I dont understand
Comment on Woke
GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
That’s only because most “woke” people are radical liberals, who have good intentions but don’t have a scientific view of political economy and still have a soft-imperialist worldview. As conditions in the imperial core decline, they succumb to despair. The failing power of the empire and the rising resistance of the global south instills them with a sense of nihilism, because we are supposed to be enlightened and civilized (though we can no longer be said to be, with the rise of overt fascism in the west), while our enemies are regressive, authoritarian barbarians - two equal evils fighting each other, with no hope for anything better.
You only need to gain a greater understanding of the world, and particularly of imperialism, to break out of this mindset. We’ve occupied a privileged place in the world, bought off by the oligarchs to ensure support at home while they plunder the world. But this was always a gilded cage. It’s easy to look at the gold leaf peeling off the cage, revealing the rusting steel beneath it, and despair at how the world is getting uglier, but this only reveals that you haven’t imagined a life outside the cage. The rust is ugly, but it also weakens the substrate.
In short, the tide has already turned, and the day of liberation is approaching. It can’t come quick enough, but it’s coming nevertheless. If wokeness has made you despair, it’s only because you’re half awake - gripped by sleep paralysis and tormented by shadows. You only need to wake up, to become more woke, to see that the sun is beginning to rise!
Chippys_mittens@lemmy.world 3 days ago
GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
My point is that, even if the meme is true and woke people tend to be sadder than reactionaries, it’s because they aren’t woke enough. For instance, you have generally well-intentioned progressive liberals who support equal rights and oppressed people at home, i.e. they support gay and transgender people against social reactionaries, but when they see Iran and its religious and socially conservative allies actually striking hard at the fascist empire, actually turning the tide back, and rather than being happy about it they just see it as two equal evils fighting each other. They don’t see the broader situation and context - they’re woke to discrimination, but they aren’t woke to imperialism.
For the last 600 years, the world has been dominated by European empires. These empires enriched themselves through their colonies, using that wealth to grow ever more powerful and take over a greater and greater proportion of the world, eventually overcoming and dominating their former equals in India and China.
World War I was fought to divide up the world between blocs of these empires, with the Anglo-French-American bloc triumphing and taking the holdings of Germany and the old Ottoman empire (a relic of the previous era), and breaking up Austria-Hungary. But this arrangement was not stable - Germany wasn’t down for the count, and more importantly, the old European empires were declining while America was rising.
This was settled into a more stable system with the end of WW2 and the decolonization that followed, but this decolonization was only giving way to a new kind of imperialism - that of finance, currency manipulation, loans with conditions that made extraction easier. Soft power, in other words, with the occasional bout of violent domination. But the violent domination wasn’t official conquest - rather, new and more amenable governments were installed, enabling the continued expropriation of labour and resources from the colonized countries. Thus, the new empire, formed from the old European empires but headed by America, came to dominate the world from World War 2 until today.
Social progress tends to follow from economic progress. The women’s rights movement was born out of women entering the workplace. The gay rights movement emerged in the post-war period of prosperity. The colonized countries of the global south did not have these same prosperity, and social progress came to them later than in the imperial core. At the same time, aspects of social progress often came to seen as aspects of colonialism and foreign domination, clashing with traditional culture. Indeed, the imperial core uses socially regressive attitudes and policies in the colonized world to justify our domination over them. Just look at the war with Iran (the repressive mullah regime that executes gays and makes women wear veils) for an example. They aren’t as developed as us, and therefore we must crush and dominate them, and seize their natural resources for private capital. Thus, a lack of social progress in the global south (or third world, or whatever you want to call it) creates the justification for imperial domination, while imperial domination creates the conditions that hinder progress.
The victory of the colonized and the overthrow of the imperial yoke will create the conditions that foster social progress. It’s a precondition, so interpreting the socially conservative Iranian state resisting the American empire as “one evil fighting another” is wrong-headed. It’s historically progressive. The victory of Iran will be a victory for the world, which will help move history forth into a new post-imperial era. 600 years of this, over half a millennia, and it’s finally coming to a close. There is therefore every reason to hope and little reason to despair. Woke liberals do not see this, because they are not woke enough.
Chippys_mittens@lemmy.world 2 days ago
But how would we?
GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
How would we what? I’m not sure what you mean.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
There’s a simpler explanation: people who aren’t shitbags are made unhappy by being beaten down by shitbags, and the shitbags becoming more openly shitty.
You don’t need to bring a geopolitical philosophy into it.
No one is being instilled with a sense of nihilism because of a loss of American influence in the global south, and no one really gives a shit about our enemies and their moral character. People care about stuff like “healthcare”, “poverty”, “civil rights”, “not burning the world”.
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s actually even simpler than that.
The world, and life itself, is complicated and messy in 2026, and an awareness of it and the constant, always on vigilance of keeping up with all of the moral responsibility of trying to build a life that allows you to look yourself in the mirror every day is draining and crushing.
If you don’t have to do that because you’re either ignorant of the machinery you’re part of, or don’t care, you just get to go about your life.
GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
That is indeed a simpler explanation. Much too simple.
I’m not saying people are nihilistic because of a loss of American influence in the global south, I’m saying they’re being nihilistic because they don’t see anything good happening. This extends to the current situation with the global south because you don’t see any “good guys”, you just see evil vs. evil. You said it yourself: “shitbags vs. shitbags”. You don’t have perspective.
Don’t see this as me calling you out, think of it as a good faith attempt to enlighten you.
baines@piefed.social 2 days ago
people openly supporting nazi’s are indeed simply shitbags
and yes non shitbags are sad to see people suffer, that is called empathy, it is only confusing to the shitbag party in the US because they generally lack said empathy
GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Yeah, definitely, but the world is much more complex than that. The current state of affairs is a result of historical contingency, and it isn’t going to last forever. As I have attempted to get across, the tide is already changing.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Why do you think things need a more complex explanation?
Do you really feel like this Iran incursion is somehow significant feeling compared to Iraq or Afghanistan?
Do you actually think that the hegemonic status of the US really enters into the consideration of most people, to say nothing of having a significant impact on their emotions? Do you think an awareness of that would actually make people feel better?
GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Because the explanation is more complex. Things aren’t the way they are for no reason, there’s historical context and theoretical frameworks that allow you to understand how and why the world came to be as it is, and how it is likely to change. If you understand this, then you also know not only that things are not going to be this way forever, you know that the world is changing right now. That we are closer to liberation than you think.
Knowledge is power, and understanding the world also means that you are more able to change it.
The Iran situation is more significant than Iraq or Afghanistan, because Iran is going to win. This is a far worse situation for the United States government than both Iraq and Afghanistan combined, because it is breaking their aura of invincibility. They aren’t being slowly exhausted in a guerilla war, they’re being struck both militarily and economically by a country they haven’t even invaded, and will not be able to invade.
You’re mixing up what is and what should be. No, most Americans don’t particularly care about the world outside their borders. If people understood that the power of the US government, of Donald Trump and his cronies, was based on American global hegemony - on the empire - and they further understood that that hegemony was crumbling and is indeed at a breaking point, they would understand that there is plenty reason to be hopeful.
Your oppressors, who are also the world’s oppressors, are being defeated! They depend both at home and abroad on the illusion of invincibility and the illusion that nothing will ever change. Those illusions are more broken today than they were yesterday, and were more broken yesterday than the day before. In the coming weeks and months, they will continue to break.