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Quote of the Day: Corporate Smoke Screens Disguise the Left
“The fundamental problem with wokeness isn’t just that it offers the wrong answer to the question of who we are. The deeper problem is that it forecloses the possibility of shared solidarity as Americans. If we see each other as nothing more than the color of our skin, our gender, our sexual orientation, or the number of digits in our bank accounts, then it becomes impossibly difficult to find commonality with those who don’t share those characteristics. Yet if we define ourselves on a plurality of attributes, then we find our path to true solidarity as a people.”
― Vivek Ramaswamy, Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam
If we were honest with ourselves, most of us would acknowledge that we want to be seen as someone “unique.” But the Woke Left thinks that those attributes come from superficial factors, not from who we are and what we offer to the world. I could tell you that I’m a white woman, a writer, a Jew, a wife, a teacher, and they will give you a glimmer of an idea of what I’m made of and who I am. But in fact, I am much more than any of those characteristics.
So, I reject those descriptions that the Woke population tries to force upon me; when I meet others, I try to see beyond the obvious perceptions of who they are: What things enrich their lives? What do they treasure about their relationships? What activities bring joy to their lives? What is a favorite way for them to spend their time? And that is only the beginning of that journey.
These are the kinds of discussions that take us deeper, that enlighten us, that build bridges, and nurture relationships. A person who looks into these questions and values them is living a life of legitimate “wokeness.”
These are the people I treasure in my life.
Published in Group Writing
Of course, the Left doesn’t want people to be close and intimate, to appreciate what we have to offer the world. They want our best buddy to be the state.
And to deflect, distract and confuse the people, so that they don’t see how they are being pulled away from close and intimate, they manufacture massive global ‘Group Projects’, that are idiocy on their face, to ‘save the world’, don’t you know.
And of course they try to “guilt” us into participating in their projects, too. No thank you!
I don’t know that being on a “path to true solidarity as a people” is a good goal. I want each of us to be able to live our unique lives without being treated simply as a member of a class or category of people. That’s not the same thing as solidarity. We need to share some common beliefs in our form of government and its aims, as well as a sense of ourselves as Americans. If that’s getting at what Ramaswamy means by solidarity, then I won’t quibble too much with the word choice.
I read much of Woke, Inc. months ago, and maybe need to revisit it, but I felt like I got the point.
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This post of part of the Quote of the Day (QOTD) group writing project. If you would like to share a quote with or without your own commentary, please pick an unclaimed date on the August QOTD Signup Sheet. The links to the previous month of QOTD posts can be accessed here.
It is funny. When you walk through a cemetery and see memorials to love ones who have passed away. You normally see things like loving husband or beloved wife and mother. I don’t think I have every seen a headstone that said what the race of the deceased is. Almost like what matters most to people is the personal relationships they have rather than their immutable characteristics.
I can understand your resistance to the word “solidarity,” although Ramaswamy may have meant something slightly different. I looked up the word:
I think he wants us to move past all the conflict and polarization and appreciate what we all have to contribute. But I haven’t read his book!
Good point, Raxxalan. I have said many times that relationship is almost always most important; everything else grows from there.
Thanks for clarifying the term. I read it more as “unity of purpose” or a “consolidation of interests,” which to me suggests too much collectivism. True community, I suppose, is different in that everyone is living together and contributing in their own ways to the benefit of others and themselves.
Rose Wilder Lane explained one factor behind the obsession with categorization:
Nobody can plan the actions of even a thousand living persons, separately. Anyone attempting to control millions must divide them into classes, and make a plan applying to these classes. But these classes do not exist. No two persons are alike. No two are in the same circumstances; no two have the same abilities; beyond getting the barest necessities of life, no two have the same desires.Therefore the men who try to enforce, in real life, a planned economy that is their theory, come up against the infinite diversity of human beings. The most slavish multitude of men that was ever called “demos” or “labor” or “capital” or”agriculture” or “the masses,” actually are men; they are not sheep. Naturally, by their human nature, they escape in all directions from regulations applying to non-existent classes. It is necessary to increase the number of men who supervise their actions. Then (for officials are human, too) it is necessary that more men supervise the supervisors.
Excellent quote, David. I so appreciate your sharing of others who speak so precisely to the discussion.
In addition to RWL’s point, here’s another factor that I think is relevant to the obsession with race/ethnic/gender categorization, especially among academics.
The writer Andre Maurois observed that people who are intelligent, but not creative, tend to latch onto intellectual systems created by others and to hold to those systems even more tenaciously than the originators of those systems would. The application of this thought…
The great expansion of academia has surely brought in thousands of people who are reasonably intelligent, but rarely if ever have creative thoughts. But they need to write and speak in ways that sound like they’re saying something new.
So, just plug into The Current Thing…you can write about “X and race”, or “Y and gender”, etc.
I really think that is a significant factor.
That completely makes sense, David. Especially in academia, people want to make an impression on their colleagues. If they aren’t creative, or don’t even try to be, why not steal the ideas of others. That’s essentially what they are doing.
Creativity is quite overrated, in my view. If geniuses have developed a good and persuasive model of the world, or a system of laws and ethics, why start from scratch? Do you think that you can figure everything out on your own?
I tend to favor ideas that have a long history, with generally favorable outcomes,
Beautiful!
Well, certainly you want to use Newtonian physics or quantum physics, as appropriate for what you’re trying to do. That’s different from glomming on to something like Marxism or Wokery to try & make it look like you have something to say when you really haven’t.
re Categorization: The Great Unwokening
re Solidarity and Uniqueness: I often see posts/comments in various places asserting that Americans are ‘too individualistic’ and hence don’t care about other people.
I think this polarity is a fallacy. What the current “progressivism” / “wokeness” is driving is *neither* individualism *nor* a meaningful sense of connection with other people; rather, it is driving an atomistic population…see Durkheim on Anomie…where everything must be mediated by the central power.
I know the above probably makes little sense as phrased; writing it to capture the thought & write about it some day.
I share your sense of it and your inability to find a real way to translate it into words and thoughts at least coherent ones. I hope you find the right formulation.
As you ponder this question, I would suggest that you research the principle of “Subsidiarity”. Yes, it is a Catholic Church principle but I don’t believe that you have to be Catholic to believe and apply it in this world. Here are two dictionary definitions [link] which describe it, and its relevance to this discussion:
http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c2a1.htm (focus on 1883 and following, regarding subsidiarity)
Agreed…Subsidiarity is very relevant to this topic.
“Devolving decision to the lowest possible level”…this is also applicable to many engineered systems. As an example…In principle, controllers for elevators could run on a centralized basis, in the Cloud somewhere. This would probably be a bad idea, for several reasons, and it is better to have the controllers serve individual elevators or groups of elevators in the same building, with the Cloud used to collect and consolidate maintenance information, etc.
Subsidiarity also is (or should be) a fundamental principle of organization design, and over-centralization has much to do with many corporate sad stories.
Also re Subsidiarity, see my post Coupling.