Is "Woke" politics a pseudo-awakening?

[JasonBlack]

For as much as millennials like to bitch about boomers, the woke ones certainly try very hard to emulate them. It's debatable whether the majority of millennials could be considered woke, but whether they're a conventional majority of a very loud, influential minority, there are a lot of them and, for better or for worse, we need to deal with them. 

Their entire movement seems like a cheap reenactment of the Consciousness Awakening, stripped of its creativity and genuine non-conformity 
- protest exactly the same causes their parents told them to (women's rights, environmentalism, equality, etc)
- rather than focusing on new, original content, they rehash remakes of tried and true franchises, just with more women and black people 
- preach about "having your voice heard"...only to turn around and try to micro manage your tone, demeanor and choice of words
- "defund the police"...and then trying desperately to police other people themselves whenever given the opportunity 
- fixating on "specialness" and "diversity", while displaying conformity in most areas of life 
- during the 60s and 70s, drugs and sexual exploration were about discovery, open mindedness, becoming aware of repressed desires. nowadays, it's mostly associated with contempt for the other gender and a generalized, self-hating desire for the society we grew up in to go up in flames. 


Speaking as a millennial from the other end, I never wanted another awakening. Frankly, I think "creativity" is extremely overrated at the societal level, at least in the sense of it not being the main thing we need right now, but while I have no desire to do a bunch of drugs, go to a music festival or go have a bunch of sex with flamboyantly dressed dandies, I can at least understand the historical context that gave the previous awakening a bit more historical legitimacy. 

In 2022....no! We are in the midst of a virus, living through a crippling recession with shortages, infrastructure breakdown and high wealth inequality and on the brink of potential nuclear war. This isn't the time to "find yourself", it isn't the time to debate the nuances or just what does or does not constitute "gender-biased language", and it sure as hell isn't the time to go dancing around in vagina hats and expecting to be taken seriously.   It's time to focus on solving problems.

[JasonBlack]

Side note: I write fiction regularly, read religiously, study up on all kinds of cultures and even went to university to become an opera singer. Anti-creativity is not the point here, and neither is conformity. The point is anti-solipsism, anti-insularity and anti-obsessing over issues for the sake of artificially bolstering self-esteem rather than focusing enough on real-world, tangible issues that have been kicked down the road for too long.

Frankly, millennials as a whole are a lot less creative than they like to think they are (Perhaps that includes me. I can't really say). They're at their best when their embrace their external focus rather than trying to emulate their childhood role models who were shaped in a completely different set of circumstances.

[Eric the Green]

(03-06-2022, 10:03 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: For as much as millennials like to bitch about boomers, the woke ones certainly try very hard to emulate them. It's debatable whether the majority of millennials could be considered woke, but whether they're a conventional majority of a very loud, influential minority, there are a lot of them and, for better or for worse, we need to deal with them. 

Their entire movement seems like a cheap reenactment of the Consciousness Awakening, stripped of its creativity and genuine non-conformity 
- protest exactly the same causes their parents told them to (women's rights, environmentalism, equality, etc)
- rather than focusing on new, original content, they rehash remakes of tried and true franchises, just with more women and black people 
- preach about "having your voice heard"...only to turn around and try to micro manage your tone, demeanor and choice of words
- "defund the police"...and then trying desperately to police other people themselves whenever given the opportunity 
- fixating on "specialness" and "diversity", while displaying conformity in most areas of life 
- during the 60s and 70s, drugs and sexual exploration were about discovery, open mindedness, becoming aware of repressed desires. nowadays, it's mostly associated with contempt for the other gender and a generalized, self-hating desire for the society we grew up in to go up in flames. 


Speaking as a millennial from the other end, I never wanted another awakening. Frankly, I think "creativity" is extremely overrated at the societal level, at least in the sense of it not being the main thing we need right now, but while I have no desire to do a bunch of drugs, go to a music festival or go have a bunch of sex with flamboyantly dressed dandies, I can at least understand the historical context that gave the previous awakening a bit more historical legitimacy. 

In 2022....no! We are in the midst of a virus, living through a crippling recession with shortages, infrastructure breakdown and high wealth inequality and on the brink of potential nuclear war. This isn't the time to "find yourself", it isn't the time to debate the nuances or just what does or does not constitute "gender-biased language", and it sure as hell isn't the time to go dancing around in vagina hats and expecting to be taken seriously.   It's time to focus on solving problems.

I mentioned this already. If they "protest exactly the same causes their parents told them to (women's rights, environmentalism, equality, etc)" it is because these problems were never dealt with and society has been frozen with no progress since boomer youth times by the neoliberal, free-market ideology that took over in 1980 and has stalled all progress ever since. You can't expect young people not to be concerned with issues that remain as real and relevant as they were 40 years ago because they remain just as they were 40 years ago.

Millennials do tend to micromanage communication these days, although it's also other generations that do this. But throwing "defund the police" at us is not honest, nor can it be levied against only Millennials. This is a slogan heard at black lives matter rallies, but is not generally adhered to by most liberal people or their politicians, especially most African Americans. It is true that social problems have been thrust onto the police, who cannot handle them well, just because Reaganomics free-market tax revolts for 40 years have defunded the social work and health care and other social programs that are also needed to stop crime. This needs to be refunded, but that does not necessarily mean defunding the police if such funding is still needed. But some police are often racist and violent and need to be reformed and better trained. All this should be clear and obvious, but conservatives and neoliberals muddy up these matters for their own political purposes.

I don't see any reason for most of your claims about Millennials, and you have quoted no sources or stats. Personal experience does not count to support such claims.

The words awakening and woke are used by whoever finds them useful, and they are used by right-wing deluded QAnon supporters as well as by millennial left-wingers. 

"We are in the midst of a virus, living through a crippling recession with shortages, infrastructure breakdown and high wealth inequality and on the brink of potential nuclear war. This isn't the time to "find yourself", it isn't the time to debate the nuances or just what does or does not constitute "gender-biased language", and it sure as hell isn't the time to go dancing around in vagina hats and expecting to be taken seriously. It's time to focus on solving problems." I sort of agree. And top of the list is the environmentalism that you say is out of date and boomer-driven. If we ditch that concern now, we truly are all toast. And toasted. I think creativity and an interesting life is valuable in any turning. After all, the GIs danced wildly to Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman and Count Basie as they went off to war. But we do need to focus externally on the real society-wide concerns that are the mark of a fourth turning. That's primarily where we are now.

That is the forte of a civic generation, more than inner-seeking and creativity, and to a large extent millennials ARE so focused. Their pop culture shows no particular creative ability. They also lack awareness of what's involved in civic participation, but that's again a deliberate neoliberal design. The free-market bosses do not want people educated to be critical of society and their bosses. They want obedient worker bees. For this purpose they have shut down civics classes in schools. And the right-wingers are now trying to shut off education about our history. So millennials, to be genuine civics, have to rise above the attempts by many from all the elder generations to shut down their ability to act on real problems.

[JasonBlack]

Eric the Green
Briefly, my point wasn't that none of those issues have any more work that needs to be done (especially environmental issues), but the pretense of originality and "consciousness" behind which they are presented. Even if you are focusing on all the right issues (I presented a mixed bag above), the present problem is that the fixation tends to be on "awareness", lazily stepping any discourse into more practical action steps, policy proposals or realistic alternatives to the current status quo. 

You are also absolutely correct about the majority of black Americans not supporting the "defund the police" movement. The majority of them, if they don't live in dangerous neighborhoods themselves, at least have experience visiting such places or otherwise have friends or family who do. On balance, black liberals are a demographic I've had a far easier time finding common ground with on account of a greater focus on results and an intolerance for rhetorical buzzwords and moral pretense. 

[Eric the Green]

(03-07-2022, 04:05 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: [/url][url=http://generational-theory.com/forum/user-26.html]Eric the Green
Briefly, my point wasn't that none of those issues have any more work that needs to be done (especially environmental issues), but the pretense of originality and "consciousness" behind which they are presented. Even if you are focusing on all the right issues (I presented a mixed bag above), the present problem is that the fixation tends to be on "awareness", lazily stepping any discourse into more practical action steps, policy proposals or realistic alternatives to the current status quo. 

You are also absolutely correct about the majority of black Americans not supporting the "defund the police" movement. The majority of them, if they don't live in dangerous neighborhoods themselves, at least have experience visiting such places or otherwise have friends or family who do. On balance, black liberals are a demographic I've had a far easier time finding common ground with on account of a greater focus on results and an intolerance for rhetorical buzzwords and moral pretense. 

It is hard to verify the amount of "pretense" which an entire generation displays or presents, however.