Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[garbon]

Thank you, Tamas, the arbiter of language use.

I told you: I am woke to the meaning of woke, time for you to catch up.

I have a hard time finding any truth in that statement.

[Legbiter]

I think they're primarily used as labels and identities - they're a way of saying "I'm in the gang" or how people define some set of their views. Because of that I think they're not very helpful to describe ideas or policies because there may be a broad divergence about ideas/policies between people who identify as conservative, for example.

Yeah, these are lifestyle brands to signal in-group status. That you have accepted full baptism into the congregation. 

[Tamas]

Thank you, Tamas, the arbiter of language use.

I told you: I am woke to the meaning of woke, time for you to catch up.

I have a hard time finding any truth in that statement.

Precisely. You are not woke to it.

[Sheilbh]

Sure but I would rather people emotionally defend their deeply personal views on what the ideal tax rate should be for people in a tax bracket between $30K and $50K or what sort of noise reduction walls should be required next to interstate highways bordering residential neighborhoods than some arbitrary tribal label where I don't even understand WTF it means or what they are talking about. I cannot work with amorphous arbitrary tribalism, I can with actual ideas.

I mean people will literally commit murder over planning disputes

But politics isn't really about policies and I don't think it's something where you get to debates about ideal tax rates (what normal person could or should have an opinion about that anyway?) unless everyone agrees on the rest. The big issues in politics are emotive: who we are, who gets to make decisions for us/on our behalf, what are the limits, who bears the cost and what type of society do we want to live in. A few of those are triggered in a planning dispute.

And of course having views on that at all is a narrow and weird interest. Most people - sensibly - just care about the outcome of politics. As Norman Kirk put it, the things that matter to most people are whether they have someone to love, somewhere to live, somewhere to work and something to hope for.

Given that for six months of the last year when politics has literally said - to me - don't leave your house without a reasonable excuse, I'm not sure we're at the point where there's so much consensus that we can worry about marginal tax rates.

[garbon]

Thank you, Tamas, the arbiter of language use.

I told you: I am woke to the meaning of woke, time for you to catch up.

I have a hard time finding any truth in that statement.

Precisely. You are not woke to it.

I guess you can misuse any term you like. Similar thing would be when people use gaslight and lie interchangeably.

[Admiral Yi]

I guess you can misuse any term you like. Similar thing would be when people use gaslight and lie interchangeably.

There's a way you would like people to respond to the term and this can differ from the way people do respond to the word.  That doesn't make it a misuse of the term.  You don't own the word and you can't dictate how people will respond.

Especially since the term is intended to convey meaning through evocation and connotation, not denotation.  The denotation of the word is awake, not sleeping.  Anyone can see that's not what is being talked about.

That being said, my perception is slightly different than Tamas'.  I don't think its meant to suggest that people who are woke are better than people who are not woke because of their superior awareness, but rather it divides the world into three groups: those who are aware of being oppressed, those who are being oppressed and are not aware of it, and those doing the oppressing.  The oppressors don't need to gain awareness because they are already aware and enjoying it.  "Woke" is a call out to those being oppressed but not yet aware of their state to free themselves of their shackles.

[garbon]

I guess you can misuse any term you like. Similar thing would be when people use gaslight and lie interchangeably.

There's a way you would like people to respond to the term and this can differ from the way people do respond to the word.  That doesn't make it a misuse of the term.  You don't own the word and you can't dictate how people will respond.

Especially since the term is intended to convey meaning through evocation and connotation, not denotation.  The denotation of the word is awake, not sleeping.  Anyone can see that's not what is being talked about.

Feels like an odd take given that Tamas is defining the term and noting its unacceptability.

I think it is a misuse when someone is intentionally reading the term as something not intended. You are right that's different from say someone reacting to the term unaware of how it was being used by a group - though you still may justifiably dislike use of the term even when you know why they were using it.

[Josquius]

I'd agree that woke hews a bit close to saying if you're not it then you're asleep.
There seems to be a big thing in the populist right about being called stupid. They seem to love yet hate it when people do this as it really let's them play up the whole victim complex.
So often ill see them taking anything that gets the slightest bit towards calling them thick as such and really getting their teeth into it.
It's a fascinating phenomena that I've not seen a good explanation for. Probably related to the idea that being stupid and being uneducated are the same and that if you get to uni you stop being working class, so it helps them push on with their attempts to redefine working class for themselves.

[Admiral Yi]

Feels like an odd take given that Tamas is defining the term and noting its unacceptability.

I think it is a misuse when someone is intentionally reading the term as something not intended. You are right that's different from say someone reacting to the term unaware of how it was being used by a group - though you still may justifiably dislike use of the term even when you know why they were using it.

By all means tell us how what the term is intended to mean. 

[Barrister]

I went to Urban Dictionary to see how the term is defined - but the place has clearly been "review bombed" - at least the top 12 definitions define it in the worst possible way.  You have to get down to about 18 to see one that tries to define it honestly.

[Jacob]

By all means tell us how what the term is intended to mean. 

As I understood it "woke" originates as a term with in the Black community of the US to indicate someone who has become aware of the systemic racism in American society. It was then picked up by various non-Black folks who were also concerned with systemic racism and other forms of social injustice, using the term as a self-descriptor. From there it was a short hop skip and jump to become a perjorative to describe social justice positions that the speaker deems as going too far (whereever they draw that line).

So I believe the term is intended to mean "aware of systemic injustice, especially racism directed at Black people in the US."

[Valmy]

Yeah like most of these things it went from having a very specific meaning about a very specific group of people to just mean the a side in the culture war.

[Jacob]

I went to Urban Dictionary to see how the term is defined - but the place has clearly been "review bombed" - at least the top 12 definitions define it in the worst possible way.  You have to get down to about 18 to see one that tries to define it honestly.

Urban Dictionary is, in my experience, uniformly garbage - completely independent of anything to do with politics.

[Josquius]

Urban dictionary is a place for petty football rivalry edit battles about anything and everything.

[Sheilbh]

So semi-relatedly interesting polling on attitudes in "Red Wall" seats - basically they're the same as the rest of the country, which you'd expect given that they voted with most of the rest of the country. And I think this is a broadly mainstream liberal set of views (another reason I'm not convinced by the Brexit/Johnson = Trump/GOP take):


Also there's ongoing debate on "free speech" in universities with the government proposing some form of legislation on this - which will be a mistake. I found this polling on what people basically think is acceptable speech in universities and what isn't:


And what's really interesting is if you look at the breakdown by age they are nowhere near as stark as I was expecting.