The Emerging Religion of Wokeness

How do people commonly abuse being treated decently?

 

I am not constitutionally opposed to your main thesis, that this movement deserves special consideration as a, "religion," but I have yet to see any evidence, in your 2 initial posts, supporting this appraisal. I am about to now go & read your linked article, of which only a little remained in your OP, due to moderator editing. I will just point out, for now, that there have always been political movements that have inspired great emotion, from their adherents. So, to automatically consider this criterion to qualify "Wokeness," as a religion would, to me, necessitate us going back to rename the labor movement, for example, as a religion, the woman's Suffrage Movement, as a religion, the Abolitionist Movement, as a religion, and so forth. In other words, the apparent point of your thread, to distinguish "woke," perspective as something markedly different from other movements of societal consciousness and attitude, would be defeated.

Just as a curiosity, in case it isn't mentioned in your cited article, today's "woke," culture, is not a new concept, at least as far as terminology goes: in the 1860s, and onward, there was a Republican group called the, "Wide Awakes."

From Wikipedia:
<SNIP>

The Wide Awakes were a youth organization and later a paramilitary organization cultivated by the Republican Party during the 1860 presidential election in the United States. Using popular social events, an ethos of competitive fraternity, and even promotional comic books, the organization introduced many to political participation and proclaimed itself as the newfound voice of younger voters. The structured militant Wide Awakes appealed to a generation which had been profoundly shaken by the partisan instability in the 1850s, and offered young northerners a much-needed political identity.[1]


A Wide Awakes parade in Lower Manhattan, one of a series of political rallies held in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, and Boston during the first week of October 1860.

Overview
In early March, 1860, Abraham Lincoln spoke in Hartford, Connecticut, against the spread of slavery and advocating for the right of workers to strike. Five store clerks, who had started a Republican group called the Wide Awakes, decided to join a parade for Lincoln, who delighted in the torchlight escort back to his hotel provided for him after his speech.[2] Over the ensuing weeks, the Lincoln campaign made plans to develop Wide Awakes throughout the country and to use them to spearhead large voter registration drives since they knew that new voters and young voters tend to embrace new and young parties.[3]

Members of the Wide Awakes were described by The New York Times as "young men of character and energy, earnest in their Republican convictions and enthusiastic in prosecuting the canvass on which we have entered."[4] In Chicago on October 3, 1860, 10,000 Wide Awakes marched in a three-mile procession. The story on that rally occupied eight columns of the Chicago Tribune. In Indiana, one historian reported:

...Each party took unusual pains to mobilize its followers in disciplined political clubs, but the most remarkable of these were the Lincoln “Rail Maulers” and “Wide Awakes,” whose organizations extended throughout the state. Clad in gaudy uniforms the members of these quasi-military bands participated in all Republican demonstrations. The “Wide Awakes” in particular were well drilled and served as political police in escorting party speakers and in preserving order at public meetings. Party emulation made every political rally the occasion for carefully arranged parades through banner-bedecked streets, torchlight processions, elaborate floats and transparencies, blaring bands, and fireworks.[5]

By the middle of the 1860 campaign, Republicans bragged that they had Wide Awake chapters in every county of every northern (free) state.[3] On the day of Lincoln's election as president, it had grown to 500,000 members. The group remained active for several decades.[2]

<End SNIP>

Reading that, reminds me that we would also need add the, "Tea Party," to your list of religions, as well as, certainly, the do or die supporters of Donald Trump.

 

@Jolly Penguin

Another movement, of the many I'd left out of my prior post, which just now popped into my head, is the anti-Vietnamese War religion, with its congregation-uniting slogans, like, "Make love, not war." Would this also oblige us to consider John Lennon to have been an Evangelist, Prophet, or Saint, of that religion?

(To a lesser degree, he also contributed to the feminist liturgy, with his song, "Woman is the Ni***r of the World.")

 

Well, it isn't magic.

 

It is not the emotion or fervor that makes Wokeness a religion to me. It is the unquestionable dogma and the endless virtue signalling obscuring actual progress, and people claiming a goal and then actively standing in the way of it. Such as people who call themselves "anti-racist' for woke social credit but are actually calling for segregation of races etc.

Having a goal, whatever it is, and rationally approaching it and trying to figure out how to get there with your own thoughts (rather than blindly following something on faith) isn't religion.

Secular Jews, for example, who still may believe in the supernatural, but are encouraged to pick apart the religious dogma they are faced with, and don't automatically judge God as necessarily good just because they are told to, are far less religious to me than a pious orthodox Jew who never stopped to ponder why he doesn't eat pork or why he isn't disturbed by rabbis doing circumcisions on boys using their mouths.

 

Choice, participation, and obedience?

Obedience one is obvious. That's the top theme of theism.

Choice? Then why the coercion? Why the threats of hell and bribes of heaven? Doesn't that minimize the choice aspect?

Participation? Jesus was put on the cross and rose again before you were born. Your only participation is to reflect on it after the fact. Why minimize participation to the absolute minimum like that?

Here is a fun reaction to the preloaded sacrifice idea: You should sin a lot. Sin all you can. Because the more you sin, the more Jesus' sacrifice is worth. You should sin to bring glory to the Lord.

 

So how does one claim this salvation as their own?

 

Delete

 

Present your question to God in private.

 

I am more interested in what you have to say.

 

There aren't any special words. You just have to be honest, sincere, dig deep and speak from your heart.

 

By not being responsible enough to be able to return the favour any time its needed. By refusing to retain a level of solvency adequate to reciprocate.

There is MUTUAL OBLIGATION involved in a circle of trust. That's what earns the trust. Without it, you have nothing.

 

So once you have sincerely requested salvation it is yours? What happens after that?

 

Yeah. Then you grab a beer and celebrate. Good luck.

 

Well there you go. I just read a high school student paper about a place called Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver which was an area mainly populated by black people. The conclusion of the paper was that Canada doesn’t like POC. She literally wrote it like that, Canada doesn’t like POC so the community disappeared.

 

Though your post seems to clearly be a reply to my post, directed to you, I point out that you:
1) did not quote, what you are responding to; nor do you even

2) alert me, with an @DEFinning , as I did, for you.

It therefore appears that you are trying to put in an answer, without my ever reading & responding to it. In more cases than not, this will be the result of a post that does not send me an alert. I cannot say for sure, of course, that this avoidance of my notice was your intent, but you really should understand this concept of alerts, at this point. That is why I am impressing on you the importance of this skipped step, and emphasizing the way it looks, when this is the way you post a response. I see no reasonable excuse for not typing the few keys it will take, for the site to offer you the choice of my name, to merely select. I hope you can follow this simple courtesy, from now on, which I will note is also the expected protocol, which is overwhelmingly followed, by the rest of the members. Thanks.


Now, to address your comments: this theory you now voice, that the category "religion," comes into play, in your mind, when the movement does not have a rationally attainable goal, is NOT the explanation, given in your link. Nor do you really offer any explication of your criterion, in your OP. It seems a highly problematic rationale; and it still does not disqualify all the current Trump supporters, claiming that the Democrats "stole," the election-- they may have a goal in mind (installing Trump as president), but it is not a rational or attainable one (which was part of your criterion). So, if this is going to be the basis of your thread's thesis, it seems incumbent on you to give a more thorough justification of it, than your post, quoted above.

The article you linked-- which typically is supposed to represent your view, unless your OP makes any differentiation-- calls Wokeness a religion, primarily based on the members' identification of the GROUP, with the Divine. Its case, that those who are, "woke," feel this way, however, is not well-defended. To me, in fact, it seems preposterous for a critic of any view that is associated with the, "woke," if I happen to agree with it, to then classify me with this label, which I do not claim for myself.

In short, there seems to be not much holding this thread together, conceptually. One could therefore say, by your own definition of religio-political thought, that this is the product of your own religious posting: trying to support a proposition, without having any rational road map to get there.

<SNIP>

We can begin our analysis of the emerging woke faith by probing its concept of the divine. Wokeness has an unconventional understanding of divinity that tends to disguise its religiosity from those accustomed to monotheism; in fact, the notion may not be fully recognized among its practitioners themselves. For the woke, identity is the source of divinity. Yet individuals are not divine on their own; they only participate in the divinity found in shared group identities.

<End Snip>

Group identity is a common feature of all sorts of human groups and occasions. In all or most of the groups I previously mentioned-- the Labor Movement, the Womens' Suffrage movement, the Vietnamese anti-War Movement-- there was a very strong identification with those groups. And that dynamic applies not just to the Tea Partiers, but to many of the millions of standard, partisan Republicans & Democrats, as well; so it would be anything but an exclusionary categorization. The thing that sets it apart, according to the writer, is the association of the group, with the DIVINE. But the proof of such a bold assertion is scant, at best. Get back to me, when people in the movement will confirm this association, of which the author uses the convenient argument, that the members of the religion may not even be aware that they are associating the group with God. Or let me know when they have weekly, "woke," services, and rites like Baptism, Confirmation, Communion (receiving of the Eucharist), and so forth. I doubt that most who accept a "woke," perspective on any particular issue, actually even identify themselves as being woke, the way one might claim to be a Christian. The article presented a very weak case. And your own, differing case, you have yet to even fully lay out. If you had done so, at some earlier point in your thread, please relate those links, or post numbers, to me. And, just as a reminder, don't forget to either quote me, or mark your post with an @DEFinning .

 

Not particularly. It was something your post inspired but it wasn't particularly in any way about you. It was meant for anyone reading this. And yes, had I wanted a response from you in particular I would have quoted you.

It looks exactly as it was intended to look. Had you never noticed it, and had somebody else reading the thread responded to it, I would not have noticed or cared. I didn't quote you because what I wrote was not about you or directed at you.

I didn't think anyone would be offended, and I don't think I missed any expected courtesy, but if you are offended then I apologize.

Nor is it what I wrote in the post you are here responding to. It isn't about having no rationally attainable goal. Where did you get that from? It is about having dogma held beyond reproach, and virtue signalling being held above and getting in the way of rational thinking about what may bring you closer to a stated goal. And that is just part of what religion is.

Trump supporters who parrot what Trump says, refuse to think about his declarations and forbid themselves and others from questioning, I WOULD say are being religious about it. Why would you think I would say otherwise?

That's not true. Just because somebody quotes something doesn't mean that they agree with it. In the OP I specifically said that I agree that woke is often a religion, and I slecifivi said why I thjnk it is. I also distinguished it from progressive movements like those who initially started BLM.

He is saying that the Woke make religion out of identity politics. And he isn't wrong about that. They add religious thinking of dogma that is not to be questioned, demonization of anyone who thinks differently, etc. They are Orthodox Woke. The ones who chant, and who segregate people by race while virtue signaling that they are "anti-racist'".

That is all very different from one who is simply secular and liberal, who cares about equal and fair treatment to all, thinks racial prejudice is stupid, doesn't engage in chants, has no dogma you can't question, etc.

Sure. Of course. And it isn't always elevated to religious thinking.

While a lot of Feminism, for example, is caught up in Woke religious thinking, not all of it is. There are plenty of Feminists who think for themselves and hold differing views. Many of them don't hold dogmatic beliefs they refuse to question. And those are the ones that can speak with non-feminists and even anti-feminists rationally without mindlessly repeating lines they may not even understand.

 

Can you give an example?

 

Let me begin by thanking you for offering an apology. I only wish to make it clear, what my objection was, which you seem to not understand. If you make an argument, and then I refute your argument, to which you offer no response, it can appear that I have, "shut you up," with an argument, for which you had nothing to come back with; I would have beaten your argument. That was the possibility, about which I had interest in preventing: it seeming that I had no response to your arguments when, in fact, the only reason for my lack of giving an answer, being that I was unaware of your response, since I would have received no notice of it. I will accept your explanation, that you did not feel you were offering a response to my argument, but I must still contend that this was exactly what you were doing, whether or not you consciously realized it. Here is a quote from my argument:

I also offered a quotation about the extremely enthusiastic, youthful, paramilitary, one might rightly consider devout group of Republicans who were behind Lincoln, in the election of 1860, the Wide Awakes (in my post #227). And I cited the Tea Partiers, as well as, in the following post, the anti-War movement, against our involvement in Vietnam (another inciter of great passion). Then, just a couple of posts later, the reader comes upon this post, of yours:

And, regardless of what was in your head at the time, it is undeniable that the appearance is that your reply about EMOTION & FERVOR, not being your primary considerations, is a direct response to my two posts, immediately preceding it, talking about all the groups-- Abolitionists, campaigners for Womens' Suffrage, etc.-- who had inspired a great sense of commitment to their causes, and a close comradery among their fellow adherents, since this is the image which your linked article had painted, in making its same argument as yours, that this was a congregation of "believers," for whom pursuing their political goals was in fact a religious experience. If you look at this objectively, you must admit that not only could one get that idea, but that some certainly would take this to be the case.

When this is so, I would expect that the author would include some reference to me, even if it is only to say that your post was, "inspired," by something you read in my posts. It is not simply a matter of whether or not you, "wanted a response," from me in particular; it is about acknowledging the connection, which I would certainly do, if the shoe were on the other foot.

But it was addressing the idea that I had just been arguing. Was there someone else, making an argument, along these lines?

I had intended to move on into the meat of your actual response, but I just accidentally hit the post button (which is uncomfortably close to the bottom line of my text, for someone whose digital, phone-finger skills are as imprecise as my own, so this is not an uncommon occurrence). So I will leave it here, for now. Again, accepting your apology, no hard feelings, but wanting you to understand what, exactly, it was that I had been saying about why it was the appropriate thing, IMO, to receive an alert notice, under this type of circumstance.

 

Lovely. Brainwashing highschool kids to use words like "POC" to refer to everyone who isn't white (dividing us) and to believe this entire highly multi-racial and multi- cultural nation doesn't like us.

This sort of identity politics is politically correct racism. I wonder how long this politically correct form of racism will flourish.

And I wonder if it will end by old school racism growing or by racism generally shrinking, including politically correct racism.

 

To use a small agrarian community as an example (though it applies to any sized community - even a nation), it would be when member/s do not meet their obligation to be secure and stable, and thus able to provide support to other members in their moments of need. A circle of trust can only exist when each person in it meets their minimum obligation to be a provider of support. When a member receives but does not provide, they have broken trust, and the strength of the circle is compromised.

 

This is off topic, but an interesting side discussion. Can we get a mod to split it off into a separate thread?

 

Apologies, I was answering a request for an example. Happy to take the discussion elsewhere, though. Will start a thread.

Edited to add it will be in Political Opinions.

 

#notallmen

One of the kids who lives in my house has a class called “Social Justice”. Her assignment this week was to write about #metoo. As a result of her research into me too she also discussed #notallmen.

The narrative about #notallmen is that all men are guilty of oppressing women because all men benefit from the oppression of women whether they actively know it or not.

Apparently, at some point some woman posted about sexual harassment or assault and when a man commented that not all men do that she pointed out that it’s “not productive” to point out that not all men assault women.

Some women who post under the #notallmen hashtag are very concerned that the hashtag is trending. When I searched it up I didn’t find men posting on Twitter that they don’t think all men are guilty of misogyny, I only saw women presenting their arguments that all men are guilty.

It’s interesting because I often hear this kid generalizing about other groups of people. She often generalizes that white people are racist. She often generalizes that her generation is amazing because they are free of racism and sexism and homophobia. She often generalizes that boomers are terrible people because that generation is racist and homophobic.

 

Prejudice and bigotry are a trap anybody can fall into, no matter how well meaning they think they are or claim to be. And all racists think they are on the moral high ground. Pretty much everyone does.