Getting Things Off My Chest
Nope, still not talking about THAT teacher in Canada.
I’m a bit further into the book Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. As I read more about the “social justice” view of the world, what we might term the “woke” perspective, the more my sense of unreality and disbelief increases. How can seemingly intelligent people believe this utter pile of shite?
That assessment may be a little harsh, because there ARE some good points made along the way by some of these woke theorists described in the book, but it’s like they take a few salient observations and construct some absurd fantasy; it’s akin to conspiracy theorizing par excellence.
What is uncovered in the book is a “woke” depiction of ‘reality’ that’s not tethered to anything, least of all reality. I’ve repurposed an old Gary Larson cartoon that neatly sums up my current view
Pluckrose and Lindsay do an admirable job of letting these insufferable buffoons speak for themselves by providing us with copious quotes.
For example, what are we to make of the claim that disability is socially constructed?
OK, that’s not quite as deranged and delirious as it sounds, but it’s not too far off by the time the woke theorists have managed to catapult it into their fantasy. The thesis here is that alongside the obvious physical and/or mental impairments suffered by those with a disability, there is a socially constructed layer of additional obstacles to do with attitudes and the way society at large treats those with a disability.
Sounds fairly reasonable, doesn’t it? Except, of course, it doesn’t stop there with this rather trite observation. We end up with a viewpoint that, yes, their physical and/or mental issues exist, but their disability arises because of the way society treats them. It’s just arsing about with words to any ‘normal’ person, but in the ‘woke’ fantasy words take on this special characteristic of being able to shape reality.
Words can certainly shape our perceptions, and it’s a good thing to have our perceptions challenged. We should all revisit the fundamental assumptions and perceptions upon which we operate, from time to time. This is, in essence, the basis of the scientific method. The issue with the woke theorizing is that certain perceptions are sacrosanct and not to be challenged.
The importance of this alternative view of what it means to be ‘disabled’ is that it allows another category to be added, another axis of evil, to the assumed web of invisible power structures that oppress ‘marginalized’ people everywhere, at all times. The existence of these oppressive power grids is essentially axiomatic. Woke theorizing is all about how these various grids intersect and impact people.
The activism part comes about in the ‘deconstruction’, the dismantling and disruption, of these lines of oppressive fairy dust. You can ‘deconstruct’ everything else - except the assumed ‘existence’ of these invisible webs of oppressive power. Nope - that’s not something that can be challenged or submitted to any kind of scrutiny.
If you attempt to adopt anything resembling the scientific method to analyse this woke construction of ‘reality’, you’re merely choosing one way of knowing that is, in itself, a tool of oppression, and with no more validity than any other “way of knowing”.
The overriding impression one gains is that it’s not supposed to make sense, in any ‘traditional’ meaning of the word sense. They’re not at all interested in ‘truth’ in any objective sense, but they are passionately, obsessively, wedded to subjective ‘truth’.
Nowhere is this more obvious and contentious than in the gender wars.
We all know that a transwoman is not a woman in the fullest sense of the word ‘woman’ - a sense of that word that includes biology along with all the other ‘socially constructed’ aspects of womanhood. However heart-breaking it must be for someone with gender dysphoria, we simply cannot ignore the brick wall of biology. We can, and should, as a society make reasonable accommodation for trans individuals so that they can live their lives as if they were their chosen sex, for all practical purposes.
We could have lived with that without too much fuss at all.
But along come the woke morons and just spew their excessive vacuous vomit over everything and make things worse. For everyone. Their insistence that the word woman needs to be redefined so that anyone who identifies as a woman actually IS a woman is causing no end of trouble for the very people they claim to be ‘helping’. It’s creating one hell of an unholy backlash, for one thing, and that really troubles me.
But these woke idiots seem not to be able to just leave well alone and let things progress naturally towards the decent and humane solutions we were already moving towards.
Instead of a universal view of humanity, a view that is pretty much rejected by the woke theorists, we now have a ridiculous and obsessive focus on differences rather than commonalities. Race, gender, sexuality, disability, weight - you name it, we’re explicitly being pressured into focussing on our differences, rather than the things that draw us together as human beings.
They think this is the right thing to do.
They are Grade A morons.
It’s a Rigger article, and what would such an article be without some crudity? So, I’m going to unzip the trousers of science and measure dick sizes. I’m going to compare the woke dick with the science dick.
Here, it must be said, we’re comparing a blue whale with gerbil. A blue whale’s penis is about 8 to 10 feet in length with a girth of about a foot. I couldn’t (quickly) find the average size of Mr Gerbil, but I am reasonably certain a Gerbil Jabber is not 8 to 10 feet in length. No doubt I will be asked by some woke fool to source that statement.
So, in the words of Monty Python, what has science ever done for us?
I’d still be writing this article when the Sun had turned into a Red Dwarf (racist and ableist in one sentence? I’m a bigot), if I tried to list all the achievements of science.
What has ‘woke’ ever done for us?
Apart from creating more division, confusion, and hatred, you mean?
Let me think, . . .
Nope. Nothing springs to mind here.
The scientific method has, in my view, been humanity’s greatest achievement. It’s the bedrock on which all progress has been built. As far as the physical and material world goes, it isn’t just a “way of knowing”, it’s THE way of knowing.
I would even make a stronger statement
As a tool to understand reality the scientific method is unparalleled. It has no equal. There is not even a close second. All other methods and methodologies are almost infinitely inferior.
And, yes, individual scientists can be corrupt, prejudiced and almost irredeemably stupid.
But what is, perhaps, the most important feature of the scientific method?
It’s the ability to self-correct.
We’re beginning to see that (necessary) self-correction with regards to the covid farce with all the papers coming out now about vaccine ineffectiveness and harms, and so on. It’s a bit on the late side, and the human frailty and susceptibility to pressure of human scientists has been exposed - but science itself responds (eventually) to reality. It corrects itself, because it must do so - it’s inbuilt into the very fabric of what science is all about.
Where’s the self-correct mechanism for woke?
There isn’t one - because it eschews things like the scientific method as a tool of oppression.
Like I said, Grade A morons.
"How can seemingly intelligent people believe this utter pile of shite?"
Because it benefits them personally in the short run, financially, career-wise, emotionally and so on.
The psychoanalyst's question in the Larsson-cartoon admirably illustrates how you /do not/ deal with the woke. To understand and to have understanding of and to be understanding (of) are so close semantically and in how they are used as were they interchangable, that the analyst is drawn into the world of the insane, with only their own maddened self for guide. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad. On the other hand, a quote from a british tabletop game serves admirably to illustrate the problem from the other side:
"Only the insane have strength enough to prosper; only those that prosper truly judge what is sane."
It is with postmodernism and wokeness as it is with the well-known and even more well-misunderstood writings of the german philospher with the dyslexia-inducing name, Nietzsche:
To understand, you must face your Last Man. You must plumb and dredge and trudge through your Abyss. You must enter the realms of madness and chaos and birth yourself into the world of order again.
but as this is a) not required for any other purpose than to understand, and b) painful, risky and possibly suicidal, most who even look that way settle for staying in the foyer, lodging at Gasthaus Nihilismus and spending their time in the kafé and beerhall of Relativismus Über Alles. They wield the words and they go through the motions, but they haven't passed through the bitter waters, finding out too late that it is a steel bath.
Because there's no guarantee that you like what you make yourself be. There's no promise of salvation. There's no security or certainty of return of investment. So they balk at this Kierkegaard:ian leap.
And produce stuff like people trying to debate whether forks are more male than femaleand how we gender cutlery.
The Woke are an existential threat to our lives, and our children. You do not negotiate or try to undertsand existential threats, excepting trying to find weapons against them/it.
The disability discussion reminds me of the sports discussion (see, for instance, this article from 2016: https://sociologyinfocus.com/sex-is-a-social-construction-even-if-the-olympics-pretends-its-not-2/). Because-- and if you've never been a relatively strong, fit woman who was beaten up, or beaten by, a puny man half your size, you're going to have to trust me on this-- womanhood is a physical disability. (And in fact, all those people who argue for abortion rights are really arguing this: being in a body that can get pregnant is a disability that requires special medical accommodations. This is also why we need Title IX.) The history and development of every single human culture was not built on a coincidental social construct.
Ultimately, woke arguments take away our guns (literally and figuratively). They remove the rights of physical beings who suffer from relative, natural disadvantages. I imagine that correction for the woke would involve something akin to a Gulag-- not because I believe in retribution, but because these beliefs can only exist in the realm of the mind, in one's books and screens and cars with heated seats and air conditioned houses and indoor plumbing and sanitized supermarket shelves polite people on the street who don't randomly assault you and someone else to clean your toilets and empty your gutters and mow your lawn and make your $5 latte. (When I run for President, my campaign slogan will be "SAG" and I'll put it on hats. I know it's not as catchy as "MAGA," but I still insist Something Akin to a Gulag is a winning campaign promise.)