Great article Lyndon! There's a quote that artfully captures the current "anti-woke" trend perfectly:
"When you're accustomed to a position of privilege, equality feels like oppression."
It describes the notion that offering equality of opportunity (rather than outcome) somehow results in a scarcity of the ingredients for success for those who previously enjoyed a position of privilege. Perhaps if those previously privileged few need to tread on those less fortunate to secure advancement, they really shouldn't be entitled to their success.
So many anti-wokers lean on the challenges in their own life as evidence that they are NOT in fact privileged - "how can I, a white man be privileged if I grew up in poverty?". This conveniently ignores that colour of their skin or heritage is not at all a contributing factor to being disadvantaged.
The biggest challenge moving forward from recognizing privilege is understanding what to do about it. Are quotas really the most productive way forward? Should university and job applications be gender, race, and identity free? Should we not hire the best individual for the job, regardless of representation? The only clear way is equality of opportunity, opening an additional question - what does removing barriers to opportunity really look like?
Thanks for the feedback Patrick. Given the whole shtick of this substack is steelmanning difficult ideas, many people have asked me to steelman the anti-woke perspective. What is the most charitable and generous reasons why you should be "anti-woke" and not believe in wokism as I've described it above. What do you think? Would you like to see that post?
Great article!
Great article Lyndon! There's a quote that artfully captures the current "anti-woke" trend perfectly:
"When you're accustomed to a position of privilege, equality feels like oppression."
It describes the notion that offering equality of opportunity (rather than outcome) somehow results in a scarcity of the ingredients for success for those who previously enjoyed a position of privilege. Perhaps if those previously privileged few need to tread on those less fortunate to secure advancement, they really shouldn't be entitled to their success.
So many anti-wokers lean on the challenges in their own life as evidence that they are NOT in fact privileged - "how can I, a white man be privileged if I grew up in poverty?". This conveniently ignores that colour of their skin or heritage is not at all a contributing factor to being disadvantaged.
The biggest challenge moving forward from recognizing privilege is understanding what to do about it. Are quotas really the most productive way forward? Should university and job applications be gender, race, and identity free? Should we not hire the best individual for the job, regardless of representation? The only clear way is equality of opportunity, opening an additional question - what does removing barriers to opportunity really look like?
Thanks for the feedback Patrick. Given the whole shtick of this substack is steelmanning difficult ideas, many people have asked me to steelman the anti-woke perspective. What is the most charitable and generous reasons why you should be "anti-woke" and not believe in wokism as I've described it above. What do you think? Would you like to see that post?
Thoughtful and well written, Lyndon.
Thanks Lorraine.
Nice article, very informative 👍
By the way... by any chance are you Porkageese?
Thanks. I think you may have drank too much Pina though.