OnlySubs Episode 48: The Woke Slope Is Always Slippery is now available exclusively for New Discourses contributors on the following platforms:
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You’ve probably heard of the “slippery slope” and heard it described as a fallacy. In fact, usually, it is fallacious thinking to believe that taking a step in a particular direction will necessarily imply taking more steps in that direction. Some slopes are Woke, though, and I think that all Woke slopes are slippery. In this episode of James Lindsay OnlySubs, my subscribers-only podcast, I go through the reasons why I think critical, deconstructive, and dialectical slopes are always slippery slopes. Another way to put this is that Wokeness (or, the various Theories of Critical Social Justice) has no brakes. There’s nothing to stop a Woke train once it starts running. The reasons are not bugs of the Theoretical worldview but are, in fact, features of how Theory operates methodologically. All the way back to Hegel, any idea that could still be hit with the dialectic must be hit with the dialectic; any problematic that isn’t critiqued leaves the status quo intact; any social construction that isn’t deconstructed maintains the possibility for oppressive systems of power. As a result, the operating system of Leftism over the last two hundred years always engenders a slippery slope. Join me to understand how and why this works.
Previous episodes of OnlySubs can be found here.
5 comments
Woke is definitely a slippery slope. Positively mucosal.
The term EDI (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion) has now expanded and added Decolonization. It’s no longer EDI; it’s now EDID (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Decolonization).
Surely, EDID is too bourgeois an acronym: better the more revolutionary full-blown leftist DIED, especially since Woke acronyms are like bad drug habits that keep expanding and end at the bottom of their slippery slope with somebody DEAD.
EDID was news to me until I saw a real job ad today that added Decolonization to the DIE. EDID is part of the job title:
“Senior Advisor Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization (EDID). Salary: $115,500.00 yearly . What you need: Graduate Degree in a related field (Human Rights, Gender Studies, Equity Studies, Indigenous Studies), with a focus on human rights, diversity, equity and inclusion, or acceptable equivalent combination of education and experience.”
I have said for years that people who mock the “Studies” degrees as wastes of money leading to unemployment did not understand the real purpose of the “Studies”. As this ad proves, the “Studies” are the training ground/prerequisites for the apparatchik/nomenklatura EDID jobs. Just as math is needed for Engineering, the “Studies” are needed for EDID. Wokians may seem like krazy spoiled green-haired tantrum brats, but $115,500 a year (with massive pensions and benefits) is a seriously double-plus-good pay off for becoming a snivel-bully functionary/lackey/stooge of the ruling Elites.
Hi Trent,
You might want to do a tiny bit of research into what political party the majority of corporate billionaires belong to. Hint – its not the Republican party, or even the Libertarian party. It’s the Democrat party. The same party that favors mass consumerism, globalism, censorship, endless wars, and open borders (which floods our labor market and drives down wages for working Americans) . The same party, and corporate billionaires who openly and happily do business with the CCP. These oh so Woke Democrats gladly turn a blind eye to the human rights atrocities like SLAVERY, Forced sterilization, Forced Abortion and Live Human Organ Harvesting that their CCP business partners subject millions of minority Uyghur Muslims to.
Cheers
Tricia,
Apparently Trent didn’t read your post. In order for him to see your post you have to click on the “reply” below his post & write it again.
Wow, great point. If we raise the minimum wage, or do something about climate change, no doubt it will lead to gulags.
I know those who used such logic in the past to oppose the suffragetes, the ability of women to vote, or women to attend schools, or non land owners to vote, or who opposed abolition, or anti miscegenation laws, or desegregation, or who opposed civil rights, white worker rights, gay and trans rights, child labour laws, animal rights, environmental rights etc etc, were wrong, but surely they’re right now!
And I know science tells us that conservatism is largely a reaction against complexity, holistic thinking and nuance, and that anti woke folk primarily can’t handle larger systemic thinking, and prefer absolutes and clear demarcations, but this time they’re right! Every generation of kids clearly becomes more conservative than the last!
Sure, the current hysteria against CRT and wokeness is being bank rolled by billionaire dark money and right wing think tanks, primarily because they want to use it as a wedge issue to shore up Christianity and tax breaks for mega corporations, but that doesn’t mean the billionaires don’t know what’s best for us!
As is so often with these Wokesters, this Trent launches right into a tirade vs. Dr. Lindsay’s presentation on *dialectical* thought, of Gramsci, Ferrari, Butler etc., without *specifying* anything the Dr. said about those thinkers’ views, e.g. on how “constructions” are *all*-or-nothing packages.
The Dr. said nothing to imply that suffragettes, civil rights, white worker rights, gay and trans rights, etc etc, were dependent on *dialectical* thought.
Even if we assume, that indeed Trent *knows* of “those who used *such* logic in the past to oppose” these mov’ts, this has zip to do with the Dr.’s specific charge, that the specific drift of *dialectical* thought guarantees
*all*-or-nothing packages.
Until Trent shows exactly which “those who used *such* logic”, and *how* they used *such* logic, we should assume that Trent is blowing typical Wokester smoke.
If you’re going to pay any heed to these Wokesters, ask yourself
“how do they *know* what is actually at issue, without clarifying that/ how they actually know this (e.g. Dr. Linday’s position).
Sorry, but these Wokesters have too often puked out far too much *deceit*, to deserve the benefit of the doubt.