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Leary | on: The Origins of Wokeness
I think there’s a fascinating throughline from older Christian moral enforcement to what the essay calls “wokeness.” Historically, a lot of Christian movements had the same impulse to legislate language and behaviors—just grounded in sin rather than privilege. For instance, the 19th-century American Puritans famously policed each other’s speech and actions because the stakes were framed as eternal salvation versus damnation. That social dynamic—where the “righteous” person gains status by exposing the lapses of others—feels remarkably similar to what we see now with “cancellations” on social media.
int_19h | parent | next
The parallels between the "original sin" in Christian theology and "... privilege" in social justice discourse are pretty obvious.

I also find it rather amusing that the social justice movement tends to be so US-centric - i.e. focusing on the issues that are specific to or manifest most strongly in US, and then projecting that focus outwards, sometimes to the point of cultural intrusiveness (like that whole "Latinx" thing which seems to be nearly universally reviled outside of US).

At the same time many people sincerely believe that US is not just a bad country - I'm fine with this as a matter of subjective judgment, and share some of it even - but that it's particularly bad in a way that no other country is. It's almost as if someone took American exceptionalism and flipped the sign. Which kinda makes me wonder if that is really what's happening here.

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prewett | parent | next
The book "American Nations", whose basic idea is that the US + Canada is composed of 12 cultural "nations", also observes that the Puritans were rather intolerant. The Puritan culture influenced what he calls "Yankeedom" (New England west to Minnesota) and the "Left Coast", which was settled by Yankee shipping. My impression is that these two areas are the most "woke"; it seems that Puritan intolerance casts a long shadow, even though those areas rejected orthodox Christianity a long time ago.
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pea | parent | next
To quote mark fisher “…It is driven by a priest’s desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant’s desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster’s desire to be one of the in-crowd.”
narag | parent | next
Christians are so new. I wonder why Pharisees aren't mentioned more often when bringing in this topic.

Actually, "pharisaical" is the dictionary definition for this kind of hypocrisy.

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CooCooCaCha | parent | next
The difference here is people are trying to address people’s actual life experiences instead of something they believe based on faith.
rockskon | root | parent | next
All peoples' life experiences equally matter. Just some areas more equal than others.

/s

commandlinefan | parent | next
I grew up in the 80's - I felt exactly the same about evangelicals then as I feel about the woke today.
xkcd-sucks | parent | next
fr Nathaniel Hawthorne is immensely relevant in the present day
aprilthird2021 | parent | next
Everyone does moral enforcement though. Even this blog post we are commenting about (which I really agree with) is an attempt at moral enforcement. He even prescribes that wholeness be treated like a religion and gives a whole list of scenarios where one should deny the request of a woke person (same as one would a religious person). To constantly keep up this equality among all ideologies requires rules and enforcement of those rules, aka moralizing
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thegrim33 | parent | next
[flagged]
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andrewflnr | root | parent
Not exactly. The article doesn't try to draw a causative link between Christianity in particular to "wokeness".
stainablesteel | parent | next
i definitely believe in the relationship between modern wokeness and some older religious traditions of moral policing

there seems to be a territorial overlap between the two

grahamj | parent
The difference is religion’s justification is the words of a fictitious being whereas “wokeness” stems from principles of equality and tolerance.

Surely some adherents of each use it to feel righeous/superior, but in only one case is it actually justified.

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