you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Horror-SwordfishI don't get how flairs work 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

There's a website called New Discourses that's run by James Lindsay that actually breaks down pretty well, in their articles, exactly what Wokeness is and where it came from. I've never been a fan of Wokeness myself, so it wasn't exactly eye-opening but there's definitely some good information there that might help you come up with ways to talk to your friend. Specifically, there is a "Social Justice Encyclopedia" that defines a lot of terms in the Woke sense. That can be really helpful, considering that Critical Theory seems to be very much about replacing definitions for certain words or terms with a new definition in order to make communication with "the outside" basically impossible. After all, if we can't even agree on the definitions of words, how can we possibly accurately get our ideas across to another person?

I don't have any practical advice, sadly. I did have a friend who was very Woke years ago, and it seems like she's backed off of that some. Not entirely, but she's also not super vocal about politics all the time anymore, so she's easier to tolerate. Unfortunately, though, Wokeness is effectively a cult and it's really hard to get someone that's in a cult out; keeping people in is one of the things that cults are really good at. Especially when you're looking at something like Wokeness, which, on its surface, seems like a good thing, it can be hard to see that you're actually perpetuating ideas that are nonsensical at best and dangerous at worst.

You might be able to find some avenues to just have discussions about things if she's actually receptive to hearing other points of view, but if she's not, it might just be something you've gotta let her work out on her own. Surely after enough time she'll realize that her point of view is only serving to make herself miserable all the time and she'll snap out of it.

[–]throwaway999 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I was about to suggest this! Fantastic resource. The only thing is that the author himself actually participates in identity politics (if you criticize Israel you h8 Jews!!1!!11), but I guess everyone falls victim to ideology at some point. Still, he makes excellent analyses.