by I. Karamazov
Political dissidents who get into arguments with Woke Folk over the exact nature of “systems of oppression” will inevitably find themselves confronted by rhetoric of a sort that often catches them off guard. This rhetoric is, by design, meant to paint political dissidents as myopic stooges who are unwilling to “listen to the Lived Experiences of marginalized people,” thus making them unwittingly complicit in systems of oppression. In this essay, we will explore the concept of “Lived Experiences” (capitalized and scare-quoted) as understood by Woke Folk, and why this conceptualization is fundamentally deficient. Political dissidents would be well advised to consider the arguments of this essay with care, as “Lived Experiences” are foundational to Woke Ideology; indeed, dismantling Woke notions of “Lived Experiences” may be the single most effective means of preserving the integrity of liberal democratic institutions from Woke encroachment. Consequently, a firm understanding of the topic and of how to address it when engaging with Woke ideology will be the focus of this essay.
Before we can address what the concept of “Lived Experiences” entails, however, we must address its function. As was mentioned in an earlier essay, the empirical claims that are made by Woke Folk seldom survive evidential and analytical scrutiny. This is a problem for ideas in a culture which values such things as evidence and reasoned argument (as opposed to arguments from authority and moral blackmail.) Evidence and reasoned argument are the currency with which ideas earn their right to be taken seriously in liberal democracies. The tenets of Woke ideology, which are in frequent conflict with both, must therefore somehow be made adaptable to an environment which is hostile to dogmatic proclamations of unsubstantiated certainty, and the concept of “Lived Experiences” is the mechanism intended to achieve this.
The context in which Woke Folk are likely to appeal to the “Lived Experiences” of certain demographics is in the generation of knowledge claims. Indeed, intersectionality, which is the dominant paradigm under which Woke Folk are influenced, is practically founded upon the notion of “Lived Experiences.”
At first glance, it might appear that the term “Lived Experiences” is merely a somewhat belabored way of referring to events that one has personally experienced: i.e, while I was walking down the street, someone bumped into my shoulder without stopping to apologize. Under this innocent conception of the term, “Lived Experiences” are synonymous with “events,” “experiences,” and “occurrences.” A “Lived Experience,” under this view, is merely a report of what happened. This is not what Woke Folk are talking about when they refer to “Lived Experiences.”
A “Lived Experience” is an event that has been interpreted by Woke Folk as manifesting oppression: i.e, while I was walking down the street, someone bumped into my shoulder without stopping to apologize because they were racist. This is the difference between an experience and a “Lived Experience;” the former is an empirical claim that relays an event that is independently verifiable and is thus subject to scrutiny under public reason. The latter is a phenomenological claim which colors an event with intentionality, or its “aboutness relation;” and crucially, that relation is not subject to independent scrutiny. The empiricist reports on an event that occurred at some point in time and space; the phenomenologist relays the meaning of that event as interpreted by the phenomenologist.
It might be helpful to illustrate the difference between these two types of thought in terms of scientific study versus literary criticism. Two engineers might be engaged in a disagreement over the amount of rocket fuel needed to deliver a spaceship into orbit. One might argue that there isn’t enough fuel to sustain the rocket’s flight, and the other might argue that the mass of the fuel will weigh down the rocket too much and prevent it from reaching escape velocity. The empirical and mathematical frameworks afforded to the engineers will allow them to resolve their dispute through mathematical argumentation and, if it comes to it, experimentation (i.e launch two otherwise identical rockets with different amounts of fuel and see which of them, if either, makes it into space.) Ultimately, there exist conceptual tools that are at the disposal of the scientifically-minded empiricist which, when properly applied, allow for the unambiguous resolution of disputes.
By contrast, two bibliophiles might be engaged in a disagreement as to the proper interpretation of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. When the titular character commits suicide at the end of the novel by crouching under a train, the question might be posed as to whether Tolstoy was condemning his adulterous protagonist to her rightful comeuppance in a sexist scene that was intended to leave the reader satisfied with her punishment, or whether he was presenting a sympathetic portrait of an unfairly maligned outcast in a feminist scene that was intended to leave the reader outraged at the hypocritical society that drove Anna to kill herself. Our two hypothetical readers might argue endlessly over their interpretations of this scene and its connections to the themes of the story. One might argue that Tolstoy was sexist because he was influenced by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, who was quite misogynistic even by the standards of 19th-century Germany, and that these sentiments seeped into Tolstoy’s novel. The other might argue that Tolstoy himself had expressed sympathy for Anna in personal letters to friends, and that the structure of the novel lent itself to a tragic, rather than triumphant, ending. Still another interlocutor might butt in and argue that the author’s intentions are completely irrelevant and that our own interpretations are all that matter in literary criticism, and that in their own view, Anna seemed to them (for whatever reason) to be a repressed lesbian, so Tolstoy’s scene is actually guilty of homophobia. Regardless of whether or not these arguments ever end up getting resolved, one thing is for certain: there is no unambiguously right answer to the question of whether Anna’s suicide in Tolstoy’s 1877 masterpiece was an expression of his misogynistic sentiments, a feminist lamentation over his society’s treatment of women, or neither. Answers to this question cannot be regarded as true or false because the question falls outside of the category of questions that can be addressed by true or false propositions. The very best that one might be able to do is to marshal textual arguments in support of one’s own interpretation and try to convince others of its merits, but at no point will there be a stage in which the question is decided in the same manner as the aforementioned engineers’ dispute concerning rocket fuel.
Matters which are of interest to those who analyze the truth of empirical claims have unambiguously right and wrong answers, and matters which are of interest to those who evaluate textual interpretations have no such answers. It is a category error to attempt to apply the equations of force and motion to the question of how to properly interpret the ending of Anna Karenina, and it is similarly erroneous to attempt to apply to the tools of literary criticism to the question of how much rocket fuel needs to be loaded onto a spaceship. It is this category error that is central to the problems of Woke Folks’ understanding of “Lived Experiences” (as well as much of the contents of social science research which rely on interpretive methodology- a discussion for another time.)
The issue with the role of interpretation when assessing empirical claims is the potential unavailability of unambiguously true judgements. This problem is not limited to textual criticism of the sort favored by psychoanalysts and phenomenologists, but to scientists and engineers as well. The problem is that, even in apparently clear-cut cases such as the hypothetical rocket scenario, there exist a plurality of relevant facts that are connected to one another via inferential relations such that the meanings of the theories employed can only be found holistically. That is to say, the theory endorsed by the first engineer in their solution to the rocket problem employs one web of inferential relations between the relevant facts, and the theory endorsed by the second engineer employs a different web of inferential relations between the relevant facts. They are both working with the same set of facts, but they assign different weights of importance to those facts and consequently arrive at different conclusions. In the case of the rocket scenario, and in science generally, experiment is the ultimate mediator between competing theories, which is all well and good when the system under study can be understood by well-established theories with predictive and explanatory power. Though there are some scientific questions at the cutting edge of research that are too ambiguously underdetermined by the available facts to allow for anyone to render conclusive judgements, the body of scientific knowledge that is widely regarded as “established” does just that. And the reason for this is that the systems described by the body of “established” scientific knowledge are cast in terms of theories that demonstrably meet the predictive and explanatory criteria that are demanded of them.
The situation becomes much murkier when the system under consideration is not described by such theories- systems like those regarded by Woke Folk as being institutionally oppressive. In such instances, there do not as yet appear to be any comprehensive theories with predictive and explanatory power that can arbitrate between competing models of society, and in many ways, this is a central problem to the social sciences more generally (again, forthcoming essay on the topic.) Thus the social theorist who wishes to evaluate the workings of such systems must employ theories which, in their character, much more closely resemble the analytic frameworks employed by the textual critic than those employed by the engineer; consequently, the problem of the unavailability of unambiguously true judgements carries over.
The “Lived Experiences” meme is an attempt to bypass this problem by casting knowledge in terms of a pluralistic epistemology. Epistemology is that field of philosophy which is concerned with the nature of knowledge, and might be best understood in terms of its relation to the egocentric problem. The egocentric problem, simply stated, is that knowledge contingent upon our senses is subject to possible error and manipulation, which renders absolute certainty as to the state of the world a potential impossibility. The history of epistemology, from Plato’s allegory of the cave in Book VII of The Republic to Kant’s transcendental idealism in The Critique of Pure Reason, is a history of the tension between the egocentric problem and the practical demands of living in a world where one’s beliefs have consequences. We simply cannot, as a practical matter, treat our perceptions of the world as inconsequential simply because we lack certainty of their verisimilitude. Epistemology, from a cynical perspective, might be regarded as the application of philosophical tricks, from Descartes’ Cogito to Kant’s synthetic a priori, to give an account of our perceptions of the world and why they matter. It’s the field of philosophy in which we acknowledge that despite our lack of direct access to a world beyond our senses, we still need to find a way to explain how it is we can come to know anything, as well as what it even means to “know.”
It is this latter question of what it means to “know” something that represents the point of greatest philosophical divergence between Woke Folk and political dissidents, as the former hold to radically subjectivist accounts of knowledge whilst the latter insist upon at least some measure of objectivity. It is difficult to overstate the importance of the epistemic chasm that separates Woke Folk from political dissidents; indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that if this epistemic dispute were to be resolved immediately, the Culture War would end tomorrow.
The problem is that Woke Folk are radically skeptical of objectivity; they do not believe that it is possible to acquire knowledge of the world in a manner that stands independently of particular social values. A detailed exposition of how their epistemology is derived lies beyond the scope of this article, as does a comprehensive critique of it; for the present purposes, it is sufficient to note that Woke Folk believe in a plurality of “knowledges” that are dependent upon membership in particular demographics, and that “objectivity” is just the name given by straight white males to their own particular type of “knowledge.”
Woke Folk assert that the balance of power in society between straight white males and everybody else has imposed a culture that values evidence and reasoned argument over the more “authentic” ways of knowing that are particular to other demographics, including storytelling, mythologies, and traditional forms of “knowledge.” The philosophical lines of thought that inform these conclusions are, for our present purposes, immaterial; what matters here is the function served by this move. By pivoting from standards of discourse that are universally and independently accountable to our senses and reason, to standards of discourse in which the conclusions that are rendered are not open to challenge or confrontation from the outside, Woke Folk aim to introduce ideas that are effectively immune from criticism. Under a paradigm that values reason and evidence, an interlocutor is welcomed to challenge ideas in a fashion that allows anyone from any walk of life to evaluate concepts. But under a paradigm in which “Lived Experiences,” which are the subjective interpretations of events from one’s demographically-dependent base of “knowledge,” are held as immutable and not open to discussion or debate, all interlocutors are obligated to listen and believe.
Whether Woke Folk realize it or not, the call to “listen to the ‘Lived Experiences’ of the marginalized” is an attempt to subvert the standards of evidence and reasoned argument for the purpose of sneaking in claims that aren’t meant to be challenged. The reason for this should be fairly clear to those who are familiar with the few arguments of Woke Folk that are actually touchable by evidence and argumentation: under even minimal scrutiny, most of the beliefs offered by Woke Folk, from Implicit Association Tests’ supposed ability to demonstrate the subconscious mechanisms by which structural racism is promulgated, to the allegation that the gender earnings gap is a consequence of institutional sexism, quickly fall apart. Recognizing this, it became necessary for Woke Folk to artificially inflate their repertoire of arguments and evidence with a form of “evidence” that is immune to scrutiny; thus were born “Lived Experiences.”
It is generally inadvisable to engage in a comprehensive critique of the epistemology of the Woke, as few of them are even aware of how their ideology works. Advice for how to engage in those rarer, more complex discussions will have to await essays that explicitly and comprehensively tackle the ins and outs of Woke epistemology. This essay is meant for the more practical interlocutor who simply wishes to engage the average Joe who parrots the Woke talking point of “Lived Experiences.” The political dissident, though well served by a deep understanding of the flaws in Woke epistemology, will have difficulty interpreting that knowledge to their opponent during an exchange, who might interpret the pivot into esoteric philosophy as a diversion. No- for the typical conversation with the ordinary Woke activist, it is sufficient to simply dismantle their application of “Lived Experiences” by making the conversation about evidence and reasoned argument, and this requires the following to be articulated.
First, the political dissident must make clear that the standards by which the contents of Woke ideology will be evaluated are evidence and reasoned argument. If this is not granted, then no conversation can be had without a thorough discussion of epistemology, which this essay is not intended to prepare the reader for. In response to the political dissident drawing a line in the sand, Woke Folk are likely to retort that the “denial of the ‘Lived Experiences’ of the marginalized” is tantamount to “erasing their voices,” “denying their humanity,” and just all-around lacking compassion.
It is at this point that the political dissident must pounce. The political dissident must state clearly and unequivocally that subjective interpretations attendant upon anecdotal testimonies will not be accepted as evidence, as though the marginalized people being cited were the Pope speaking ex cathedra. No- all human beings, as fallible creatures, might be wrong in their interpretations of their experiences. And what is being rejected is not the collection of experiences of the marginalized, but the interpretation of those experiences as issuing from systems of oppression. This is a critical distinction that must be recognized if a productive conversation is to ensue, and unless Woke Folk are prepared to posit the infallibility of the marginalized, then they must accept the legitimacy of skepticism towards subjective interpretation as a metric for truth. The simple fact of the matter is that until the social sciences come up with a theoretical paradigm in which differences of interpretation might reliably be adjudicated, disagreements over the interpretations of “Lived Experience” will yield as little truth as disagreements over the interpretations of the ending of Anna Karenina.
Armed with all of this information, the political dissident is now armed to engage in confrontations of the following character.
Political dissident: “What is your reason for believing in the existence of a system of oppression pertaining to x?”
Woke Folk: “There is a gap in outcome x between the dominant group and the marginalized group. This suggests that the dominant group is oppressing the marginalized group.”
Political dissident: “The existence of a gap in outcomes is not necessarily a consequence of systemic oppression. What evidence do you have to suggest that the cause of this gap is owed to oppression?”
Woke Folk: “I listen to the Lived Experiences of marginalized group x. If you’d have done that too, then you’d have all the evidence that you need.”
Political dissident: “But the anecdotal testimony of a person, or even of the several people you’ve listened to, isn’t sufficient to establish the existence of these systems that you speak of. All that these people’s testimonies would establish is their interpretation of their experiences, which can differ from the actual causes of their experiences.”
Woke Folk: “Why are you denying the Lived Experiences of marginalized people? Where is your compassion? Do you consider marginalized people to be unworthy of being listened to by you? Why are you denying their humanity and erasing their voices?”
Political dissident: “My rejection of these testimonies is predicated upon my recognition of the fact that the members of this demographic are, like all human beings, not infallible. Their interpretations of their experiences are not incorrigible, and acknowledging this is not tantamount to lacking compassion, considering them to be unworthy, denying their humanity, or erasing their voices. I simply think that these subjective experiences should not be treated as though the people expressing them are omniscient.”
Woke Folk: “I never said that I think that they’re infallible, I just think that it’s virtuous to be compassionate and to listen to other people’s truths.”
Political dissident: “I agree that it’s important to be compassionate and to listen. But being compassionate and listening does not obligate me to share in their interpretation of their experiences. If you agree that they’re not infallible, then you will not object to this.”
Woke Folk: “Fine, so what would it take to convince you that differences in outcome x between these groups is owed to systemic oppression?”
Political dissident: “Evidence and reasoned argument, neither of which can admit personal interpretations of anecdotal testimony. Are you prepared to have that conversation?”
Woke Folk: “Fine, let’s talk evidence.”
Having thus successfully maneuvered Woke Folk into the realm of evidence and reasoned argument, the political dissident is now in a position to deliver a coup de grace, for the intersectionalist who is barred from relying upon appeals to “Lived Experience” is as helpless as a fish in the desert. Sit back and enjoy watching the ideologue flop around helplessly in the hostile sands of empirical reality and under the garish sunlight of reason.
POSTSCRIPT:
The appeal to “Lived Experiences” is not the only rhetorical strategy deployed by Woke Folk, but it ranks as among the most important (if not the most important.) Still, there are other rhetorical strategies at play, and counter-strategies must be developed and understood so that engagements with Woke Folk end favorably for the political dissident. If there is interest in future essays to this effect, please share and clap for this essay. With enough encouragement, I might be willing to impart additional experience on these matters to the devoted reader.
This article was originally published at Medium.
69 comments
Amazing and wonderfully laid out. I made my own cliff notes to explain it to the masses if ever allowed. (of course, linking to actual article) And many of the comments are excellent as well. Why can’t we see reasoned debate like this ANYWHERE on MSM? Such frustration….
“Almost all of your complaints can be answered simply: grant government subsidies to businesses that pursue these practices.”
I was not registering complaints, but offering refutations and responses to those you made. To assert that subsidies are a “simple” answer belies a profound ignorance of macroeconomics and how subsidies are implemented, administered, and monitored. Regardless, that and some of your other absurd, unsubstantiated, and demonstrably false claims are completely off topic and veering down a rabbit hole I have neither the time nor inclination to follow you down.
“…but my point here is that instead of attacking a non-existent ideology (the woke – a term used ironically by the left until very recently) you could engage with the actual progressive policy solutions proposed by the people behind the “movement.””
I understand your point and refuted it before you tried to redirect it into your reductivist takes on extraordinarily complex policy proposals.
So if you want to circle this thing back around to the topic and address specifically the points I addressed to you, then be my guest. If you want to drag this out into discussions about how to fix problems caused by government intervention with even more government intervention, you’ll have to do so without me.
Within the social sciences there are competing paradigms for interpreting data. Positivism is the dominant paradigm for those doing quantitative research but positivism makes little sense when dealing with qualitative data. Thus, interpretivism and other schools of thought are applied to the “lived experiences” of individual research participants. Out of the social sciences have grown debates about epistemology, about critical social justice (including CRT) and about the subsequent policy debates. From what I can tell, this site does a relatively good job of accurately reflecting the tenets of these schools of thought. The problem is that none of the academics within these spaces would use the term “woke.” It’s a meaningless, ironic term. I should know, I’m a social scientist with a PhD in public policy and I live within these spaces. While aspects of CSJ theories have seeped into the mainstream, I think it’s conspiratorial and harmful to allege the existence of a homogeneous woke movement. It prevents you from engaging with the actual purposes behind the academic studies. Here’s what I mean…
The New Deal explicitly left out domestic and farm workers (who were mostly black) because of a compromise with southern Democrats. Black women in particular occupied a structurally oppressed place of domestic servitude and were cut off from government assistance. Black women consequently – according to scholars like Patricia Hill Collins – developed cultural attachments to care and domestic work that have persisted post-Jim Crow. In other words, there is a combined legacy of structural alienation and cultural attachment to care work. How do we know this? Well, we can look to quantitative data that shows a large number of black women either unemployed or employed in care work OR we can listen to lived experiences of women who tell us the importance of this care work to their culture. My point is, we have multiple types of data leading us to the same conclusion: a large number of black women spend much of their time engaged in either unpaid or poorly paid care work within the home.
Why do academics spend time and intellect dedicated to uncovering this truth? The answer is, at least from a public policy standpoint, to influence policy. That’s why scholars like Delgado and Albelda have connected the past oppression of groups like black women and the contemporary advancement of policy reforms. One solution to economic displacement of black women would be to hope more of them compete within traditionally male-dominated careers, but this is inconsistent with their cultural attachment to care work which originally arose out of their exclusion from other forms of work. Another option (which I favor) would be to pay them more for their low-or-unpaid care work. You can say that such a suggestion betrays a profound ignorance of macroeconomics (I have a Master’s in economics) but twenty years ago people would have said the same about quantitative easing. The Federal Reserve has claimed unheralded power to create and distribute money over the past decade. A policy like a guaranteed monthly income or subsidies/reparations for black women could be passed by a Democratic congress and financed by the same mechanism we finance quantitative easing or any other form of Fed stimulus. (Check out Frances Coppola’s The Case For People’s Quantitative Easing).
My intent is not to digress into policy (or follow a rabbit hole). Rather, I am trying to demonstrate that the reason scholars turned to things like “lived experiences” was as a way to interpret qualitative data within the social sciences. Their commitment to that kind of research was born in the desire to propose feminist and anti-racist policy solutions to structural problems. This is a very different world from what this site portrays as a public movement of “woke” ideology.
My original point was that the facts are indisputable. There are a large number of black women engaged in low-paid and unpaid care work. They do tell us that they have a cultural attachment to this type of work. What we can dispute is what to do about it. I favor progressive government policies that ARE possible given unified Democratic control of government. I favor these things because I value – in a John Rawls way – setting up policies that benefit the least successful among us (one of his two principals of Justice).
I do think that by trying to find flaws within a public “woke” movement you are straw-manning and missing the point. CSJ and CRT were never meant to be tenets of a public movement. They are academic disciplines committed to birthing radical policy solutions to what they perceive as public problems.
Regarding your original two policy “refutations,” you make going off to have kids sound like a vacation for women. If we paid women to have kids or restructured work environments around having kids we might encourage more women to have them (which would help with our declining birth rate). We CAN pay companies (big or small) to restructure. If it leads to increased economic activity it’s not going to contribute to inflation.
As for redlining, you are right that subprime mortgages led to the financial crisis. I would have favored a larger stimulus package that paid off those borrowers’ mortgages (in addition to saving the banks). I still favor mortgage assistance but I also advocate for place-based revitalization. This would include investments in public housing, schools, public parks, environmental cleanup, business incentives, etc. Combined with rent control or rent assistance, we can revitalize formerly red-lined neighborhoods in ways we should have done sixty years ago.
“Regarding your original two policy “refutations,” you make going off to have kids sound like a vacation for women. “
That’s simply an imputation on your part and not reflected in anything I wrote. The inarguable fact of the matter is that women’s decision to leave the workforce and have children is a personal one – a choice men are not afforded.
Regarding the rest of your response here and above, as I’ve said a few times, I’m not interested in debating policy or partisan cheerleading.
The argument that “Woke” ideology doesn’t exist simply because academics don’t use the term is wholly unpersuasive. The fact that one need not venture from this website to find an example of academics using the term right at the top of the page (which explains in detail the concept you still seem to think isn’t well-defined) casts some serious doubt on your superficial sematic objection. [See here https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-woke-wokeness/%5D
Offering up your lack of personal experience with the Woke movement (well-documented here and elsewhere) is particularly unconvincing. It’s sort of like claiming the #MeToo movement isn’t really a thing because it lacks academic window dressing.
Your public policy argument is still tangential. What you outline is not “truth”, but correlation presented as causation after reducing extraordinarily complex human systems down to a couple of quantifiable data points (or isolating a couple of variables from what is ultimately inseverable from the system to which it belongs) and then making broad claims as justification for broad intervention. Once again, I lack the time or inclination to follow you down that rabbit hole because it is hardly “truth” and wide open to interpretation and debate (yes, including on economic grounds, on which there is no consensus or even useful predictive power, despite your previous absurd implications).
“Rather, I am trying to demonstrate that the reason scholars turned to things like “lived experiences” was as a way to interpret qualitative data within the social sciences.”
You are making a truth claim based on what is too heavily exposed to subjective interpretation. The social “sciences” are riddled with this sort of fallacious thinking.
“Their commitment to that kind of research was born in the desire to propose feminist and anti-racist policy solutions to structural problems.”
And the research is questionable, to put it charitably.
“This is a very different world from what this site portrays as a public movement of “woke” ideology.”
No, it is not, for reasons this website describes in great detail. Feminist and Anti-racist ideology is just that – ideology which shares all the characteristics and roots outlined on this website.
“My original point was that the facts are indisputable.”
You have presented many disputable “facts”, but they are not related to your original point, which I suppose I should remind you was that “Woke” doesn’t exist.
“CSJ and CRT were never meant to be tenets of a public movement. They are academic disciplines committed to birthing radical policy solutions to what they perceive as public problems.”
Policy solutions require public consent. To get public consent, you have public movements. To assert that radical leftwing academic disciplines like CSJ and CRT do not intend to foster or birth public movements is to ignore the last sixty years of well-known history.
Funny to see applied post modernists struggling to accept skepticism isn’t it?
love it.
Great strategy! Always remember that facts and evidence always are what counts not feelings Look at it this way what we know about the Nazis documented planning and execution of the Holocaust is proof together with the testimonies of survivors of the ghettos and the concentration camps as well as those survived the Gulag Archipelago and documents released during Glasnosr Someone who claims to be discriminated against in terms of unequal results or based on the claim that only a member of a purportedly discriminated against minority or gender can make no such claim
Regarding Anna Karenina, I found Anna incredibly selfish, naïve, immoral, inconsiderate, self-loathing, and vain. She didn’t deserve to die, but she got what she asked for.
Regarding the author I. Karamazov, real name or not, Tolstoy is wrong to use Alyosha as a paragon. Ivan has the thought process we should emulate. Certainly not Dmitri.
Regarding this article, I agree that it is crucial, if objectivity and evidence are not permitted, to argue that the basis of a “Lived Experience” (“LE”) interpretation is the most vulnerable but also most critical target: both a hard and soft target. If Woke Folk argue that myriad POC’s “LE” converge to illustrate a white systemic oppression, on what basis do they reject myriad white males’ “LE” that there is no such system? Woke Folk: “You can’t see it because you benefit from it; if you suffered from it, you’d see it.” On what grounds are we assigning higher value or TRUTH to one “LE” over another?
If white males benefit from the “system”, then there must be an agent to give that benefit. Supposing white males unknowingly treat each other better than they treat others (POC, women, etc.), do women also treat women better than they treat others? Do POC favor POC too? If white males also receive favorable treatment from non-white (aka POC) non-males (aka women), then everyone is complicit.
If white males do NOT receive favorable treatment from them, then only white males favor white males–leaving POC and women to favor themselves, which means those “identities” behave no differently than white males. Therefore, the systemic oppression is an illusion. Instead, we have reciprocal oppression, which makes NO ONE marginalized.
Woke Folk would then have to argue that their interpretation concluding a perceived oppression (i.e. “LE”) is inherently more accurate than the “LE” of dissenters who claim there isn’t any oppression. Hypothetically, white males could easily say that they experience oppression too. Should Woke Folk dispute this (deny a “LE”), perhaps calling it a lie, how did they determine the truth of people whose “LE” suggests a dominant white male hierarchy / power dynamic? Justify & qualify the conclusion that one “LE” is more factually accurate than another.
Perception is not reality.
Dennis Prager used to discuss this phenomenon on his radio program with a story he would relay.
In it, he recalls driving home with his family in their car, and the boys were wearing their yamulkas. A car load of teenage boys pulled up along side of them and were yelling obscenities at the family. They presumed this was “antisemitism” until they saw the same car load of teenagers drive up to the next car and did the same thing–to people with no yamulkas.
He says he realized a that moment that some people are just jerks, and applying your own intentionality screening rubric is usually a bad idea.
First off, there is no uniform “woke” ideology or epistemology. By pretending there is you create an easy straw man to knock down. While there are calls to elevate lived experience to a level of academic acceptance (Patricia Hill Collins comes to mind), this is hardly the only – or even most definitive – form of evidence available to an educated progressive. Arguments against discriminatory outcomes are about values, not evidence, as there is plenty of evidence that systems are constructed in ways that privilege white males. If you believe these constructions are just – so be it, but don’t pretend there aren’t rational arguments in favor of reforming institutions.
Speaking of strawmen, no one said that there is a uniform “woke” ideology or epistemology, but pretend they don’t grow from the same roots, or that they don’t share enough categorical similarities is simply absurd. This website provides ample explanation and evidence.
“as there is plenty of evidence that systems are constructed in ways that privilege white males.”
Claiming evidence exists is not persuasive. Please cite some examples.
“…but don’t pretend there aren’t rational arguments in favor of reforming institutions.”
Another strawman. No one is making these claims. They’re claiming that the “Woke” arguments for reform are irrational.
Well I don’t know what counts as “woke” because I don’t believe it’s a thing. The term began as ironic slang on the left and it’s been coopted by those on the right to create a left wing boogeyman.
With that said, here’s an example of the kind of reform I’d prefer. Most corporate structures in the United States were made with men in mind. The 9-5 work shift with the 30 minute lunch break is inherently unwelcome to women who have children. If women leave a job to have a child they’re penalized in terms of wage growth. A solution is to have flexible work hours, on site child care and other services that allow women to compete more easily with men. Corporations that have adopted these kinds of reforms have seen their female workforce significantly increase and have higher productivity as a result. If you don’t believe these kinds of reforms are necessary I imagine it’s because you value efficiency. I value justice more than efficiency. That’s why I say that these debates are matters of values not evidence. There are female academics who write about the need to rely on lived experiences, but that’s hardly the only kind of evidence necessary to argue for feminist reforms.
As another example: historic redlining left black people clustered in cities with low property values and less accumulated wealth than whites. Reparations in the form of mortgage assistance would be an admirable policy response. There are African American scholars who talk about this from a lived experience perspective, but it’s also possible to engage in a policy debate using evidence.
If you think that the contributors here – that present mountains of evidence detailing the “Woke” Ideology you claim doesn’t exist – are “the right”, you are sorely misinformed. Also, using terms that the ideologues who promote CSJ use themselves is not coopting. If your chief objection to the information provided here is about superficial semantics, your argument needs work.
Regarding your first example, there is no monolithic work week in the United States today that resembles a 9-5 work week with a 30 min lunch break and hasn’t been for quite some time. That’s also not “corporate structure”. That old labor schedule did not arise from a vacuum and is a result of decades of rational choices, none of which have to do with some nebulous, conspiratorial effort to keep women out of the workplace.
You can attempt to reduce complex labor issues down to a reductivist binary choice between values and justice, but this is neither useful, descriptive, or meaningful. “Efficiency” is not some concept applied arbitrarily to soothe some cigar-chomping boss in a smoke-filled room. Efficiency, in the vast majority of workplaces, is critical to keeping those employees on the payroll. Many of the “reforms” you mention are simply not available to vast sectors of employment, particularly small businesses – the largest sector of employment. Big businesses love these sorts of reorms because they can more easily absorb the additional costs. It’s just one way they drive small business competition out of the market. Is that Just?
Regarding “justice”, you are applying a subjective form of it. Is it just that man must continue to work long hours, while maintaining his professional skillset while a woman gets to take off a year or more to have children and come back to her old position at the same payscale? Did the man get her pregnant? Does the man get this sort of choice? Does he have any comparable opportunity? No? Is that Just? Do the other coworkers who have to pick up the slack with no additional compensation feel this is just? There are all kinds of complex ethical issues in play here, all of which could fall under the rubric of justice, so your worldview doesn’t hold the monopoly on workplace “justice”.
Regarding your second example – redlining affected more than just minorities, and has not been a practice for decades. Minorities have had mortgage assistance for decades as well. In fact, government programs aimed at forcing lenders to lend to otherwise financially unqualified mortgagees was the primary contributor to the 2006 financial crisis. If you are going to make an evidence-based argument, then I commend you, but you need to examine all the evidence, which you fall well short of here.
Almost all of your complaints can be answered simply: grant government subsidies to businesses that pursue these practices. Modern monetary theory suggests we need not worry about the debt. The Fed can continue pumping stimulus money into the economy, we’re nowhere near inflation. I actually believe the government should pay for “care” work, such as people (women or men) staying home to care for children or the elderly (most of these people are female and black). By paying them for their at-home labor we increase their agency. The concept of work outside the home making money but work within the home not making money is itself a sexist construction. There isn’t a conspiracy to rig systems against women and people of color, rather there has been no effort to correct these systems following centuries of exclusion. The corrections must be radical. Redlining may have been outlawed but there is academic literature that realtors continue to practice it today by limiting showings to black buyers. Look up Purpose Built Communities for an excellent example of how we could revitalize black neighborhoods (and working class white neighborhoods) with holistic government investment. We can disagree on whether these policy solutions would work but my point here is that instead of attacking a non-existent ideology (the woke – a term used ironically by the left until very recently) you could engage with the actual progressive policy solutions proposed by the people behind the “movement.”
For some reason, my response to this appeared below.
I’ve used a simple version of this scenario many times, but my favorite place to use it is when the worn out bullshit subject of “Dreadlocks: Cultural Appropriation?” comes up again for the thousandth time. The argument is always the same, that white people have appropriated dreadlocks from blacks (going back, black african tribes and ethnicities) and that they should not do so, as dreadlocks represent items of cultural or historical significance for blacks. I like to argue a bit simply but dramatically for a bit and get them all worked up, then I hit them with my Tsar Bomba:
“Ok, ok, ok, maybe what you’re saying is true, but I’m going to need a bit more to be fully convinced and in agreement with you all. Please, can anyone here tell me WHT is the cultural significance of dreadlocks for black people? Did your warrior ancestors wear them as a sign of prowess in combat? did young women wear them as a symbol of fertility? or did your shamens wear them to signify a connection with the spirit world?”
(always a bit of a silent spell at this point, I guess as my questions are being considered and my answers prepared)
“Ummmm, well, Rastafarians were from Ethiopia and dreadlocks are part of their religion”
“No good, sorry. Rastafarianism dates back only to the 1930’s. Hardly long enough
“Well, they were first invented in Africa”
“I think the question there is not when dreadlocks were ‘invented’, but when and where scissors were invented. You can’t cut your hair with a rock, and anyone who doesn’t cut their hair for long enough will develop dreadlocks. Sorry, no good”
Then always comes the final frustrated reply
“THEY JUST DON’T LOOK GOOD ON WHITE PEOPLE!!!!!! RACIST MFR!!!!!”
It’s always the same
“Cultural appropriation”
Oh, yeah! This is America; Americans are nothing if not eclectic! Like the Apostle Paul said (paraphrasing), “Try everything! Hang onto the good!”
“Rightful Liberty is the free exercise of the will, bounded only by the Rights of others.” – Thomas Jefferson
Does a white wearing dreadlocks infringe upon another’s Rights? Deprive them of anything? Cause them any harm?
America is rooted in facts & reasoning; the French Revolution was rooted in emotion.
More U.S. citizens should be Americans.
One comment about your rocket fuel example. Although the final fuel calculations will be carried out by a proven algorithm in a straightforward manner, the process to arrive at that final step is neither straightforward nor completely objective. The decision about how much fuel is needed will include both the launch vehicle and also the payload fuel. There will be long debates and a complex layer of trade studies to determine the mission parameters, including: data collection, storage, and communication; mission duration; the need for and extent of on-orbit maneuvers; and numerous other topics. The trade studies proceed using subjective processes for assigning weights (values) to mission parameters; partially subjective processes for arriving at design alternatives, which have an effect on fuel consumption; and partially subjective processes for scoring the design alternatives against the (already subjectively weighted) mission parameters. The same kinds of processes are at work in any large scale scientific / engineering effort; for another example, consider the complex array of decisions leading to development and launching of a new Covid-19 vaccine. So, for all the quantitative certainty in many aspects of science and engineering, there is also a tremendous amount of subjective analysis to be dealt with as well. The debates can be very contentious, and there is no shortage of ideologues in the scientific/engineering world. All of that being said, we do usually get to observable & measurable outcomes, which will never be possible for interpreters of Anna K.
I’m new to this issue, only having begun to look into it when POTUS recently made a few remarks about the sins of CRT and demanded that diversity training, etc., be expunged from the government. I’ve closely read this article and numerous other articles on this site. I’ve read How to be Anti-Racist by Kendi, which I found to have useful insights, many of which I am in agreement with. I’ve read White Fragility by DiAngelo, which I found to be vapid and a waste of my time. And I’ve read miscellaneous other sources, prompted by Kendi and articles in this site. With that background, here are some questions: who are these “woke folk?” Why do you believe that they have such incredible power that they are worth all of this effort? Where can I most efficiently read to catch up? Thanks in advance for any help you (the author and other commenters) can offer.
It’s worth remembering one of the reasons why the ‘woke’ have power. It is because of crimes of slavery, exploitation, rigged rules to favor the wealthy. Those crimes were and are morally wrong. The ‘woke’ used these and seized the moral high ground. But the woke were able to come to power because injustices remain to be corrected. Part of solution can be to point out the excesses of the loony left or the woke, but the solution must also be to correct injustices, and to change a system which continues to favor the white and wealthy.
” But the woke were able to come to power because injustices remain to be corrected.”
There is ample room for debate here. Could you provide some clarification on “injustices”? You list slavery, exploitation, and “rules rigged to favor the wealthy”; however, slavery has long since been corrected, “exploitation” is hopelessly vague, as are the “rules” being rigged. The latter also seems to drift from racism and oppression, which is why your point could use clarification
“Part of solution can be to point out the excesses of the loony left or the woke, but the solution must also be to correct injustices, and to change a system which continues to favor the white and wealthy.”
Again, what injustices? And you also need to explain how the current system favors “the white”. Correlation arguments won’t do.
As with all shifts in power, as with all shifts in inter-subjectivities, the pendulum can over-swing…
Not to worry, it’ll swing back but just don’t expect it to return to the same point it once was as the whole swinging apparatus is shifting in of itself.
To react so fearfully is natural, to cry out in pain as some of the privileges are shifted away from the white skin is natural. That said, it is still Pathetic.
The “Woke” movement is just one of many that are shaping the world for the better.
Pseudo-intellectual gibberish is poor window-dressing for an empty comment.
Leave your racism at the door and make an adult contribution.
What pseudo-intellectual gibberish? I wasn’t trying to be intellectual in the first place.
Your comment speaks volumes…
Look at your anger, look at your miss-use of words. Why are you so threatened?
What pseudo-intellectual gibberish?”
The opening line. The imputation of emotions and feelings to others as if you were some sort of psychic reader.
“Look at your anger, look at your miss-use of words. Why are you so threatened?”
I have not used your words, so it is impossible for me to have misused them. That you keep imagining emotions where none are presented simply reeks of projection.
If you do not like being called a racist, why do you use racist language?
Okay, champ. You win. 🙂
If you are genuinely interested in the subject, may I recommend a new book from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson. It’s as good as any place to start.
https://www.amazon.ca/Caste-Origins-Discontents-Isabel-Wilkerson/dp/0593230256
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/17/isabel-wilkersons-world-historical-theory-of-race-and-caste
It seems that my last few comments have been censored, and not posted?
So funny – you just did what one of the commenters said was classic – “they will not answer the argument with any evidence or information of their own, they just ask a shaming question….” 🤣
Schratter – you suggest a zero-sum game: privileges are shifted away from whites, presumably to BIPOC. Zero-sum by definition, is not equity or equality, it is simply, to use woke terminology, ‘oppressed’ having their turn at being the ‘oppressors’. This is racism in it’s traditional form.
Shouldn’t the objective be to lift up BIPOC to the same (fill in the blank) within society? This doesn’t require anyone giving anything up, but rather advancement to all. Nobody here is offended by that notion.
But the woke language is clear; equity and equality are not the goal – bringing down the ‘oppressors’ is, and it most certainly is not shaping the world for the better, particularly for BIPOC.
I am not suggesting a zero-sum game whatsoever. I am saying that the way this piece is framed, the way the movement is framed, has the privileged feelings of fear (by design).
I am in agreement with you in so far as there is (almost) always a radical subset in any social movement, and that this subset is often detrimental to the cause of the said movement.
“This doesn’t require anyone giving anything up, but rather advancement to all.”
Wrong.
Outside of the few and the tokenism, we can clearly see males, and in particular white males, running the show. And since there are fewer spots than applicants, and since surely neither of us believe that America is a true meritocracy…
Wrong again. The ‘woke’ movement is indeed equity and equality. Don’t get caught up in the anger and fear.
“A “Lived Experience” is an event that has been interpreted”…
Well, d’uh…ALL experiences are interpreted. Everyone follows itineraries of experiences, ideas, and various other types of baggage (such as the idea that we can ever be objective) with each encounter with any type of phenomena. Interpretations drive behaviour and produce phenomena that are real (people die, business are burn down) which are then interpreted all over again. Dismissing lived experience is naiive and useless. Wishing people would just behave like rational mathematicians is a road to nowhere. Practical wisdom, phronesis, can help us solve our problems. Not rigid notions of how the world “should” be. This applies to the loonie left as much as the rapid right.
This is the sort of dishonest “argumentation” that this article so thoroughly addresses. You seem to have skimmed to an idea you found remotely objectionable, then split it in half and crafted a strawman from there. Even a cursory reading would disabuse anyone of the fantasy that the author is “dismissing lived experience”.
The ‘both sides’ trope at the end was on par with the rest of your comment.
Excellent article – simple and clear. Thank you! You are giving us valuable tools.
Keep them coming…
This article(and website in general) depresses me but after reading all these articles it becomes clear that there is absolutely no way to beat these folks with reason and logic. They reject reason and logic and while under normal circumstances of a bygone age they could simply be dismissed and ignored. Today’s social media society means these people have huge influence in our culture, our economics and our lives in general.
They won’t argue correctly, they impugn your motives and your morality and person, objectives statistics are questioned and picked apart or ignored or deflected. They have a rhetorical tool for everything and if all that fails, they have public sanction to simply beat you up and force you to shut up.
It makes me so angry because arguing with these people is useless, but these people have POWER over me in the real world and if I can’t argue against their power using logic and rhetoric then I’m only left with one device. Pre-emptive physical violence.
@ gmmay70, on
“the moment the discussion moves to the public square, you will be loudly denounced as a heretic or non-believer. Your goal is truth, theirs is *positional* good. It’s only when you understand these completely different goals that you can formulate an effective strategy. ”
Exactly. If the Woke insist on living on a different planet, it’s not your duty to lure them back to this one.
My time is too valuable, to waste on these brats, when the planet has other, better specimens.
“Exactly. If the Woke insist on living on a different planet, it’s not your duty to lure them back to this one.
My time is too valuable, to waste on these brats, when the planet has other, better specimens.”
The problem, however, is that these “brats” occupy positions of power in the media, all levels of education, federal and state bureaucracies, elected politicians at every level of government, and an alarming share of corporate governance.
You may not be interested in wasting your time on them, but they are definitely interested in wasting their time on you. And they have the leverage.
«You may not be interested in wasting your time on them, but they are definitely interested in wasting their time on you. And they have the leverage.»
That’s the frightening part. They have the emotional lever well in hand and lynching people does not require reasons or evidences. I have the feeling, expressed elswhere in the comments, that for reason to regain ground, we will have to use emotions wholesale. Nothing new, perhaps, Hume had found before that reason has to be the slave of passions. Let’s choose which ones. We have to show that the Woke ideology leads to results clearly opposed to the Woke intended goals. There are precedents to half-baked theories finaly self-destructing. So hope is not out of place. I am old enough to remember the Mao craze in Europe.
This is a very good article. The trouble is, however, that many of the woke *do* think that “the marginalized” are infallible, at least when it comes to their own “lived experiences.” So then your interaction breaks down at that point. You have to undermine that belief somehow, perhaps by pointing out that two people from the same demographic could experience the same event and have very different interpretations of it. You’ll notice there are lots of people with “marginalized” “identities” who are publicly disagreeing with this nonsense, for example, John McWhorter — and the woke (the white woke at least) tend to act like the arguments of those people don’t exist. So, that can be a useful seed to plant — ‘what do you do when “BIPOC” themselves disagree about the interpretation of “lived “experience?’ I think it was Rebecca Reilly-Cooper who said something like, discussions about universal concepts like “what is racist” and about social policy like “should abortion be legal”, are discussions that *everyone* should be able to participate in. As a feminist, the latter was a tough one to swallow, but I think she’s right. If someone interprets their “lived experience” as due to racism (or whatever), that’s fine, but other people, regardless of identity, still have the right to disagree.
Apart from the quality of this article (excellent) and its usefulness (high), I’m still LOL-ing at the tongue-in-cheek reference to us anti-woke-folk as the “political dissident”. Well played, Karamazov! Thank you.
more of this stuff, please
I recommend the book “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Khaneman. It’s an in-depth look at the actual science as to why ‘lived experience’ is so unreliable, written by one of the most prominent behavior scientists of our day.
I mean, you can try..
Political Dissident: “well, My lived experience involves looking at Everybody’s lived experience – which is called facts and data. True compassion for this group means listening to the data. I care deeply about the facts. The data is telling us a different story. If you could only embrace the facts, you’d grow a much deeper perspective on this. You need to feel what the data is telling us about this. ”
You have to feminise your language. And never, ever, use ‘tantamount’.
Nice article. I’d question your account of literary analysis, however. While it is currently fashionable to believe anything goes and it is true there may be a range of plausible interpretations, there are established rules to separate the wheat from the chaff in the interpretation of literature. The idea you can give anything a Marxist or Feminist interpretation and this is somehow illuminating is false, for if anything goes in interpretation, then there is no such thing as misinterpretation, which is an absurdity. Plumbing the depths of the wisdom contained in Shakespeare, for instance, is a laudable and worthwhile activity, and not just anyone can do it well. Interpretations aren’t facts, but there are better and worse ones – it is the loss of these standards that has hurt the standing of the Humanities so much over the past decades.
Very, very good article. Two things (the second more substantial than the first):
(A) Omit this sentence: “The history of epistemology, from Plato’s allegory of the cave in Book VII of The Republic to Kant’s transcendental idealism in The Critique of Pure Reason, is a history of the tension between the egocentric problem and the practical demands of living in a world where one’s beliefs have consequences.” – No, it isn’t. This isn’t an adequate summation of the history of epistemology over a period of (roughly) 2,100 years. Besides, sweeping statements involving the history of a main area in philosophy aren’t helpful when the goal of the rest of the article is to get down to serious business.
(B) Revise the mistake in concepts here: “…there is no unambiguously right answer to the question of whether Anna’s suicide in Tolstoy’s 1877 masterpiece was an expression of his misogynistic sentiments, a feminist lamentation over his society’s treatment of women, or neither. Answers to this question cannot be regarded as true or false because the question falls outside of the category of questions that can be addressed by true or false propositions.”
It’s the latter part of the quote that worries me. So, the contrast between the disagreement over the engineers’ rocket case and the disagreement over the meaning of Tolstoy’s titular character committing suicide case isn’t a matter of propositions. Why not? The former case presents us with propositions, and the latter case actually does as well (That he wrote it for such and such, etc., (very nice examples, btw). Propositions, by definition, are true or false (they are just the kinds of things that are T or F). Generally, propositions also account for the meaningfulness of declarative sentences. Because both cases present us with sentences that are meaningful, both cases present us with propositions. So, where is the contrast in these cases most clear? Not easy to tell sometimes. Probably in their epistemic profiles, which is what I think you were saying throughout the article. The scientists agree on an idealized procedure given certain facts (two identical rockets) to know the answer, whereas the literary theorists don’t agree on an idealized procedure given certain facts (what would count as authorial intention) to know the answer. There is definitely more to say here, but I will leave it as this: It is very easy to think that an issue of knowledge is an issue of language, but the two are separate.
Anyway, thank you very much for the article. I really enjoyed it. Keep up the good work.
Other commenters clearly have a point when they write that woke folk are unlikely to stick around for an argument that is based on evidence and reason. Unfortunately, that didn’t work for Brett Weistein. And I doubt it would work for any torch carrying mob.
However, I think there might be enormous value in trying to teach this content in which the concept of “lived experience” can come up. I can think of a number of classes in which I might do so. The set-up/lead-in would need some care, but to me, that seems quite doable.
I admire the energy and thought you put into this essay. So. Bravo. More please.
Not to pile on here, but you cannot impose your conceptual framework on someone who explicitly rejects it. In other words, someone who rejects your conceptual framework as racist, misogynist, oppressive, etc, will not concede that ground to you for fear of being out-grouped.
You might get lucky in a one-on-one conversation, but the moment the discussion moves to the public square, you will be loudly denounced as a heretic or non-believer. Your goal is truth, theirs is positional good. It’s only when you understand these completely different goals that you can formulate an effective strategy.
The conversation would appear more like this:
“Political dissident: “Evidence and reasoned argument, neither of which can admit personal interpretations of anecdotal testimony. Are you prepared to have that conversation?”
“Woke Folk: Evidence has been manipulated for centuries to oppress marginalized folk, and “reason” is a tool of white supremacists to subjugate and enslave. I refuse to talk to a white supremacist. Who is your employer?”
And that, as they say, would be that.
If you somehow manage to avoid that minefield (it’s possible, but not through the technique outlined here), you still face a constellation of rhetorical gambits that range from veering way off topic to latching onto the slightest portion of your argument to take offense to while avoiding the substance.
This is ultimately reason vs. emotion. The old adage about trying to reason a person out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into applies. You first have to make an emotional appeal (which is a rejection of traditional western argumentative framework) to get reason’s foot in the door. Otherwise, you’re not going to get anywhere.
This is helpful, thank you.
I also admire your optimism, but in reality, trying to argue with Wolk Folk, is as pointless as trying to describe a fish knife to a Martian. In reality, you will be met with a Gish Gallop of Woke obsessions; if you attempt a reasonable interjection, you will be shouted at for not letting them answer your question, which is precisely not what they are doing. Should you actually seem to be getting anywhere, they will simply answer your question with a question. Along the lines, why don’t you just be accountable for your racism/ ism…? Why do you hate women so much? They are not like you and me, they are truly not interested, and their use of language is so debased, so chameleon like to suit their nefarious purpose, that it is literally futile arguing with them. Good luck though.
Anecdotes and mind-reading.
Yeah this will never end in “lets talk evidence.” It will end in the typical “you’re a racist!” denunciations and mobbing. You can see this play out on video with Bret Weinstein and Evergreen. He tried to talk sense with them. It ended up with him being hunted on his own campus by a bat wielding mob. Because as James Lindsey pointed out earlier, the Woke aren’t interested in debating you. They’re interested in exercising power over you. The only words that need to be exchanged between you and the Woke is the word “No.” Period, full stop.
That said, for those actually interested in evidence based discussions of the problems the Woke either obsess over or invent out of the ether, the author hits the nail on the head. The criminal justice system has been studying the ability of eye witnesses to accurately relate the truth of a criminal episode for decades. The results aren’t good for that ability. Eye witnesses (ie people who relay their “Lived Experiences”) are the least reliable form of evidence we have. So people should absolutely call into question people’s “Lived Experiences.” Questioning “Lived Experiences” should be the default in any circumstance. Humans generally suck at accurately recalling and relating events due to a whole host of structural problems with how our brains function and our inability to avoid our own innate biases. And that’s just when we’re not outright lying for personal or political gain.
An incredible book that thoroughly lays out the science of why ‘lived experience’ is so unreliable is called “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman. The author is a nobel-prize winning behavioral scientist who discovered a few truths that altered economic predictive models that had been in place for several hundreds of years, for which he won the nobel in economics.
But what’s more interesting is what he spent most his career studying, his research on how our brain functions on two levels; nearly instantaneous processing of our environment and the more deliberate analytical consciousness (thinking fast and slow). His book is a treasure trove of knowledge and explanations for topics such as ‘lived experience’, ‘innate biases’, ‘unreliable memories’, ‘group think’ and many others.
Mr Khaneman evidently had an extremely productive career and this is him unloading his and his prominent peers’ findings for the masses. It is a dense read and I’ve needed to revisit some sections multiple times to better grasp the concepts.
I’m sounding a bit like a wiki entry but, frankly, I’ve found the book to be a perfect companion for the essays presented on this site and the issues of our day. Obviously I highly recommend it.
As someone who has studied in various areas of the humanities, I think the problem (as alluded to but not clarified) is that – outside of a few areas of philosophy such as logical analysis – there exists no objective check on the ego of any given academic. The two scientists in the example of the rocket might both have egos the size of hot air balloons, but the results will eventually determine who – if either – is right, while the literary theorists arguing over the meaning of the scene in Anna Karenina could, and perhaps will, disagree forever with no means of settling their dispute.
The problem, quite simply, is that we in the humanities have to recognise that the phenomena we are studying are largely ambiguous, and that the most we can hope and attempt to do is to clarify different ways of approaching them and leave the discovery of facts to scientists. I still have a lot of time for even the most left-field of academics, including those working in and with postmodernism (something I’ve spent a lot of time studying). However, there is an important difference between having an interesting, and perhaps productive, interpretation and finding out the truth of the matter.
Put really simply: the problem is not academia, but the inability for many academics to recognise the scope of what they’re doing (though I would add that scientists should stop demanding that the humanities appeal to its own principles; let the humanities interpret and the scientists describe).
I have to take issue with your (rather simplistic) dismissal of literary interpretation. First, some interpretations of Anna Karenina are more plausible than others. Evidence for a particular interpretation can include the context of tbe rest of the novel, author biography, historical context, and the history of criticism of the novel. Second, differing interpretations can be complementary rather than contradictory. Finally, interpretation of literture may not issue in rockets that work, but it is a skill that notveveryone has and at which some people are better than others.
Thank You & please more more more of the same type of articles… to help our “Dissidence” be heard & to save us the trouble/hurt from the possiblity of a personal attack. …& also not to get caught in the WokeFoke’s web of rhetoric & circle talk !
* I would really appreciate some tips on talking to schools/teachers about all of this too. Thank You
Just remember, when talking to woke people, that they are merely high functioning morons. Talk to them like you would to an autistic child. Do this and you’ll do fine.
thank you! We must have the tools to fight this, a problem I think on deeply. My main tactics are not getting triggered, staying calm and humane, and keeping my decency in any discussion, and then I try to flip the script, I try to find inconsistencies…I push them to see that they are choosing the rights of one person over another etc etc, as I am a former cult member, I am well trained, so I use the same techniques back on them, in as graceful way as possible, no name calling, assuming good faith etc. This is a more advanced technique and I can find I make points well this way. There is no changing their minds. What I hope to do is plant seeds of doubt by revealing inconvenient truths, moral hypocrisies, and difficult questions that get their own mind thinking on the topic.
In some ways dealing with these people and their highly simplistic rote rhetoric, that they have not really thought through, is not a fair fight against someone who has spent time in the issues, thinks in nuance and has donethework. I tend to dominate intellectually, and that is not helpful. I try to come up with simple moral examples that show the unfairness of their position, who it is hurting, and why it might not be the best answer. I stick to facts as much as I can.
It is frustrating though, as so often people are wedded more deeply than their ideology than out relationship and that can be painful. It is intellectually lonely right now. Even the good people, I see them saying just horrible things, and I am like where is your moral compass? At the same time I do not want to fall into the self righteous trap myself. I want to lead by example.
I have lost a lot by speaking up. I have also gained freedom. Call me any name you want, does not matter anymore. I know where I stand, your bullying is not only ineffective, it shows who you are. I really tried to not block anyone or cancel them, I am fine with my ideas being challenged, and am happy to have discourse. I have however drawn a line. If you come in my space, and put my morality and character on trial, particularly if you have known me for a long time, I will now make the first move. I am sick of struggle sessions, which are far different than principled debate.
Struggle sessions are abusive, counterproductive and divisive. I will no longer allow them to happen to me. If someone repeatedly goes there, they show they do not trust me, or even like me, and well, I do not need you in my life if you do not support me being complex. I do not need agreement, not want it per se, but I will not be told I am a bad person by an ignorant person who is just spouting rote recitations and has not donethework. It took me a long time to set this boundary, in trying to be agreeable.
I thought my social capital built over time would protect my closer relationships, that I would be trusted as I was know. This was naive. If anything I was MORE of a threat and had to be dealt with more harshly.
I am making new relationships, it has been about a 90% churn in a year, a true Reign of Terror, where even my best friend accused me of having hidden nefarious motives.
But I can know I did the right thing, and stayed true to myself. That is important. I am lonely and hurt, some of these people were very abusive to me, and as someone with abuse related PTSD it has been hard emotionally. But it gives me the tools to see the abuse.
They do not care about my lived experience, it is only used when it suits them. I am disabled, low income, and check so many marginalized boxes, every one really but race, does not matter. If you do not follow the party line, your lived experience is irrelevant. It is said to be self hating etc. but it is not, it is true liberation from oppression. The only ones oppressing me are people on the extreme left, they are trying to “creatively silence” me, per an article on the Puget Sound Anarchist site. If that is not oppression, I do not know what is.
I am not named by name, but there are enough easter eggs in this to know I am one of the targets. Plus I am one of the HANDFUL who are willing to speak against these people at city council meetings etc. I often read their own texts which infuriates them, you think they would appreciate the press? 🙂 25 years of activism, the right has never come at me like this.
https://pugetsoundanarchists.org/fighting-smarter-strategy-analysis-in-olympia/
It’s not fun being called racist or bigot or whatever by people who’ve known you for years just because you’ve spoken up on this issue. A lot of us stay silent when among those we know and care about, or when we actually have something to lose.
I think the degree of which this works is subject to the grade of indoctrination of the Woke person, among other elements. Nonetheless, I’ve seen it “work.” The Woke person is told facts and given concrete evidence, but still seems unconvinced (perhaps they end up seeing the light). Here’s a link to a video where it happens:
https://youtu.be/F8EpsIyR5qI
*to which
Whoo you guys are putting up the great articles here as fast as we can read and study — thank you times 10
>Woke Folk: “Fine, let’s talk evidence.”
Your optimism is truly adorable. It seems more likely they’ll retreat to “you just don’t understand/haven’t truly engaged with marginalised people/accepted your privilege”/faith, and call you a racist/sinner.
“more likely they’ll retreat to….”
Those who do that show themselves to utterly unworthy of my time.
I don’t babysit pseudo-adults.
“you just don’t understand/haven’t truly engaged with marginalised people…”
These brats *know* nothing of the sort.
They assert such junk, gambling that it’ll intimidate their critics.
Agree but I for one would weave this into my side like saying “such a s such insert slogans”. is thought avoidance so if you answer with one of those slogans it means those slogans have no meaning
Something like that — like a salesman would weave all objections into his pitch
Actually in my experience they just call you a racist and a racist as soon as appear to be disputing anything they say.
This is a religion, not a philosophy.
I’ve even seen one of them claim that empirical knowledge isn’t the only valid kind of knowledge.
> Woke Folk: “Fine, let’s talk evidence.”
That will never happen, for reasons described extensively elsewhere on this website.
Still, it’s a great take-down of “lived experience”. This article gets at the distinction of what I like to call “public reality” and “private reality”. The different interpretations of Anna Karenina have personal significance and it’s incumbent upon us to understand and empathize with the very different inner landscapes that give the human experience its richness. Our different interpretations help us (and sometimes hurt us) as we navigate life. However, when groups of humans need to make a collective decision about a matter that affects multiple people (e.g. launching a rocket) then we need to have standards that are verifiable by all (at least in principle) using a commonly understood metric.
I like to make this distinction because there is a tendency on “both sides” (of the epistemological divide) to make the kind of category error described in this article. Science cannot answer questions about personal significance, even though the attempt is sometimes made (by multiple competing political factions). On the other hand, literary interpretation can’t answer questions of social significance with any kind of just outcome, even though the attempt is often made (again, by multiple competing political factions).
Ira – I definitely couldn’t have said it better.