able to give a definintion to what “equality of opportunity” in her opinion is either. Is it to make all mothers to talk and read to their children exact amount of words and books? Pay exact amount for their extracurricular tuition? As vital contribution to anyone's development? The lady refused to define Woke as she herself is the clear representative of this ideology. They doesn't do definitions and finding solutions. They look for the “sinners” of the society ( in the view of the guest it's clearly the wright wing) in order to identify them as the problem, and to take control over them. Excellent questions though 👍! pretty exposing 😊
This interview reminded me of: when your watching a movie and you suffer through it with the hope at the end there was something…something ..nut no…bad from start to finish..
Perhaps a personality test could be developed to rank wokeness by the answers to a series of questions. For example: 1. Should white people be ashamed of US or British history or should they celebrate the advancements made to civilization over the centuries? 2. Should speech that criticizes certain groups be considered violence and not allowed? 3. Is it reasonable to promote campaigns to fire or de-platform people who have views counter to those of the offended people? 4. Should people who commit crimes be punished or rehabilitated? I am sure there are social scientists out there who can design better more nuanced questions than these to allow us to know where people fall on the woke/enlightened spectrum.
I worked ( in a very small way ) with a phenomenology oriented philosopher on a written test she was developing in the early 70s to measure by questionaries and essay answers levels of awareness & ethical maturity --- ( measuring wokeness? ) in a Karl Jaspers--- grasping greater or smaller horizons sense--- ? ) --- she had Kiekegaard's philosphy in mind as a model as well and trying to figure out the best basis to justify his leaps of faith, I suppose. --- Just sayin', the idea has been around. It's not out entirely there.
It’s really difficult to access the full video through the unheard website. Please upload it to youtube or make the embedded video (which links to youtube anyway) easier to play.
I tend to agree. A new form of self-righteousness based on ideas that have been turned into dogma. The woke ideology seems to prevail in countries with strong Puritan roots which could indicate a correlation.
@@CLCL748 Strong Puritan roots? Really? Any evidence to back that up? And what do those Puritan roots have to do with people now being woke when that ideology has been mostly continued by white evangelicals, who are most definitely not woke?
@@Trunchisholm What I mean by that is the woke ideology feels like a form of religious fanaticism that has turned secular and is based on secular dogma.
I always loved the description of “waking up” waking up to our true selves whether spiritually or simply becoming aware of our capacities as a human. It seemed like overnight awakening became “woke”, a confusing term that has succeeded in dividing us and distracting us from waking up.
We should also be awake to the weaponisation of the term "woke" by the right, which seems to be effective in distracting people from both specific and general injustices. We can be woke without losing sight of one or the other. Meantime the right has us fighting amongst ourselves, mainly because they have to shut down such a powerfully emotive term. Wokeness is a real threat to the right, hence their distortion of its meaning in such a way that ordinary people are turned against issues that should be of great concern to them. Bit of a hellish master stroke that seems to be working unfortunately.
Hey, you're describing DeSantis' Florida here! So, I mean, another pointless definition that could be applied to both sides of the spectrum depending on your political bias.
@@gguitar2438 Do you mean "nihilism"? In that case, no, it absolutely isn't. Read the definition. Still, your rhetoric around 1984 is weird. What does "apply the depth of 1984 convincingly" even mean? That's a word salad if I ever saw one.
Lol, wtf is this incoherent rambling? None of this makes any sense. Of course you have to define words. You 'don't know it when you see it', that's just using common sense, instead of critical thinking.
I disagree. Without a working definition, we cannot become sufficiently oriented about this topic to have a conversation on the matter. Of course, most of those, who would claim to be woke, do not wish to come under any critical scrutiny regarding their contradictory and regressive positions, so perhaps Susan has a point.
Your first question is exactly what I had in mind when I heard her. The idea of putting Schmidt there is interesting. He has an interesting book on "values" as well. Foucault is easy, he is a student of the Marquis of Sade. The problem with her argument is she is confusing the left with her own beliefs, but historically it is pretty broad. There were people like Sade who wanted complete freedom, there were others like Lenin who didn't. Most socialists want to direct everything, and Schmidt quite clearly was of that sort, but Sade who also would fit as a socialist didn't. Basically the so-called tribalism of woke is only a function of sociology. As a discipline, it created those groups, and claimed it was science, and people believed it. Believed they existed. So it does not come from the nazis, but the nazis come from it. It's Darwin and then his cousin Galton. Functionally it is what is driving it, not ideology. Basically all she is saying is she is a liberal from liberalism and they are not. I am not so sure of that. There is no woke collective, nor any call to any structured socialism. There is however, corruption of individualism. It's cheating on the individualism that tells people to be individual in the public sphere. In the 19th century, it was known and was accepted as what is needed to get equality. One group that didn't play like the others were the Jews, so you got the Jewish question of how to deal with that and it lasted a long time, and we know one of the answer that people came up with. Of course it was then hidden after the war and the whole idea was hidden and then forgotten. Now it's coming back in forms like multiculturalism and so on. So the difference is there. Multiculturalism backed by sociology (if it can be measured it exists) and policies made to use that, and it's liberalism that is denying itself and forgot it's origins and principles. But otherwise it's the same, it's quite neo-liberal and everything, it's totally mainstream, compatible with businesses and so on. Great for marketing. If liberalism had solved that group problem, it would not exist, but it never it, because it can't.
This is an accurate analysis well done, so what do you see being the outcome this second time around? Will it be worst than the first time or will China just exploit our weakness during this time and just take over worldwide with satellite internet.
Foucault also considered himself a Nietzschian and later not as a socialist. Woke identitarainism fits in very nicely with establishment thinking as you say, it's kind of the left wing of neoliberalism. I think its important to make the distinctions between what traditional liberalism is, what the origins of collectivism are and so on. I read Stephen Hicks book recently Nietzsche and the Nazis, it attempted to make that clearer. But we have amnesia ahout the German collectivist ideology that flowered as Nazism, socialisms infatuation with the eugenics movement and many any other things we ought to remember, lest we sleepwalk into re-enacting something similar.
@@michaelmcclure3383 Wow! A name twin (almost) I came here to say something similar. Woke identitarianism is establishment, is status quo, is a sort of left wing neoliberalism. It’s the 6:00 establishment news and where the social media algorithms coalesce. It’s the “influencers” who get the brand deals. It’s corporate. It’s ESG. It’s white upper middle class. The only thing Marxist about wokeism is that it uses and discards marginalized people to achieve its own ends.
Assuming the economic equality ( giving equal opportunities) racism or sexism etc. are still the problem. In this sense the woke is not separate it is subset of left. The thoughts of Susan Neiman opposing woke and left are strange to me.
@@Trunchisholm Arguably, both left and right wing extremists have absorbed the central message of postmodernism: that truth is a function of power, rather than an objective reality.
@@liberality Maybe both left and right wing extremists see truth as a function of power, but as one who trained as a scientist in the ‘70’s that whole notion stinks. It is also a notion that will lead us down the road of perdition as I believe we are witnessing in the Western world today.
Sorry but is your definition of woke as someone who holds the view that various aspects of human behaviour that may seem innate are actually social predicated, and that the mechanism through which the behaviours are transmitted is worthy of study?
Constructivism is the view that the reality we experience is a product of the categories of the understanding of the mind (a la transcendental idealism). Social constructivism is the view that the relevant categories are those of the society (and thus contingently varies from society to society) aka the general will or world spirit. Critical Social Constructivism is the view that what makes those structures what they are are the relations of power between the members of that society, and the related practice of using that knowledge to disrupt/overturn those power relations. Intersectional Critical Social Constructivism adds that there are multiple overlapping layers of these power relations. Doctrinaire Intersectional Critical Social Constructivism is my name for the belief in all of the above as the received wisdom of one's society/peers/educators/authority. Ie. not those for whom it is a live contesting theory but those for whom it is "common sense". Simply believing that some aspect of society has been falsely believed to not be contingent, is not necessarily constructivist. But if the belief is that it's existence depends upon our belief that it does but that belief/reality can be changed and that is why its existence is not necessarily so, that is constructivist What is distinctive is the (explicit or implicit) equation of belief and existence. Is this what "predicated" means? Add that that belief is only so because people with the power to make that so have done so for their own benefit, that this is just one example of a general pattern, all of which must be stopped, and you have wokeness.
@@xouat In short, no, because your description is compatible with a realist metaphysics, with lack of focus upon power relations, and restriction to a limited domain. With not being constructivist, critical, or intersectional
8 minutes... sorry dear, I don't think the antidote to high IQ upper middle class university mumbo jumbo is more high IQ upper middle class university mumbo jumbo......
My shorthand definition is: 'Equity at any cost.' It's not perfect but it helps me to understand it and if called upon I can deliver this to anyone in a matter of seconds. If they want to go deeper then the ball is in their court and we can unpick this simplistic definition...ie: What is equity? Why equity and not equality? What is 'any cost'? What are some examples to prove my definition?
Alt-left buzz words: UnIronically, literally, actual, problematic, reparations, indigenous peoples, solidarity, death to America, anti fascism, green party, harm reduction, equity, systemic racism, offensive, cultural appropriation, gaslighting, mental health, patriarchy, misgender, cisgender, gender studies, anti racism, cringe, soy, safe space, climate change, climate justice, defund the police, social construct, micro aggressions, privilege, pronouns, I identify as, triggered, shut it down, institutionalism. This kind of language is hate speech & tyranny from alt left fascist.
The concept of "progress" is too subjective and ambiguous, so I prefer not to use it. Woke people think too much with their heart instead of their heads. For instance, the woke who support medicalizing children and surgery on children confused with their gender, do it from their heart because they believe they are saving children from death and despair. Rational people, on the other hand, would think about the issue and first question the idea of "being born in the wrong body" because such idea rejects the establish work on Cognition and Cognitive Development of Jean Piaget. Rational people would also question why is it that 30 years ago young people were not committing suicide although there was no "gender affirming care", as well as the fact that the Trans craze only exists in the Western world. Woke people don't think, they just react in defence of what they perceive as the underdog.
Maybe it means that the moral consideration we gave to the human body have now been extended to cover the emotional body. Before Woke; don't hurt me. After Woke; don't offend me.
It is a useless, meaningless term which means different things to different people. It’s lazy shorthand used as a weapon to put down and try to discredit people you disagree with. Why don’t we say what we mean? If somebody is being a moralistic zealot, call it out. If somebody is a bigot, say it. As an Aspie this messy language infuriates me. I like what this professor is saying so far. It is thoughtful and exploratory. Somebody probably said woke in the moment as a spontaneous slang way of meaning awake and then it got distorted and fixed and claimed as something progressive by some and moralistic and po faced by others. I wish we could move on from a word that has become so divisive.
Aardvark - "let's not use labels, it means something different to everyone." Apple - "You'll know it when you see it." Anus - "Actually the root of 'analysis' so let's not define it, let's analyse it" ... ... ... Bullshit - "Everything that comes out of my mouth"
It pains me to write that your "philosopher" has, at beast, a superficial and an ahistorical understanding of the Leftism / la gauche. Much of what was said of leftism can be found both in Burkean Conservatism and William Buckly's conservatism ("Freedom = #1 principle of social organization). In order to understand the "generative" (and not essentialist) principle of leftist thinking, I suggest my book The Archetypal Structure of Leftist Thinking. an Essay Concerning Ideological Pathology (2020, Shaker Verlag) The origins of the term "la gauche" is generated during and out of the French Revolution (1789ff). That revolution and its ideology established the basic generative structure for future forms of leftism (concretized in different and differing ideologies--hence, archetypal), the nature of which was summarized effectively when Marx explained the generative principle of his youthful poems. (Cf. my three books on the mythic origins and, consequently, structure of Marxist thinking along with its ironic terror as the principle of revolutionary activity.) The absolutely annihilative conflict of protagonist vs antagonist, oppressor vs oppressed, better, the dramatic agon between that which is and that which ought to be, leading leftist thinking to an annihilative impulse relative to what is, specifically the socio-economical structure of an unredeemed society. (As Marx stated, the proletarians is that class of role that can say: "I am nothing and should be everything".)This pattern evinces itself in the French Revolution, Marxism, New Left, postmodernism (which is at the origins of "works-ism") and American liberalism (now fusing with postmoderns elements), crescendo-ing all through the 20th Century and mutating now into ...? WOKE-ism! Woke-ism is just one more "concretization" of the leftist pattern of annihilative thinking, a pattern not necessarily accepted by other forms of thinking lefty. There is more, much more hidden away in the bowels of leftism than revealed in the confession of faith by Prof. Neiman. As one professor to another, I thank Prof. Neiman's contribution. To hear a rational mind in this age or irrational emotions is always a pleasure. She is, however, riding the crest of a liberalism (hegemonic before, "now" fading) that existed In America in a profitable and positive dialectic with conservatism until the "really real" leftist stole, viz., adopted liberalism for its vehicle of radically. In this context I suggest, Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution. How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance (2014, Broadside Books). Prof. Neimen might also find Yoram Hazony's Conservatism. A Rediscovery (2022, Forum), so as to obtain an insight into the two conservatisms (one accepting her universalism and commitment to reason and the other rejecting reason and universalism). Prof. Leonard Wesssell (ret.) Bonn, Germany
In popular usage by those on the right today, "woke" is synonymous with "bullshit" and often phrased together as "woke bullshit." Definitionally, "bullshit" means "nonsense," "stupidity," or "untrue," all of which match the popular usage of "woke" for those on the right. More specifically, though "woke" means "alert to social injustice" to the left, to the right, it is now also a catch-all term of contempt for the extreme leftism that is currently dominating the Democratic Party: such as critical race theory (another word whose definition has grown); radical gender theory; identity politics; diversity, equity & inclusion; apocalyptic climate alarmism; ESG, etc.
12:20 a lot of "leftists" hold that same view, fortunately they aren't nazis. But it is the same kind of reversed moral relativism, "who are you to judge?"
Woke was a word that came out of the Black Community
Woke Originally intended to mean "alert to civil rights issues" or "takes an enlightened approach to civil rights", its meaning has changed. It is now associated with adopting an obsessive, blinkered or deliberately obtuse approach to certain civil rights, particularly in relation to equality. It refers to an approach which is overall and on balance harmful to society, ignores context and counterpoints, and is ignorant of the wider ramifications of the position taken.
Under the pretense of being politically correct, the "woke" person is, ironically, asleep, in that they are ignorant of or unconcerned by the harms caused by their actions.
.....But these right-wing half-wits are using the corporate co-opted version of "woke." Cultivated stupidity.
False. Woke has multiple roots, and your use of the term 'community' is a reflection of your collectivist ideological bias. Your claim is nothing but a racist fantasy. Grow up.
@alex Yet more alert to their environment than their previous state of slumber. But I believe that's not intended herein. Then again, a useful definition was not gained by this.
genuine liberals wont even associate with leftists who hijacked the true wokeness ideology
Also meant 'alert to hotep issues'
6:19 in listening and Susan Neiman still hasn't said anything useful I gave up. She is left and she does not want woke to be left. That was the only thing I learned from this. Edit: By reading the comments I learned way more. for example this one with 42 likes: "It means I feel safer because I get to control your speech so my sensibilities are not offended."
Ultimately she’s arguing to detach woke from leftism to make it even less accountable
thanks for listening to her so I don't have to. what you said is just what I expected.
here's another related quote: "Totalitarianism is the world as safe space."
About then 7:00 she says liberal is based on ideals while leftists want to make liberal ideals reality.
@@familyshare3724 'make' = force
she's dreaming about the old left, of which we were were all a part of. It has morphed into something evil today.
Wokeness - The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
WOKE = BRAIN DEAD....Depraved Democrats are the party of Pedophiles. Killing babies, removing children's genitals, and drag shows for kids. Pure evil
@Robert Stephenson A pagan myth, as opposed to a Christian myth, (excuse me, a Christian revelation).
@Robert Stephenson There are plenty of Christian sects that claim revelations apart from standard scripture. That's why we have heretics and inquisitions.
You've fallen for their lies: their intentions were never good.
@Robert Stephenson Hell is a city ran by Democrat scumbags who worship satan
well, from what have experienced in my last 7 years of life, it means INSANE.
That's becoz you've been listening too much to Right Wing Media. Basically it's a definition by People who want to decide for you what you want not representing what the people want. For Example, Last Year, The Anti-Woke Movement claimed Cracker Barrel's gone woke becoz they introduced a new Plant Based Sausage. That doesn't make them happy. What they want is to make sure that somebody else doesn't get what they want. They are not concerned about their own sausage they're concerned about somebody else enjoying their own sausage. Anti-Woke means Anti-Freedom. New Options become available and they are decried as 'Woke' becoz they are afraid of new things becoz they have a narrow scope of reality. In other words they the Anti-Woke gets to decide what's right for you and the same ideology goes to the Anti-Abortion/Anti-Choice Movement, Anti-Climate Change. The Right Wing in General craves for Authoritarian leadership threatening Civil war while their base are made to think that they are opposing some form of Tyranny completely unaware that that's how historically authoritarian regimes get their foot at the door
It means being aware the Iraq war where human beings were slaughtered every day until 2013 raged because of obsession, revenge, imperialism, money and oil.
@@geekylove3603 lol, that is not beign woke, that is just following the facts, m8. woke hate facts, like, iraq war hidden motives, the maidan coup, the gasduct sabotage incident and so on...
woke is the lgbq+ antihuman agenda, the population relacement plot and the brown and MAP bias doublestandards of the justice system.
also, woke is the garbage idea that people's gender is unrelated to biology and that governament should pay people an univerasl income.
it's all insane crazy stuff m8.
So, in other words, "woke" is a catch-all insult for people who disagree with you. Unless, of course, you also think MAGA supporters are also woke, as in insane. In that case, I'd be on board with that definition.
Mental illness?
Hold your horses. We need definitions BEFORE we get into analysis. James Lindsay provides a good definition of woke on his New Discourses which I've pasted below. But he's also got a shorter version which is something like: "Its just Marxism, but with race, gender etc instead of class" - which is a good place to start I think.
"In brief, “woke” means having awakened to having a particular type of “critical consciousness,” as these are understood within Critical Social Justice. To first approximation, being woke means viewing society through various critical lenses, as defined by various critical theories bent in service of an ideology most people currently call “Social Justice.” That is, being woke means having taken on the worldview of Critical Social Justice, which sees the world only in terms of unjust power dynamics and the need to dismantle problematic systems. That is, it means having adopted Theory and the worldview it conceptualizes.
Under “wokeness,” this awakened consciousness is set particularly with regard to issues of identity, like race, sex, gender, sexuality, and others. The terminology derives from the idea of having been awakened (or, “woke up”) to an awareness of the allegedly systemic nature of racism, sexism, and other oppressive power dynamics and the true nature of privilege, domination, and marginalization in society and understanding the role in dominant discourses in producing and maintaining these structural forces. Furthermore, being woke carries the imperative to become a social activist with regard to these issues and problems, again, on the terms set by Critical Social Justice. This-especially for white people-is to include a lifelong commitment to an ongoing process of self-reflection, self-criticism, and (progressive) social activism in the name of Theory and Social Justice (see also, antiracism)..."
Ecellent analysis, questor55 thank
So Utter Bollocks, Then!!!
James Lindsay says some weird things but he does some good stuff on New Discourses. This definition encapsulates the phenomenon very well.
James Lindsay is a lying crackpot. Just ignore him.
I think what it's come to mean is letting your sense of values supersede and obscure your sense of truth
All men are created equal
But some men menstruate and have vaginas
Why are the replies not populating?
@@jg495 you have to click on "newest" comments, then come back and _try_ to find the comment again
Sure but one could put right wing values before a sense of truth. Not saying that is happening but you could do it.
It means being aware the Iraq war where human beings were slaughtered every day until 2013 raged because of obsession, revenge, imperialism, money and oil.
An intellectual pontificating about Karl Schmidt and Martin Heidegger whilst skirting around the issue and failing to provide a definition for Woke.
Many of the comments are far more insightful.
She was quick to show us her left wing paid up socialist party membership, even though giving the appearance of herself basking in considerable comfort. She euphemistically referred to it as social cooperation, which is an oxymoron, and not a source of progress, any more than a flock of sheep achieve progress. It is creative individuals that achieve progress in an environment of relative libertarianism, as we can clearly see in societies since Ancient Greece, that have been most unfettered.
The elevation of sensitivity over truth.
I despise Woke ideology and respect Prof. Nieman, but I also think Schmitt and Foucault made valid points about liberalisms’ hypocrisies and failures. And yet Woke has been adapted by liberals - not just the left - to cover for those same failures and perhaps even justify oligarchic class power. I’ve come to the conclusion that State Socialism with traditionalist-informed characteristics, as in China, is probably the only existing system that’s truly workable long-term right now.
Woke originally comes from the black American community. It’s meaning is intended to remind the black community to be aware of our issues and to honor our culture. It’s hard to define as left or right. I have seen many families have that member we call woke. This person typically encourages the family to remember where they came from and the struggles we’ve had over the years. …. Another way it’s used is STAY WOKE.
it means Critical Consciousness, a Marxist revolutionary term. So, definitely far left.
Since there are no ''Black'' people, a racist/racial label, it started off as being asleep to Science!
The fuck are you talking about. It’s entirely Left
I am grateful to Good Vibes for what I guessed was the origin of the term. It seems to have been appropriated by some people as a substitute for activism. Stay Woke to injustice makes total sense, Taking dubious moral high ground instead of engaging in important consciousness raising discussion is a distortion and is eagerly seized on by those in power to divide us further. We are so susceptible to divide and rule.
as usual the left stole a black thing and made it their own.
Her expertise fell apart on the 1st point of her 3 principles that leftists and liberals have in common for me - that apparently being universalism - believing in respect for everyone and not tribalism - that shows a complete lack of understanding of the people she's talking about as leftists and liberals I have known in my wide ranging social experience, and that's many, were and are by far the most tribal cliques of people I've met - they're prone to damn another simply for the clothes they wear - e.g. wearing a suit - and never mind anything else. As for the universalism - where do we start? They may SAY that, but its blatantly nowhere to be seen in their behaviour, they live and breathe judging books by their cover and discriminating based on those judgements, just a load of tosh.
Aye. I've heard enough there.
woke means you give yourself permission to denigrate one side without consequence
Woke means you are the victim and the bully
That was happening way before woke was a thing
@@xouat yes but this has now been perfected and evolved requiring a term to be applied to categorise it. You can almost trace it back to 2016 when trump came to office. The liberal left lost so they doubled down and vowed not to let this happen again by any means. The individual is no longer sacred, facts and logic don’t count for anything, institutions and corporations have been captured by this mind virus. An it goes further, the youth of today are being indoctrinated into the ideology. The lib left have over reacted big time!
That definition applies to every single person who denigrates one side without consequence regardless of their political affiliation. It's pointless.
@@winstonsmasterplan Another functionally useless definition.
Being woke means you’ve lossed the plot & the reality of humanity!
Hard to take your argument seriously with that double grammatical whammy of "lossed".
By the way, what's that reality of humanity you're talking about?
@@Trunchisholm they deny human bio-diversity and human nature
but intellectuals are the ones who got us into this mess... maybe we should just ask ordinary people
I have a very high IQ. So do some of my friends. I can take my very dim friend (IQ 80-ish) to the National Gallery, and show him a Constable. He looks awestruck, and moved by the humbling talent on display, and inspired by the majestic beauty.
I take him with my high IQ history-of-art friend to the Tate modern, and show him a poo on a plate.... the high IQ history of art guy can talk for ten minutes..... my dim friend looks at me and laughs, and says "what a load of bollox, it's a poo on a plate."
I then spend twenty minutes discussing this with my high IQ history-of-art friend, and then five minutes carefully articulating in a very high IQ university way, what I think. But really it just took me twenty five minutes to reach the same conclusion my dim friend arrived at in two seconds.
I'm now 54, and realised I should have listened to that dim guy in the pub in the 1980's who said "it's all bullshit mate, you need a university degree to come up with that crap".
Nothing wrong with intellectual inquiry itself, it's the process of critical testing before popular adoption that's failed.
... If you just asked ordinary people: we'd still have chattel slavery, accepting much needless suffering and we'd be perceiving the physical world in a wildly less accurate manner. Much improvement is possible through intellectual inquiry... But it can lead to foolish harms as well.
In particular watch out for those who claim their understanding must be protected from critique because of some sacred sentiments or moral righteousness.
@@explrr22 Actual intellectual inquiry is one thing.
Intellectuals' ideas and ideologies are another.
And if we asked ordinary people about the meaning of the word woke, no we would not still have any of the above stuff you mentioned (chattel slavery, etc). You'd just get a short down to earth answer that probably makes a good deal of sense.
@@just_another32I agree that today's ordinary people seem unlikely to regress to the commonly accepted perspectives from the past.
I just want to observe, it was often intellectual inquiry and argument that advanced and changed those perspectives to where we are now. That's something intellectuals by definition do.
Sometimes they have a culture that's doing it productively and other times poorly to the point of harm.
But it doesn't seem to me that it's the exercise of the intellect that's useless, it's doing it poorly, or supporting a culture that's doing it poorly that's damaging.
... Just reflecting...
For sure. I replied in a literal rather silly way. But I'm sure you see my point. And I do see yours. Absolutely. I would not want to live in a world without doctors, scientists, etc.
It's just that I work in academia and am sick to the teeth of this extreme ideology which most of my colleagues seems to believe / support or will not speak out against if they don't (so they may as well support it). I'm just disillusioned. Don't mind me. :]
Her analogy is pornography? Hmm, pornography is quite easily defined.
Certainly not sold on her book based on her interviewing.
It can be hard to give up things we cherish, but to define the modern day political left as separate from wokeism is quite laughable.
Can I also add , it is my observation that "woke" has effected many left leaning university educated women that I know in a negative way , Ive seen 6 breakup-ups with long term partnerships in the last 5 years.
"Woke" broke their relationship? Are you seriously arguing that? 😂 Not to mention that bringing up anecdotal evidence as proof of anything is pointless.
I would say an example of woke would be the opposite of the jordan peterson answer to cathy newman which was "in order to get to the truth you must risk causing offence" where the woke answer would be "so as not to cause offence to someone you must not tell the truth".
"In order to get to the truth you must risk causing offense" In order to get to what/whos truth of what question though? That quote is an ideological platitude that doesnt portray one ounce of profound sentiment... Particularly because the quote is so vague, that it could be used by both opposing sides of an argument to describe their counterparts.
@@LD-tn6ffhis is one of the notions at the root of Woke. That people have their own truth according to their identity, that truth is subjective. It confuses wish and belief with truth. In fiction anything can be true. Sorry but in the real worlld 1+1=2, 2+2=4, if you do x and y then z will happen regardless of what you believe or might wish for. Religions have served civilization well for centuries in encouraging people and society to forego immediare convenience, pleasure and reward for future benefit and a stable cohesive society with minimal enforcement. The Woke religion dreamed up over the course of a couple of decades thats currently preached throughout major establishment institutions, with its simple notions of good and bad, blasphemy and excommunication of unbelievers is doing the precise opposite. Truth, or the nearest we can get to establishing it in complex matters is that which can be seen and demonstrated to work predictably, consistently and repeatedly over time.
Or, maybe, "....so as not to cause offense or discomfort by altering the truth and/or bending reality." The WOKE love to manipulate language and create new meanings of words to fit their often ludicrous ideology. Challenging norms is a phenomenon that has been around for eons. But this use of language to seemingly manipulate reality is what is, in part, so chilling about WOKE. For instance, the way we hear it insisted that we can identify as whatever or whomever we want in regards to gender, race, or even any animal we desire. It is positively bizarre, odd, baffling, offensive to us normies, and even sometimes depraved.....among other things.
By the way, it should be obvious that I am not an academic or intellectual. But I have been studying this trend a lot the past couple years. It's the weirdest thing I have seen in my 61 years, and it is a difficult matter to define and understand in totality. But as Neiman said, "Like with porn, people know it when they see it". People don't always know how to define it. But that doesn't mean it is nothing to worry about, as I have heard the WOKE assert when they demand someone define it and it cannot easily be done. It'a way for the WOKE to be dismissive of the concerns people have about what the movement's motives and goals are. I have heard many intellectuals try to tackle what it is and what are its origins, and some do a good job, while others simply describe it in packaged sound bites for their audience.
@@LD-tn6ff that it's a vague platitude would depend on what you mean by 'truth'. I would argue that truth - while not always being a fixed, singular thing - is at least approached by having an evidence base in material reality. Having had many social media discussions with people I consider to be woke, I can attest to their disregard for evidence unless it supports their worldview. When you try and debate with gender-identity ideologues, for example, you quickly realise that they have very little grasp of or regard for material reality. I've often come across people for whom basic statistics are considered harmful because they provoke in them a painful cognitive dissonance. This is what it means to be 'offensive' when trying to get to what is truth. Offence is also something that is taken - it's subjective and often irrational. It might be accurate to say that the quote could be used by opposing sides of an argument. I don't think that's a problem, in circumstances where both sides use evidence to make a case towards a truth, and perhaps fail to agree. What *is* a problem - in respect of 'wokeness' - is where evidence is deemed irrelevant and 'the truth' is something that can just be ideologically asserted and imposed. That's authoritarian.
A very good succinct way to describe a significant element of Woke,
the comments section had way more insight than the interview
More political/intellectual diversity.
Really? It just struck me that most of the UnHerd tribe are uninterested in engaging with complex ideas and it’s just yet another circlejerk of people hoping to have their existing simplistic beliefs confirmed.
Neiman’s ideas are perfectly clear.
WOKE = BRAIN DEAD....Depraved Democrats are the party of Pedophiles. Killing babies, removing children's genitals, and drag shows for kids. Pure evil
Excellent comment indeed.
Yes. Amazing that they call this hack writer of pop bestsellers a "philosopher." Check out, say, Giorgio Agamben in Italy or Alain Badiou in France. Those are actual philosophers, and they are, let's say, more than a tad more nuanced than this creature of the publishing world, who, while she is actually right about a few things, makes the profound mistake of assuming the phenomenon she is discussing is organic and arose by itself, when in fact it--or at least its ubiquitous presence in our society for the past 6-8 years--is the direct product of the strategies of the ruling structures: media, government, think tanks, academia, etc. The fact is, THEY WANT this confusion. If they didn't, they would just ignore it and send in the goons to crush it, as they did with Occupy Wall St., which, for its part, was a far more genuine phenomenon.
She is strangely naive about the BLM protests. She said that people out there protesting "in the middle of a plague!" were showing how much they cared by taking such dire risks. This was the tipping point for many who might have otherwise been sympathetic; if this "plague" were so serious as it had been made out to be, so serious that it justified locking us in our homes and letting the elderly languish in care homes alone, no social cause justified massive congregations in numbers. That point was the moment when many liberals lost faith in their leaders, as the same leaders who scolded them for taking a reasoned approach to the pandemic and shut their schools and trails and playgrounds then happily celebrated thousands congregating. Very strange blind spot on her part, and unfortunately somewhat disqualifying to many of her subsequent stances.
Starts the interview refusing to define woke. Ends the interview calling other philosophers slippery.
"Woke" is not a definable concept so much as it is a state of mind, and an attendant form of behavior. The 'woke' are triggered by certain ways of speaking and respond with vociferous censorship and ostricision ('cancelation'). In form and behavior, it is very similar to religious fanaticism.
No one gets to define a label owned by another group. When the group who coined the term - for themselves - now refuse to accept the idea ever existed.
I think Susan N is right. We need to analyse woke. It's history, connections, political uses, ...
wokeism is a racist, divisive and oppressive gaslighting that uses victimhood to paint the complete opposite. So it allures the most impressionable people.
Woke: Commie
Not Woke: Not Commie.
Dumb is the simplest definition, there, I fixed it for you.
It’s pathological group narcissism. No such thing as “tribalism.” What is being described is group narcissism.
So glad to see you press on the "woke" definition. And may I say, it's far too convenient for her to never define "progress." We have all struggled under the yoke of "progress" for generations, and all we ever get is an observation of what it might be, but never an actual definition of what it might look like when it is achieved.
Progress in the liberal democratic terms is kind off just another word for the pursuit of happiness. Trying to find a better solution for something that is not working well now. The idea that if we work together to try and find solutions to the problems we are facing we will eventually stumble on a way, system, method that works better or at least is less problematic than the previous approach. If it is utopian… be ware ;-)
@@sgjoni "Progress in the liberal democratic terms is kind off just another word for the pursuit of happiness. "
According to woke people, it is "progress" to medicalize young people who are confused about their gender and make them lifelong healthcare users, although their only problem is emotional. Just imagine those Trans people in Ukraine and who are dependent on drugs, hormones, and healthcare in general. Woke is dumb.
It means being aware the Iraq war where human beings were slaughtered every day until 2013 raged because of obsession, revenge, imperialism, money and oil.
Progress far too often is measured in GDP.
@@nonfictionone "Progress far too often is measured in GDP."
Economic progress, yes. But the so-called Social Progress, is kind of arbitrary. Many times it means stopping discrimination, which in the case of Trans Ideology, progressives want to medicalize people who have Body Dysmorphia. Is increasing the number of people dependent on the healthcare system for life progress?
No. It’s not productive to look for some intellectual culprit. If anything, it’s rather Sartre and Beauvoir rather than Heidegger or Schmitt to blame. The problem is precisely the current hypermoralism.
This explanation might be interesting in a pure academic setting where we can turn theoretical ideas over in an abstract way, but is pretty useless in the real world where there are concrete consequences to these ideas and we need clear definitions.
woke means the extreme far left.
Even though she calls out the woke, she still has this despicable attitude of taking the moral high ground to enforce her ideology.
She distinguishes ideals from realities, and most importantly from attempting to make ideals realities.
WOKE = BRAIN DEAD....Depraved Democrats are the party of Pedophiles. Killing babies, removing children's genitals, and drag shows for kids. Pure evil
of course the woke would never, ever in a million years take moral high ground to enforce their ideology.
I did not understand what this guest speaker was trying to express. Some people articulate their topics very well,and are,therefore,easily understood. This does not apply to this woman. Also,EVERYONE in the Public Eye writes books(Non-stop). Many of these books are created to discuss horrible human problems. Who among those many,many people, (that have horrible human problems),have the time to read all of those books?
“Woke” means different things to different people. The word became popular during the George Floyd protests as many street activists (who constitute no organized political force anywhere) used it frequently. It was depicted in tv and the internet as being a term that black activists used in particular. Right wing people see that as the origin and view to very negatively.
All it originally referred to was been aware of injustices. That’s it.
Right wingers have redefined politically incorrect and liberal to mean “woke”. They are all bit hysterical in the apoplectic use of the word. It’s an idiotic debate being used for political purposes.
Hear! Hear! 👍
Oh… I thought I had read an ebony article I. The word, at least 8 years before Floyd.
It's much older then Floyd
Woke. Stands for the idea of absolute domination of everything by the 'better' people who know more than YOU.
Philosophically, the act of defining has many functions both restrictive and useful, and yet is the basis for any meaningful discussion. Without definitions, the landscape can become like quick-sand that leads to impasses, leaving at least one side dissatisfied. Regardless of the merits of defining, we are stuck with it, with further clarification capable of broadening the initial terms of reference. So avoid anyone who can't give a meaningful/logical definition of the subject at hand as they are just playing with you. Wokeness and it's purposeful avoidance of definition is the most slippery snake that middle class Anglophones have come up with for a long time to distract us from thinking.
I agree, that made me in a distrustful mindset for the rest of the interview
Couldn't agree more !👍
your last sentence may say it all
I would add “for ourselves”
WOKE = BRAIN DEAD....Depraved Democrats are the party of Pedophiles. Killing babies, removing children's genitals, and drag shows for kids. Pure evil
"Left" and "Liberal" mean vastly different things to different people. Clearly "Woke" is just another word without inherent meaning and such terms can often mean their opposite.
Witless, Obnoxious, Kranky, Exasperating
woke is not equal. It created preferential treatment and another discrimination. svb didn't hire with skill. It is composed of people who have had a woke experience. Those who have studied and worked hard in that field for the rest of their lives were excluded. Is this considerate and equal?
The simplest definition I've come up with is "dogmatic identity politics".
I guess that works if you're a Fox News viewer.
@@Trunchisholm Nope I'm Left/Libertarian. Try not to be so simplistic.
@@fiveleavesleft6521 How can you be both left and libertarian? That doesn't compute.
@@gguitar2438 That's what anybody with a smidge of critical thinking abilities thinks. Libertarians and those in the left have irreconcilable views in terms of the role of government and social services. How can you possibly adhere to both ideologies?
Also, does anyone in this day an age consider CNN to be leftist or something? 😂
@@Trunchisholm Political compass tests are quadrants- Left/Right, Authoritarian/Libertarian. If you are in the extreme corner of the Left/Libertarian quadrant you are basically an Anarchist. I'm moderately Left Libertarian and there's nothing about wokeness that fits with that worldview. In fact I don't think that philosophically wokeness is Left at all. The obsession with hierarchies of racial groups is literally closer to National Socialism.
I know we don't generally read much these days...
The message or idea here is much more clearly made in the linked article.
It addresses many of the criticisms made in comments left here.
This isn't a hot take or a quick hit, but a critical observation regarding confusion and sloppiness in popular current discourse and ideologies.
Am surprised that 9 mins into this interview and she can't even define 🤔 what she wrote about.
Im surprised you watched 9 minutes and didn't understand a pretty basic idea.
I think we should replace the word “woke” with the older terms “political correctness” or “identity politics.” It’s more specific. And not all identity politics is bad. It’s normal to love your own people. It’s only bad when you create a friend-enemy distinction between two groups (like white vs nonwhite) haphazardly. If anything, the true friend-enemy distinction should be bankers and the military-industrial complex vs the rest of humanity.
Internet had caused a hall of mirrors. We are more self conscious than ever in history. We struggle internally with inner hypocrisy and inconsistencies. We blame, we group, we signal.
It didn´t cause anything, it is us who are showing who we are more, and it's there for everyone to see, like a mural. We have the right to choose whether and how to use the Internet, and we deliberately do this.
I would argue your friend is correct. I think the Left-Right dichotomy is changing from the 20th century social and economic spectrums to a new philosophical one: A postmodernist (or “woke”) new left and a fractured right that has yet to restructure itself fully for this divide (but even in the US we see younger Republicans who have started to embrace ideas that were not too long ago progressive and are wary of capitalism, though still wary of socialism). The new right, I think, will eventually be a metamodernist response that embraces democratic deliberation and rationalism, and will encompass previous Leftists. The longer the Right resists this change, the more powerful the new Woke Left will become, and they are fundamentally a danger not just to democracy but also to civilization and humanity itself.
"Woke" is a claim to special knowledge regarding ethical standards that have no concensus, nationally or globally.
No consensus. Just like the definition of "woke". You're just making shit up based on your cognitive bias.
Starting off by problemetising definitions in favour of analysis (analysis of an undefined thing?) does not bode well
Bull more bull more bull.
Nothing worthy of a reasonable person’s attention (in my opinion)
yes I have an opinion but I don’t as nobody else, own the truth .
Woke is what happens when religious moralism, “the personal is the political”, safetyism, and post-structuralist language games merge into one unholy sh*tstorm.
What definition starts with "X is what happens when..."? That's some useless description there. How about you express it in terms of "X is Y"? You know, like every single dictionary definition.
👏👏
No eoke is when you give up completely on religion/spirituality.
@@tankiebot704 atleast if we can’t define woke we can atleast say it is a thing unlike the speaker
@@tankiebot704 I would agree. Look at Foucault and the influence of Nietzsche on him with his biological reductionism and lack of a metaphysics. It tuns into a 'non essentialism' that denies the ground of being.
You give up on religion, but still have the desire to be perceived as a good or virtuous person and for that you need your devils..
"destroying humanity" i just saved you 18 minutes and 24 seconds
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Nice quotation, even though it has FA to do with this topic. Unless, of course, you see the so-called woke peeps as your enemy rather than as fellow humans. That would be extremely sad.
@@Trunchisholm can a man become pregnant?
@@winstonsmasterplan I've already answered that Walshy question, mate. I guess you can't be arsed to read? Also, you still haven't defined "woke" for me 😉
@@Trunchisholm what an absolute let down, we have been debating for days now and you still won’t openly admit your true position. You wouldn’t be this passionate and persistent if you wasn’t trying to defend the position of the speaker. Power of deduction. What is it that you stand for, maybe I can learn something today.
@@winstonsmasterplan We haven't been debating. You've merely been asking pointless gotcha questions copied and pasted from frigging Matt Walsh of all people. And I've indulged you. Only you seem to be too lazy to read my answers.
Also, I've no idea what you want me to say. That I'm pro-woke? WTF does that even mean? At the very least, tell me what you mean by "woke". I'll be more than happy to answer once you come up with a definition 😉
I stopped listening at "Left in not woke"...
A strikingly superficial analysis.
Agreed. I think she has the "leftist emotions" bit backwards too. It's leftist concepts but with fascist emotions.
She reluctantly admits.."I am not quite a Stalinist"..wow! Academia?
"I am not quite a Hitlerist".. how does that sound?
To me it's a perverted sense of reality in the quests to teardown tradition.
If you mean the western tradition, then yes, it should be torn down.
@@squatch545On what kind of foundation should a new society be built? On the principles of anarchy? I wouldn't want to live in such a society.
@@ritar.7836 Why not? You prefer authoritarian hierarchy? Anarchy is how most humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years.
Woke has become Puke. Please start identifying left Wokeness with the new term Puke.
Ok, so you showed us another person who does not know what "woke" means...
Yes. She's just old and feeling her dinosaur form of communism is out of fashion, getting replaced by another version of leftist revolutionary ideology (wokeism). She senses something is wrong and yet she can't put the finger on it and define it.
Analysis is subjective, definitions are accurate descriptors. The 'woke' would prefer analysis, the logical among us would prefer definitions.
I’ve not read Schmidt or Heidegger but in life I’ve often learned much from the observations of people whose conclusions I vehemently disagreed.
I once had a boss - bar manager - who was useless. The head barman and the rest of us had to fix everything.
Best boss I ever had, learned pretty much everything about how to manage a bar.
@@redfernpixelgnomepitcher1377 Is right!
Andrew Doyle, Helen Pluckrose, and Joanna Williams have written excellent books on the division between Woke, on the one hand, and my generation's versions of leftism and liberalism. What we have today is not something that many of us older leftists can recognize, and we certainly can't join it. I hope that Ms. Neiman's book is more clear than her presentation during this interview.
The Frankfurt School should also be considered in this discussion.
WOKE = BRAIN DEAD....Depraved Democrats are the party of Pedophiles. Killing babies, removing children's genitals, and drag shows for kids. Pure evil
I'm 71 and have always aligned with liberal, progressive, feminist viewpoints and I no longer recognise that landscape. I'm faced with the prospect of voting with the right wing most of whose beliefs I am inherently opposed to or I don't vote at all, which is something I've always considered a sacrilege.
Me too😢
what right wing beliefs do you oppose??
I adore Freddie’s transition
Cute right?
Lol
lmao
😂
WOKE = BRAIN DEAD....Depraved Democrats are the party of Pedophiles. Killing babies, removing children's genitals, and drag shows for kids. Pure evil
Woke: someone who believes they do not have to abide by natural laws such as biology and human nature. But even more to the point, someone who wants freedom for themselves, but not for other people.
if you do not give the meaning, you can move the meaning to your advantage, and your opponent's disadvantage.
If your opponent controls the dictionary, take every advantage you can get.
For me woke refers to childish entitlement, pandering to simplistic emotive response, superficial identity, and/or vacuous virtue signalling, whilst denying cost, consequential impact, fact, rational, or others right to differ.
So she can't define what she wrote a book about. Short video. Thank you.
Agreed 👍
This , albeit short , interview was not of the highest quality or sophistication we are used to following on this channel 🤷
Very second-rate stuff
Exactly. If you can't define a word, you probably shouldn't base a whole book around it.
Am even surprised 😮
She is referring to a critique of definitions which says that definitions are always second-rate tools of analysis because they are abstracted rather than analytical (i.e. they focus on arbitrary groupings, rather than describing and figuring out what's actually going on)
I disagree. Although I had a similar reaction at her initial struggle to define the phrase, I found she did quite well in her following summary. Prof Norm Finkelstein is the only other academic I’ve heard describing it the way she does so hopefully you all listened to this in its entirety.
Woke is identity politics.
What is identity politics?
Thank you Ellsworth Toohey. I got as far as point 3 and gave up. Progress only ever comes from the individual, not the collective. The stupidity of collective action is the precise cause of (imho) 99.99% of the problems in the West today. The good lady would also be well advised to read Nobel prize winning Von Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” to see why no matter WHAT the collective throws at the market, the market always wins through eventually. Dismissed.
I agree it was difficult to watch. When Susan started listing things that Woke and Left have in common it sounded like she was saying...
1. @3:50 the Right doesn't believe that people should be judged by the principles they stand for...
2. @4:26 the Right doesn't make a distinction between justice and power.... and is therefor corrupt by default?
3. @4:51 and the Right doesn't believe that progress, thought large groups (corporations) is possible.
I'm pretty sure the Right would believe in some, or all of these and this is not the view of the Left exclusively. Therefore, after 18 minutes of "deep philosophic nonsense" doesn't explain why or how the left appears more woke then the right.
I want my 18min back....
@@patusoro4781 good comment. I was thinking along similar lines myself. I am neither right nor left but 1. Believe every individual has rights that should be protected, sadly all too often shouted down by the left - e.g. Covid vaccines and mask wearing 2. Believe that justice is something that is often been wholly abused by the left. We have seen this virtually non stop over the past five years from Russiagate to (in all likelihood) Nordstream. 3. Elon Musk must surely be the best example of a left wing cooperative woke success story that has changed the course of humanity … I jest of course! 😊
@@rogersinger3757 Elon Musk is not a Left Wing Coop nor 'woke'. He is a hardcore Capitalist. He is not the Founder of Tesla Industries. Just like Trump he used money he got from his already rich dad and bought Tesla company then promoted his name as it's branding. He used his Professional Marketing skills and stunts to reach a demographic that was largely ignored - the left and became their branding. The whole point was to exploit that market. Otherwise he is Pro-Authoritarianism, Anti-Union, Pro-Corporate Establishment. Russia has not been a left wing country in a very long time. Its run by the Oligarchs who control everything. As for the Covid and Vaccine mandates are basically biblical and also came from the right wing libertarian ideology.
Personal responsibility is the cornerstone of a lot of different schools of thought. The general idea is that if we exercise personal responsibility we will end up being more free when we as individuals do what’s right then there’s no need for gov’t intervention, there will be less laws contrary to liberty and gov’t intervention so we become more free. You can swing your fist as long as you want so long as it doesn’t hit somebody else’s nose. The foundational element of small gov’t libertarian side of the right wing is beautiful in it’s simplicity. We hear the same thing from small gov’t conservatives, right wing media, libertarians and politicians ‘You can’t make me wear a mask’ If you're a believer in Personal responsibility school of thought then that is half a sentence claim. ‘You don’t need to make me wear a mask because I’m already doing it’ because I’m exercising that personal responsibility because I understand that when I’m walking around unmasked unvaccinated that the stuff that’s coming out of my mouth every time I cough or sneeze that that is hitting somebody else’s nose and they might be infected by a deadly disease that can cause them injury and death'. Otherwise screaming that you're not going to wear a mask in the middle of a Deadly Pandemic does not show 'Personal responsibility'
@@patusoro4781 You should have played it at 2X speed. You’d have only wasted 9 minutes.
Roger Singer that's not True. You reason like this becoz you are a victim Corporate monopoly which excludes all other viable competitors which basically restricts choice for consumers, basically hinders growth of local industries and kills free market. Because of this in today’s society despite your hard work you’re less likely to grow out of your socio-economic status because someone at the top is busy hindering you while selling you that kind of propaganda yet ironically they get huge Gov't bailouts whenever they fail by bribing Politician's through 'Donation' to push their interests forward thus they never fail becoz they rig the system. They Decry Socialism but never seem to have a problem with Gov’t handouts to huge Corporations. They want socialism for the Rich but Capitalism and Individualism for the Poor. Progress does not come from Individual. It comes from collective action. The Fact is that you have only been exposed to a Capitalist corporate monopoly environment that tells you repeatedly that a functional society is that only driven by the Oligarchs so you should give all your money to the rich thus you have never been exposed to other options. The Free Market doesn't exist today becoz it's been rigged by the Oligarchs who will buy that Idea and place it like its their own preventing growth of other options. Just like Elon used funds from his already rich father and bought Tesla with it marketed it and now presents himself as if it were his idea.
US history’s greatest moments were during the age of invention & during those times the gov't made a huge investment in the middle class during the 1945's to 1950’s. The GI Bills, Subsidized Mortgages, Education became valued and a strong manufacturing base that saw massive marriage and household formation some men were seen as economically and emotionally viable. This was before the lobbyists bribed the politicians to change it. The reverse happened with the offshoring of our manufacturing base to make more profits with a society that doesn’t value young men. I guess you attempting to say that Standard Response policies like Universal Healthcare, Affordable housing, Better Wages, Unions etc make you a dependent of the state with no rights as depicted in Von Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”. This is BS straight from the Right Wing Propaganda Channel. People in Prison are those that the society has deemed worthy of throwing in a cage and stripping away most of their rights yet they get shelter, food and healthcare because it is a basic human right and something that is required to live. Prisoners get it yet the average person in your free society doesn’t. In the military they provide these things because it makes the soldier more productive, effective and able to focus on the mission. Imagine if all of society was more productive and effective if they were committed in a mission of making the world a better place.
Reality is your beloved corporate lobbyists capitalists don’t want these because they want the warning there.’ If you don’t do what you’re told, If you don’t tore the line, If you don’t go to work and engage in the Financial transaction that they suggest, If you want to quit because the working conditions are unsafe or because your boss is harassing you, well you better give it a second thought. You better just do what you’re told coz you may end up hungry or out in the street.’ This seems awful coercive too. They care about power and keeping working class commoners in their place. They need to keep you down so they can sit there and say work harder don’t worry the American dream is right around the corner for you. It's clear that’s how you want the society to function. The carrot is that you may be that one in a million shot. The stick is that you may end up being one of those that everyone looks down upon. This is not a good standard response. It would be great if you stopped focusing on motivations that were handed over to us. We weren’t there when these rules were made. The society and the world at large has changed a whole lot. Maybe the way you look at things should change too and be focused on building that society where people do have a mission. Where we are all united behind an idea or principle and that the mission is making this a better place for everyone not just making sure our betters stay in power.
I bet the left wing philosopher wouldn’t be able to give a definintion to what “equality of opportunity” in her opinion is either.
Is it to make all mothers to talk and read to their children exact amount of words and books? Pay exact amount for their extracurricular tuition?
As vital contribution to anyone's development?
The lady refused to define Woke as she herself is the clear representative of this ideology.
They doesn't do definitions and finding solutions. They look for the “sinners” of the society ( in the view of the guest it's clearly the wright wing) in order to identify them as the problem, and to take control over them.
Excellent questions though 👍! pretty exposing 😊
This interview reminded me of: when your watching a movie and you suffer through it with the hope at the end there was something…something ..nut no…bad from start to finish..
😂
Her attempt to defend leftism by distancing it from wokeism is as sad as the ongoing attempt to pretend communism has never been implemented.
Perhaps a personality test could be developed to rank wokeness by the answers to a series of questions. For example: 1. Should white people be ashamed of US or British history or should they celebrate the advancements made to civilization over the centuries? 2. Should speech that criticizes certain groups be considered violence and not allowed? 3. Is it reasonable to promote campaigns to fire or de-platform people who have views counter to those of the offended people? 4. Should people who commit crimes be punished or rehabilitated? I am sure there are social scientists out there who can design better more nuanced questions than these to allow us to know where people fall on the woke/enlightened spectrum.
I worked ( in a very small way ) with a phenomenology oriented philosopher on a written test she was developing in the early 70s to measure by questionaries and essay answers levels of awareness & ethical maturity --- ( measuring wokeness? ) in a Karl Jaspers--- grasping greater or smaller horizons sense--- ? ) --- she had Kiekegaard's philosphy in mind as a model as well and trying to figure out the best basis to justify his leaps of faith, I suppose. --- Just sayin', the idea has been around. It's not out entirely there.
It’s really difficult to access the full video through the unheard website. Please upload it to youtube or make the embedded video (which links to youtube anyway) easier to play.
Today woke, Yesterday proselytizing. Missionaries in the possession of ultimate truth LOL
I tend to agree. A new form of self-righteousness based on ideas that have been turned into dogma. The woke ideology seems to prevail in countries with strong Puritan roots which could indicate a correlation.
@@CLCL748 like Oliver Cromwell's mobs smashing and looting churches in the name of holiness.
@@CLCL748 Strong Puritan roots? Really? Any evidence to back that up? And what do those Puritan roots have to do with people now being woke when that ideology has been mostly continued by white evangelicals, who are most definitely not woke?
@@Trunchisholm What I mean by that is the woke ideology feels like a form of religious fanaticism that has turned secular and is based on secular dogma.
@@CLCL748 So the whole Puritan roots things is pointless and based on nothing. Right. By the way, what are those countries you're talking about?
" If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism. " ---- Ronald Reagan
I always loved the description of “waking up” waking up to our true selves whether spiritually or simply becoming aware of our capacities as a human. It seemed like overnight awakening became “woke”, a confusing term that has succeeded in dividing us and distracting us from waking up.
WOKE = BRAIN DEAD....Depraved Democrats are the party of Pedophiles. Killing babies, removing children's genitals, and drag shows for kids. Pure evil
We should also be awake to the weaponisation of the term "woke" by the right, which seems to be effective in distracting people from both specific and general injustices. We can be woke without losing sight of one or the other. Meantime the right has us fighting amongst ourselves, mainly because they have to shut down such a powerfully emotive term. Wokeness is a real threat to the right, hence their distortion of its meaning in such a way that ordinary people are turned against issues that should be of great concern to them. Bit of a hellish master stroke that seems to be working unfortunately.
True "State Socialism has never been tried" type?
Woke - someone who has read the book 1984 and sees it as an instruction manual rather than a warning
Hey, you're describing DeSantis' Florida here! So, I mean, another pointless definition that could be applied to both sides of the spectrum depending on your political bias.
@@gguitar2438 Do you mean "nihilism"? In that case, no, it absolutely isn't. Read the definition. Still, your rhetoric around 1984 is weird. What does "apply the depth of 1984 convincingly" even mean? That's a word salad if I ever saw one.
1984 is an instruction manual. Shows us what happens if we elect a Trump or a Putin and not a Democratic Socialist!
It means what anyone wants it to mean. Infantile boiling down of language.
Woke is actually Swahili for “mincing knt”. True fact
WOKE = BRAIN DEAD....Depraved Democrats are the party of Pedophiles. Killing babies, removing children's genitals, and drag shows for kids. Pure evil
Intolerance against someone you disagree with, unable to compromise.
Lol, wtf is this incoherent rambling? None of this makes any sense. Of course you have to define words. You 'don't know it when you see it', that's just using common sense, instead of critical thinking.
I disagree. Without a working definition, we cannot become sufficiently oriented about this topic to have a conversation on the matter. Of course, most of those, who would claim to be woke, do not wish to come under any critical scrutiny regarding their contradictory and regressive positions, so perhaps Susan has a point.
Your first question is exactly what I had in mind when I heard her.
The idea of putting Schmidt there is interesting. He has an interesting book on "values" as well.
Foucault is easy, he is a student of the Marquis of Sade.
The problem with her argument is she is confusing the left with her own beliefs, but historically it is pretty broad. There were people like Sade who wanted complete freedom, there were others like Lenin who didn't. Most socialists want to direct everything, and Schmidt quite clearly was of that sort, but Sade who also would fit as a socialist didn't.
Basically the so-called tribalism of woke is only a function of sociology. As a discipline, it created those groups, and claimed it was science, and people believed it. Believed they existed. So it does not come from the nazis, but the nazis come from it. It's Darwin and then his cousin Galton. Functionally it is what is driving it, not ideology. Basically all she is saying is she is a liberal from liberalism and they are not. I am not so sure of that. There is no woke collective, nor any call to any structured socialism. There is however, corruption of individualism. It's cheating on the individualism that tells people to be individual in the public sphere. In the 19th century, it was known and was accepted as what is needed to get equality. One group that didn't play like the others were the Jews, so you got the Jewish question of how to deal with that and it lasted a long time, and we know one of the answer that people came up with.
Of course it was then hidden after the war and the whole idea was hidden and then forgotten. Now it's coming back in forms like multiculturalism and so on. So the difference is there. Multiculturalism backed by sociology (if it can be measured it exists) and policies made to use that, and it's liberalism that is denying itself and forgot it's origins and principles. But otherwise it's the same, it's quite neo-liberal and everything, it's totally mainstream, compatible with businesses and so on. Great for marketing. If liberalism had solved that group problem, it would not exist, but it never it, because it can't.
This is an accurate analysis well done, so what do you see being the outcome this second time around?
Will it be worst than the first time or will China just exploit our weakness during this time and just take over worldwide with satellite internet.
Foucault also considered himself a Nietzschian and later not as a socialist. Woke identitarainism fits in very nicely with establishment thinking as you say, it's kind of the left wing of neoliberalism.
I think its important to make the distinctions between what traditional liberalism is, what the origins of collectivism are and so on. I read Stephen Hicks book recently Nietzsche and the Nazis, it attempted to make that clearer. But we have amnesia ahout the German collectivist ideology that flowered as Nazism, socialisms infatuation with the eugenics movement and many any other things we ought to remember, lest we sleepwalk into re-enacting something similar.
@@michaelmcclure3383 Wow! A name twin (almost) I came here to say something similar. Woke identitarianism is establishment, is status quo, is a sort of left wing neoliberalism. It’s the 6:00 establishment news and where the social media algorithms coalesce. It’s the “influencers” who get the brand deals. It’s corporate. It’s ESG. It’s white upper middle class. The only thing Marxist about wokeism is that it uses and discards marginalized people to achieve its own ends.
Assuming the economic equality ( giving equal opportunities) racism or sexism etc. are still the problem. In this sense the woke is not separate it is subset of left. The thoughts of Susan Neiman opposing woke and left are strange to me.
That’s nice
How’s Your day going today my friend?
Its where objective fact based reasoning is supplanted by subjective emotive based wishful thinking.
I have found the anti-woke crowd be equally emotive, like mention the words systemic racism and just watch people lose their shit
@@xouat It's appropriate to be emotive if a white mob is burning down a black neighbourhood in the name of anti-racism.
So you mean to tell me, going by that definition, that MAGA supporters are woke?
@@Trunchisholm Arguably, both left and right wing extremists have absorbed the central message of postmodernism: that truth is a function of power, rather than an objective reality.
@@liberality Maybe both left and right wing extremists see truth as a function of power, but as one who trained as a scientist in the ‘70’s that whole notion stinks. It is also a notion that will lead us down the road of perdition as I believe we are witnessing in the Western world today.
I identify as a social scientist and I declare the term woke to be exclusively attached with the liberal left.
Agreed. This is why so many people are saying the left has lost them
Illiberal left.
I identify as a dictionary and I declare your definition of woke to be positively rubbish.
@@Trunchisholm I identify as your mother and I’m telling you to go to bed 👉
@@andreas.9175 oxymoron right?
Why is it so hard to define Woke? Is "doctrinaire intersectional critical social constructivism" not adequate?
Sorry but is your definition of woke as someone who holds the view that various aspects of human behaviour that may seem innate are actually social predicated, and that the mechanism through which the behaviours are transmitted is worthy of study?
Constructivism is the view that the reality we experience is a product of the categories of the understanding of the mind (a la transcendental idealism).
Social constructivism is the view that the relevant categories are those of the society (and thus contingently varies from society to society) aka the general will or world spirit.
Critical Social Constructivism is the view that what makes those structures what they are are the relations of power between the members of that society, and the related practice of using that knowledge to disrupt/overturn those power relations.
Intersectional Critical Social Constructivism adds that there are multiple overlapping layers of these power relations.
Doctrinaire Intersectional Critical Social Constructivism is my name for the belief in all of the above as the received wisdom of one's society/peers/educators/authority. Ie. not those for whom it is a live contesting theory but those for whom it is "common sense".
Simply believing that some aspect of society has been falsely believed to not be contingent, is not necessarily constructivist. But if the belief is that it's existence depends upon our belief that it does but that belief/reality can be changed and that is why its existence is not necessarily so, that is constructivist What is distinctive is the (explicit or implicit) equation of belief and existence. Is this what "predicated" means?
Add that that belief is only so because people with the power to make that so have done so for their own benefit, that this is just one example of a general pattern, all of which must be stopped, and you have wokeness.
@@xouat In short, no, because your description is compatible with a realist metaphysics, with lack of focus upon power relations, and restriction to a limited domain. With not being constructivist, critical, or intersectional
8 minutes... sorry dear, I don't think the antidote to high IQ upper middle class university mumbo jumbo is more high IQ upper middle class university mumbo jumbo......
Without definition, how do you know what you are analyzing?
My shorthand definition is: 'Equity at any cost.'
It's not perfect but it helps me to understand it and if called upon I can deliver this to anyone in a matter of seconds.
If they want to go deeper then the ball is in their court and we can unpick this simplistic definition...ie: What is equity? Why equity and not equality? What is 'any cost'? What are some examples to prove my definition?
So you're essentially arguing for a definition as a form of logical trap rather than as a functional description of the term? Nice.
Alt-left buzz words: UnIronically, literally, actual, problematic, reparations, indigenous peoples, solidarity, death to America, anti fascism, green party, harm reduction, equity, systemic racism, offensive, cultural appropriation, gaslighting, mental health, patriarchy, misgender, cisgender, gender studies, anti racism, cringe, soy, safe space, climate change, climate justice, defund the police, social construct, micro aggressions, privilege, pronouns, I identify as, triggered, shut it down, institutionalism. This kind of language is hate speech & tyranny from alt left fascist.
It means we're all doomed
The concept of "progress" is too subjective and ambiguous, so I prefer not to use it.
Woke people think too much with their heart instead of their heads. For instance, the woke who support medicalizing children and surgery on children confused with their gender, do it from their heart because they believe they are saving children from death and despair.
Rational people, on the other hand, would think about the issue and first question the idea of "being born in the wrong body" because such idea rejects the establish work on Cognition and Cognitive Development of Jean Piaget. Rational people would also question why is it that 30 years ago young people were not committing suicide although there was no "gender affirming care", as well as the fact that the Trans craze only exists in the Western world. Woke people don't think, they just react in defence of what they perceive as the underdog.
Maybe it means that the moral consideration we gave to the human body have now been extended to cover the emotional body.
Before Woke; don't hurt me.
After Woke; don't offend me.
Close. I think it's more like Before Woke: Don't oppress me with unjust laws. After Woke: Your beliefs oppress me.
It is a useless, meaningless term which means different things to different people. It’s lazy shorthand used as a weapon to put down and try to discredit people you disagree with. Why don’t we say what we mean? If somebody is being a moralistic zealot, call it out. If somebody is a bigot, say it. As an Aspie this messy language infuriates me. I like what this professor is saying so far. It is thoughtful and exploratory. Somebody probably said woke in the moment as a spontaneous slang way of meaning awake and then it got distorted and fixed and claimed as something progressive by some and moralistic and po faced by others. I wish we could move on from a word that has become so divisive.
If she publishes a dictionary, that'll be one big book.
Or alternatively a very short one given that she is very down on definitions, which is the point of a dictionary…
There'll be a whole volume defining a woman, by what is not a woman.
🤣
😂
Aardvark - "let's not use labels, it means something different to everyone."
Apple - "You'll know it when you see it."
Anus - "Actually the root of 'analysis' so let's not define it, let's analyse it"
...
...
...
Bullshit - "Everything that comes out of my mouth"
To me woke is everything I don't want to be... I don't want to be part of the mob
It pains me to write that your "philosopher" has, at beast, a superficial and an ahistorical understanding of the Leftism / la gauche. Much of what was said of leftism can be found both in Burkean Conservatism and William Buckly's conservatism ("Freedom = #1 principle of social organization). In order to understand the "generative" (and not essentialist) principle of leftist thinking, I suggest my book The Archetypal Structure of Leftist Thinking. an Essay Concerning Ideological Pathology (2020, Shaker Verlag) The origins of the term "la gauche" is generated during and out of the French Revolution (1789ff). That revolution and its ideology established the basic generative structure for future forms of leftism (concretized in different and differing ideologies--hence, archetypal), the nature of which was summarized effectively when Marx explained the generative principle of his youthful poems. (Cf. my three books on the mythic origins and, consequently, structure of Marxist thinking along with its ironic terror as the principle of revolutionary activity.) The absolutely annihilative conflict of protagonist vs antagonist, oppressor vs oppressed, better, the dramatic agon between that which is and that which ought to be, leading leftist thinking to an annihilative impulse relative to what is, specifically the socio-economical structure of an unredeemed society. (As Marx stated, the proletarians is that class of role that can say: "I am nothing and should be everything".)This pattern evinces itself in the French Revolution, Marxism, New Left, postmodernism (which is at the origins of "works-ism") and American liberalism (now fusing with postmoderns elements), crescendo-ing all through the 20th Century and mutating now into ...? WOKE-ism! Woke-ism is just one more "concretization" of the leftist pattern of annihilative thinking, a pattern not necessarily accepted by other forms of thinking lefty. There is more, much more hidden away in the bowels of leftism than revealed in the confession of faith by Prof. Neiman.
As one professor to another, I thank Prof. Neiman's contribution. To hear a rational mind in this age or irrational emotions is always a pleasure. She is, however, riding the crest of a liberalism (hegemonic before, "now" fading) that existed In America in a profitable and positive dialectic with conservatism until the "really real" leftist stole, viz., adopted liberalism for its vehicle of radically. In this context I suggest, Barry Rubin, Silent Revolution. How the Left Rose to Political Power and Cultural Dominance (2014, Broadside Books). Prof. Neimen might also find Yoram Hazony's Conservatism. A Rediscovery (2022, Forum), so as to obtain an insight into the two conservatisms (one accepting her universalism and commitment to reason and the other rejecting reason and universalism).
Prof. Leonard Wesssell (ret.)
Bonn, Germany
In the last microsecond we get an essential element of wokeness... the lead up was useful, but the cash value was just that last phrase.
This is so appreciated, you guys are doing a fantastic job! UnHerd 4ever!🙌🙌
WOKE = BRAIN DEAD....Depraved Democrats are the party of Pedophiles. Killing babies, removing children's genitals, and drag shows for kids. Pure evil
I still do not comprehend what WOKE is supposed to be.
In popular usage by those on the right today, "woke" is synonymous with "bullshit" and often phrased together as "woke bullshit." Definitionally, "bullshit" means "nonsense," "stupidity," or "untrue," all of which match the popular usage of "woke" for those on the right. More specifically, though "woke" means "alert to social injustice" to the left, to the right, it is now also a catch-all term of contempt for the extreme leftism that is currently dominating the Democratic Party: such as critical race theory (another word whose definition has grown); radical gender theory; identity politics; diversity, equity & inclusion; apocalyptic climate alarmism; ESG, etc.
12:20 a lot of "leftists" hold that same view, fortunately they aren't nazis. But it is the same kind of reversed moral relativism, "who are you to judge?"