DISCLAIMER: This is my personal opinion. I am a computer science student, not an expert in the matter, I am not a U.S. citizen, I do not follow politics that much. Please go read my
‘Welcome’ blog post before this one. Probably starting with a blog post this controversial was not my smartest move. Next posts will vary in topics…
as I said this is just what passes my mind:
I learn, I observe, if I feel like it… I write it down.
Straight to the point:
Balance is self-regulating as it's, by its own definition, what naturally recurs in a system when left undisturbed.As to whether balance by itself is the 'good' in most situations, is a different question I will probably cover in a future blog.
Humans, because of their egotistical nature, presume to be able to predict the balance point to force it on a system artificially, which more often than not has led to long-term repercussions much worse than if the system had been left as is.
Humans are very extremist by their own nature and by today's society structure, we all know the polarization that happens in social networks (online and offline). For this reason, history tends to swing like a pendulum, we can see it in everything: the political parties' consensus, in fashion trends, in economic policies, artistic movements, educational philosophies, dietary fads...
And of course also in the social attitudes towards body image, tolerance for non-conventional orientations, personal expression, sexualities, races, and in general social circles.
About Wokeism
The word "woke", born in the 2020s or so, is defined like this on UrbanDictionary:Obviously the definition is biased because it is used by the opposite political party but the fact that people had to invent a new word to describe this social dynamic is explanatory enough.
From the BLM movement to today’s date wokeism has been on the rise, with also COVID playing a role in it (where polarity was at its peak) .
We can clearly see that the pendulum from days where oppressing black people and women was the norm, has swung the other way passing the middle point. From closed-mindedness to the overacceptance of the absurd.
I could give many examples (and I am not even a Twitter/X user, imagine if I was…):
- Women in Tech meetings
- No Jewish allowed in UCLA
- Demigender Scholarships
- No more U-turn signs
- College study
- Rage ritual retreat
- Boy Scouts of America
- Race vs Gender
I guess by now you are educated about the popular use of the word wokeism and what I mean about the pendulum surpassing its balance point.
The real problem
The real problem in all of this is that equality is commonly used to mean two different things, “equality of opportunity” and “equality of outcome”.Imagine a 100m race between me and Usain Bolt. Equality of opportunity would mean that we both start off at the same place, and both have to run the same 100m. I will never win. For equality of outcome, we might have to weigh Usain down with 100 lbs or give me a 50m head start to get a world where we each have a 50% chance of winning the race.
Woke people in their arguments often make the mistake of wanting to force "equality of outcome" to solve discrimination, often through oppression. This is fundamentally wrong and I believe all of us understand that... It's just like doing a 180° and making the oppressor the new oppressed.
But this is not the only fallacy, the problem is also with people believing that:
This is also very wrong, there’s actually evidence of the opposite, at least for the gender gap in tech. Meaning as equality of opportunity increases, observed outcomes diverge.
Another problem as I have talked about already is how oftern, after periods of oppression people tend to overcorrect behaviours and do not realize when the so-called ‘desired balance’ has been surpassed.
This is obviously because of human cognitive biases that often make it believe what it observes or feels day to day and not what actual statistics say.
Iran is an example of how progressism if done too fast or brought to extremes (not in this specific case) can lead to the pendulum swinging all the way back even harder.
Takeaways:
1. Do not force equality of outcome, enforce equality of opportunities with no expectations2. Follow the statistics (flying on a commercial plane should not feel scary)
3. Do not overcorrect, avoid the extremes. If something triggers you so much you are probably in the wrong.
4. Do not be politically correct all the time, think with your mind and if something seems outrageous just say it.
5. Just chill out, peace and love for everyone.
We have limited time on this earth (you as well as others) enjoy it while you are being here. Objective morality is not real (future post on this...) do whatever YOU want and make YOU happy. Just make sure you are not ruining the movie for everyone else currently watching it, and also for those who will come next.