Even the very best of things can become twisted and evil if you turn off your brain, turn off your humanity, turn off your heart.
The positive value of loyalty was twisted and turned evil by the Japanese in WWII and it resulted in countless atrocities such as the rape of nanking.
The positive value of purity was twisted and turned evil by the Germans in WWII, and it too resulted in atrocities such as the concentration camps. Arguably, Saudi Arabia's worst excesses come from such a place as well.
The positive value of fairness was twisted and turned evil by the British in the 1800s, and it resulted in extreme class division under the idea that those who were doing well did so by their own merit and those who did not had obviously done so by their lack of merit, as well as treating those in the lower classes horribly because the world is fair so you must deserve what happened to you!
The positive value of liberty was twisted and turned evil in iceland, where pure liberty ended up turning into massive multi-generational blood feuds, the worst of what people fear would come from unlimited liberty. Arguably some of the worst excesses of early American colonisation came from a similar place.
The positive value of security was twisted and turned evil in the war on terror in America, where many basic human rights were infringed in the name of security.
The positive value of meritocracy is twisted and turned evil in many Asian countries, where the young are placed under such tremendous pressure to perform that it causes massive social problems, as well as myopia in adults because they spent every spare second studying for the next test for decades on end.
The world is not black and white, but many shades of grey, and so too is no single value only good or only evil, but consisting of many different attributes which interact with the world where those attributes exist in different ways with different outcomes in different situations. Therefore, people can't just turn off their brains and assume they're doing the right thing because they're following a good value. The world isn't that easy.
Often, these things happen in part because when one value is elevated above all others, people start to figure out how to re-frame getting what they want in terms of that value. The Japanese gets what he wants because it'll help the Empire. The German gets what he wants because it'll help the pure Aryan race. The Brit gets what he wants because it's only fair, the Icelander gets what he wants because that's what it means to be free.
Human beings are master rationalizers, and so over time they can build great obelisks of philosophy balanced on a single twig. A twig is not a firm foundation upon which to build such a philosophy, so inevitably the obelisk topples over, but a philosophy is not like a physical obelisk, even one that has been toppled can continue to be built as if there's nothing wrong even if it's obvious to everyone else there's a big problem.
Wokeness is one such obelisk. It was once much more balanced when it was younger, but it has been coopted by so many interests that it is no longer on even a twig of foundation whereas previously it had quite a strong foundation.
There is an image floating around of all the evil corporations happily throwing out their rainbow flags. Do you think they're doing it because they're good? These are companies like Phillip Morris, who sell cancer causing cigarettes, and paid off surgeon generals to lie about the cancer, and paid for studies for decades to muddy the water lest cigarette sales be affected, suddenly good and just? Halliburton was a key figure in the disastrous Iraq war, suddenly they're woke. Do you think it's because they're suddenly the good guys? The pharmaceutical industry is filled with some of the most evil people on earth, yet they're all super woke now. Are they the good guys and none of that other stuff ever happened?
And the sad thing is, that worked. Somehow, companies are attaching their soulless corporate products to the idea of equality and justice. Which is absurd. You mean to tell me that to refuse to take the pharmaceutical industry's latest poison, or the film industry's latest billion dollar mind poison actually means you hate women and black people? Think about that proposition for a second. Especially given the history of most industries regarding women and black people.
Similarly, and I think this is the key to all of this, about 10 years ago I started to see a lot of really angry people start to move into what was previously a pretty chill movement. At first they festered in their little echo chambers where they hatefully built ideologies that actively demanded genocide of certain groups (and calling for those genocides is considered acceptable in modern wokeness and will not generally be punished by our woke corporate overlords), threatened violence against political enemies, made unreasonable and bullying demands of innocent people, and overall just seethed in toxic hate.
Those little communities of toxic hate and entitlement were benign at first in the sense that they were siloed, but eventually they metastasised, and brought their cancerous hate everywhere. That would be the moment that the word "woke" started to be such a universally loathed phrase.
If you stop feeling guilty for a second, and stop feeling angry for a second, and look at some of the latest stuff coming out of some of these movements with eyes unclouded by guilt or hate, this new ideology isn't what my entire generation grew up believing. Many people who believe in justice will look at what academia (a thoroughly infected class of people if any exist) defines "whiteness" as and be disgusted by what looks like pure bigotry. If you were a member of the KKK, I suspect academic "whiteness" would be just fine.
A movement that once idolized Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi suddenly gleefully pronounced "Punch a Nazi!" (Where 'a Nazi' is just anyone who slightly disagrees with you), and all tactics are allowable because wokeness has rationalized that all who disagree in the least actually are literal 1945 Nazis and so they aren't even human beings anymore.
A movement that once asked for equal treatment under the law now cheers for explicitly racist laws that lay out exactly what each race gets.
A movement that once convincingly argues that not all black people are responsible for the crimes committed by a few suddenly argues that all white people are responsible for the crimes committed by a few.
A movement that saw injustice against women and fretted constantly about issues of sexual consent and peer pressure suddenly loudly proclaimed "You will have sex with this person over here or you are one of *THEM* and will be dealt with appropriately"
A belief in tolerance and diversity never went away for most people. But most people aren't hypocrites and cannot simultaneously support tolerance and diversity and support wokeness because the two are not compatible belief systems.
Even the very best of things can become twisted and evil if you turn off your brain, turn off your humanity, turn off your heart.
I fear what will come of the values I grew up with when this abomination finally dies. I hope the cancer doesn't take the patient with it. Most of us care for the patient.
The positive value of loyalty was twisted and turned evil by the Japanese in WWII and it resulted in countless atrocities such as the rape of nanking.
The positive value of purity was twisted and turned evil by the Germans in WWII, and it too resulted in atrocities such as the concentration camps. Arguably, Saudi Arabia's worst excesses come from such a place as well.
The positive value of fairness was twisted and turned evil by the British in the 1800s, and it resulted in extreme class division under the idea that those who were doing well did so by their own merit and those who did not had obviously done so by their lack of merit, as well as treating those in the lower classes horribly because the world is fair so you must deserve what happened to you!
The positive value of liberty was twisted and turned evil in iceland, where pure liberty ended up turning into massive multi-generational blood feuds, the worst of what people fear would come from unlimited liberty. Arguably some of the worst excesses of early American colonisation came from a similar place.
The positive value of security was twisted and turned evil in the war on terror in America, where many basic human rights were infringed in the name of security.
The positive value of meritocracy is twisted and turned evil in many Asian countries, where the young are placed under such tremendous pressure to perform that it causes massive social problems, as well as myopia in adults because they spent every spare second studying for the next test for decades on end.
The world is not black and white, but many shades of grey, and so too is no single value only good or only evil, but consisting of many different attributes which interact with the world where those attributes exist in different ways with different outcomes in different situations. Therefore, people can't just turn off their brains and assume they're doing the right thing because they're following a good value. The world isn't that easy.
Often, these things happen in part because when one value is elevated above all others, people start to figure out how to re-frame getting what they want in terms of that value. The Japanese gets what he wants because it'll help the Empire. The German gets what he wants because it'll help the pure Aryan race. The Brit gets what he wants because it's only fair, the Icelander gets what he wants because that's what it means to be free.
Human beings are master rationalizers, and so over time they can build great obelisks of philosophy balanced on a single twig. A twig is not a firm foundation upon which to build such a philosophy, so inevitably the obelisk topples over, but a philosophy is not like a physical obelisk, even one that has been toppled can continue to be built as if there's nothing wrong even if it's obvious to everyone else there's a big problem.
Wokeness is one such obelisk. It was once much more balanced when it was younger, but it has been coopted by so many interests that it is no longer on even a twig of foundation whereas previously it had quite a strong foundation.
There is an image floating around of all the evil corporations happily throwing out their rainbow flags. Do you think they're doing it because they're good? These are companies like Phillip Morris, who sell cancer causing cigarettes, and paid off surgeon generals to lie about the cancer, and paid for studies for decades to muddy the water lest cigarette sales be affected, suddenly good and just? Halliburton was a key figure in the disastrous Iraq war, suddenly they're woke. Do you think it's because they're suddenly the good guys? The pharmaceutical industry is filled with some of the most evil people on earth, yet they're all super woke now. Are they the good guys and none of that other stuff ever happened?
And the sad thing is, that worked. Somehow, companies are attaching their soulless corporate products to the idea of equality and justice. Which is absurd. You mean to tell me that to refuse to take the pharmaceutical industry's latest poison, or the film industry's latest billion dollar mind poison actually means you hate women and black people? Think about that proposition for a second. Especially given the history of most industries regarding women and black people.
Similarly, and I think this is the key to all of this, about 10 years ago I started to see a lot of really angry people start to move into what was previously a pretty chill movement. At first they festered in their little echo chambers where they hatefully built ideologies that actively demanded genocide of certain groups (and calling for those genocides is considered acceptable in modern wokeness and will not generally be punished by our woke corporate overlords), threatened violence against political enemies, made unreasonable and bullying demands of innocent people, and overall just seethed in toxic hate.
Those little communities of toxic hate and entitlement were benign at first in the sense that they were siloed, but eventually they metastasised, and brought their cancerous hate everywhere. That would be the moment that the word "woke" started to be such a universally loathed phrase.
If you stop feeling guilty for a second, and stop feeling angry for a second, and look at some of the latest stuff coming out of some of these movements with eyes unclouded by guilt or hate, this new ideology isn't what my entire generation grew up believing. Many people who believe in justice will look at what academia (a thoroughly infected class of people if any exist) defines "whiteness" as and be disgusted by what looks like pure bigotry. If you were a member of the KKK, I suspect academic "whiteness" would be just fine.
A movement that once idolized Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi suddenly gleefully pronounced "Punch a Nazi!" (Where 'a Nazi' is just anyone who slightly disagrees with you), and all tactics are allowable because wokeness has rationalized that all who disagree in the least actually are literal 1945 Nazis and so they aren't even human beings anymore.
A movement that once asked for equal treatment under the law now cheers for explicitly racist laws that lay out exactly what each race gets.
A movement that once convincingly argues that not all black people are responsible for the crimes committed by a few suddenly argues that all white people are responsible for the crimes committed by a few.
A movement that saw injustice against women and fretted constantly about issues of sexual consent and peer pressure suddenly loudly proclaimed "You will have sex with this person over here or you are one of *THEM* and will be dealt with appropriately"
A belief in tolerance and diversity never went away for most people. But most people aren't hypocrites and cannot simultaneously support tolerance and diversity and support wokeness because the two are not compatible belief systems.
Even the very best of things can become twisted and evil if you turn off your brain, turn off your humanity, turn off your heart.
I fear what will come of the values I grew up with when this abomination finally dies. I hope the cancer doesn't take the patient with it. Most of us care for the patient.
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