This is correct with the caveat that there's no "they" there.
Or like people say, there's identity politics and then there's actual politics.
Or yet another way of putting it is that class differences trump fake differences in the real world but academia and the media focus on fake differences.
Hierarchies and social strata exist and persist over centuries. The problem of economic inequality is a tough nut to crack. We have pretended to ourselves that there is decent social mobility and that economic inequality is not too bad. But it's bad, so – hey – let's focus on non-issues of race and gender and whatnot.
Some call "wokeness" radical egalitarianism – enlightenment ideals taken to their breaking point and beyond. People urge us to focus on reaching some utopian ideal of equality of outcomes. Better to focus on reducing economic inequalities. But entrenched interests will not share the pot without being forced to, I believe.
This is the defining struggle of our era – of every era really. The struggle between those who have access to opportunity and wealth and those that barely do.
It's a lie that we've had a bunch of popular revolutions. We've never truly had one. A landed aristocracy and merchant class has held sway over us all (systemically) from feudal and aristocratic times down through to this era of nation states – be they communist or capitalist, doesn't matter.
The main problem is wokeness gives some people political leverage they wouldn't otherwise have, and it's hard to fire them even if they are shitty at work. That's a real problem.
The main problem with wokeness is it creates a bunch of divisions in the population into smaller and smaller sections which are "incompatible." which means that concerted efforts between the bottom 70% are seriously diluted because very few people are interested in coordinating between these lines.
Not to mention it's a prolific and constant distraction from real topics of interest, and is at best superficial, and identity issues can be drummed up infinitely. But it generates user interaction, and inundates them, and dissolves community. These are all big wins for those at the top, whether they're aware of it or not. Personally I like to assume that it's automatic, user interaction whether sympathetic or indignant is sells, inundation is the nature of the medium, the dissolution of community is just an aside.
It’s common to see people spout some version of “How dare any group try to maximize it’s leverage!” With an implicit that I am not part of. People leverage a wide range of subtle interactions to their advantage. From shared national, ethnic, religious, or even educational background to good looks and height. It’s easy to point to any of them as being unacceptable. However, while they can be minimized, I don’t think this stuff is going away.
What’s interesting is the knock on effects as these interactions get internalized into culture. Working out to maximize attractiveness, especially while networking, just becomes part of climbing the corporate ladder.
Or like people say, there's identity politics and then there's actual politics.
Or yet another way of putting it is that class differences trump fake differences in the real world but academia and the media focus on fake differences.
Hierarchies and social strata exist and persist over centuries. The problem of economic inequality is a tough nut to crack. We have pretended to ourselves that there is decent social mobility and that economic inequality is not too bad. But it's bad, so – hey – let's focus on non-issues of race and gender and whatnot.
Some call "wokeness" radical egalitarianism – enlightenment ideals taken to their breaking point and beyond. People urge us to focus on reaching some utopian ideal of equality of outcomes. Better to focus on reducing economic inequalities. But entrenched interests will not share the pot without being forced to, I believe.
This is the defining struggle of our era – of every era really. The struggle between those who have access to opportunity and wealth and those that barely do.
It's a lie that we've had a bunch of popular revolutions. We've never truly had one. A landed aristocracy and merchant class has held sway over us all (systemically) from feudal and aristocratic times down through to this era of nation states – be they communist or capitalist, doesn't matter.