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Comment by wolframhempel | Hacker News Reader

Last three things I read (slightly all over the place):

- Aleister Crowley by Steven Ashe: A biography of the British occultist.

- Going Infinite by Michael Lewis: A (very well meaning) story of Sam Bankman-Fried

- The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt: A book about "safety culture" on campus and it's implications at large.

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I thought The Coddling of the American Mind was excellent.

Yup. I've been looking for books that explain the underlying structures and dynamics of "wokeness" for a while. I feel "the Coddling" does a good job for some aspects of it. The best book I found so far in this regard is "Cynical Theories" by Helen Pluckrose. You read it and just think: "yeah, this is it". Unfortunately it's written like a PhD thesis, so not the lightest read.

> I've been looking for books that explain the underlying structures and dynamics of "wokeness" for a while.

Fear & fear of tolerance is a universal theme throughout history, there's not much to it. "Coddling" is a pejorative used by people afraid of tolerance.

Far left woke people aren't really tolerant though. At least not universally

Sure, but that's just Popper's old paradox of tolerance: tolerating hateful people makes a hateful society. Anyone who is fine tolerating hate isn't working towards a tolerant society, they're working towards a hateful society. You don't need to look any further than e.g. the contemporary indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians to see this. Or the deep fear and lack of empathy americans have towards the poor.

The problem is in how you judge hate, seems to me they don't judge it very well. And their reaction to what they consider hateful is also hateful which I don't agree with.

I remember listening to stories about a black preacher that converted a KKK leader and he did it through tolerance and compassion not by screaming hateful things back through a megaphone

> I remember listening to stories about a black preacher that converted a KKK leader and he did it through tolerance and compassion not by screaming hateful things back through a megaphone

The fact is, nothing in society was won by polite persuasion, but the compulsion to make people comfortable is the core of white supremacy. You might want to check your own judgement on hate if tolerating hateful people is your litmus test.

> but the compulsion to make people comfortable is the core of white supremacy.

Sorry, what? Then woke people are just white supremacists by your account. What's the point of the comical micro aggression complaints if it isn't to make woke people comfortable?

"I'm sooo not like those white supremacists!"

Sorry to break it out to you, both them and you are in the common pursuit of comfort and safety. One from the edgy teenager, I'm-totally-not-like-my-parents point of view, the other from I'm-totally-not-like-those minorities.

The fact is, you want to be treated in comfortable ways by them. Assuming you are a minority. If you are not, well, how's mom? And why was she so emotionally unavailable?

James Lindsay, new discourses, does the best analysis of woke I know of. Including reading books, analysis of academia, etc

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9K5PLkj0N_b9JTPdSRwPkg

Then definitely don't miss its forefather. Writing with such insight

The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom

I recommend the "If Books Could Kill" podcast episode that covers this book.

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