A lot of its adherents feel that they are unjustly lowered in status, though. The narrative of woke is centered on the idea that you have been unfairly maligned due to whatever identity characteristic and deserve to be treated with more respect/status. Its mass appeal is thus to people who are salty over their place in the status hierarchy.
A lot of its adherents feel that they are unjustly lowered in status, though. The narrative of woke is centered on the idea that you have been unfairly maligned due to whatever identity characteristic and deserve to be treated with more respect/status. Its mass appeal is thus to people who are salty over their place in the status hierarchy.
Can you blame them? We told them college was the path to a successful life and when they get out (having majored in gender studies or underwater basket weaving) the only thing they're qualified for is Starbucks barista. Resentment is totally understandable. Peter Turchin calls our problem one of "elite overproduction" -- we're sending 30% of our population to universities but only about 15% of the jobs are actually university-level positions.
However the push for wokeness is coming from those who ARE successful and members of the quasi-elite. Starbucks baristas are woke, but only incidentally, and oddly enough it works against their interests. Because being woke (obsessed with every tiny race/sexual injustice) makes you blind to the growing class imbalances in America. For the successful elites, this makes sense - -they don't want to talk about income inequality since they're on the top end of it. However, wokeness also entrenches the successful elites positions by distracting the relatively poor, Starbucks baristas from their obvious class solidarity with blue-collar whites.
The idea of blue-collar "class solidarity" sort of goes along with my original point that mass democracy invites the lower classes to try and "level out" the field relative to their more successful counterparts. Wokeness is one manifestation of this, you're referencing another form of it with the Marxist talk of "class solidarity." Whether any of this is actually good or bad for this person or that person is a different discussion entirely. I'm just speaking to the motivating impulse behind these things, which is that basic desire to make everyone equal. Even if you think there is a sinister cabal of cynical elites who push woke for selfish reasons, that is the impulse that the ideology hijacks in order to gain mass adoption.
A lot of its adherents feel that they are unjustly lowered in status, though. The narrative of woke is centered on the idea that you have been unfairly maligned due to whatever identity characteristic and deserve to be treated with more respect/status. Its mass appeal is thus to people who are salty over their place in the status hierarchy.
Can you blame them? We told them college was the path to a successful life and when they get out (having majored in gender studies or underwater basket weaving) the only thing they're qualified for is Starbucks barista. Resentment is totally understandable. Peter Turchin calls our problem one of "elite overproduction" -- we're sending 30% of our population to universities but only about 15% of the jobs are actually university-level positions.
However the push for wokeness is coming from those who ARE successful and members of the quasi-elite. Starbucks baristas are woke, but only incidentally, and oddly enough it works against their interests. Because being woke (obsessed with every tiny race/sexual injustice) makes you blind to the growing class imbalances in America. For the successful elites, this makes sense - -they don't want to talk about income inequality since they're on the top end of it. However, wokeness also entrenches the successful elites positions by distracting the relatively poor, Starbucks baristas from their obvious class solidarity with blue-collar whites.
The idea of blue-collar "class solidarity" sort of goes along with my original point that mass democracy invites the lower classes to try and "level out" the field relative to their more successful counterparts. Wokeness is one manifestation of this, you're referencing another form of it with the Marxist talk of "class solidarity." Whether any of this is actually good or bad for this person or that person is a different discussion entirely. I'm just speaking to the motivating impulse behind these things, which is that basic desire to make everyone equal. Even if you think there is a sinister cabal of cynical elites who push woke for selfish reasons, that is the impulse that the ideology hijacks in order to gain mass adoption.