" It is no longer important to be good, but only to maintain the aesthetic of being good. It is only necessary that you have vibe and appearance and “feel” of a good person." This is frighteningly true. All surface, no substance. It's the words that matter; say the correct words because they are a magic spell.
They really are incantations. The older I get, the less I feel like that is a figure of speech. I think the way they talk has powerful effects on people's thoughts and the way we respond is powerful too
Spot on. And what is the antidote to magical words? Physical reality. I would argue that the barbell is the greatest philosophical tool of the 21st century. To quote Henry Rollins, 200 pounds is always 200 pounds, regardless of what you "identify" as today.
It might surprise you that at least one of your readers is in Generation Z. I do not know America, and what you say might be accurate there. But I do not recognise anything like it from my own experience; at the university where I am studying I have met no-one who passionately preaches wokery, unless one counts a few of the middle-aged lecturers pushing it at us.
It seems to me that my colleagues' main fault is not so much that they do not care about truth as that they do not think it attainable. They are sceptical, and about far more than religion: many are resigned to living without knowing or having reason to believe in anything.
I think your diagnosis is quite wrong: the woke do not possess the circular shield of faith pictured in the article. Their ideology is not working from its own strength, but from the weakness of any other ideology we can set against it. The loudest students might happen to be woke, but only because no-one can find anything else to be loud about.
But criticising wokery in articles like these seems to me a shallow trap for the deeper sort of mind. I would like to read more about what you do believe. If it is of any value, it will win more doubters away from the woke ideology than a hundred more articles like this. But if you go on writing articles simply criticising wokery, I see little value in subscribing to any of it.
Haydn - thanks for commenting. I can absolutely guarantee you that the experience in the US is different. I know this because my partner is from where you are from (as far as I can tell from your blog)
I have no interest in recruiting others from that ideology; those who agree already agree. I am empowering those of us who already think similarly to walk away and not waste their vital energies engaging in conflicts that are wastes of time.
Truth is never attainable; religion used to stand as a safety in the end, an alternative to the empty nihilistic abyss that lies at the end of the search for truth. Religion has been discarded in the hubris that *this time* we will find the bedrock of the abyss.
Obviously not all of Gen Z are this way, I was just trying on the dismissive costume of many of my peers (millennial) who so casually dismiss entire populations of people for much less.
I think you're right though in that I should write more about my own vision of things. I sometimes need to un-clog the pipes of the bad before the light shines through, this substack is only one part of my mind's output, as I'm sure yours is too. I will follow and find out.
" It is no longer important to be good, but only to maintain the aesthetic of being good. It is only necessary that you have vibe and appearance and “feel” of a good person." This is frighteningly true. All surface, no substance. It's the words that matter; say the correct words because they are a magic spell.
They really are incantations. The older I get, the less I feel like that is a figure of speech. I think the way they talk has powerful effects on people's thoughts and the way we respond is powerful too
Spot on. And what is the antidote to magical words? Physical reality. I would argue that the barbell is the greatest philosophical tool of the 21st century. To quote Henry Rollins, 200 pounds is always 200 pounds, regardless of what you "identify" as today.
I read that essay by Rollins every few years to remind myself of what is important.
It might surprise you that at least one of your readers is in Generation Z. I do not know America, and what you say might be accurate there. But I do not recognise anything like it from my own experience; at the university where I am studying I have met no-one who passionately preaches wokery, unless one counts a few of the middle-aged lecturers pushing it at us.
It seems to me that my colleagues' main fault is not so much that they do not care about truth as that they do not think it attainable. They are sceptical, and about far more than religion: many are resigned to living without knowing or having reason to believe in anything.
I think your diagnosis is quite wrong: the woke do not possess the circular shield of faith pictured in the article. Their ideology is not working from its own strength, but from the weakness of any other ideology we can set against it. The loudest students might happen to be woke, but only because no-one can find anything else to be loud about.
But criticising wokery in articles like these seems to me a shallow trap for the deeper sort of mind. I would like to read more about what you do believe. If it is of any value, it will win more doubters away from the woke ideology than a hundred more articles like this. But if you go on writing articles simply criticising wokery, I see little value in subscribing to any of it.
Haydn - thanks for commenting. I can absolutely guarantee you that the experience in the US is different. I know this because my partner is from where you are from (as far as I can tell from your blog)
I have no interest in recruiting others from that ideology; those who agree already agree. I am empowering those of us who already think similarly to walk away and not waste their vital energies engaging in conflicts that are wastes of time.
Truth is never attainable; religion used to stand as a safety in the end, an alternative to the empty nihilistic abyss that lies at the end of the search for truth. Religion has been discarded in the hubris that *this time* we will find the bedrock of the abyss.
Obviously not all of Gen Z are this way, I was just trying on the dismissive costume of many of my peers (millennial) who so casually dismiss entire populations of people for much less.
I think you're right though in that I should write more about my own vision of things. I sometimes need to un-clog the pipes of the bad before the light shines through, this substack is only one part of my mind's output, as I'm sure yours is too. I will follow and find out.
Outstanding.
Useful. I think of this in terms of "After Virtue" but I appreciate seeing current analysis. Thank you and please keep writing.
Thank you Hope I wrote this one in one shot to get as close to my "raw analysis" on it as possible, hoping that would be useful to some!