Re: What is “woke”
Reading the many postings in response to this post and the responses to responses etc. I find there are several different definitions of "woke" from posters, so I looked it up and fond this on WikiPedia:
"Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) originally meaning alertness to racial prejudice and discrimination. Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBT rights."*
So those above who claim 'woke' is about labelling people with a single shared characteristic and then assuming they are one homogenous group with identical beliefs, desires and experiences is the exact opposite of what 'woke' actually means in the social context.
The problem here is that people are using the same word with diametrically opposed meanings and getting all angry and annoyed at one-another for disagreeing. It is rather similar to religious people arguing with scientists about 'truth'. For scientists, 'truth' is factual accuracy in statements about the real world. For religious people 'truth' is the 'revelations of their faith and their god'. For example, in the book 'Belief'**, Madeleine L'Engle writes:
"Nevertheless there is stil the common misconception, the illusion, that fact and truth are the same thing. No! We do not need faith for facts; we need faith for truth. In his letter to Titus Paul speaks of the mystery of faith, and in Hebrews 11.1 he writes, Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (KJV)."
When people sue the same words for fundamentally different meanings their arguments, however amusing to bystanders, are completely pointless and a waste of of energy.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke#:~:text=Woke%20is%20an%20adjective%20derived,and%20denial%20of%20LGBT%20rights.
** 'Belief', edited by Francis S. Collins, pub HarperOne, ISBN 978-0-06-178734-8, page 90-91.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
