A colleague sent two challenges to me, posted by Jordan Peterson, suggesting I should respond. I’m happy to do so because I greatly respect Dr Peterson’s courageous stance against a bossy, intolerant thought-police whose Orwellian newspeak threatens enlightened rationalism. The hero of
Excellent response to both his first more poignant question and indeed to his second more petulant question. I’m glad to see someone, in a civil way, reject Peterson’s nonsense claims that we need the god delusion in order to live free of the woke delusion.
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds . . . https://nordicresistancemovement.org/what-is-cultural-marxism/
Does it? There are plenty of countries which have been significantly less religious than North America for decades and they’ve managed to survive quite well without either delusion. There’s a certain parochialism in Peterson’s perspective, frankly.
It’s also worth noting that the ‘woke delusion’ (a horrible concoction of neo-Marxist ideas) really developed and matured in the still deeply religious United States before being exported to the heathen countries.
Which ones? Seriously, here in rather secularised Western Europe, wokeness may not be quite as advanced as it is in the US, but it's not that far off. There is no place in (Western) Europe that is "without either delusion".
In places like Japan, which culturally seem better able to resist woke, I believe there is still a very strong religious element to society (even though not Christian of course).
The problem with "woke" is that it's adherents simply care more, like religious people, about their beliefs, than the general secular liberal public does about secular liberalism. We're already seeing younger generations of Westerners easily swayed into denouncing the idea of free speech.
And the woke delusion may have developed in the "deeply religious" US, but it developed in the non-religious parts of it: universities.
It might be "weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews OF the Frankfurt School". There is no "Jewish conspiracy". Plenty of Jews are not fans of the Frankfurt School and the feces that came from it. Myself included.
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds . . .
You can say that you don't need God, but you do need right and wrong, which is what God represents. On this you should make common cause with the religious; the idea that right and wrong exist as objective standards outside of people's subjective preferences. Otherwise, you might as well pretend men can be women, because why not? If right and wrong are all just a matter of opinion either way.
God might be one representation of someone's set of rights and wrongs, but you certainly don't need a God to learn the difference between them. Teaching that God is the only representation of right and wrong is nothing but blatant indoctrination.
True- but each individual already picks a dogma (consciously or not) - because we all worship in some form. Consciously people pray to the traditional mystical forms with hundreds of years of ethical teachings OR the unconscious modern version of worshiping the self which centers on gaining prestige, power, wealth, beauty, youth in a solitary, soul crushing quest for completeness.
I hear you, but it sounds like an over generalization to me. I don't pray for any traditional mystical forms, nor do I worship even subconsciously myself or any of the things you list, as far as I can tell anyway. I've always been a believer that community comes before individual liberty, with the old adage "a rising tide lifts all boats" applying.
That said, I agree that the megaphones of western cultures, particularly the capitalists, do place far too much emphasis on those selfish pursuits.
Touch wood, I've avoided falling into that trap. Others are free to rate me on the rubrics of prestige, power, wealth and beauty, but I refuse to reciprocate. This also explains why I bristle when people place their supposedly superior "religious" values above common sense and logic.
God represents the rejection of nihilism, moral relativism, etc., and the affirmation that right and wrong exist. If right/wrong do not exist in an objective sense, then morality itself is fake and everyone should just do whatever they want, only power matters, etc.
You can sit here and say you "don't need God to know right and wrong" but the real world disagrees with you. It isn't a coincidence that all the people opposed to objective morality are hardcore atheists. God is the best way, or at least one of the best, for most people to internalize objective morality. It's been around forever and popped up organically across multiple cultures that never had any contact with each other, proving its evolutionary utility.
You can say you found a better way to do it, but I'd like to see the evidence if so. What the real world seems to show is that if you focus on rejecting God and degrading religion as badmeanevilwrongstupid, people predictably fall into moral decay and end up pursuing all sorts of harmful nonsense in their attempt to find meaning somewhere else.
You are confusing "moral" right or wrong versus "factual" right or wrong. That's the problem with using words where they don't fit. Moral right or wrong is pretty subjective except that atheists realise (as does the rest of the world) that everyone (all cultures) believes in common set of ethics which we can define as shared morality.
Gender is not part of this moral right/wrong. That's a matter of objective fact/truth. It can be proven under a microscope (if I were to simply put it). We can totally hold morality as subjective and still still say there is objective truth to the gender claim. Nobody is claiming it to be morally right or wrong (we aren't religious). We are only stating the scientific fact of genders.
Morals represent religion. Facts represent science. Both are required for humans to succeed and excel in our earthly domain. If you have a scientist who makes up facts to support his hypothesis (lying is a violation of the ten commandments), such as climate change, what morally objective facts have you proven? None! Morals are not subjective and they have not evolved over time. Killing someone today without cause is just as immoral as killing someone 3600 years ago. Morals are objective truths that have existed infinitely in the past and will exist infinitely into the future without change. And where do they come from? They come from a higher power and apply to humans. The lower animals have no need for morals. They live by the natural law exclusively and have no need for the divine law. XX is female and XY is male. This is a scientific fact and an objective truth. One confronts this truth by use of the book of morality. And remember, morality equals immortality.
Acceptance of transgenderism is 100% a moral question. Whether to even point out to the transgenders that they are delusional in the first place is a moral issue. Should you try to correct them, or let them indulge in whatever it is they're doing? There is no moral neutrality on the issue, as even the stance of "leave them alone and let them be" remains an affirmative belief in what you should do about the situation.
And all of politics, most of life really, is like this. The idea of navigating the world as if morality were truly subjective is utterly absurd. By this logic, we would have to accept that a random jungle tribe with the custom of raping little girls is doing nothing wrong because, well, that's just like, their subjective morality, dude.
I think the objectivity of values derived from God definitely serve as a protection from the woke nonsense and from a totalitarian state. I don't have respect for any authoritarian state but I do love and respect my God who tells me I was created in his image, not in the states. And also that theft is wrong. Theft wasn't wrong in soviet Russia, which is why they destroyed churches during that period. I am convinced Christianity in the west is what still keeps some of us sane.
God isn’t an illusion, but a poor conception of a higher power based on dogmatic beliefs can be very harmful and an impediment to understanding our Universe.
On the other end, science is incapable of answering many of our most fundamental burning questions, and so insisting on appealing to it to do so is equally harmful to understanding our Universe imo. There are entire realms of the mind, consciousness, perception and our relationship to the Universe and one another that science just cannot answer.
What happened before the Big Bang? What happens to our soul/consciousness upon death?
Trying to define creation and the great mysterious eternal with numbers and formulas will cause you to miss a significant and glorious part of the human experience, the part that makes living worthwhile
Yea.. Only till science answers those questions (like it did the big bang and evolution which were also part of those deep burning questions at one point in time not too long ago) and we move the goalposts to stick to our ancestors beliefs in some form of misplaced loyalty..
Science answered intermediate questions of how to we get from ..a->b
Science doesn’t and cannot answer how to get to a. Thus, there is a need for another method of inquiry and knowledge acquisition for this other, non-material realm.
Except science is at least trying to answer certain questions, while many religions simply concoct their own answers.
Is the continued search not better than having various groups of people across the globe getting together at various points in the past to literally make up stories that work for them and then teach younger generations that having a story -- regardless of its plausibility and dubious rule structure -- is better than not having any answer at all?
I’m not an advocate for the sort of dogmatic religious practice that closes the mind to scientific advances in the material world. But I also think some people have dogmatic views about science and close their mind to the immaterial world, which science isn’t equipped to explore.
Do you not see a logical problem there? Everything came from nothing in a split second and that is supposed to be a scientifically rational position that actually explains where we come from? Pretty far fetched that we rely on conservation of energy as a fundamental principle…..except during the event of creation when we look the other way?
Every version of the Big Bang Theory starts with “The Universe started as…”
Welp, how the heck did the Universe just up and start itself? That seems a “belief” just as much as any religious creation story.
I don’t believe Dawkins has disproven the need for a god lest the masses pick a much worse one. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s culpable for the result, or should do anything other pursue the truth.
God has very important properties: Instills stability in the universe, ensures we live in best of all possible realities, explains the subjective nature of intelligence, and judges fairly and ultimately, as well as ensures that the good aspects of us remain after we die.
Natural selection barely explains why animals are fit to their environment, but does not generate traits, nor explain the complexity of life, nor does it explain (most of all) the ultimate stability of reality.
(Multiverse hypotheses do not work to explain stability because any moment that exists is eternally stable... there can be no "survival of the most stable realities" when ultimacy is needed, and hence metaphysical principles).
Yet you no doubt would prefer the Christian “delusion” over the woke dogma destroying science. Give yourselves a pat on the back, delusional secularists. Can’t have your cake and eat it too. Enjoy wokeism.
Woke has become a meaningless word because it can mean whatever the speaker wants or whatever suits the argument of the moment. Woke does NOT consist of just people who support trans rights, or even just those who support them unthinkingly. It is like saying that because one Christian Sect believes in end times, that we must condemn all Christians, even those who stress and live by the tenet "love thy neighbor"
Woke is in the broad sense the idea that we should respect people unless they act to lose that respect; the main way they lose the respect is by hypocrisy. It is worst when they ACT in contradiction of the beliefs they claim. The end-times folks do not love their neighbors when they support political policies that will wipe out millions who don't believe in the end times. The rapist using "her" doesn't respect his/her fellow women nor is rape (as described) an action that women believe in.
I am not a Christian. I do believe in respect for people who look at the teachings of their religion --all of them--to guide their lives and at the same time not force their beliefs on others. I have no respect at all for hypocrites.
"Woke" as used by people who choose to identify that way doesn't fit the idea of dogmatic beliefs at all. What you are describing is a perversion of "woke" and is no more to be respected than a perversion of any other belief.
I would note that the trans rapist being held in a woman's prison was particularly overblown by Dawkins in making a rather hysterical case against "woke-ism". Isla Bryson was in a women's prison for only a short time, while the system figured out what to do with him/her. She/he was kept from the general prison population before being transferred to a men's prison where she/he is also kept away from the general population as is apparently the norm for any type of sex offender. Yes, trying to navigate the world of transgender people is hard and we're just beginning to grapple with it. But the case of Isla Bryson was resolved per policy with safety prevailing. It's hardly a sign of rampant perversion of any norm. One swallow does not make a summer.
Absolutely incorrect. Nicola Sturgeon resigned at the apogee of her popularity and power because of the Isla Bryson debacle. “The system” didn’t figure out a damn thing! People DEMANDED they remove that monster from the women’s unit. Bryson is only one of DOZENS of cases of murderous, sexually violent men claiming to be women specifically to gain access to women and women’s protected spaces all over the western world! You, my dear, sound very much like a warm, safe, full-bellied Christian who looks around her safe, little corner of the world and sees how loving, generous, and good god is to his children. That is, perfectly oblivious to the horrors and daily misery of the lives of many around the globe. SMH.
So, Mr Single-neuron. If it's dozens, then, as the women's prison population in the US numbers 170000, this makes the probability of a women encountering a man about 1 in 10000, which makes prison really safe in regard to assaults by trans people. On the other hand, the the rate of sexual assaults in women's prisons (women on women) is 200 per 1000, or 1 in 5. So, this makes trans women 2000 times safer than women.
You're probably not an arsehole, but you struggle with using neurons. I can use 'men' any way I want, because it is not defined in an essential way, but by the circumstances.
Thus, so the mentally weak don't have trouble comprehending, I use the term they want to use, so there isn't confusion, even though it is offensive to call trans-women 'men'.
Hello Andrew, you are using very different measurements. I dispute the numbers you provide, however for the sake of argument let’s accept them. You compare the number of predators per population to numbers of victims per population.
They both are a measure of the likelihood of being assaulted by a man or woman. Being assaulted by a trans woman is very very unlikely. Being assaulted by another woman is very very likely.
Andrew, as Nick explains, you’re conflating per stirpes & pari passu. MTF trans individuals have a significantly higher instance of assault and sexual assault against women in female prisons (as well as outside them) than do women against women. Just as males do within ANY given population. It’s just one more real-world example of the empirical evidence of differences between men and women. That’s not to say all males are violent but, overall, males are more violent than females. Nothing about transitioning changes this.
Wrong, Woke is defined as being awake to structural injustices perpetuated by oppressor identity classes against opressed identity classes. It rejects individual identity and narrows the world down to collective consciousness, whether that is your race, gender, sexual attraction (etc). The left can't come up with new ideas, they just rebrand old ideas such as marxism and post modernism and pretend that woke is really about compassion and justice. When anyone with half a brain really know it's about cultural revolution and seizing control of power.
And this is why not everyone on the left is woke. Because woke people are the ones who will label even people on the left as right wing once we disagree with them based on scientific facts. JK Rowling was absolutely correct and she is left to center. And so is Richard Dawkins. It's this insanity that makes up a woke person.
Re: Basically anyone you identify as "The left" is woke.
That's analogous to saying that anyone on the right is a fascist. It's dichotomous thinking. What about progressive-conservatives that believe in equal rights for everyone in society?
It's only the super 'far-left' that typically ascribe as 'woke'. Most left-wing people loathe this stuff, including myself. I've been left-leaning my entire life and have only ever voted for left-wing parties.
Your last sentence sounds like the typical right-wing media narrative, with their replacement theories and all that nonsense. Minorities and alternative lifestyle seekers aren't looking for power and revolution, they're looking for nothing more than basic respect and equality as outline quite clearly in the US Constitution, the country where this whole woke thing started.
Every-time Marxism is applied, it fails. The insanity of Marxism is the arrogance of it's believers that think that if only they were the ones to apply it's ideology, that it would be successful. Wokeism was born out of the ashes of all the failed marxist experiments of the 20th century.
Yes, now let's look at the state of societies currently under Marxist governments, compared to those under forms of secular liberal democracy and free markets.
Jordan Peterson has defined Woke rather differently. In his opinion, the Woke movement consists of people who have been led to the conclusion that everything in the world is simply an expression of power dynamics and that therefore facts, reality, truth and common sense are an annoying irrelevance, and that the concept of "values" is meaningless.
It had a meaning once, an actual originalist meaning that an originalist jurist would be not able to countenance. It meant alert to racial injustice and later more broadly to social injustice in general. What one DID with that awareness was up to you, and could lead to dogmatism or alternatively empathy or at the least to respect for the experiences of others as being something they really did experience
This was anathema to those living in an alternate reality where the founding fathers told us conclusively all that all was right in the most perfect of worlds, where Jim Crow was just something designed to make kiddies feel bad and slavery taught useful skills that could be used when benevolent whites finally decided to end slavery. (See Candace Owens and her video lesson put on by Prager[not]U.). So they turned it into a swear word just as they did Socialist. American Exceptionalism must not be challenged.
Those of us who came of age in the 60s know this was bullshit. We have chosen the path of empathy and a continuation of the struggle to reach continually TOWARDS those founding ideals. And, at the risk of cultural appropriation, we assert “say it loud. I’m woke and I’m proud”. And up yours, those who think that your sneering has any effect on our own ideals.
We don’t claim to be socialists because we also know the original meaning of THAT word and it doesn’t fit anything current in American life nor a very plausible future .
As a professional woman in a heavily male sector, I spent most of my professional life being told (by men) that I was just imagining my own experiences. “Women are liberated, you got into law school, all is now perfect” it was mansplained. Yeah, empathy runs deep for all others who are sick of being told that you can’t POSSIBLY be experiencing discrimination.
LOL woke activists exist and are pretty nasty and dubious. I'll give you a lived example of it. There was a news item few months back where a passenger in an airplane supposedly peed on a female and then after a few months the female launched a complaint to the airline and now cops were looking for the man. I argued, we don't know the facts or the story while women and "woke" men went ahead crucifying the man's image and calling him and all men rapists. I was merely echoing their tone of speaking and was not out of line while firmly holding to values I know to be true : don't harm people's reputations unless you know something to be definitively true. Nobody did, but they still argued like what happened towards the end of the metoo movement.
A mere 10 minutes later my business partner gets an email that I am a mysoginist, bullying women of social media accompanied by screenshots of some of these partial responses that make me look bad. This female Susan requested my partner to fire me (a co-founder :D) based in this drivel. What she didn't know was she was reaching out to my wife who is my co founder in our company (ghast a mysoginist with a female partner with a 50/50 split in the business). She looked and laughed at the email. I ended up showing her the entire exchange which made her laugh even more. Long story short, a few days later it was proven the elderly man was simply pissed drunk and couldn't see or know where he was and the elderly woman had been apologised to and she had forgiven him and had only put in a complaint to get some money from the airline and there was absolutely no case to be made on him. The woman herself apologised for the trouble as she was egged on by relatives when there was no need. It was vindication.
I had looked up the email address and it was a fake one created for this sort of snitching. This woke Karen had gone through layers of my social media to find out what company I run, who my partner was and her private email address and had a draft ready to send. It's a mafia. So spare me the gullible nonsense that they don't exist.
These WOKE ACTIVISTS are nuts and don't mind ruining lives on mere disagreements. If you think they don't exist, it's only because you haven't crossed them. Good luck as they get more and more absurd there will be a point every single person will cross them.
Here is how Bill Maher defines woke: He said that a true liberal which we are running out of, would look at San Francisco today and commence to make sure that they could help the people who are living in boxes and crapping on the street. They would have ways to address it that were effective and not absurd. The Woke religion sees the problem and offers no help but to say things like "They should be able to rob stores and crap on the street. They have rights! Cops should not enforce laws on these "disenfranchised" people who are here because of systemic racism or other ridiculous made up reason.
They are blind to human nature. Classic liberals would give them tough love because they want to actually help, not virtue signal to get warm fuzzy fuzzy feelings about "sticking up" for these people. They are a cult of no common sense, fake empathy and heaps of magical thinking.
if Maher says that he's an abject idiot. Ever tried to raise taxes to cover the expense of the homeless problem? Affordable housing is just the tip of the problem. Factor in mental health care and drug rehab --those ways to help people that woke people DO have--and watch the population proudly excoriating the woke pull in their wallets and screech Socialism.
There is one word for what "woke" and "socialism" has become:
"Woke" started out during the racial protests of the 60s, with the phrase "Stay woke." Which meant at the time "keep your head on swivel and watch the people in your surroundings, because cops are busting heads. It eventually moved to mean "keep your conciousness raised" while you keep your head on a swivel, and at this point has been co-opted by people who want a convienient label for the "social justice warrior."
As much as I have disdain for the insanity of Critical Marxism and it's sub theories, I"ve never heard any of the people who spout the beliefs use it, except ironically. (Maybe my data set is too small, so I'm willing to reconsider, with references.) That doesn't mean they don't subscribe to the religion - they just don't call it what we call it.
"...The term then gained particular significance and tied itself to the contemporary Social Justice movement in the mid 2010s as it became an activist watchword of the Black Lives Matter movement. There, say following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the phrase “stay woke” took on the very specific meaning of being aware of the reality (according to critical race Theory) of systemic racism in American society that activists blamed for being at the root of the incident. This has, in turn, led to the term being nearly synonymous with having a critical consciousness as provided through critical race Theory, although it has been appropriated through intersectional thought to apply to other issues of identity relevant to postcolonial Theory, queer Theory, feminism, and so on. It has since expanded and memefied further and is now seen from the outside as being wholly synonymous with having been converted to a Social Justice critical consciousness. As such, “wokeness” often refers to both critical Social Justice doctrine and the state of having accepted it."
The origins were way earlier than that. But why then link it to a bunch of theories as if they were to BLAME for black people, or women, or gays happening to notice that they are, in their own lived experience, facing discrimination? What theory do you have for DENYING those lived experiences of systemic discrimination?
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds . . .
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds . . .
That is a good summary of the points Jordan often makes. Although I suppose it is a fraction of the woke community. When you listen to Peterson you can easily forget the good ideals due to his linear crusade against who he calls 'neo-marxists'. He does make some important observations about these neo-marxists. I think he is saying that the majority of those in Marxist politys believed in the common cause and ideals, just as the woke do. However as he would put it the 'tyrannical' minority subverts this. It is used, he thinks as a lever. So in order for this idea to work, most of the woke would indeed be genuine and good yet the movement overall to be tyrannical and oppressive, similar to communism/marxism. It is not an unreasonable observation. The solution being more conventional religion as Richard points out and others here, is somewhat nonsensical IMHO :)
A further point to note is that while the tyrannical minority certainly pulls the majority in a particular direction, the majority also affects the direction of the tyrannical minority. Take the analogy of a stand-up comedian. The comedian works the audience, but the audience reaction also affects the direction the comedian takes his show in. He reacts to what works and what doesn't. A similar push-pull dance exists in the woke community too. (You could argue that this was also the dynamic at play in Nazi Germany). By the way, this is not a Petersonian concept; I first saw it articulated by the Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. How long are we still going to argue the "good ideals" of Marxism, or even revolutionary Communism, when we know what these "good ideals" amount to in practice. Every, single, time.
The Nazi's had "good ideals", from their perspective. So do Islamic terrorists. Everyone thinks that what they are doing is "the right thing" or they wouldn't be doing it.
How many times must we see the "good ideals" of the radical left turn into oppression, authoritarianism and mass murder before we start understanding that "good ideals" is a meaningless phrase. Who decided that these were "good ideals" in the first place? As if we are all presupposed to be in agreement that the kind of "equality" the (radical) left fights for is a "good ideal". We are not.
It's maddening, this presupposition that whatever ideals the left has are somehow inherently "good". This is the whole "well Communism is good in theory, but was never implemented "right" argument. I hear even completely run of the mill social democrat left wingers (who've never read a history book) around me say stuff like that as if it's common knowledge. Absolutely infuriating.
If we want to discern some "good ideals" that have actually been proven to bring relative happiness, progress and prosperity to human society we should look towards secular humanism, science and the pursuit of objective knowledge, free market capitalism and liberal democracy. Anywhere but Marxism or it's various offshoots.
That is going a bit too far but your point is valid. I had better book my place in the woke concentration camp for gender is fluid deniers now and get a good bunk... In seriousness though easier to get on with wokies compared to islamic extremists, for example. I think their ideology is objectively better than some of the comparisons you make. It's about tolerance and inclusion to a greater extent.
Nonsense. Woke has specific meanings and origins in (marxist) Critical Social Justice theory. It is based on specific presuppositions about society (not based in objective facts), and a specific lens through which to observe, and more importantly, to change it (through social activism).
It is NOT just "the idea that we should respect people unless they act to lose that respect". (that sounds more like simple "live and let live" humanism/individualism)
That's about as dishonest as saying "Islam is the religion of peace".
What does it even mean, that we "should respect people". Who decides when someone "loses respect"? Doesn't that presuppose certain parameters of behaviour that are worthy or unworthy of "respect"? And if so, where do these come from? Obviously they are not written in the sky somewhere.
"Woke's" origins are in fact from African-American Vernacular English and the term has been used since the 30's to mean "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination." Leadbelly used it, for heaven's sake. This was all years before assorted "Theory" was a gleam in the eye of academics trying to figure out how to say something "new" to get published.
I was in grad school in English just before "Theory" hit. I switched to law school (where, btw, the discipline in English I was taught--close reading of literature for its internal consistency and how the work was put together, i.e. New Criticism--turned out to be spectacularly useful in parsing case law) Later I was curious and looked into it--and found a few sensible ideas encased in impenetrable jargon. Thank goodness it no longer seems to be the norm in the study of literature. Whether it is in other "theories" I don't know, though I can see that anyone wading through the jargon might end up with a sense of obfuscated "elitism."
That doesn't mean that people who actually like theory taking up the idea are the origins of it, nor that the good ideas hiding under the blather are wrong. Just because some people have embraced, or perverted the ideas (I HATE "trigger warnings and such, btw) doesn't mean the underlying meaning is wrong. The attacks on the term are actually attacks on the underlying ideas--like the fact (sorry "color-blinders") that systemic discrimination is in fact part of our non-yet ideal society.
As an example, I stopped listening to NPR years ago due to the endless, monotonous, drumbeat of identity politics. Wokeness is identarian monomania. That is not the exception, but the rule.
I have never been able to figure out what "identity politics" means to the right. It appears to be "anyone who has concerns about those folks with characteristics I don't share." Don't we ALL involve our politics in some ways with our identities? Isn't "I'm a true red-white-and blue patriot loving the flag and out to own the libs and thus voting for trump" an example?
Which identity? Woman? Retired Lawyer? History major who has kept up the interest throughout life? Science fiction fan? Former teacher at both high school and University Level? Grandmother of kids who will have to deal with climate change way more than I ever will? Person who came of age in the 60s and was active in the Civil Rights Movement and Earth Day and opposed to the failed war in Vietnam? Person who bought a miniscule amount of Amazon stock because her daughter worked there in the 90s, and who totally lucked out on that one? Mother of a software engineer? Believer in the separation of church and state? Disliker of people who make vast generalizations about anything and are are unable to distinguish between things that are superficially similar but in fact are really different?
At any point one of those identities may come to the fore. And if a candidate appears to support any one of those, or myriads more, I will speak out in favor and thus appear to be--on different forums-- a feminist, an opponent of wars of aggression; a proponent of reasoned argument; a defender of some, though not all, of Amazon's policies; a supporter of a the teaching civics, of diverse literature, of history warts and all; a believer that all people are created equal but not all people have the opportunity to live up to their potential for reasons beyond their control.
I think I can leave monomania to others, thanks. Those who prefer labels to thought.
Listen to NPR and see if you can go for more than 5 minutes without having any subject whatsoever linked in some way to race and/or sexual orientation. Doesn't matter * whose * race or sexual orientation it is. And if 'monomania' isn't the exact right word for such an unrelenting focus, then I'll gladly substitute 'religion.' Whatever you call it, I'm hardly the only person who has been driven away from the left by it.
Into the arms of trump, he of the "Mexico is sending criminals, they're sending rapists?" Or DeSantos, of the "teaching about Jim Crow might hurt kids' feelings?" Hope you find it a safe haven.
Actually, NPR has a lot of stuff that isn't about race or sexual orientation. But it is a brutal fact that issues of race have for centuries and even more now been central to politics in America.
Sexual Orientation is another matter, having been manufactured by the Right as an issue--and in face of that onslaught, yes, it needs to be dealt with. I was six when Christine Jorgenson became the first US transgender female. If there was thundering from the pulpits about it, it wasn't from any pulpit I had to listen to. The reaction until just recently was "gee, that's weird, wouldn't do that myself." In fact, I doubt NPR talked about it much at ALL before the Christian Right joined with trump to make it OK to be racist and homophobic.
"Critical Race Theory" was an abstruse grad level theory until the right decided it was a good reason to whitewash history. I will bet you big money that you never HEARD of it until the last few years. Racism has always been an issue, but denying it actually still operates in our society is a monomania to end all monomanias.
You seem to be taking the catbox approach to the central issues of our time. Scratch the sand hard enough and it will all be neatly covered over.
Ah, so it IS "....even more now ... central to politics in America." But that's okay, since such a monomaniacal focus is good and trooo. And if I don't agree, then I'm a Trumpist.
well, I'm a skeptic, not at all religious, so I do tend to think blanket statements about almost anything are monomaniacal. So far "the sun rises daily" is one that isn't, of course.
I just WONDERED where you would find a safe haven. It it's not trumpian or DeSantosian, great. Its just well, weird, to object to discussion of the issues that seem to matter most to both sides.
Very nicely put. Might I add that there is little practical distinction between someone who "knows" that god exists and someone who "knows" that she doesn't. In both cases, driven by dogma instead of reason; in fact it is unknowable. Dawkins is reminding me ever more frequently of what Wolfgang Pauli jokingly said of P.A.M. Dirac ("There is no god and Dirac is his prophet".) PS I am an athiest. Occam's Razor, and all that.
Yet there is certainly a "practical distinction" between someone who "knows" that Superman really exists and someone who "knows" that he doesn't. It's not clear what you mean by "god" in that paragraph. Perhaps if you clarify with some specific claims about what you mean by that word, it will become more coherent to then entertain statements about the concept being "knowable" or "unknowable." As it is, such statements are meaningless and uninteresting.
Superman regularly breaks the laws of physics. For example he flew around the world so fast that it started spinning the other way thus causing time to reverse.
Ok but that's exactly the point -- there is a specific claim about Superman that's quite unlikely. To say nothing of the fact that he's well documented to be a fictional character anyway. So claims about his feats aren't even relevant considering there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that he is a work of fiction.
But when people say that you can't know or not know if god is real, they are avoiding specifying what they mean by the word "god." I've found that when people DO end up making claims about "god," they either make claims that are demonstrably false or have no evidence where one would expect to find it, or define the concept entirely out of existence, or it's just incoherent. Anyway, without specific claims, there's nothing to discuss. It's just a three-character string at that point with no meaning attached.
The primary distinction, practicality notwithstanding, is atheists, in rejecting god claims, are simply rejecting god claims. We make no knowledge claims. The practical distinction in terms of real-life application is that rejecting god claims means atheists make no proscriptions for human behavior (or thoughts) based on the unknowable preferences and desires of supernatural beings.
Without agreeing or disagreeing with the main point of your comment, I had a chuckle that your first line was that 'x' is meaningless and whatever the speaker wants it to mean, then proceed to define what 'x' is/isn't.
No, I said it has BECOME meaningless. It has had a pretty well defined meaning since the 30s. However, after going through all the comments on this thread, including cites people gave, I can see that the "respect" part is a consequence of the definition, not the definition itself. The definition started as an alertness to racial (and later social) discrimination; the only humane response to that is to respect the experiences that those who report them have undergone and not to deny them on some nebulous theory of "it can't be like that because this is 'Murica." That latter is what the attacks on the word have wrought. The attacks and misdefinitions hide yet another inconvenient truth.
When I was a grade-schooler in the 50s I was taught a bunch of pieties, including "America is a color blind society." By the time I reached early college, I watched Gov Wallace and thought--Hmpf. THAT was a load of bull. The number of people I have heard recently going on about color blind society, as if it were miraculously and suddenly true, boggles the mind.
To watch people opining that it is all tied up with Critical Race Theory also boggles the mind. This would have startled Leadbelly, who used the term. The fact that Critical Race Theorists or neo-Marxists use the term just means they use it, not invented it. At some point both groups probably also use man, woman, person, and probably camera and TV. Thus proving that trump is a neo Marxist? Uh huh.
"Woke is in the broad sense the idea that we should respect people unless they act to lose that respect", the act usually being something that the woke disapprove of dogmatically, even if the dogma is newly minted, devoid of logic, and inconsistent with other dogmas. Which is exactly the point Dr Dawkins makes. Being "woke" is a cult.
Great American thinker Joseph Campbell contends the difference between atheists and theists is that atheists understand theology to be metaphorical, rather than dogmatic. While theists believe in dogma.
By this thinking, Dawkins and other scientists hellbent on the veracity of their unproven worldview and morality fall under the theist category.
I have read about---and observed--two different "strains" of atheism: the militant and the "different strokes for different folks" kind. I'm the latter. What I care about is whether the theist actually acts in accordance with the religious precepts of the religion, whatever it may be, AND whether they try to force others to accept whatever the belief du jour is, particularly when that belief actually contradicts the key precepts of the religion.
If a theist demands from me "proof" that god doesn't exist, I'll respond with a request for proof otherwise. But those theists are the activist counterparts of the atheist activists. A whole lot of Christians, though in distressingly diminishing numbers, are of the "different strokes" persuasion, and don't try to enforce their beliefs through laws. I can go with the Golden Rule--pretty much all religions, not to mention Kant--have a version of it.
So I can agree with the underlying premises of Dawkins arguments about there not being a Father in the Sky. Where I part company with him is when he tries to use--or go beyond--those arguments into political waters--where skepticism turns into intolerance.
The “Father in the Sky” conception is not particularly common among well studied theologians imo.
Funny enough, I’m in the process of writing a little piece on the divergence of Christian nationalism and ideology. I agree such hypocrisy is ugly. Pt 1 here:
For my part, I’m somewhere in the middle if that makes any sense. I practice what I think is a kind of rational spiritualism where mythology should be taken like art or literature not factual dogma. I am convinced the immaterial world is absolutely real and highly undervalued in our modern societies, because it is not material and measurable and so forth. But it is where creation is born seems to me. It is where our ideas come from at the very least, which we might then translate into the material world. As such God might exist without “Father in the sky” conception, but rather as a metaphorical concept to denote the great mysterious powers of the Universe and creation, the eternal.
As Joseph Campbell notes, to put many spiritual concepts into words in order to communicate them, like the concept of the eternal, it requires a condescension - language is inadequate to capture these ideas, and so therefore metaphors or poetry is required to relate these concepts in a way that is visceral and convincing. Problems arise when people start taking the metaphor as fact. This little video from an interview explains this concept far more masterfully than I can…
I'm with you on the idea that there could well be an unknown force out there driving the universe. I don't have any sense that it cares one whit about humans in particular. As I have posted elsewhere, I belong to the Congregation of the Sublimely Indifferent. If no Daddy is going to reward me for being a good girl, I just have to choose what seems to be the best ethic to keep society functioning and go with it. The Golden Rule and Love Thy Neighbor pretty much sums it up. I do draw the line at loving neighbors who want to ignore the Golden Rule.
I don't feel any sense of spiritual connection with whatever the Force is. But I do believe that the human mind at its best has created all sorts of things that could be CALLED spiritual. For example, a friend asked me if I believe in the Tarot. My response is: not as a predictor of the future. But as a series of images, winnowed through time, that speaks to our deep psychology, such that our REACTION to them tells us something about ourselves and helps guide our conduct, yes. I've felt it.
It's like the old bromide: with two choices, flip a coin and go with your REACTION to what comes up.
I feel the same way about what much of Joseph Campbell says. As with Tarot images, there are STORIES also winnowed through time that speak to us even without belief in their original context. Prometheus on the rock. Milton's Satan. Pandora. Even freakin' Cinderella.
Years ago I wrote a poem on this theme. It is obviously and intentionally based on Auden's Musee de Beaux Artes. Stories tell us things that clarify our thoughts, even if we disagree with what they originally meant.
Grimm Heritage
About love they were often wrong,
the old stories: so pat they set us up
for hopeless endings, so tight their webs---
the white-armored prince, and the thorns, and the princess
pure surface;
so cruel to those Evil who, active and passionate, scheme
towards their golden desire, while the Good simply lie
sleeping on silken couches, beautiful, waiting
for a kiss to propel them to life:
They always insist
that a queen's facile mirror reveals the truth complete
of beauty's mysterious call, that a magic wand
can veil the rags and pumpkins underneath, and that the perfect girl
needs only a glass slipper to be perfect wife.
But in Hansel and Gretel, consider: how the children turn
together into the forest: how the girlchild plans
salvation, how she slips the bone
to her caged, fattening brother: the fire cracks
in the oven, the witch peers in at the moment of
push: and the two scramble from gingerbread heaven and walk
back into the forest, no happily ever etceteras, just
the searching together for the long trail home.
sorry about the vanished line breaks. For some reason Substack wants to ignore them.
If I may pick your brain by asking are there not the same?
"For example, a friend asked me if I believe in the Tarot. My response is: not as a predictor of the future. But as a series of images, winnowed through time, that speaks to our deep psychology, such that our REACTION to them tells us something about ourselves and helps guide our conduct, yes."
Tarot are not predictor of the future but series of images that speak to our deep psychology, which then changes who we are by affirming and adopting new ways of participating with the surroundings. I find intellectual dissonance here
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds . . .
To Dr. Dawkins who has taught me so much, I am surprised in reading this to learn that I might teach you something for a change. Unless I have misunderstood, you seem to have forgotten about the existence of gender roles in society: Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed, including norms, behaviours, roles, and relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time. Mocking individuals who feel more comfortable in different gender roles with claims like "2+2=5" and "transubstantiation" is ignorant of (meaning it ignores) the fact that gender is a social construct. Now are there some instances and situations where individuals go to irrational extremes in their beliefs and actions? Always! But that should not cause us to marginalize the majority of our fellow humans who are simply trying to be the best version of themselves. Please do better.
Gender roles are a bunch of bullshit. You don’t need to change your body, name, or pronouns in order to reject the trappings of gender, let alone expect people to pretend you are not the sex you are to reject gender roles and stereotypes.
Feminists defined this problem and addressed it long ago, before the postmodernists took over academic feminism.
So what is a woman (girl)? A human being with a female body and any set of personality, interests, sexual inclinations, and relationship to gender roles and stereotypes.
A woman is not a person who wants to inhabit a female gender role. That’s just more sexism. If it was I wouldn’t be a woman. But I am. So I say no to the new definition.
So it's ok with you if a person wants to be free of society's gender role assigned to them at birth, but it's not ok if they feel more comfortable adopting a different one? If a man prefers to identify as a woman, what does it matter to you? I'm a straight man who feels comfortable being identified as such, and it doesn't bother me one bit if others feel more comfortable expressing themselves differently. I'll respect their preferences and call them what they want, so long as they're causing no harm. Everyone is different. I'm far more concerned with the confusion of many urbanites sitting in traffic on paved city streets with gas-guzzling lifted pickups... I mean, who do THEY think they are???
"So it's ok with you if a person wants to be free of society's gender role assigned to them at birth"
You're missing the point. People are not "assigned" gender "roles" at birth. They are *observed* as boy or girl. Whatever "role", personality, behavior, habits, or creative expressions that person takes on is up to them.
If you're a man & decide to dress yourself as a woman commonly would, that does not make you a woman. It simply makes you a non-conforming man, & that's OKAY.
Just as a white person who grows up in a predominantly black neighborhood is not black just because they assume the language, dress, behaviors, expressions, & tastes common to black people.
Assimilating/assuming/adopting the common traits of a group does not necessarily make you a member of that group. Perhaps figuratively, but not literally.
Are you being obtuse? Or maybe you've picked up tactical speech to evade honest discourse? Everyone is saying why it matters, at least from their perspective. I, for example, would never ask a Christian why my being an atheist “matters to them.” Obviously their (albeit fundamentally wrong beliefs) are why. Mind blowing!
I constantly explain to ppl that something like the term “non-binary” actually is more of the same game.
If you really want to transcend gender roles/social ideas of gender, just be your biological sex and act however you want. Otherwise u perpetuate the very idea of gender roles that you aim to rid of
Edit: that being said, I don’t care if someone says they’re non-binary and I think we should treat ppl compassionately. I just think the idea of non-binary is just that “idea”
Thank you for this comment. I agree with you. Both this article and the conversation with Helen Joyce ignore the very real lived experiences of the majority of trans individuals and focus on the semantics and controversies that make this subject a favourite plaything of right wing media. I expected better.
This is a term used by applied post-modernists. It's word salad nonsense. Your feelings are not more important than reality. If you can't see that, then I'm sorry, you've been indoctrinated into a cult.
I feel compelled to contest the notion that 'lived experiences' are rendered nonsensical in the realm of postmodern discourse. There exists a robust foundation in cognitive science which supports the relevance and legitimacy of 'lived experiences', particularly when understood through the frameworks of the 4Ps - Participatory, Perspectival, Procedural, and Propositional - and the 4Es - Embodied, Embedded, Extended, and Enacted.
The Participatory approach acknowledges the active engagement of the individual in shaping their perceptions and interactions with the world. This, coupled with the Perspectival approach, appreciates the individualized viewpoint each person brings to their understanding of reality, driven by their unique experiences and contexts.
Moreover, the Procedural perspective emphasizes the process-based nature of cognition, and the Propositional view underscores the role of linguistic representations and mental models in shaping our cognitive processes.
Simultaneously, the 4Es framework offers a comprehensive understanding of cognition as being Embodied in our physiological structures, Embedded in our social and physical contexts, Extended through our use of tools and technologies, and Enacted through our interactions with the environment.
Taken together, these cognitive frameworks underscore the fundamental importance of 'lived experiences' in shaping our understanding of the world.
It is possible that the term 'lived experiences' may be interpreted or employed differently within various discourses, possibly leading to misconceptions or miscommunications. However, any attempt to cherry-pick certain interpretations while disregarding the broader and well-supported understanding within cognitive science would constitute a clear instance of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
It's really weird. I feel like the heroes of my youth, like Dawkins, are getting old and clinging to the norms of the past as the world is changing faster than they can deal with.
Oh yeah, like if some old, clingy atheist kept rejecting new theistic religions! They should be more open minded and respectful to fast changing neo-souled folks.
Gender is a perfect synonym for the sex class, to differentiate from the sex act. Woman, man, girl, and boy are all human sex/gender terms. The words for natural psychological and following social sex characteristics or tendencies are femininity (typical of females), masculinity (typical of males), androgyneity (typical of both), and neutrality (typical of neither). “Socially constructed” norms and roles are pseudo-[femininity, etc.]. The ideologies or beliefs about these pseudo-characteristics are called sexism. Identifying people based on their purported degree of fem-masc and adulterating our shared language is sexist (along with irrational). Neither ignorance or benevolence changes that. People are responsible to address in themselves why they find comfort in sexism and irrationality, and deal with it in a way which doesn't harm others instead.
I agree regarding true religions and cults, but you have fallen prey to bombasticism with narrow mindedness. Nature is not binary in all things, there are shades of grey. Nature is organic and emergent, analog and sometime digital.
Some unfortunate people are born with both male and female genitalia, some have abnormal sex chromosomes.
Do you and Peterson believe people go through hormone treatments and reassignment surgery for kicks?
Did Bruce Jenner decide to become Kaitlin Jenner as a fad? Did Renee Richards do likewise
You and Peterson are ignorant of the facts. Sexual identity is both physical and mental.
I grant that some cases may be ill-founded, but the large majority are well-founded and well thought out.
You guys are puffed up and really out of your depth here. You both are aggressively judgmental.
Acquire a little compassion and love, and you both will be better for it.
Biological errors do not make sex a spectrum, just like people who are born with one hand, three hands, or 1.25 hands do not make the number of human hands a spectrum.
Gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and those who suffer from it should be cared for with compassion.
But trans culture and gender ideology are not limited to these biological or development errors. Afflicted schools are not teaching children to accept the minuscule minority who suffer from gender dysphoria and treat them with respect. They are teaching them the Genderbread Person.
Re: If people with schizophrenia went around claiming they were the tooth-fairy, the compassionate thing to do would be to give them their meds.
If that is the language you would rather chooce to communicate with schizophrenic at first sight, you, I would argue, need to be away from them if you have an ability to prescribe meds.
Why else would he spend time online arguing about something so obscure?
I'm upset because you morons can't seem to stop yourself from meddling in other peoples business. It's as if you think have the right to control everyone else and dictate what we are allowed to think.
Both the far left and far right ate meddling in other peoples affairs on this issue. The cps in Texas will take your kids away if you and your doctor decide medicalizing their gender is the right path. The custody courts in Oregon and California will take your kids away if you decide that your kid shouldn’t medically transition. Both are meddling and both are happening.
In terms of how to think I don’t appreciate being told womanhood is now defined by how much I like the idea of female gender stereotypes.
Im also pretty pissed that right wingers think my kids and I can’t be trusted to read books critically when they contain controversial content.
I did some online checks on the books mentioned in the above tweets, and they absolutely did make it into some schools and school libraries (I believe some of them are still available in some schools).
By your measure, homosexuality is a “mental illness.” So Alan Turing was “mentally ill” and the British government was correct in its “treatment” of prison or chemical castration.
I don’t see how this follows. For something to be a mental illness it has to reduce a persons ability to function or live a happy life. That’s part of the deal with being trans - you need treatment to alleviate that. I don’t know of any gay people who require medical treatment in order to thrive in society. Well I guess in Iran where they make gay men transition to women on penalty of death.
That the British government was correct in its "treatment" of prison or chemical castration of gays does not follow from classifying homosexuality as "mental illness".
Unless you feel that it's right to put people who are mentally ill in prison or chemically castrate them (speaking of "Dark Ages" mentality).
If classifying Gender Dysphoria as mental illness can be likened to classifying Homosexuality as mental illness, then NOT classifying Gender Dysphoria as mental illness can be likened to NOT classifying Body Integrity Dysphoria as mental illness.
Classifying it as "mental illness" may not be PC, but that doesn't make it "Dark Ages" (perhaps even the opposite).
Well, it's fortunate then that Dawkins never claimed that "nature is binary in all things".
He even specifically said that "sex is one of the few genuine binaries of biology".
It helps to actually read what is written and not twist someone's words in order to bolster your own argument.
Biological sex ≠ "sexual identity" ≠ "gender". They are different things.
Intersex conditions existing does not negate the sex binary. They are not truly "intersex" either as there are only two sexes, only two gametes. Most people with intersex conditions are still discernably and unmistakenly male or female.
"I grant that some cases may be ill-founded, but the large majority are well-founded and well thought out."
It's not "well founded" nor "well thought out" if you are basing your actions on the erroneous idea that humans can change sex (they cannot), or that changing your body will bring an end to your psychological suffering (it might, but it also might not, it might even create new suffering). There are people who think very long and deep about religious matters. In fact, people have done so for thousands of years. That doesn't make any of it true or good.
Observing the FACTS of the biologically-based reproductive binary and sexual dimorphism in virtually all living things doesn’t mean one thinks nature is binary “in all things”. Your use of the predeterminer “both” in regard to intersex (such an unironic adjective in this case) signifies a binary and in no way denotes (though it may connote) a third sex.
As someone with no religious leaning/belief other than thinking ‘I think there’s more’, I often find myself feeling that most other people against the current madness are those of faith.
This is why I am very pleased to find other voices who do not come from a Christian or other religious background feeling as I do.
I appreciate your effort into explaining your stance as you have so eloquently,
Dr Dawkins, thank you for replying to Dr Peterson and making some great points.
I think what Peterson may reply is that, although you don't believe that the solution to the absence of a given religion is the substitution of another religion, that inevitably the "death of God" necessitates the emergence of a religion or a religion-like ideology because most human beings can't cope with the the fact that most of their experience is unknown.
Like the terror management theorists claim that the denial of death motivates religious belief, Peterson (and this thesis is outlined in his book and several of his academic articles) claims that the fact of reality's infinite complexity motivates most people to subscribe to conceptual structures that constrain such complexity.
He claims that religion tends to be the most differentiated means of representing the nature of the ultimate complexity of (experiential) reality, which he characterises as the interplay of order and chaos mediated by consciousness.
Religions tend to be complete representations insofar as they make room for the bivalent aspects of order, chaos, and consciousness, whereas ideologies like wokeness tend to be incomplete representations insofar as they neglect to include one aspect of valence, for example, the idea of patriarchy fails to include the positive aspect of order.
I think you two could have a fruitful exchange of ideas if you were to engage him on the idea that consciousness does seem to have evolved to allow humans to transform the chaos of nature into ordered society. In your previous discussion, I think he was trying to make this point by honing in on sexual selection, basically trying to get you to consider the idea that female consciousness has selected for this capacity in males - females choose males that are able to voluntarily and courageously confront the unknown and transform the latent information into something that benefits society.
You had an opportunity for genuine self-reflection here. You wasted it making dick jokes about the Eucharist and seeing how many times you could say "semen" in a passage discussing the fundamental tenets of Christianity. Yes, it's very funny to say bad words in Church. Haha.
Unfortunately, your condescension blinded you to the actual point of pondering the question in the first place. You talk about some of the "characteristics" of religion, but noticeably leave out the most fundamental trait of any organized system of worship, from which religion derives its social utility. That's this: All major religions compel their followers to adhere to a standardized, and relatively immutable subjective moral code. When societies subscribe to religion en masse generally what's virtue the day you're born is still virtue when you're in your 60s, and what's sin in your 20s is still sin the day you die. And generally everyone agrees what is sin and what is virtue. Without that standard template of virtuous living provided by religion, people become untethered. You end up with 10,000 competing "irrational dogmas" all at odds with each other as illustrated by the "woke" crowd we have today. What used to be sin is now virtue and something that is virtue to me is sin to you. The common ground is eroded in the vacuum left by the death of God.
You hide behind your "love of truth" to justify your demonization of religion wholesale, without realizing you're actually attacking two separate belief systems under the same umbrella. The first, which is objective in nature, are the religion's collective myths and ritual practices. Biblical books, belief in a God, taking the Eucharist etc. The second, which is subjective in nature, is that aforementioned standardized moral code. Attack the first under the guise of "truth" all you like. Those things either happened or they didn't. There either is a God or there isn't. But the second is beyond reproach. There is no one "true" system of values.
Jordan Peterson is trying to get guys like you to realize you threw the baby out with the bathwater. The consideration is purely practical. You willingly sacrificed the social cohesion that religion gave the world because you thought the concept of a bearded man in the sky judging your actions was silly. And the worst part is your arrogance doesn't permit you to understand that your philosophy is entirely self-defeating. You claim to love truth too much to oppose one irrational dogma by promoting another irrational dogma, without realizing the unwavering "love of truth" is itself an irrational dogma. In fact that whole statement is just the promotion of one irrational dogma "love of truth" over two other irrational dogmas, religion and "the cult of woke". If O'Brien had a gun to your head and demanded you say 2+2=5 and your "love of truth" prevented you from doing so, surely you would agree you were behaving irrationally, right? You love truth. Christians love Jesus. The woke crowd loves trannies. There is no way to be objectively right here.
“Hereditary Guilt. One of Christianity’s nastier doctrines is the notion that we are all, even tiny babies, born in sin.”
-----
Also add that this is not a Christian view but a Catholic perspective of the original sin, there are other “Christian” interpretations of the original sin - prime example Orthodox Christians believe they are dealing with the result of the first sin, the foremost being death, BUT only Adam and Eve are guilty of that sin. Orthodox baptisms are about sickness from this sin - the person dies to this world and is born again in the resurrection of Christ into eternal life.
Said this above, in complete agreement, all individuals already picks a dogma (consciously or not) - because we all worship in some form each day (on a deeper level, ask why do you get up in the morning everyday, what is your focus and what do you believe). Either you can consciously pray to the traditional mystical forms with hundreds of years of ethical teachings OR the unconscious modern versions of worshiping the self which centers on promotes prestige, power, wealth, beauty, youth in a quest for completeness.
Thanks, you put this much more succinctly than I did. Values are subjective. Rejecting someone else's value system because it's "not true" is just nonsensical.
Vocal atheists have a practical choice to make. Am I so committed to spreading my disbelief in a higher power that I'm willing to tear down the institutions that are the foundation of the last several thousand years of cultural ethical norms? Or should I just mind my own business? Something tells me Dawkins is the kind of guy who would run PSAs on Cartoon Network telling kids Santa Claus wasn't real, never realizing that the whole point wasn't to mislead kids. It was to teach the lesson that good behavior is rewarded.
But woke is just as silly word that right wing name-callers throw at lefty victims. I doubt you’d find many individuals that identify as woke - certainly not a church-full. It’s a word normally wielded by those who make a career out of pandering to extreme anti-left sentiments. Interestingly, a friend who introduced me to Jordan Peterson is also a climate-change denier. Perhaps climate-change denial is another modern-day religion?
What do you call a group that adheres to common ideology and exhibits common behavior but refuses any label because recognition — much less debate or discourse — is disadvantageous to their ideological aims?
I see 'woke' similarly to 'political correctness' as being on a spectrum. Good ideas which can be taken too far by uncompromising idealists. The poison is in the dose.
Anyone who says, "I am a woman" is making a statement about how they intend to live. A woman whose sex organs have been removed does not begin to say, "I am no longer a woman." They continue to identify as a woman because that is, psychologically, how they feel. Biology to many women is irrelevant. Women who adopt an essentialist view of womanhood (aligning with Dawkins essentialism) can become depressed when their breasts are removed because they feel "less of a woman". Those who survive breast cancer the best are those who assert their womanhood independent of biology.
Body parts and / or biological sex ('biological' is redundant, since the only context for talking about sex is biology) do not tell you anything about whether a woman is a woman. A woman who predicates their womanhood upon body parts is vulnerable to disappointment when they are removed. Best not to.
Richard, you seem to be diving into shallow waters unnecessarily. There's an old saying "Shrimps make fools of dragons in shallow waters" and I fear that's where you're heading when you succumb to the sirens calling you into their cesspool. You're a biologist and, personally, I'd advise you to stick more to science than all this ideological nonsense. I notice someone mentioned how atheists often talk more about God than religious people do. I plead guilty to that myself, but you really do seem to be giving the current ideological silliness far more attention than it deserves and, quite frankly, I don't think you're sufficiently broadly informed enough to do it.
My first cringe was seeing the word "woke". It no longer means what it did some time ago and I don't think it means what you think it does. A genuine critical thinker should be taking a judicial perspective, not sides, and "woke" is a sided term. It seems that when you've been inviting discussion, you've really been making a statement and seeking confirmation. In some of your more recent discussions on particular topics, there is rarely "the other side", perhaps what you would call "woke" views, in improper derisive dismissiveness if merely due to disagreement. You don't need to be told that, so why are you doing what the right-wing "anti-wokists" do? Especially as, it seems to me anyway, that you're trying to prove you're not really like them.
I can understand a personal defensiveness as to colonialism and the original sin argument is valid. But you don't have to be blind enough not to acknowledge past wrongs at all and offer a bit of sympathy for that.
More importantly, there is a glaring contradiction here - avidly defending safe spaces for women from trans people but not ordinary men, the main perpetrators of assaults against women, in which case you equally avidly cry ‘innocence’ against ‘whingers’? The obvious contradiction implies affected insincerity.
The "trans v TERF" thing is toxic and there is much vitriol directed toward women who speak up for women's rights. Fortunately, I seem to be spared that, probably because I'm not famous enough for it, but also I think it's because I take a genuinely judicious perspective, without bias or personal abuse. The stifling of free speech is an issue but both the vitriol and censorship come from both directions, which it's also important to recognise.
A couple of good points though. There is some truth to the idea that Christianity can be the lesser of evils in the religion/cult spectrum. Although a hard-core atheist, I have no difficulty recognising that most Christians are decent people following ideals of care and compassion for their fellows. Even worse and incredible as it may seem, especially given my anti-fundamentalist position, on one occasion, I myself actually advised a young woman to stay associated with some Mormons who had taken her under their wing. Admittedly, I saw it as a transitional thing and I was perfectly aware that it may have ended up substituting one bad world for another, but in that case, it really was the lesser of evils in her personal circumstances at the time.
It is important to note that irrationality is the enemy, in whatever guise it presents itself. Reason in both perspective and argument is the aim and if we can stick to that, with all due bird's eye judiciousness, many of the issues associated with today's mix of fads and genuine attempts at meaningful equity will resolve themselves and progress can take place as the worst extremes of any are left behind and whatever's good succeeds.
I think Richard did a good job at setting out his stance whilst not lowering his intellectual ability to brawl in the playground. These issues are forefront in society right now so to not get involved is to turn a blind eye. I agree that ‘Woke’ has become an unhelpful word and instantly gets people’s backs up but I’m very pleased someone with such reasoned means of expression is engaging.
I agree and it's one the benefits of this substack site. In the same spirit and in good humour, I've written a piece about the trans issue, which I've placed on Richard's page re his talk with Helen Joyce.
Way off-base. Anti-Semitic nonsense. Until the Jewish Emancipation Act in 1858, Jewish people in Britain were severely restricted from taking part in most professions and walks of life, essentially restricted to money-lending, which is how the stereotypes associated with that arose. Anti-Semitism on the continent was particularly violent, from pogroms in Russia to, ultimately, the Nazi holocaust, giving rise to the establishment of Israel as safe haven for Jews. Israel, now, unfortunately. is not extending the same sense of humanity to Palestinians, but that is a different matter. Opposing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories or being in favour of a two-state solution is not about being anti-Semitic.
Excellent response to both his first more poignant question and indeed to his second more petulant question. I’m glad to see someone, in a civil way, reject Peterson’s nonsense claims that we need the god delusion in order to live free of the woke delusion.
Are Peterson's claims actually nonsense, though? Reality, unfortunately, seems to suggest otherwise...
Yes I think we can categorically state that if Peterson moves his mouth it's mostly nonsense coming out. And if it's not nonsense it's self serving.
Juden Peterstein is a Zionist Canadian drug addict . . .
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Juden Peterstein . . .
And they are also words to talk about modern politics. Two things can be true at once.
Fuck you and your Jewish god . . . you lying Jew whore . . .
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
.
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds . . . https://nordicresistancemovement.org/what-is-cultural-marxism/
Does it? There are plenty of countries which have been significantly less religious than North America for decades and they’ve managed to survive quite well without either delusion. There’s a certain parochialism in Peterson’s perspective, frankly.
It’s also worth noting that the ‘woke delusion’ (a horrible concoction of neo-Marxist ideas) really developed and matured in the still deeply religious United States before being exported to the heathen countries.
"Plenty of countries"
Which ones? Seriously, here in rather secularised Western Europe, wokeness may not be quite as advanced as it is in the US, but it's not that far off. There is no place in (Western) Europe that is "without either delusion".
In places like Japan, which culturally seem better able to resist woke, I believe there is still a very strong religious element to society (even though not Christian of course).
The problem with "woke" is that it's adherents simply care more, like religious people, about their beliefs, than the general secular liberal public does about secular liberalism. We're already seeing younger generations of Westerners easily swayed into denouncing the idea of free speech.
And the woke delusion may have developed in the "deeply religious" US, but it developed in the non-religious parts of it: universities.
Fuck you and your Jewish god . . .
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
From the article you have posted it reads, “Never mind that ‘communism’ is a Jewish ideology.”
This is fundamentally wrong.
Fuck you and your Jewish god . . . Juden Peterstein is a Zionist Canadian drug addict.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
It doesn't really matter when or where it was developed. What matters is when and where it took root in the general population...
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
It might be "weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews OF the Frankfurt School". There is no "Jewish conspiracy". Plenty of Jews are not fans of the Frankfurt School and the feces that came from it. Myself included.
Fuck you and your Jewish god . . .
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds . . .
https://nordicresistancemovement.org/what-is-cultural-marxism/
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
You can say that you don't need God, but you do need right and wrong, which is what God represents. On this you should make common cause with the religious; the idea that right and wrong exist as objective standards outside of people's subjective preferences. Otherwise, you might as well pretend men can be women, because why not? If right and wrong are all just a matter of opinion either way.
God might be one representation of someone's set of rights and wrongs, but you certainly don't need a God to learn the difference between them. Teaching that God is the only representation of right and wrong is nothing but blatant indoctrination.
True- but each individual already picks a dogma (consciously or not) - because we all worship in some form. Consciously people pray to the traditional mystical forms with hundreds of years of ethical teachings OR the unconscious modern version of worshiping the self which centers on gaining prestige, power, wealth, beauty, youth in a solitary, soul crushing quest for completeness.
I hear you, but it sounds like an over generalization to me. I don't pray for any traditional mystical forms, nor do I worship even subconsciously myself or any of the things you list, as far as I can tell anyway. I've always been a believer that community comes before individual liberty, with the old adage "a rising tide lifts all boats" applying.
That said, I agree that the megaphones of western cultures, particularly the capitalists, do place far too much emphasis on those selfish pursuits.
Touch wood, I've avoided falling into that trap. Others are free to rate me on the rubrics of prestige, power, wealth and beauty, but I refuse to reciprocate. This also explains why I bristle when people place their supposedly superior "religious" values above common sense and logic.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
God represents the rejection of nihilism, moral relativism, etc., and the affirmation that right and wrong exist. If right/wrong do not exist in an objective sense, then morality itself is fake and everyone should just do whatever they want, only power matters, etc.
You can sit here and say you "don't need God to know right and wrong" but the real world disagrees with you. It isn't a coincidence that all the people opposed to objective morality are hardcore atheists. God is the best way, or at least one of the best, for most people to internalize objective morality. It's been around forever and popped up organically across multiple cultures that never had any contact with each other, proving its evolutionary utility.
You can say you found a better way to do it, but I'd like to see the evidence if so. What the real world seems to show is that if you focus on rejecting God and degrading religion as badmeanevilwrongstupid, people predictably fall into moral decay and end up pursuing all sorts of harmful nonsense in their attempt to find meaning somewhere else.
FUCK YOU AND YOUR JEWISH GOD . . .
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
You are confusing "moral" right or wrong versus "factual" right or wrong. That's the problem with using words where they don't fit. Moral right or wrong is pretty subjective except that atheists realise (as does the rest of the world) that everyone (all cultures) believes in common set of ethics which we can define as shared morality.
Gender is not part of this moral right/wrong. That's a matter of objective fact/truth. It can be proven under a microscope (if I were to simply put it). We can totally hold morality as subjective and still still say there is objective truth to the gender claim. Nobody is claiming it to be morally right or wrong (we aren't religious). We are only stating the scientific fact of genders.
What are these “universal morals” you espouse are held by “all cultures”?
That’s a bold claim
Evolution is heterosexual.
Religious faggots are insane.
Morals represent religion. Facts represent science. Both are required for humans to succeed and excel in our earthly domain. If you have a scientist who makes up facts to support his hypothesis (lying is a violation of the ten commandments), such as climate change, what morally objective facts have you proven? None! Morals are not subjective and they have not evolved over time. Killing someone today without cause is just as immoral as killing someone 3600 years ago. Morals are objective truths that have existed infinitely in the past and will exist infinitely into the future without change. And where do they come from? They come from a higher power and apply to humans. The lower animals have no need for morals. They live by the natural law exclusively and have no need for the divine law. XX is female and XY is male. This is a scientific fact and an objective truth. One confronts this truth by use of the book of morality. And remember, morality equals immortality.
Evolution is heterosexual.
The Jewish god is a fraud.
Monogamy is a religious tenet.
Religious faggots are insane.
Acceptance of transgenderism is 100% a moral question. Whether to even point out to the transgenders that they are delusional in the first place is a moral issue. Should you try to correct them, or let them indulge in whatever it is they're doing? There is no moral neutrality on the issue, as even the stance of "leave them alone and let them be" remains an affirmative belief in what you should do about the situation.
And all of politics, most of life really, is like this. The idea of navigating the world as if morality were truly subjective is utterly absurd. By this logic, we would have to accept that a random jungle tribe with the custom of raping little girls is doing nothing wrong because, well, that's just like, their subjective morality, dude.
Xxy anyone … rants miss details, details sink rants
EVOLUTION IS HETEROSEXUAL, YOU STUPID FAGGOT.
FUCK YOU AND YOUR JEWISH GOD . . .
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Evolution is heterosexual . . . religious faggots are insane . . .
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
I think the objectivity of values derived from God definitely serve as a protection from the woke nonsense and from a totalitarian state. I don't have respect for any authoritarian state but I do love and respect my God who tells me I was created in his image, not in the states. And also that theft is wrong. Theft wasn't wrong in soviet Russia, which is why they destroyed churches during that period. I am convinced Christianity in the west is what still keeps some of us sane.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Hmmm
God isn’t an illusion, but a poor conception of a higher power based on dogmatic beliefs can be very harmful and an impediment to understanding our Universe.
On the other end, science is incapable of answering many of our most fundamental burning questions, and so insisting on appealing to it to do so is equally harmful to understanding our Universe imo. There are entire realms of the mind, consciousness, perception and our relationship to the Universe and one another that science just cannot answer.
What happened before the Big Bang? What happens to our soul/consciousness upon death?
Trying to define creation and the great mysterious eternal with numbers and formulas will cause you to miss a significant and glorious part of the human experience, the part that makes living worthwhile
Cheers
https://youtu.be/qX8j9TE7P38
Yea.. Only till science answers those questions (like it did the big bang and evolution which were also part of those deep burning questions at one point in time not too long ago) and we move the goalposts to stick to our ancestors beliefs in some form of misplaced loyalty..
I disagree.
Science answered intermediate questions of how to we get from ..a->b
Science doesn’t and cannot answer how to get to a. Thus, there is a need for another method of inquiry and knowledge acquisition for this other, non-material realm.
Except science is at least trying to answer certain questions, while many religions simply concoct their own answers.
Is the continued search not better than having various groups of people across the globe getting together at various points in the past to literally make up stories that work for them and then teach younger generations that having a story -- regardless of its plausibility and dubious rule structure -- is better than not having any answer at all?
I’m not an advocate for the sort of dogmatic religious practice that closes the mind to scientific advances in the material world. But I also think some people have dogmatic views about science and close their mind to the immaterial world, which science isn’t equipped to explore.
Cheers
Evolution is heterosexual.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
My understanding is that time started with the Big Bang. So there is no “before”.
Do you not see a logical problem there? Everything came from nothing in a split second and that is supposed to be a scientifically rational position that actually explains where we come from? Pretty far fetched that we rely on conservation of energy as a fundamental principle…..except during the event of creation when we look the other way?
Every version of the Big Bang Theory starts with “The Universe started as…”
Welp, how the heck did the Universe just up and start itself? That seems a “belief” just as much as any religious creation story.
Big Bang = Immaculate Conception
I don’t believe Dawkins has disproven the need for a god lest the masses pick a much worse one. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s culpable for the result, or should do anything other pursue the truth.
I don’t think he was really trying to. He said he understands the point- just he personally and others can’t get on board.
God has very important properties: Instills stability in the universe, ensures we live in best of all possible realities, explains the subjective nature of intelligence, and judges fairly and ultimately, as well as ensures that the good aspects of us remain after we die.
Natural selection barely explains why animals are fit to their environment, but does not generate traits, nor explain the complexity of life, nor does it explain (most of all) the ultimate stability of reality.
(Multiverse hypotheses do not work to explain stability because any moment that exists is eternally stable... there can be no "survival of the most stable realities" when ultimacy is needed, and hence metaphysical principles).
Thankfully proof of God is found in the CTMU.
Heinrich Himmler on How Bolshevik Christianity Spreads Homosexuality and Hatred of Women . . .
http://www.renegadetribune.com/himmler-on-how-bolshevik-christianity-spreads-homosexuality-and-hatred-of-women/
The only “delusions” are the degenerative perceptions, not those that developed for thousands of years.
Yet you no doubt would prefer the Christian “delusion” over the woke dogma destroying science. Give yourselves a pat on the back, delusional secularists. Can’t have your cake and eat it too. Enjoy wokeism.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Woke has become a meaningless word because it can mean whatever the speaker wants or whatever suits the argument of the moment. Woke does NOT consist of just people who support trans rights, or even just those who support them unthinkingly. It is like saying that because one Christian Sect believes in end times, that we must condemn all Christians, even those who stress and live by the tenet "love thy neighbor"
Woke is in the broad sense the idea that we should respect people unless they act to lose that respect; the main way they lose the respect is by hypocrisy. It is worst when they ACT in contradiction of the beliefs they claim. The end-times folks do not love their neighbors when they support political policies that will wipe out millions who don't believe in the end times. The rapist using "her" doesn't respect his/her fellow women nor is rape (as described) an action that women believe in.
I am not a Christian. I do believe in respect for people who look at the teachings of their religion --all of them--to guide their lives and at the same time not force their beliefs on others. I have no respect at all for hypocrites.
"Woke" as used by people who choose to identify that way doesn't fit the idea of dogmatic beliefs at all. What you are describing is a perversion of "woke" and is no more to be respected than a perversion of any other belief.
I would note that the trans rapist being held in a woman's prison was particularly overblown by Dawkins in making a rather hysterical case against "woke-ism". Isla Bryson was in a women's prison for only a short time, while the system figured out what to do with him/her. She/he was kept from the general prison population before being transferred to a men's prison where she/he is also kept away from the general population as is apparently the norm for any type of sex offender. Yes, trying to navigate the world of transgender people is hard and we're just beginning to grapple with it. But the case of Isla Bryson was resolved per policy with safety prevailing. It's hardly a sign of rampant perversion of any norm. One swallow does not make a summer.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/26/trans-woman-isla-bryson-found-guilty-rape-not-be-held-in-womens-prison-sturgeon
Absolutely incorrect. Nicola Sturgeon resigned at the apogee of her popularity and power because of the Isla Bryson debacle. “The system” didn’t figure out a damn thing! People DEMANDED they remove that monster from the women’s unit. Bryson is only one of DOZENS of cases of murderous, sexually violent men claiming to be women specifically to gain access to women and women’s protected spaces all over the western world! You, my dear, sound very much like a warm, safe, full-bellied Christian who looks around her safe, little corner of the world and sees how loving, generous, and good god is to his children. That is, perfectly oblivious to the horrors and daily misery of the lives of many around the globe. SMH.
So, Mr Single-neuron. If it's dozens, then, as the women's prison population in the US numbers 170000, this makes the probability of a women encountering a man about 1 in 10000, which makes prison really safe in regard to assaults by trans people. On the other hand, the the rate of sexual assaults in women's prisons (women on women) is 200 per 1000, or 1 in 5. So, this makes trans women 2000 times safer than women.
Next time, engage a second neuron.
You kinda seem like an asshole, but at least you acknowledge that "trans-women" are actually men ;)
You're probably not an arsehole, but you struggle with using neurons. I can use 'men' any way I want, because it is not defined in an essential way, but by the circumstances.
Thus, so the mentally weak don't have trouble comprehending, I use the term they want to use, so there isn't confusion, even though it is offensive to call trans-women 'men'.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Hello Andrew, you are using very different measurements. I dispute the numbers you provide, however for the sake of argument let’s accept them. You compare the number of predators per population to numbers of victims per population.
They both are a measure of the likelihood of being assaulted by a man or woman. Being assaulted by a trans woman is very very unlikely. Being assaulted by another woman is very very likely.
Andrew, as Nick explains, you’re conflating per stirpes & pari passu. MTF trans individuals have a significantly higher instance of assault and sexual assault against women in female prisons (as well as outside them) than do women against women. Just as males do within ANY given population. It’s just one more real-world example of the empirical evidence of differences between men and women. That’s not to say all males are violent but, overall, males are more violent than females. Nothing about transitioning changes this.
Just say 'they', dude.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Woke is a meaningless term as it is undefined and also have exactly no one identifying as woke in any meaningful sense.
It's an invective used by right wing nut cases to describe anything they don't like.
Wrong, Woke is defined as being awake to structural injustices perpetuated by oppressor identity classes against opressed identity classes. It rejects individual identity and narrows the world down to collective consciousness, whether that is your race, gender, sexual attraction (etc). The left can't come up with new ideas, they just rebrand old ideas such as marxism and post modernism and pretend that woke is really about compassion and justice. When anyone with half a brain really know it's about cultural revolution and seizing control of power.
That's an impressive definition.
Basically anyone you identify as "The left" is woke.
There are plenty on the left who aren't woke, classical liberals just like Richard Dawkins are still on the left.
I'm not so sure. He's looking more and more like J. K. Rowling.
He is a biologist. He understands the fact that sex is binary. Are you a science denier?
Who is also an outspoken leftist.
And this is why not everyone on the left is woke. Because woke people are the ones who will label even people on the left as right wing once we disagree with them based on scientific facts. JK Rowling was absolutely correct and she is left to center. And so is Richard Dawkins. It's this insanity that makes up a woke person.
Re: Basically anyone you identify as "The left" is woke.
That's analogous to saying that anyone on the right is a fascist. It's dichotomous thinking. What about progressive-conservatives that believe in equal rights for everyone in society?
It's only the super 'far-left' that typically ascribe as 'woke'. Most left-wing people loathe this stuff, including myself. I've been left-leaning my entire life and have only ever voted for left-wing parties.
Anyone on the right of the far-left, is by their definition a fascist.
It's even worse than calling everyone on the right a fascist. Because it no longer has a definition so anything under the sun is included.
Looks like my analogy went over your head. Oh well.
Good luck.
Your last sentence sounds like the typical right-wing media narrative, with their replacement theories and all that nonsense. Minorities and alternative lifestyle seekers aren't looking for power and revolution, they're looking for nothing more than basic respect and equality as outline quite clearly in the US Constitution, the country where this whole woke thing started.
Every-time Marxism is applied, it fails. The insanity of Marxism is the arrogance of it's believers that think that if only they were the ones to apply it's ideology, that it would be successful. Wokeism was born out of the ashes of all the failed marxist experiments of the 20th century.
Yes, now let's look at the state of societies currently under Marxist governments, compared to those under forms of secular liberal democracy and free markets.
Like CIS?
Jordan Peterson has defined Woke rather differently. In his opinion, the Woke movement consists of people who have been led to the conclusion that everything in the world is simply an expression of power dynamics and that therefore facts, reality, truth and common sense are an annoying irrelevance, and that the concept of "values" is meaningless.
well, each to his own, I guess. As I said, you can define "woke" to be pretty much anything you want, including a straw man.
The good thing about Peterson's formulation is that it maps very well to what we see from the Woke activists on a daily basis.
There are no woke activists. There are no people who prescribe to the term, at all.
It's a term made up by right wing nut cases to pile in everything they don't like.
It had a meaning once, an actual originalist meaning that an originalist jurist would be not able to countenance. It meant alert to racial injustice and later more broadly to social injustice in general. What one DID with that awareness was up to you, and could lead to dogmatism or alternatively empathy or at the least to respect for the experiences of others as being something they really did experience
This was anathema to those living in an alternate reality where the founding fathers told us conclusively all that all was right in the most perfect of worlds, where Jim Crow was just something designed to make kiddies feel bad and slavery taught useful skills that could be used when benevolent whites finally decided to end slavery. (See Candace Owens and her video lesson put on by Prager[not]U.). So they turned it into a swear word just as they did Socialist. American Exceptionalism must not be challenged.
Those of us who came of age in the 60s know this was bullshit. We have chosen the path of empathy and a continuation of the struggle to reach continually TOWARDS those founding ideals. And, at the risk of cultural appropriation, we assert “say it loud. I’m woke and I’m proud”. And up yours, those who think that your sneering has any effect on our own ideals.
We don’t claim to be socialists because we also know the original meaning of THAT word and it doesn’t fit anything current in American life nor a very plausible future .
As a professional woman in a heavily male sector, I spent most of my professional life being told (by men) that I was just imagining my own experiences. “Women are liberated, you got into law school, all is now perfect” it was mansplained. Yeah, empathy runs deep for all others who are sick of being told that you can’t POSSIBLY be experiencing discrimination.
LOL woke activists exist and are pretty nasty and dubious. I'll give you a lived example of it. There was a news item few months back where a passenger in an airplane supposedly peed on a female and then after a few months the female launched a complaint to the airline and now cops were looking for the man. I argued, we don't know the facts or the story while women and "woke" men went ahead crucifying the man's image and calling him and all men rapists. I was merely echoing their tone of speaking and was not out of line while firmly holding to values I know to be true : don't harm people's reputations unless you know something to be definitively true. Nobody did, but they still argued like what happened towards the end of the metoo movement.
A mere 10 minutes later my business partner gets an email that I am a mysoginist, bullying women of social media accompanied by screenshots of some of these partial responses that make me look bad. This female Susan requested my partner to fire me (a co-founder :D) based in this drivel. What she didn't know was she was reaching out to my wife who is my co founder in our company (ghast a mysoginist with a female partner with a 50/50 split in the business). She looked and laughed at the email. I ended up showing her the entire exchange which made her laugh even more. Long story short, a few days later it was proven the elderly man was simply pissed drunk and couldn't see or know where he was and the elderly woman had been apologised to and she had forgiven him and had only put in a complaint to get some money from the airline and there was absolutely no case to be made on him. The woman herself apologised for the trouble as she was egged on by relatives when there was no need. It was vindication.
I had looked up the email address and it was a fake one created for this sort of snitching. This woke Karen had gone through layers of my social media to find out what company I run, who my partner was and her private email address and had a draft ready to send. It's a mafia. So spare me the gullible nonsense that they don't exist.
These WOKE ACTIVISTS are nuts and don't mind ruining lives on mere disagreements. If you think they don't exist, it's only because you haven't crossed them. Good luck as they get more and more absurd there will be a point every single person will cross them.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Wow that is just an astounding anecdote about a woke Karen., lol.
Here is how Bill Maher defines woke: He said that a true liberal which we are running out of, would look at San Francisco today and commence to make sure that they could help the people who are living in boxes and crapping on the street. They would have ways to address it that were effective and not absurd. The Woke religion sees the problem and offers no help but to say things like "They should be able to rob stores and crap on the street. They have rights! Cops should not enforce laws on these "disenfranchised" people who are here because of systemic racism or other ridiculous made up reason.
They are blind to human nature. Classic liberals would give them tough love because they want to actually help, not virtue signal to get warm fuzzy fuzzy feelings about "sticking up" for these people. They are a cult of no common sense, fake empathy and heaps of magical thinking.
if Maher says that he's an abject idiot. Ever tried to raise taxes to cover the expense of the homeless problem? Affordable housing is just the tip of the problem. Factor in mental health care and drug rehab --those ways to help people that woke people DO have--and watch the population proudly excoriating the woke pull in their wallets and screech Socialism.
There is one word for what "woke" and "socialism" has become:
Newspeak.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Bill Maher is another old fart who has lost the plot.
He is applying woke as he sees fit.
"Woke" started out during the racial protests of the 60s, with the phrase "Stay woke." Which meant at the time "keep your head on swivel and watch the people in your surroundings, because cops are busting heads. It eventually moved to mean "keep your conciousness raised" while you keep your head on a swivel, and at this point has been co-opted by people who want a convienient label for the "social justice warrior."
As much as I have disdain for the insanity of Critical Marxism and it's sub theories, I"ve never heard any of the people who spout the beliefs use it, except ironically. (Maybe my data set is too small, so I'm willing to reconsider, with references.) That doesn't mean they don't subscribe to the religion - they just don't call it what we call it.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Why do you have disdain for Marxism?
So basically you reserve the right to call anyone woke even if they don't describe themselves that way.
How very convenient.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
While there may not be one clear "official" definition of "woke", I think this makes it's origins, and they way it's meaning has evolved pretty clear:
https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-woke-wokeness/
"...The term then gained particular significance and tied itself to the contemporary Social Justice movement in the mid 2010s as it became an activist watchword of the Black Lives Matter movement. There, say following the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the phrase “stay woke” took on the very specific meaning of being aware of the reality (according to critical race Theory) of systemic racism in American society that activists blamed for being at the root of the incident. This has, in turn, led to the term being nearly synonymous with having a critical consciousness as provided through critical race Theory, although it has been appropriated through intersectional thought to apply to other issues of identity relevant to postcolonial Theory, queer Theory, feminism, and so on. It has since expanded and memefied further and is now seen from the outside as being wholly synonymous with having been converted to a Social Justice critical consciousness. As such, “wokeness” often refers to both critical Social Justice doctrine and the state of having accepted it."
The origins were way earlier than that. But why then link it to a bunch of theories as if they were to BLAME for black people, or women, or gays happening to notice that they are, in their own lived experience, facing discrimination? What theory do you have for DENYING those lived experiences of systemic discrimination?
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds . . .
https://nordicresistancemovement.org/what-is-cultural-marxism/
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds . . .
https://nordicresistancemovement.org/what-is-cultural-marxism/
That is a good summary of the points Jordan often makes. Although I suppose it is a fraction of the woke community. When you listen to Peterson you can easily forget the good ideals due to his linear crusade against who he calls 'neo-marxists'. He does make some important observations about these neo-marxists. I think he is saying that the majority of those in Marxist politys believed in the common cause and ideals, just as the woke do. However as he would put it the 'tyrannical' minority subverts this. It is used, he thinks as a lever. So in order for this idea to work, most of the woke would indeed be genuine and good yet the movement overall to be tyrannical and oppressive, similar to communism/marxism. It is not an unreasonable observation. The solution being more conventional religion as Richard points out and others here, is somewhat nonsensical IMHO :)
A further point to note is that while the tyrannical minority certainly pulls the majority in a particular direction, the majority also affects the direction of the tyrannical minority. Take the analogy of a stand-up comedian. The comedian works the audience, but the audience reaction also affects the direction the comedian takes his show in. He reacts to what works and what doesn't. A similar push-pull dance exists in the woke community too. (You could argue that this was also the dynamic at play in Nazi Germany). By the way, this is not a Petersonian concept; I first saw it articulated by the Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet.
Thanks
"...you can easily forget the good ideals..."
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. How long are we still going to argue the "good ideals" of Marxism, or even revolutionary Communism, when we know what these "good ideals" amount to in practice. Every, single, time.
The Nazi's had "good ideals", from their perspective. So do Islamic terrorists. Everyone thinks that what they are doing is "the right thing" or they wouldn't be doing it.
How many times must we see the "good ideals" of the radical left turn into oppression, authoritarianism and mass murder before we start understanding that "good ideals" is a meaningless phrase. Who decided that these were "good ideals" in the first place? As if we are all presupposed to be in agreement that the kind of "equality" the (radical) left fights for is a "good ideal". We are not.
It's maddening, this presupposition that whatever ideals the left has are somehow inherently "good". This is the whole "well Communism is good in theory, but was never implemented "right" argument. I hear even completely run of the mill social democrat left wingers (who've never read a history book) around me say stuff like that as if it's common knowledge. Absolutely infuriating.
If we want to discern some "good ideals" that have actually been proven to bring relative happiness, progress and prosperity to human society we should look towards secular humanism, science and the pursuit of objective knowledge, free market capitalism and liberal democracy. Anywhere but Marxism or it's various offshoots.
That is going a bit too far but your point is valid. I had better book my place in the woke concentration camp for gender is fluid deniers now and get a good bunk... In seriousness though easier to get on with wokies compared to islamic extremists, for example. I think their ideology is objectively better than some of the comparisons you make. It's about tolerance and inclusion to a greater extent.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Nonsense. Woke has specific meanings and origins in (marxist) Critical Social Justice theory. It is based on specific presuppositions about society (not based in objective facts), and a specific lens through which to observe, and more importantly, to change it (through social activism).
https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-woke-wokeness/
It is NOT just "the idea that we should respect people unless they act to lose that respect". (that sounds more like simple "live and let live" humanism/individualism)
That's about as dishonest as saying "Islam is the religion of peace".
What does it even mean, that we "should respect people". Who decides when someone "loses respect"? Doesn't that presuppose certain parameters of behaviour that are worthy or unworthy of "respect"? And if so, where do these come from? Obviously they are not written in the sky somewhere.
"Woke's" origins are in fact from African-American Vernacular English and the term has been used since the 30's to mean "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination." Leadbelly used it, for heaven's sake. This was all years before assorted "Theory" was a gleam in the eye of academics trying to figure out how to say something "new" to get published.
I was in grad school in English just before "Theory" hit. I switched to law school (where, btw, the discipline in English I was taught--close reading of literature for its internal consistency and how the work was put together, i.e. New Criticism--turned out to be spectacularly useful in parsing case law) Later I was curious and looked into it--and found a few sensible ideas encased in impenetrable jargon. Thank goodness it no longer seems to be the norm in the study of literature. Whether it is in other "theories" I don't know, though I can see that anyone wading through the jargon might end up with a sense of obfuscated "elitism."
That doesn't mean that people who actually like theory taking up the idea are the origins of it, nor that the good ideas hiding under the blather are wrong. Just because some people have embraced, or perverted the ideas (I HATE "trigger warnings and such, btw) doesn't mean the underlying meaning is wrong. The attacks on the term are actually attacks on the underlying ideas--like the fact (sorry "color-blinders") that systemic discrimination is in fact part of our non-yet ideal society.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
As an example, I stopped listening to NPR years ago due to the endless, monotonous, drumbeat of identity politics. Wokeness is identarian monomania. That is not the exception, but the rule.
I have never been able to figure out what "identity politics" means to the right. It appears to be "anyone who has concerns about those folks with characteristics I don't share." Don't we ALL involve our politics in some ways with our identities? Isn't "I'm a true red-white-and blue patriot loving the flag and out to own the libs and thus voting for trump" an example?
Which identity? Woman? Retired Lawyer? History major who has kept up the interest throughout life? Science fiction fan? Former teacher at both high school and University Level? Grandmother of kids who will have to deal with climate change way more than I ever will? Person who came of age in the 60s and was active in the Civil Rights Movement and Earth Day and opposed to the failed war in Vietnam? Person who bought a miniscule amount of Amazon stock because her daughter worked there in the 90s, and who totally lucked out on that one? Mother of a software engineer? Believer in the separation of church and state? Disliker of people who make vast generalizations about anything and are are unable to distinguish between things that are superficially similar but in fact are really different?
At any point one of those identities may come to the fore. And if a candidate appears to support any one of those, or myriads more, I will speak out in favor and thus appear to be--on different forums-- a feminist, an opponent of wars of aggression; a proponent of reasoned argument; a defender of some, though not all, of Amazon's policies; a supporter of a the teaching civics, of diverse literature, of history warts and all; a believer that all people are created equal but not all people have the opportunity to live up to their potential for reasons beyond their control.
I think I can leave monomania to others, thanks. Those who prefer labels to thought.
Listen to NPR and see if you can go for more than 5 minutes without having any subject whatsoever linked in some way to race and/or sexual orientation. Doesn't matter * whose * race or sexual orientation it is. And if 'monomania' isn't the exact right word for such an unrelenting focus, then I'll gladly substitute 'religion.' Whatever you call it, I'm hardly the only person who has been driven away from the left by it.
Into the arms of trump, he of the "Mexico is sending criminals, they're sending rapists?" Or DeSantos, of the "teaching about Jim Crow might hurt kids' feelings?" Hope you find it a safe haven.
Actually, NPR has a lot of stuff that isn't about race or sexual orientation. But it is a brutal fact that issues of race have for centuries and even more now been central to politics in America.
Sexual Orientation is another matter, having been manufactured by the Right as an issue--and in face of that onslaught, yes, it needs to be dealt with. I was six when Christine Jorgenson became the first US transgender female. If there was thundering from the pulpits about it, it wasn't from any pulpit I had to listen to. The reaction until just recently was "gee, that's weird, wouldn't do that myself." In fact, I doubt NPR talked about it much at ALL before the Christian Right joined with trump to make it OK to be racist and homophobic.
"Critical Race Theory" was an abstruse grad level theory until the right decided it was a good reason to whitewash history. I will bet you big money that you never HEARD of it until the last few years. Racism has always been an issue, but denying it actually still operates in our society is a monomania to end all monomanias.
You seem to be taking the catbox approach to the central issues of our time. Scratch the sand hard enough and it will all be neatly covered over.
Ah, so it IS "....even more now ... central to politics in America." But that's okay, since such a monomaniacal focus is good and trooo. And if I don't agree, then I'm a Trumpist.
Not at all a religious attitude.
well, I'm a skeptic, not at all religious, so I do tend to think blanket statements about almost anything are monomaniacal. So far "the sun rises daily" is one that isn't, of course.
I just WONDERED where you would find a safe haven. It it's not trumpian or DeSantosian, great. Its just well, weird, to object to discussion of the issues that seem to matter most to both sides.
Very nicely put. Might I add that there is little practical distinction between someone who "knows" that god exists and someone who "knows" that she doesn't. In both cases, driven by dogma instead of reason; in fact it is unknowable. Dawkins is reminding me ever more frequently of what Wolfgang Pauli jokingly said of P.A.M. Dirac ("There is no god and Dirac is his prophet".) PS I am an athiest. Occam's Razor, and all that.
Yet there is certainly a "practical distinction" between someone who "knows" that Superman really exists and someone who "knows" that he doesn't. It's not clear what you mean by "god" in that paragraph. Perhaps if you clarify with some specific claims about what you mean by that word, it will become more coherent to then entertain statements about the concept being "knowable" or "unknowable." As it is, such statements are meaningless and uninteresting.
Superman regularly breaks the laws of physics. For example he flew around the world so fast that it started spinning the other way thus causing time to reverse.
That's quite a miracle!
Ok but that's exactly the point -- there is a specific claim about Superman that's quite unlikely. To say nothing of the fact that he's well documented to be a fictional character anyway. So claims about his feats aren't even relevant considering there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that he is a work of fiction.
But when people say that you can't know or not know if god is real, they are avoiding specifying what they mean by the word "god." I've found that when people DO end up making claims about "god," they either make claims that are demonstrably false or have no evidence where one would expect to find it, or define the concept entirely out of existence, or it's just incoherent. Anyway, without specific claims, there's nothing to discuss. It's just a three-character string at that point with no meaning attached.
The primary distinction, practicality notwithstanding, is atheists, in rejecting god claims, are simply rejecting god claims. We make no knowledge claims. The practical distinction in terms of real-life application is that rejecting god claims means atheists make no proscriptions for human behavior (or thoughts) based on the unknowable preferences and desires of supernatural beings.
Without agreeing or disagreeing with the main point of your comment, I had a chuckle that your first line was that 'x' is meaningless and whatever the speaker wants it to mean, then proceed to define what 'x' is/isn't.
No, I said it has BECOME meaningless. It has had a pretty well defined meaning since the 30s. However, after going through all the comments on this thread, including cites people gave, I can see that the "respect" part is a consequence of the definition, not the definition itself. The definition started as an alertness to racial (and later social) discrimination; the only humane response to that is to respect the experiences that those who report them have undergone and not to deny them on some nebulous theory of "it can't be like that because this is 'Murica." That latter is what the attacks on the word have wrought. The attacks and misdefinitions hide yet another inconvenient truth.
When I was a grade-schooler in the 50s I was taught a bunch of pieties, including "America is a color blind society." By the time I reached early college, I watched Gov Wallace and thought--Hmpf. THAT was a load of bull. The number of people I have heard recently going on about color blind society, as if it were miraculously and suddenly true, boggles the mind.
To watch people opining that it is all tied up with Critical Race Theory also boggles the mind. This would have startled Leadbelly, who used the term. The fact that Critical Race Theorists or neo-Marxists use the term just means they use it, not invented it. At some point both groups probably also use man, woman, person, and probably camera and TV. Thus proving that trump is a neo Marxist? Uh huh.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
"Woke is in the broad sense the idea that we should respect people unless they act to lose that respect", the act usually being something that the woke disapprove of dogmatically, even if the dogma is newly minted, devoid of logic, and inconsistent with other dogmas. Which is exactly the point Dr Dawkins makes. Being "woke" is a cult.
Great American thinker Joseph Campbell contends the difference between atheists and theists is that atheists understand theology to be metaphorical, rather than dogmatic. While theists believe in dogma.
By this thinking, Dawkins and other scientists hellbent on the veracity of their unproven worldview and morality fall under the theist category.
I have read about---and observed--two different "strains" of atheism: the militant and the "different strokes for different folks" kind. I'm the latter. What I care about is whether the theist actually acts in accordance with the religious precepts of the religion, whatever it may be, AND whether they try to force others to accept whatever the belief du jour is, particularly when that belief actually contradicts the key precepts of the religion.
If a theist demands from me "proof" that god doesn't exist, I'll respond with a request for proof otherwise. But those theists are the activist counterparts of the atheist activists. A whole lot of Christians, though in distressingly diminishing numbers, are of the "different strokes" persuasion, and don't try to enforce their beliefs through laws. I can go with the Golden Rule--pretty much all religions, not to mention Kant--have a version of it.
So I can agree with the underlying premises of Dawkins arguments about there not being a Father in the Sky. Where I part company with him is when he tries to use--or go beyond--those arguments into political waters--where skepticism turns into intolerance.
Well said.
The “Father in the Sky” conception is not particularly common among well studied theologians imo.
Funny enough, I’m in the process of writing a little piece on the divergence of Christian nationalism and ideology. I agree such hypocrisy is ugly. Pt 1 here:
https://radmod.substack.com/p/christopher-columbus-richard-nixon
For my part, I’m somewhere in the middle if that makes any sense. I practice what I think is a kind of rational spiritualism where mythology should be taken like art or literature not factual dogma. I am convinced the immaterial world is absolutely real and highly undervalued in our modern societies, because it is not material and measurable and so forth. But it is where creation is born seems to me. It is where our ideas come from at the very least, which we might then translate into the material world. As such God might exist without “Father in the sky” conception, but rather as a metaphorical concept to denote the great mysterious powers of the Universe and creation, the eternal.
As Joseph Campbell notes, to put many spiritual concepts into words in order to communicate them, like the concept of the eternal, it requires a condescension - language is inadequate to capture these ideas, and so therefore metaphors or poetry is required to relate these concepts in a way that is visceral and convincing. Problems arise when people start taking the metaphor as fact. This little video from an interview explains this concept far more masterfully than I can…
https://youtu.be/qX8j9TE7P38
Cheers!
I'm with you on the idea that there could well be an unknown force out there driving the universe. I don't have any sense that it cares one whit about humans in particular. As I have posted elsewhere, I belong to the Congregation of the Sublimely Indifferent. If no Daddy is going to reward me for being a good girl, I just have to choose what seems to be the best ethic to keep society functioning and go with it. The Golden Rule and Love Thy Neighbor pretty much sums it up. I do draw the line at loving neighbors who want to ignore the Golden Rule.
I don't feel any sense of spiritual connection with whatever the Force is. But I do believe that the human mind at its best has created all sorts of things that could be CALLED spiritual. For example, a friend asked me if I believe in the Tarot. My response is: not as a predictor of the future. But as a series of images, winnowed through time, that speaks to our deep psychology, such that our REACTION to them tells us something about ourselves and helps guide our conduct, yes. I've felt it.
It's like the old bromide: with two choices, flip a coin and go with your REACTION to what comes up.
I feel the same way about what much of Joseph Campbell says. As with Tarot images, there are STORIES also winnowed through time that speak to us even without belief in their original context. Prometheus on the rock. Milton's Satan. Pandora. Even freakin' Cinderella.
Years ago I wrote a poem on this theme. It is obviously and intentionally based on Auden's Musee de Beaux Artes. Stories tell us things that clarify our thoughts, even if we disagree with what they originally meant.
Grimm Heritage
About love they were often wrong,
the old stories: so pat they set us up
for hopeless endings, so tight their webs---
the white-armored prince, and the thorns, and the princess
pure surface;
so cruel to those Evil who, active and passionate, scheme
towards their golden desire, while the Good simply lie
sleeping on silken couches, beautiful, waiting
for a kiss to propel them to life:
They always insist
that a queen's facile mirror reveals the truth complete
of beauty's mysterious call, that a magic wand
can veil the rags and pumpkins underneath, and that the perfect girl
needs only a glass slipper to be perfect wife.
But in Hansel and Gretel, consider: how the children turn
together into the forest: how the girlchild plans
salvation, how she slips the bone
to her caged, fattening brother: the fire cracks
in the oven, the witch peers in at the moment of
push: and the two scramble from gingerbread heaven and walk
back into the forest, no happily ever etceteras, just
the searching together for the long trail home.
sorry about the vanished line breaks. For some reason Substack wants to ignore them.
Gorgeous!!! Thank you so much for sharing!
thanks
If I may pick your brain by asking are there not the same?
"For example, a friend asked me if I believe in the Tarot. My response is: not as a predictor of the future. But as a series of images, winnowed through time, that speaks to our deep psychology, such that our REACTION to them tells us something about ourselves and helps guide our conduct, yes."
Tarot are not predictor of the future but series of images that speak to our deep psychology, which then changes who we are by affirming and adopting new ways of participating with the surroundings. I find intellectual dissonance here
Fuck you and your Jewish god.
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds . . .
https://nordicresistancemovement.org/what-is-cultural-marxism/
To Dr. Dawkins who has taught me so much, I am surprised in reading this to learn that I might teach you something for a change. Unless I have misunderstood, you seem to have forgotten about the existence of gender roles in society: Gender refers to the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed, including norms, behaviours, roles, and relationships with each other. As a social construct, gender varies from society to society and can change over time. Mocking individuals who feel more comfortable in different gender roles with claims like "2+2=5" and "transubstantiation" is ignorant of (meaning it ignores) the fact that gender is a social construct. Now are there some instances and situations where individuals go to irrational extremes in their beliefs and actions? Always! But that should not cause us to marginalize the majority of our fellow humans who are simply trying to be the best version of themselves. Please do better.
Gender roles are a bunch of bullshit. You don’t need to change your body, name, or pronouns in order to reject the trappings of gender, let alone expect people to pretend you are not the sex you are to reject gender roles and stereotypes.
Feminists defined this problem and addressed it long ago, before the postmodernists took over academic feminism.
So what is a woman (girl)? A human being with a female body and any set of personality, interests, sexual inclinations, and relationship to gender roles and stereotypes.
A woman is not a person who wants to inhabit a female gender role. That’s just more sexism. If it was I wouldn’t be a woman. But I am. So I say no to the new definition.
So it's ok with you if a person wants to be free of society's gender role assigned to them at birth, but it's not ok if they feel more comfortable adopting a different one? If a man prefers to identify as a woman, what does it matter to you? I'm a straight man who feels comfortable being identified as such, and it doesn't bother me one bit if others feel more comfortable expressing themselves differently. I'll respect their preferences and call them what they want, so long as they're causing no harm. Everyone is different. I'm far more concerned with the confusion of many urbanites sitting in traffic on paved city streets with gas-guzzling lifted pickups... I mean, who do THEY think they are???
"So it's ok with you if a person wants to be free of society's gender role assigned to them at birth"
You're missing the point. People are not "assigned" gender "roles" at birth. They are *observed* as boy or girl. Whatever "role", personality, behavior, habits, or creative expressions that person takes on is up to them.
If you're a man & decide to dress yourself as a woman commonly would, that does not make you a woman. It simply makes you a non-conforming man, & that's OKAY.
Just as a white person who grows up in a predominantly black neighborhood is not black just because they assume the language, dress, behaviors, expressions, & tastes common to black people.
Assimilating/assuming/adopting the common traits of a group does not necessarily make you a member of that group. Perhaps figuratively, but not literally.
Are you being obtuse? Or maybe you've picked up tactical speech to evade honest discourse? Everyone is saying why it matters, at least from their perspective. I, for example, would never ask a Christian why my being an atheist “matters to them.” Obviously their (albeit fundamentally wrong beliefs) are why. Mind blowing!
This.
I constantly explain to ppl that something like the term “non-binary” actually is more of the same game.
If you really want to transcend gender roles/social ideas of gender, just be your biological sex and act however you want. Otherwise u perpetuate the very idea of gender roles that you aim to rid of
Edit: that being said, I don’t care if someone says they’re non-binary and I think we should treat ppl compassionately. I just think the idea of non-binary is just that “idea”
Absolutely spot on.
Thank you for this comment. I agree with you. Both this article and the conversation with Helen Joyce ignore the very real lived experiences of the majority of trans individuals and focus on the semantics and controversies that make this subject a favourite plaything of right wing media. I expected better.
Re: 'lived experiences'
This is a term used by applied post-modernists. It's word salad nonsense. Your feelings are not more important than reality. If you can't see that, then I'm sorry, you've been indoctrinated into a cult.
I feel compelled to contest the notion that 'lived experiences' are rendered nonsensical in the realm of postmodern discourse. There exists a robust foundation in cognitive science which supports the relevance and legitimacy of 'lived experiences', particularly when understood through the frameworks of the 4Ps - Participatory, Perspectival, Procedural, and Propositional - and the 4Es - Embodied, Embedded, Extended, and Enacted.
The Participatory approach acknowledges the active engagement of the individual in shaping their perceptions and interactions with the world. This, coupled with the Perspectival approach, appreciates the individualized viewpoint each person brings to their understanding of reality, driven by their unique experiences and contexts.
Moreover, the Procedural perspective emphasizes the process-based nature of cognition, and the Propositional view underscores the role of linguistic representations and mental models in shaping our cognitive processes.
Simultaneously, the 4Es framework offers a comprehensive understanding of cognition as being Embodied in our physiological structures, Embedded in our social and physical contexts, Extended through our use of tools and technologies, and Enacted through our interactions with the environment.
Taken together, these cognitive frameworks underscore the fundamental importance of 'lived experiences' in shaping our understanding of the world.
It is possible that the term 'lived experiences' may be interpreted or employed differently within various discourses, possibly leading to misconceptions or miscommunications. However, any attempt to cherry-pick certain interpretations while disregarding the broader and well-supported understanding within cognitive science would constitute a clear instance of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
Hilarious!
The article and the conversation were extremely arrogant, and short sighted.
How so? Give me an actual argument other than "extremely arrogant, and short sighted".
Do fuck off.
That's a good argument, lol.
I thought so. Or at least it was to the point.
It's really weird. I feel like the heroes of my youth, like Dawkins, are getting old and clinging to the norms of the past as the world is changing faster than they can deal with.
Oh yeah, like if some old, clingy atheist kept rejecting new theistic religions! They should be more open minded and respectful to fast changing neo-souled folks.
Gender is a perfect synonym for the sex class, to differentiate from the sex act. Woman, man, girl, and boy are all human sex/gender terms. The words for natural psychological and following social sex characteristics or tendencies are femininity (typical of females), masculinity (typical of males), androgyneity (typical of both), and neutrality (typical of neither). “Socially constructed” norms and roles are pseudo-[femininity, etc.]. The ideologies or beliefs about these pseudo-characteristics are called sexism. Identifying people based on their purported degree of fem-masc and adulterating our shared language is sexist (along with irrational). Neither ignorance or benevolence changes that. People are responsible to address in themselves why they find comfort in sexism and irrationality, and deal with it in a way which doesn't harm others instead.
Its great to see you more in twitter and here.
Stay strong and continue pushing against dogmatic behaviour.
I agree regarding true religions and cults, but you have fallen prey to bombasticism with narrow mindedness. Nature is not binary in all things, there are shades of grey. Nature is organic and emergent, analog and sometime digital.
Some unfortunate people are born with both male and female genitalia, some have abnormal sex chromosomes.
Do you and Peterson believe people go through hormone treatments and reassignment surgery for kicks?
Did Bruce Jenner decide to become Kaitlin Jenner as a fad? Did Renee Richards do likewise
You and Peterson are ignorant of the facts. Sexual identity is both physical and mental.
I grant that some cases may be ill-founded, but the large majority are well-founded and well thought out.
You guys are puffed up and really out of your depth here. You both are aggressively judgmental.
Acquire a little compassion and love, and you both will be better for it.
Biological errors do not make sex a spectrum, just like people who are born with one hand, three hands, or 1.25 hands do not make the number of human hands a spectrum.
Gender dysphoria is a mental illness, and those who suffer from it should be cared for with compassion.
But trans culture and gender ideology are not limited to these biological or development errors. Afflicted schools are not teaching children to accept the minuscule minority who suffer from gender dysphoria and treat them with respect. They are teaching them the Genderbread Person.
Even if it was a mental illness why are you so upset about it and why do you care?
Why do you see the need to meddle in other people's affairs?
Do you do the same for people with schizophrenia?
Why do you assume the poster is upset?
They care as much as you do apparently, because you keep posting here.
If people with schizophrenia went around claiming they were the tooth-fairy, the compassionate thing to do would be to give them their meds.
Re: If people with schizophrenia went around claiming they were the tooth-fairy, the compassionate thing to do would be to give them their meds.
If that is the language you would rather chooce to communicate with schizophrenic at first sight, you, I would argue, need to be away from them if you have an ability to prescribe meds.
Why else would he spend time online arguing about something so obscure?
I'm upset because you morons can't seem to stop yourself from meddling in other peoples business. It's as if you think have the right to control everyone else and dictate what we are allowed to think.
People who suffer from gender dysphoria are specifically those who I am *not* upset with.
Caring about the education system, the media, and cultural development in society are not "meddling in other people's affairs".
Caring about large swaths of the population being indoctrinated into a cult is not "meddling in other people's affairs".
Caring about free speech doing down the drain is not "meddling in other people's affairs".
What on earth made you think large swaths of the population are being indoctrinated into a cult and what is this cult?
Who is the cult leader?
Both the far left and far right ate meddling in other peoples affairs on this issue. The cps in Texas will take your kids away if you and your doctor decide medicalizing their gender is the right path. The custody courts in Oregon and California will take your kids away if you decide that your kid shouldn’t medically transition. Both are meddling and both are happening.
In terms of how to think I don’t appreciate being told womanhood is now defined by how much I like the idea of female gender stereotypes.
Im also pretty pissed that right wingers think my kids and I can’t be trusted to read books critically when they contain controversial content.
What books do "right wingers" not trust you and your kids to read critically?
As far as I know no books are being removed from print (by the right; it does seem to happen a bit by the left, e.g. one o two Dr. Seuss books).
My understanding is that the objections are to book such as these: (warning: explicit and absolutely NSFW content ahead) -
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1639280953922138115
https://twitter.com/againstgrmrs/status/1653087980356091927
I did some online checks on the books mentioned in the above tweets, and they absolutely did make it into some schools and school libraries (I believe some of them are still available in some schools).
First of all we're talking about an EXTREMELY rare event.
More people are probably killed by sharks or lightning (I did not look it up).
And it's probably more likely that a doctor would know what is best than a random dude on internet.
By your measure, homosexuality is a “mental illness.” So Alan Turing was “mentally ill” and the British government was correct in its “treatment” of prison or chemical castration.
You appear to have a “Dark Ages” mentality.
I don’t see how this follows. For something to be a mental illness it has to reduce a persons ability to function or live a happy life. That’s part of the deal with being trans - you need treatment to alleviate that. I don’t know of any gay people who require medical treatment in order to thrive in society. Well I guess in Iran where they make gay men transition to women on penalty of death.
That the British government was correct in its "treatment" of prison or chemical castration of gays does not follow from classifying homosexuality as "mental illness".
Unless you feel that it's right to put people who are mentally ill in prison or chemically castrate them (speaking of "Dark Ages" mentality).
If classifying Gender Dysphoria as mental illness can be likened to classifying Homosexuality as mental illness, then NOT classifying Gender Dysphoria as mental illness can be likened to NOT classifying Body Integrity Dysphoria as mental illness.
Classifying it as "mental illness" may not be PC, but that doesn't make it "Dark Ages" (perhaps even the opposite).
Well, it's fortunate then that Dawkins never claimed that "nature is binary in all things".
He even specifically said that "sex is one of the few genuine binaries of biology".
It helps to actually read what is written and not twist someone's words in order to bolster your own argument.
Biological sex ≠ "sexual identity" ≠ "gender". They are different things.
Intersex conditions existing does not negate the sex binary. They are not truly "intersex" either as there are only two sexes, only two gametes. Most people with intersex conditions are still discernably and unmistakenly male or female.
"I grant that some cases may be ill-founded, but the large majority are well-founded and well thought out."
It's not "well founded" nor "well thought out" if you are basing your actions on the erroneous idea that humans can change sex (they cannot), or that changing your body will bring an end to your psychological suffering (it might, but it also might not, it might even create new suffering). There are people who think very long and deep about religious matters. In fact, people have done so for thousands of years. That doesn't make any of it true or good.
Observing the FACTS of the biologically-based reproductive binary and sexual dimorphism in virtually all living things doesn’t mean one thinks nature is binary “in all things”. Your use of the predeterminer “both” in regard to intersex (such an unironic adjective in this case) signifies a binary and in no way denotes (though it may connote) a third sex.
As someone with no religious leaning/belief other than thinking ‘I think there’s more’, I often find myself feeling that most other people against the current madness are those of faith.
This is why I am very pleased to find other voices who do not come from a Christian or other religious background feeling as I do.
I appreciate your effort into explaining your stance as you have so eloquently,
Dr Dawkins, thank you for replying to Dr Peterson and making some great points.
I think what Peterson may reply is that, although you don't believe that the solution to the absence of a given religion is the substitution of another religion, that inevitably the "death of God" necessitates the emergence of a religion or a religion-like ideology because most human beings can't cope with the the fact that most of their experience is unknown.
Like the terror management theorists claim that the denial of death motivates religious belief, Peterson (and this thesis is outlined in his book and several of his academic articles) claims that the fact of reality's infinite complexity motivates most people to subscribe to conceptual structures that constrain such complexity.
He claims that religion tends to be the most differentiated means of representing the nature of the ultimate complexity of (experiential) reality, which he characterises as the interplay of order and chaos mediated by consciousness.
Religions tend to be complete representations insofar as they make room for the bivalent aspects of order, chaos, and consciousness, whereas ideologies like wokeness tend to be incomplete representations insofar as they neglect to include one aspect of valence, for example, the idea of patriarchy fails to include the positive aspect of order.
I think you two could have a fruitful exchange of ideas if you were to engage him on the idea that consciousness does seem to have evolved to allow humans to transform the chaos of nature into ordered society. In your previous discussion, I think he was trying to make this point by honing in on sexual selection, basically trying to get you to consider the idea that female consciousness has selected for this capacity in males - females choose males that are able to voluntarily and courageously confront the unknown and transform the latent information into something that benefits society.
Yes, this is indeed what JP is getting at.
You had an opportunity for genuine self-reflection here. You wasted it making dick jokes about the Eucharist and seeing how many times you could say "semen" in a passage discussing the fundamental tenets of Christianity. Yes, it's very funny to say bad words in Church. Haha.
Unfortunately, your condescension blinded you to the actual point of pondering the question in the first place. You talk about some of the "characteristics" of religion, but noticeably leave out the most fundamental trait of any organized system of worship, from which religion derives its social utility. That's this: All major religions compel their followers to adhere to a standardized, and relatively immutable subjective moral code. When societies subscribe to religion en masse generally what's virtue the day you're born is still virtue when you're in your 60s, and what's sin in your 20s is still sin the day you die. And generally everyone agrees what is sin and what is virtue. Without that standard template of virtuous living provided by religion, people become untethered. You end up with 10,000 competing "irrational dogmas" all at odds with each other as illustrated by the "woke" crowd we have today. What used to be sin is now virtue and something that is virtue to me is sin to you. The common ground is eroded in the vacuum left by the death of God.
You hide behind your "love of truth" to justify your demonization of religion wholesale, without realizing you're actually attacking two separate belief systems under the same umbrella. The first, which is objective in nature, are the religion's collective myths and ritual practices. Biblical books, belief in a God, taking the Eucharist etc. The second, which is subjective in nature, is that aforementioned standardized moral code. Attack the first under the guise of "truth" all you like. Those things either happened or they didn't. There either is a God or there isn't. But the second is beyond reproach. There is no one "true" system of values.
Jordan Peterson is trying to get guys like you to realize you threw the baby out with the bathwater. The consideration is purely practical. You willingly sacrificed the social cohesion that religion gave the world because you thought the concept of a bearded man in the sky judging your actions was silly. And the worst part is your arrogance doesn't permit you to understand that your philosophy is entirely self-defeating. You claim to love truth too much to oppose one irrational dogma by promoting another irrational dogma, without realizing the unwavering "love of truth" is itself an irrational dogma. In fact that whole statement is just the promotion of one irrational dogma "love of truth" over two other irrational dogmas, religion and "the cult of woke". If O'Brien had a gun to your head and demanded you say 2+2=5 and your "love of truth" prevented you from doing so, surely you would agree you were behaving irrationally, right? You love truth. Christians love Jesus. The woke crowd loves trannies. There is no way to be objectively right here.
“Hereditary Guilt. One of Christianity’s nastier doctrines is the notion that we are all, even tiny babies, born in sin.”
-----
Also add that this is not a Christian view but a Catholic perspective of the original sin, there are other “Christian” interpretations of the original sin - prime example Orthodox Christians believe they are dealing with the result of the first sin, the foremost being death, BUT only Adam and Eve are guilty of that sin. Orthodox baptisms are about sickness from this sin - the person dies to this world and is born again in the resurrection of Christ into eternal life.
Said this above, in complete agreement, all individuals already picks a dogma (consciously or not) - because we all worship in some form each day (on a deeper level, ask why do you get up in the morning everyday, what is your focus and what do you believe). Either you can consciously pray to the traditional mystical forms with hundreds of years of ethical teachings OR the unconscious modern versions of worshiping the self which centers on promotes prestige, power, wealth, beauty, youth in a quest for completeness.
Thanks, you put this much more succinctly than I did. Values are subjective. Rejecting someone else's value system because it's "not true" is just nonsensical.
Vocal atheists have a practical choice to make. Am I so committed to spreading my disbelief in a higher power that I'm willing to tear down the institutions that are the foundation of the last several thousand years of cultural ethical norms? Or should I just mind my own business? Something tells me Dawkins is the kind of guy who would run PSAs on Cartoon Network telling kids Santa Claus wasn't real, never realizing that the whole point wasn't to mislead kids. It was to teach the lesson that good behavior is rewarded.
Why would you reply to this crackpot and asshat?
The answer is, you have turned into an old crackpot.
Hitchens is turning in his grave.
Must we really be inflicted with these childish tantrums?
The teenager using "learned words" to seem old and wise.
Yes you are pathetic.
I’ll leave it here, with dignity. Goodbye.
Hahahahaha. Oh boy this is a sad one.
If you wanted to leave with dignity you wouldn't have responded in the first place.
Idiots are idiots.
The way you’re interacting — insults, invective, without debate — reminds me most of the old religious right.
You expected me to respond with an argument to this "Must we really be inflicted with these childish tantrums?"?
You must be English.
But woke is just as silly word that right wing name-callers throw at lefty victims. I doubt you’d find many individuals that identify as woke - certainly not a church-full. It’s a word normally wielded by those who make a career out of pandering to extreme anti-left sentiments. Interestingly, a friend who introduced me to Jordan Peterson is also a climate-change denier. Perhaps climate-change denial is another modern-day religion?
What do you call a group that adheres to common ideology and exhibits common behavior but refuses any label because recognition — much less debate or discourse — is disadvantageous to their ideological aims?
I’m reminded most of Scientology.
There is no common woke ideology.
The term is invented by right wing nut cases and contains everything however small they don't like.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Excellent! I'm glad you engaged with Peterson on this. Well done; especially as to the second challenge.
Juden Peterstein . . .
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Well put, Mr. Dawkins.
Juden Peterstein is a Zionist Canadian drug addict . . .
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
I see 'woke' similarly to 'political correctness' as being on a spectrum. Good ideas which can be taken too far by uncompromising idealists. The poison is in the dose.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Anyone who says, "I am a woman" is making a statement about how they intend to live. A woman whose sex organs have been removed does not begin to say, "I am no longer a woman." They continue to identify as a woman because that is, psychologically, how they feel. Biology to many women is irrelevant. Women who adopt an essentialist view of womanhood (aligning with Dawkins essentialism) can become depressed when their breasts are removed because they feel "less of a woman". Those who survive breast cancer the best are those who assert their womanhood independent of biology.
Removing body parts does not change your biological sex. Obviously.
What do you mean 'biological sex'? Is it physical biology or genetic biology?
Evolution is heterosexual.
Religious faggots are insane.
Body parts and / or biological sex ('biological' is redundant, since the only context for talking about sex is biology) do not tell you anything about whether a woman is a woman. A woman who predicates their womanhood upon body parts is vulnerable to disappointment when they are removed. Best not to.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Beautiful.
Richard, you seem to be diving into shallow waters unnecessarily. There's an old saying "Shrimps make fools of dragons in shallow waters" and I fear that's where you're heading when you succumb to the sirens calling you into their cesspool. You're a biologist and, personally, I'd advise you to stick more to science than all this ideological nonsense. I notice someone mentioned how atheists often talk more about God than religious people do. I plead guilty to that myself, but you really do seem to be giving the current ideological silliness far more attention than it deserves and, quite frankly, I don't think you're sufficiently broadly informed enough to do it.
My first cringe was seeing the word "woke". It no longer means what it did some time ago and I don't think it means what you think it does. A genuine critical thinker should be taking a judicial perspective, not sides, and "woke" is a sided term. It seems that when you've been inviting discussion, you've really been making a statement and seeking confirmation. In some of your more recent discussions on particular topics, there is rarely "the other side", perhaps what you would call "woke" views, in improper derisive dismissiveness if merely due to disagreement. You don't need to be told that, so why are you doing what the right-wing "anti-wokists" do? Especially as, it seems to me anyway, that you're trying to prove you're not really like them.
I can understand a personal defensiveness as to colonialism and the original sin argument is valid. But you don't have to be blind enough not to acknowledge past wrongs at all and offer a bit of sympathy for that.
More importantly, there is a glaring contradiction here - avidly defending safe spaces for women from trans people but not ordinary men, the main perpetrators of assaults against women, in which case you equally avidly cry ‘innocence’ against ‘whingers’? The obvious contradiction implies affected insincerity.
The "trans v TERF" thing is toxic and there is much vitriol directed toward women who speak up for women's rights. Fortunately, I seem to be spared that, probably because I'm not famous enough for it, but also I think it's because I take a genuinely judicious perspective, without bias or personal abuse. The stifling of free speech is an issue but both the vitriol and censorship come from both directions, which it's also important to recognise.
A couple of good points though. There is some truth to the idea that Christianity can be the lesser of evils in the religion/cult spectrum. Although a hard-core atheist, I have no difficulty recognising that most Christians are decent people following ideals of care and compassion for their fellows. Even worse and incredible as it may seem, especially given my anti-fundamentalist position, on one occasion, I myself actually advised a young woman to stay associated with some Mormons who had taken her under their wing. Admittedly, I saw it as a transitional thing and I was perfectly aware that it may have ended up substituting one bad world for another, but in that case, it really was the lesser of evils in her personal circumstances at the time.
It is important to note that irrationality is the enemy, in whatever guise it presents itself. Reason in both perspective and argument is the aim and if we can stick to that, with all due bird's eye judiciousness, many of the issues associated with today's mix of fads and genuine attempts at meaningful equity will resolve themselves and progress can take place as the worst extremes of any are left behind and whatever's good succeeds.
I think Richard did a good job at setting out his stance whilst not lowering his intellectual ability to brawl in the playground. These issues are forefront in society right now so to not get involved is to turn a blind eye. I agree that ‘Woke’ has become an unhelpful word and instantly gets people’s backs up but I’m very pleased someone with such reasoned means of expression is engaging.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
I agree and it's one the benefits of this substack site. In the same spirit and in good humour, I've written a piece about the trans issue, which I've placed on Richard's page re his talk with Helen Joyce.
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Way off-base. Anti-Semitic nonsense. Until the Jewish Emancipation Act in 1858, Jewish people in Britain were severely restricted from taking part in most professions and walks of life, essentially restricted to money-lending, which is how the stereotypes associated with that arose. Anti-Semitism on the continent was particularly violent, from pogroms in Russia to, ultimately, the Nazi holocaust, giving rise to the establishment of Israel as safe haven for Jews. Israel, now, unfortunately. is not extending the same sense of humanity to Palestinians, but that is a different matter. Opposing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories or being in favour of a two-state solution is not about being anti-Semitic.
FUCK YOU AND YOUR JEWISH GOD . . .
“Woke,” “wokeism,” “wokeness,” etc., are weasel words used to hide the truth about the Jews and the Frankfurt School.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Should be "Jewish Relief Act", not "Emancipation". That was the Catholics in 1829.
Holohoax . . . LOL!
no more Jews = no more war
If Iran nukes Israel, the Palestinian filth also dies in the fallout . . . PEACE AT LAST . . .