Thought Police: Are we allowed to query 'woke'?

[Funt Solo]

I don't like the slogan "men are trash" - I think it's a negative when positives work better.

However...

Does 'all' make a difference?

Yes, it does. Try this one: "Whales are endangered". Nobody's going to argue with that as a fair statement. It doesn't mean "all whales are endangered", it means "some whales are endangered".

people shouldn't apply blanket statements to groups of people

I think that depends on context. "Black Lives Matter" applies a blanket statement to a group of people. It's an entirely positive message (really, a cry for help).

---

people shouldn't apply blanket statements to groups of people

But then you do exactly that...

the woke don't speak for everyone

I get a bit lost there anyway, because I don't have a clear picture in my head of who "the woke" are supposed to be. It's like that joke in Curb Your Enthusiasm about "The Lesbians" having a meeting and deciding that Larry was okay.

[repoman]

We've gotten to the point where we're drifting into semantics now.  I think that means we've exhausted the topic.

[Funt Solo]

...or that we're just getting to the interesting bit. 

[Professor Bear]

The reason it is difficult is that people shouldn't apply blanket statements to groups of people.

feminists

BLM

SJWs

the further left

the woke

[judgeurko]

We've gotten to the point where we're drifting into semantics now.  I think that means we've exhausted the topic.

No, you are just being called out on your hypocrisy.

[Funt Solo]

We've gotten to the point where we're drifting into semantics now.  I think that means we've exhausted the topic.

No, you are just being called out on your hypocrisy.

To be fair, repoman and I had come to an agreement: we both dislike the slogan "men are trash", and find it misleading and negative. So, we had started to discuss semantics.

And I often tend towards a "do as I say, not as I do" mentality (i.e. hypocrisy), but I think that's just human nature. It's easy to get tied in knots during a debate-like conversation. We're not all Christopher Hitchens. (And neither is he, now that he's unfortunately dead.)

[The Legendary Shark]

Quote from: Funt Solo on Today at 01:18:33
Is there a positive masculinity?

Here's the thing, masculinity can be seen as toxic but it could be seen as necessary for survival and helpful for breeding.

There are some ideas about the inities that have helped me. This is probably going to be long and weird, so strap in...

I've always seen my own personality as more feminine than masculine. To clarify, this has nothing to do with sexual orientation (or at least hasn't yet) but is more about attitude. I have masculine traits, of course; rippling and hairy old male body, a deep attraction to females, a love of comics and so on. But my personality seems more reliant on my right brain than my left. As such, emotions tend to be more important to me than rationality and so I often let them rule me, using my left brain to figure out ways of justifying my emotions. One example would be warning people that I had a bad temper to kind of excuse my behaviour when I inevitably lost my temper, or to be snippy and snappy with folk who poked my emotions with a verbal stick.

Anyway, long story short: bad temper, righteous outrage, anger, being sacked, fear, depression, stress, isolation, heart attacks.

And it was around this time in the completely boring yet utterly mesmerising mystery tour which has been my life so far that I started to listen to people talking about the masculine/feminine balance in different ways.

One idea is that in prehistory human society was completely the other way around, a right-brained world  with females filling all the roles of power. When humankind was young, this may have made more sense - as we evolved self-awareness,  the first things we'd notice are our emotions and the emotions of others, and other animals. Being a tribal animal, emotions would be holding communities together before rationality even figured out what a community was. With feminine energy in ascendance, and women in charge, perhaps the emerging human race, still very much a part of the landscape for uncounted millennia, was a peaceful and cooperative one - but not very pro-active; being more about accommodating  Nature than controlling it.

Nowadays, and for all recorded history, the human race has lived under a masculine paradigm with men in charge. And we can all see how well that's going. Granted, the left-brain has given us some wonderful things but it's not very nice, not very accommodating, and it's charging ahead like tomorrow never comes, virtually heedless of the consequences.

Some think that men should be suppressed now (it's our turn) and women put in charge (it's their turn), but I disagree. I think we need a balance, not between men and women but between the masculine and the feminine. I don't think the man/woman difference is what it's all about at all. That's only part of it - we all know that we are a mixture of masculine and feminine traits, we all know masculine women and feminine men just as we all know feminine women and masculine men. Not to mention just plain old men and women, who always seem happiest, somehow.

When the masculine or feminine traits are pushed to the extremes and concentrated, as with many substances, they become toxic. (One could interpret genocide, for example, as extreme instances of the masculine desire for supremacy.)

What I think we need is a balance. Pass emotions through the filter of rationality and pass rationality through the filter of emotion. Don't do things that feel wrong, don't feel things that make you do wrong. Use both parts of your brain - strive for balance: think as you feel as you do.

Anyway, that's what I learned and ever since I've tried to maintain that left/right, masculine/feminine balance. Has it worked? Well, yes and no - I hardly ever experience bad tempers, righteous outrages, anger, fear, depression, stress, or isolation any more. As for getting sacked and heart attacks - I guess time will tell. I still have a hairy arse, though.

Well, it worked for me in a weird, hard-to-explain kind of way (even if it is 90% bollocks - and it very well might be). Maybe, and here's an idea for all you statists out there (for I know you are many! **waves**) suggested by my recent delve into the Olden Days, why not have two prime ministers? One masculine and one feminine (interpret and choose as you will), the no vote of one always overriding the yes vote of the other, so nothing gets done unless they agree; passing emotions through the filter of rationality and rationality through the filter of emotion to arrive at a balanced decision. I think I'll call that Sharksism, if it catches on. If nobody likes it, I was just the fall-guy - it was all Jim's idea.

WTL;ODR - Feminism will never be able to enjoy the see-saw on her own.

WTF? - He made her do it.

[Modern Panther]

"Sjw values" that define all art?  " Woke approved" hormone levels?

Bloody hell.

[The Legendary Shark]

Why not? And when their term of office expires, we force them to marry and send them out into the Cursed Earth, there to bring unity to the, er, unityless until death do them part.

Then we'll name a warship and a hospital after them.

[repoman]

Pretty disappointed in Urko and Bear there.

Very disingenuous to call me out when I clearly mean that blanket statements are wrong based on certain criteria such as race, gender.  Things you are born with and can't readily change.

The things quoted there are just names of groups.  What blanket statement did I make about BLM for example?

Without checking I'm not even sure I mentioned BLM.  What are you even quoting then?

Poor form.

[repoman]

Edit: just checked I mentioned BLM in the context of people mentioning it but didn't comment on it with any sort of statement.

You might as well quote every noun I've posted.

Not that this needs clarifying but BLM = good. 

[Professor Bear]

If you're saying you don't like it when people make reductionist generalizations, then fair play.

[sintec]

I'm no fan of Piers Morgan but he has some interesting comments on wokeness in this interview which I think are quite relevant to this conversation https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/oct/12/piers-morgan-what-does-trump-smell-like-expensive-aftershave-and-a-whiff-of-hairspray

Also interesting to see him admit that many of his comments are intentionally aimed at stirring up controversy and in his own words; "I think I've been at my best journalistically when I've had something to get my teeth stuck into. When there's nothing really going on and I'm creating a few firestorms because that's my instinctive nature, that's me at my worst – just a bit bored, sinking my fangs, which can be ferocious, into fairly inconsequential things, contributing to the general culture wars in a not-particularly-helpful manner." - I think I'd tend to agree with him there.

I really hate this idea that there's a "culture war". It implies that different cultures can't co-exist, that there can be only one and it must vanquish all opposition to reign supreme. That culture is a thing to be fought over a series of battles to be won. That for me is entirely missing the point. But then I'm pro-multi culturalism and I often feel like a lot of those on the flip side of these arguements are in favour of restoring a more mono-cultural society (I'm not sure such a thing ever really existed but that's a whole separate conversation).

[Professor Bear]

Morgan has been poking lefties since at least his days as editor of the Mirror, though at the time it was dismissed as a poor copy of Matthew Wright's schtick - which was to achieve minor pundit notoriety by using his position as the Mirror's showbiz editor to create feuds with celebrities - and Morgan's ire for "the Guardian and its readers" seemed genuine and unironic in the pre-social media landscape of minor UK celebrity.  I doubt very much if Morgan's self-awareness is genuine so much as a contemporary addition his act.

[sintec]

oh indeed - the interview is clearly in service to trying to flog his new book and if he wants Guardian readers to pick it up then he needs to persuade them that it's not going to be several hundred pages of him calling them names and dismissing their opinions.