I wouldn’t say “even wokeness” - I would say clearly wokeness is a money maker. It is highly funded, lobbied, commercialized, packaged, tee-shirted, gas-masked, etc etc…. — Fire Ologist

I forgot to include anti-woke, which is also quite influential.

Interesting you said wokeness is resistance. Can you elaborate - is resistance essential, like awareness is? — Fire Ologist

If Bud Light’s gesture didn’t feel like a push there wouldn’t have been pushback.

Awareness is essential when navigating from a weak position. I understand the origins of “woke” was from an old song with a cautionary theme.

I’m not sure how to answer if resistance is essential. I think awareness is essential because it can be a matter of life or death, or some form of ruination, for those in a weak position.

If the Bud Light gesture is a form of resistance, is it essential to push back?

Enjoy yourself and your woke jokes! — Fire Ologist

Credit where credit is due–that's a real product. I photoshoped this however:



It illustrates a protest against political messages appearing on commercial products. Shoot'n up half woke and half anti-woke equally. Powerful message, right?

Anyway, another CT insight is that even resistance (wokeness or anti-wokeness) can be turned into a commodity in late stage capitalism.

I think that is not as meaningful as what Kid Rock said with a gun and a case of beer - which had more to do with people not wanting to make every single thing a political statement. — Fire Ologist

It was hard to decide on a product. This was the funniest:



And I mean no disrespect by not engaging more. I don’t want to trash the topic further with useless bickering.

Gee, I wonder why the political class loved woke-ism so much. — Tzeentch

The same reason the political class loves anti-wokeism.

I wrongly, according to you, brought in ‘homophobia’ — Fire Ologist

I said that I almost included it myself but didn't think it necessary to make the point. That's not saying you were wrong.

From the moment I heard about "woke" I thought about the way that Buddhists use the same metaphor of awakening. Yet with time the gulf between a Buddhist approach and a woke approach has proved remarkably wide, and I think the Buddhists leverage the metaphor much more consistently. The repudiatory nature of wokeness is inconsistent with the metaphor of waking from slumber. — Leontiskos

Awareness is the precondition for both rejection and liberation. You can’t reject what you don’t know exists, just like you can’t escape a cage you don’t realize you’re in.

I went to college too long ago I guess. — Fire Ologist

Rather, your unwillingness to to employ CT expresses your anti-wokeness.

Through the lens of wokeness - probably exactly like you did. Maybe add homophobia to the analysis. I don’t know if bud light is sold at Disneyworld, but if so, it was probably all part of a planned conspiratorial attack… — Fire Ologist

I almost added homonormativity but thought it superfluous to the point. Anyway, wokeness critiques visible social structures. You’re employing culture war rhetoric, not CT.

I don’t think it was unconscious what happened there, nor about any cultural/ideological status quo. That’s university-speak, or secular church speak. — Fire Ologist

I was attempting to adopt woke-speak or what the anti-woke decidedly don't speak. I thought that was clear.

How would you view the incident through the lens of wokeness or critical theory?

I don’t know how best to characterize the anti-woke. — Fire Ologist

Most concisely would simply be what the term implies: asleep or unaware.

Take the controversy surrounding Bud Light and transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for example. The anti-woke reacted unconsciously to reassert cisnormativity and the status quo. They didn't concsiously realize that their status or power was being challenged and yet reacted with shows of power, perhaps most famously with Kid Rock blasting cases of Bud Light with a semi-automatic assault rifle. Of course it could be that Rock was also acting in bad faith (like Bud Light) and capitalizing on the culture war, but either way the anti-woke drank it up heartily, the video having been viewed over 11 million times.

Art is a social construct grounded in aesthetic experience, which is characterized by heightened perceptual awareness, emotional engagement, a non-utilitarian or nonjudgmental stance, a diminished sense of self, and often a sense of emerging meaning or form. While this experience is commonly triggered by objects that are culturally recognized as art—such as paintings—it can also arise from many other sources and may vary in depth or intensity.

Depending on the individual and the context, an object barely recognizable as art may evoke a profound aesthetic experience, while a Rembrandt masterpiece might, for some reason, be dismissed outright. The experience is what has value and counts as art.

When such people are morally charged, and morally charged in the particular direction of identity politics, you get... — Leontiskos

I wouldn't suggest that support for their grievances is unwarranted.

I have confidence in my work but it needs to be stress-tested. That is why I am looking for an "astute reader" that could help me find a possible "fatal flaw" in my reasoning. The statement that I posted in my introduction is only part of my problem statement, in an effort to solicit some stress-testing of my work. — Pieter R van Wyk

Frankly, it appears that you're looking for an 'obtuse buyer' of your book and that's why you avoid openly discussing its contents.

Good luck with that endeavor.

In principle, you are correct. However, the 2018 Kavanaugh hearing is a paradigmatic example of a triumphant woke spectacle. — Number2018

A succesful woke spectacle but triumphant? Due process prevailed over woke mob justice. And I think it could be argued that the long-term backlash resulted in strengthening the perception that social justice activism had become censorious, reckless, and morally absolutist.

All in all, the Kavanaugh hearings exemplify the extent to which public life is structured by affective discursive formations of contemporary woke culture. — Number2018

Curious that you only look at one side of the spectacle. The testimony of both Ford and Kavanaugh was emotional and lacked the explicit language or rhetorical style that typically marks woke or anti-woke discourse. Ford was adopted by the woke and Kavanaugh by the anti-woke, and the anti-woke won.

My point is simply that religions are inherently exclusive and fail the excluded. Your example illustrates this well. In Orthodox Brahmanical Hinduism the untouchables were denied even spiritual mobility—were excluded within their own culture and religious tradition by no fault of their own.

Your example also shows how religions change as untouchability and caste discrimination has been banned for many years.

By the way, Zaroastrianism (the first monotheistic religion) argued 3 postulates: Good thought. Good word. Good deed. Little has changed in religions since then. — Astorre

Obviously a lot has changed in religion since then.

Though I didn't watch the video my interpretation is that Are48 is essentially pointing out that religions fail because they are human inventions–no religion can be all-inclusive because no people can be all-inclusive.

I assume that your particular distillation of wokeism helps you to better deal with the concrete complexities and diversity of life.

The purpose of the allegations is obviously distraction.

I’m notably no closer to understanding this foundation from which solutions to humanity’s problems might be found.

Don’t you believe that it would be good if I did understand it?

Is it that only an elite class of people are capable of understand it?

Also, you say that solutions might be found from this foundation. Aren’t humanity’s problems important enough to present a foundation that you have more confidence in?

Please consider an alternative foundation from which solutions to humanity's problems might be solved. A foundation that is not based on philosophy, religion, politics or science. A foundation based on a fundamental understanding of systems, a definition of a system from first principles. A definition that provides for a classifications of systems that provides a theory of evolution without any tautologies and which solve the demarcation problem. An understanding that clearly shows that the emergence of wealth preceded the evolution of modern Homo sapiens. — Pieter R van Wyk

You claim to offer a foundation from which solutions to humanity's problems might be solved and then proceed to describe this foundation in an obfuscating manner.

Snake oil salesmen have always been part and parcel of humanity's problems.

The only real value that religion has is the potential to make the imperfect perfect and imperfect and neither imperfect nor perfect.

Doesn’t this handover more executive power to any administration and is that what you really want?

Damn, I liked her a lot.

You want Orwellian, this poster is being shared on social media by The White House and Homeland security.

Man, the organizers and all their acolytes in the press tried really hard to get people to notice the No Kings protest, and everyone has already forgotten about it. It’s performative and cathartic stunts like these that have rendered protesting largely ineffectual. What a shame. — NOS4A2

You haven't forgotten about it and it seems to have had an impact. :up:

I went to the one in my county and it was by far the biggest protest that I've ever seen at the government center here.

:100:

So do you think a general conclusion is possible for religionists?

You’re fast, I corrected that within a minute.

Just to note a basic division in testimony, non-theistic religions tend to report experiences of emptiness and such, while theistic religions tend to report experiences like the unification with God or whatever. Perhaps a general conclusion is not possible.

Are you at all familiar with Christian theology? Or the Reformation polemics? I'm not sure where your starting point is. — Leontiskos

I have no doubt that it's extremely complicated.

That hope and love are intertwined in faith indicates that its function has to do with human bonding rather than salvation. Why should salvation require faith?

When I think of faith, I don’t necessarily think of God or religion. — Fire Ologist

Neither do I, but clearly religion is the quintessential exemplar and that makes it an excellent subject to focus on.

The point being love. — Fire Ologist

What do you think that implies?

But praxis, “a nuclear family that enforces patriarchy, heteronormativity, or other power dynamics” is, to me, completely off the topic of what is faith. — Fire Ologist

That's off topic but not moms and dads loving their kids?

I would agree that there can be a substantial amount of faith in progressivism.

Incidentally, regarding intentional communities, I was curious about what you thought about Twin Oaks in The Myopia of Liberalism thread, if you have anything to say about it there.

when I think of faith, I think of moms and dad living their kids. — Fire Ologist

Interestingly, I imagine that a contemporary Western religionists tends to envision a nuclear family that enforces patriarchy, heteronormativity, or other power dynamics.

My response: ... — Leontiskos

I'll assume that you disagree.

I would interpret it this way: people are not interested in entire posts of AI-generated content. The only words of your own were, "All AI generated, btw."

AI will be the end of us. — Leontiskos

Such flagrant AI bigotry. What is the world coming to. :fear:

Anyway, my argument is basically that faith is unnecessary for genuine spiritual pursuits; it is religion that demands faith—not for the sake of salvation, but because religion is primarily concerned with forging strong, unified social bonds. Faith is necessary in religion because it is action that proves allegiance. Faith serves to filter out non-committed individuals and strengthen in-group loyalty. Faith in supernatural beliefs, especially when they’re costly or hard to fake, signals deep commitment to the group. And faith-based communities that required costly religious commitments (e.g., dietary restrictions, celibacy) have been show to be robust and long lived.

This is all based on a diverse group of thinkers, namely:

David Émile Durkheim - A French sociologist who formally established the academic discipline of sociology and is commonly cited as one of the principal architects of modern social science, along with both Karl Marx and Max Weber.

William James - An American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers and is often dubbed the "father of American psychology.

Peter Ludwig Berger - An Austrian-born American sociologist and Protestant theologian. Berger became known for his work in the sociology of knowledge, the sociology of religion, study of modernization, and contributions to sociological theory.

Scott Atran - An American-French cultural anthropologist who is Emeritus Director of Research in Anthropology at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris, Research Professor at the University of Michigan, and cofounder of ARTIS International and of the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at Oxford University.

Richard Sosis - A James Barnett Professor of Humanistic Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. His work has focused on the evolution of religion and cooperation, with particular interests in ritual, magic, religious reproductive decision-making, the dynamics of religious systems, and related topics such as meaning systems and the anthropology of sport.

Please forgive the appeal to authority.

So now that AI can no longer be used as an excuse to ignore my point, do you agree with it? This is where I was going before, incidentally, when I repeatedly asked you about the value of faith.

And what do you think of this? Will you be off to join an exclusive religious community - or are you already a member?

Do you think this an admirable way to live? — Banno

I was wondering if the religionists would agree.

How should I interpret silence?

But will you happily judge a faith sufficient to risk one’s life to save another as good? — Fire Ologist

Based on faith? A third woman has died under Texas’ abortion ban as doctors reach for riskier miscarriage treatments

Nobody has brought up William James The Will to Believe. It's rather a modern classic in this context. — Wayfarer

According to James, religious faith can occur when:

The belief is psychologically possible.
The choice cannot be avoided.
The consequences matter deeply.
Evidence is incomplete.
And faith could open the door to real experience of the divine.

Much if not all of that is dependent on or highly influenced by society, which suggests that it’s the social aspect that makes faith necessary.

Agree. Although I would cautiously add, that it may only be known first-person, but it's not a matter of personal prediliction. — Wayfarer

I don’t know, the term ‘samadhi junkie’ suggests that practitioners may develop a strong personal predilection for the experience.