I saw something somewhere where a critic of right-wing complaints about wokeness demanded a definition. <\/p>\n
Yeah. <\/p>\n
I’m sympathetic, but I also realize that is a left-brain obsession that doesn’t work in the real world. <\/p>\n
On the one hand, we have Lewis Carroll’s caterpillar, who claims that words mean exactly what he chooses them to mean at any moment, and on the other hand, we have legal contracts, where there are pages of definitions. <\/p>\n
But even at that, not every term is defined. Because it can’t be. <\/p>\n
“Before you can use a word, you need to define it.” <\/p>\n
I’ll consider your proposal if you start by defining every word in that sentence. <\/p>\n
The idea is nonsense. While I appreciate and endorse the desire to be precise, you can’t define every word. Words are flexible and squishy. <\/p>\n
Also, we can know a thing without being able to articulate it precisely. <\/p>\n
Man: “I love you.”
\nWoman: “Define love.” <\/p>\n
That’s not going to work out well. <\/p>\n
But … “wokeness” is a relatively new term, and it does us good to try to narrow down what we mean by it. <\/p>\n
At first, it meant “alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.” E.g., young blacks were “woke” when they realized how many things in society were slanted against them. A young black being pulled over by a cop had to be extra careful to stay out of trouble. <\/p>\n
[Whether that’s true or not is irrelevant.] <\/p>\n
In order to get to its more modern meaning, you need to reflect on the underlying attitude behind that earlier definition. That would include … <\/p>\n
That’s my attempt to spell it out. Can you think of a common use of “wokeness” that isn’t adequately encompassed in that description? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I saw something somewhere where a critic of right-wing complaints about wokeness demanded a definition. Yeah. I’m sympathetic, but I also realize that is a left-brain obsession that doesn’t work in the real world. On the one hand, we have Lewis Carroll’s caterpillar, who claims that words mean exactly what he chooses them to mean … Continue reading “Towards a definition of “wokeness””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2718"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2723,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions\/2723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}