Thank-you for sharing this interview and a part of your self. For me, a silver lining of covid is that it led me to seek other options for information. I have stumbled upon some truly great minds from all over our big, blue marble.
Fantastic interview and one of the most important things I've read in a long time. I don't pretend to fully understand everything you discussed but I appreciate the exposure to new ideas about language and sociology specifically.
The articulation of how wokeism is about overcoming our animal and physical natures is something I've thought about a lot in the past two years also as it intersects with covid and vaxx hysteria: the concept that humans need to conquer the earth and everything natural (including our immune systems) in order to evolve into the next phase of transhumanism, and I will not comply.
I just finished reading that! I agree that woke language doesn’t work well in German due to the articles of der, die and das. The English language mainly uses the. In addition, it won’t work well in Spanish with el, la y los. Even more confusing is how an article in German, der Mond, can be masculine but is feminine in Spanish- la luna.
I’m not sure Germany is 20 years behind the US with wokeism, I would argue it’s on another plane altogether. Already in the 90’s the feminists were so awful that if you went to get a heavy bag from the cargo hold above your seat in the airplane, no German man would help. The men would run right over you to get to the next plane. I’d rather get some catcalls if I can get some help! None of that helped women advance much.
Sadly they have been pushing hard for this in the last years, changing all gendered language with an ''E'' at the end like in Catalan, or explicitly stating both sexes like in ''Ladies and gentlemans''... It's absurd really because the traditional convention was that the ''O'' at the end included everybody, regardless of their sex... The change cannot be systematised either, but it doesn't have to make sense for them, only that people comply with this ''etiquette'' in institutional emails and so on...
Side note regarding woke (or rather PC as the older term once coined by none other than Lenin himself is) language, pronouns and articles. Do not understimate the power to form thought by controlling language.
Language was a spontaneous evolving concept up until the late nineteenth century, but from then on it has been directed and bred, so to speak. There is no word so negatively loaded it cannot be made into a positive, and vice versa. And having gendered pronoins or aticles matter snot, all it takes is a political decision that from here on out all official communication (state media, school books, laws, et cetera) shall use a new genderless pronoun instead of the older ones. Ten years after that, most everyone will routinely use the new politically mandated pronoun when talking to strangers or online, or about official matters. Another ten years and the then twenty-year olds will only use the PC pronoun, except when talking to their elders and then only as a courtesy. And yet another ten to twenty years the old pronouns will be gone, even from older sources as these will have been edited to comply with values and mores.
Don't believe me? Then study Sweden, where this has been ongoing since the early seventies. About ten years ago, the socialist democrats made it procedure that all official state and county communication, information etcetera use a made-up pronoun: hen. Han is him, and hon is her in swedish. Hen means nothing but has quickly become a marker for if you're good or evil. Recently, a teacher was fired and had her license revoked for refusing to use hen when addressing a pupil - and the school was fined 150 000:- (about 15 000 euros) in damages to the pupil's parents. As a comparison, the sum typically awarded children who has been subjected to rape is about 80 000:-, even for multiple cases or ongoing abuse. So according to the "world's first feminist governement" as they call themselves, refusing to comply with politically mandated pronouns is a worse crime than rape.
For german, just replace der die das with dus. Done deal. Same with any language. Any problem crops up can be solved by ignoring it. Anyone refuring to comply is simply made an example of, starting in the academies and universities. Because the language teachers use is what the kids wind up having as their golden mean for what constitutes normality.
After all, we teachers often spend more time with people's offspring than they do themself. 8-10 hour days from age 2 at kindergarten isn't uncommon. School from 0815 to 1635.
So watch closely what they do to your children at school.
Thank you for this thought provoking interview and assuaging some of my curiosity over who you are! I can not stomach much of what I read these days so I appreciate everything you put out. I just discussed several of the premises you covered here with my 18 year old son who is about to move out into the world to attend university. I pray daily that we do make it just as you stated.
Your comments referencing the English language and wokeism ae so true. I find one of the best examples to be that of the word latinx. It illustrates a complete disregard for the language it originated from. In Spanish the word "latino" refers to everyone and/or a group of men, whereas "latina" can only refer to women. Thus latinx is completely superfluous. Unfortunately some Spanish speakers have decided that they also need to become woke and have begun modifying words incorrectly, thus a female president becomes la presidenta, instead of el presidente, which is grammatically incorrect.
That is good news. Now if only the daily wire itself would properly define latino in the article! I think the only Latinos that approve of latinx are those ignorant of the Spanish language. I do not blame them for not speaking Spanish (most of us in the US do not speak the languages of out ancestors) but they should at least study the origin of the world before they try and force nonsense on the rest of us who know better.
I have noted this previously, that the influence of SF Bay Area tech firms has functioned as Eugyppius said. The book by Shoshana Zuboff, "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (2019), describes very well the techniques used to produce the results described.
As an Anglocentric Canadian, I assumed that the reason for initiation of the woke arrangement was due to the global influence of the Americans. To consider the inception of the Covid "pandemic" it was interesting that the onset in New York was so prominent, and also SF and Seattle, all major centres of world power and influence, NY through culture and finance, SF and Seattle as tech headquarters.
We should not neglect the WEF influence and plan for its "Great Reset" and note the major attention paid to subverting English speaking governments.
A fantastic read, thought provoking and informing, and informative about how little I really know! Very deep. I some research to do. I hope Brave is up to the search engine challenge.
And I now think the German language is brilliant with a built-in “wokism” firewall. I’ll never know how be woke in German; I still don’t know when and if I use ihr or deine!!!!
Your argument of grammatical gender hit me on the head.
In Hebrew this is possibly even more so. It has not only gendered pronouns (and only one definite article), but it extends to verb conjugations as well.
A hard nut to crack for wokeism.
But also, boys and girls are what they are, they love what they are, and they are all tough as nails.
Reading Matt Taibbi's more recent writing is, to me, a lot like listening to someone who is perpetually on the uncomfortable cusp of realizing that his liberal journalistic background, among other things, might have led him to making some pretty seriously wrong conclusions about how the world works. Reading Eugyppius' s stuff is much like that, except for its coming from someone who previously inhabited the world of academia instead. It is interesting to read somewhat similar perspectives/realizations coming from two quite different experience sets. I suspect a lot of people, from a whole of lot different backgrounds, are currently 'flowing' down into the same mental 'water course' as the two authors named here.
Well done, eugyppius. A very interesting exercise. The interviewer has "forced" you to spit out some really nice coherent paragraphs. It's not illegal to do something like this every so often, please...
The premise that the left is intent on overcoming their animal origins in any way possible strikes a note with me.
I guess I had never thought about it.
I love dogs, and in having conversations with fellow dog lovers, they have asked how it is that I can take an eight year old, untrained dog, and within months, turn it into a docile, well mannered pet.
The first thing I say is something I learned early .
Take away the natural instincts passed down through generations, and the intelligence left to work with is that of a five year old child.
When I say this to a leftist, in usually get lectured on how humans are NOT animals, and they have no comparison to dogs.
This has always baffled me as my view is so obvious that, "even a caveman could see it".
I sometimes like to goad a little further by telling them that in some ways dogs are MORE intelligent than a five year old.
The truth is that the intelligence was not learned, but qualifies as instinct, passed down through generations of conditioning.
Last paragraph of the interview, your thoughts seem to parallel the central premise of The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher: withdraw to smaller, isolated communities to keep essential truths alive. Do you think that's a fair observation?
I haven‘t read Rod Dreher, but something along those lines, yes. maybe even enormous isolation is not necessary, i think about ethnic enclaves in cities (chinatowns, e.g.), etc.
Yeah, he's not suggesting everybody move to rural Idaho & live off the grid 1800's style, but small private (or home) schools, small or home churches, etc. And seeing the delta between a small unapologetic & distinctly unwoke private school, and what I read about the disasters of U.S. public schools, I have to agree with his prescriptions. It's not that we don't know how to educate children over 12 years in preparation for college and adulthood, just that too many schools ignore this wisdom passed down over the generations. Over 20 student-years (and counting) of private schooling has been expensive, but I don't regret it for a moment!
Thank-you for sharing this interview and a part of your self. For me, a silver lining of covid is that it led me to seek other options for information. I have stumbled upon some truly great minds from all over our big, blue marble.
Fantastic interview and one of the most important things I've read in a long time. I don't pretend to fully understand everything you discussed but I appreciate the exposure to new ideas about language and sociology specifically.
The articulation of how wokeism is about overcoming our animal and physical natures is something I've thought about a lot in the past two years also as it intersects with covid and vaxx hysteria: the concept that humans need to conquer the earth and everything natural (including our immune systems) in order to evolve into the next phase of transhumanism, and I will not comply.
Check this Devon:
https://tritorch.com/DARPA
The MIC is totally out of control on this subject.
I just finished reading that! I agree that woke language doesn’t work well in German due to the articles of der, die and das. The English language mainly uses the. In addition, it won’t work well in Spanish with el, la y los. Even more confusing is how an article in German, der Mond, can be masculine but is feminine in Spanish- la luna.
I’m not sure Germany is 20 years behind the US with wokeism, I would argue it’s on another plane altogether. Already in the 90’s the feminists were so awful that if you went to get a heavy bag from the cargo hold above your seat in the airplane, no German man would help. The men would run right over you to get to the next plane. I’d rather get some catcalls if I can get some help! None of that helped women advance much.
Sadly they have been pushing hard for this in the last years, changing all gendered language with an ''E'' at the end like in Catalan, or explicitly stating both sexes like in ''Ladies and gentlemans''... It's absurd really because the traditional convention was that the ''O'' at the end included everybody, regardless of their sex... The change cannot be systematised either, but it doesn't have to make sense for them, only that people comply with this ''etiquette'' in institutional emails and so on...
Side note regarding woke (or rather PC as the older term once coined by none other than Lenin himself is) language, pronouns and articles. Do not understimate the power to form thought by controlling language.
Language was a spontaneous evolving concept up until the late nineteenth century, but from then on it has been directed and bred, so to speak. There is no word so negatively loaded it cannot be made into a positive, and vice versa. And having gendered pronoins or aticles matter snot, all it takes is a political decision that from here on out all official communication (state media, school books, laws, et cetera) shall use a new genderless pronoun instead of the older ones. Ten years after that, most everyone will routinely use the new politically mandated pronoun when talking to strangers or online, or about official matters. Another ten years and the then twenty-year olds will only use the PC pronoun, except when talking to their elders and then only as a courtesy. And yet another ten to twenty years the old pronouns will be gone, even from older sources as these will have been edited to comply with values and mores.
Don't believe me? Then study Sweden, where this has been ongoing since the early seventies. About ten years ago, the socialist democrats made it procedure that all official state and county communication, information etcetera use a made-up pronoun: hen. Han is him, and hon is her in swedish. Hen means nothing but has quickly become a marker for if you're good or evil. Recently, a teacher was fired and had her license revoked for refusing to use hen when addressing a pupil - and the school was fined 150 000:- (about 15 000 euros) in damages to the pupil's parents. As a comparison, the sum typically awarded children who has been subjected to rape is about 80 000:-, even for multiple cases or ongoing abuse. So according to the "world's first feminist governement" as they call themselves, refusing to comply with politically mandated pronouns is a worse crime than rape.
For german, just replace der die das with dus. Done deal. Same with any language. Any problem crops up can be solved by ignoring it. Anyone refuring to comply is simply made an example of, starting in the academies and universities. Because the language teachers use is what the kids wind up having as their golden mean for what constitutes normality.
After all, we teachers often spend more time with people's offspring than they do themself. 8-10 hour days from age 2 at kindergarten isn't uncommon. School from 0815 to 1635.
So watch closely what they do to your children at school.
Thank you for this thought provoking interview and assuaging some of my curiosity over who you are! I can not stomach much of what I read these days so I appreciate everything you put out. I just discussed several of the premises you covered here with my 18 year old son who is about to move out into the world to attend university. I pray daily that we do make it just as you stated.
Your comments referencing the English language and wokeism ae so true. I find one of the best examples to be that of the word latinx. It illustrates a complete disregard for the language it originated from. In Spanish the word "latino" refers to everyone and/or a group of men, whereas "latina" can only refer to women. Thus latinx is completely superfluous. Unfortunately some Spanish speakers have decided that they also need to become woke and have begun modifying words incorrectly, thus a female president becomes la presidenta, instead of el presidente, which is grammatically incorrect.
the good news though is that only 2% of hispanics use the term latinx- many find it offensive:
"https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-poll-shows-only-2-of-hispanics-use-term-latinx-many-find-it-offensive
That is good news. Now if only the daily wire itself would properly define latino in the article! I think the only Latinos that approve of latinx are those ignorant of the Spanish language. I do not blame them for not speaking Spanish (most of us in the US do not speak the languages of out ancestors) but they should at least study the origin of the world before they try and force nonsense on the rest of us who know better.
I have noted this previously, that the influence of SF Bay Area tech firms has functioned as Eugyppius said. The book by Shoshana Zuboff, "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" (2019), describes very well the techniques used to produce the results described.
As an Anglocentric Canadian, I assumed that the reason for initiation of the woke arrangement was due to the global influence of the Americans. To consider the inception of the Covid "pandemic" it was interesting that the onset in New York was so prominent, and also SF and Seattle, all major centres of world power and influence, NY through culture and finance, SF and Seattle as tech headquarters.
We should not neglect the WEF influence and plan for its "Great Reset" and note the major attention paid to subverting English speaking governments.
A fantastic read, thought provoking and informing, and informative about how little I really know! Very deep. I some research to do. I hope Brave is up to the search engine challenge.
And I now think the German language is brilliant with a built-in “wokism” firewall. I’ll never know how be woke in German; I still don’t know when and if I use ihr or deine!!!!
Great perspective Eugyppius!
Vielen Dank, liebte ihr Interview, oder deine Interview! Lol !
Your argument of grammatical gender hit me on the head.
In Hebrew this is possibly even more so. It has not only gendered pronouns (and only one definite article), but it extends to verb conjugations as well.
A hard nut to crack for wokeism.
But also, boys and girls are what they are, they love what they are, and they are all tough as nails.
Very interesting interview, especially your thoughts about wokeism. Many thanks.
Brilliant interview
Reading Matt Taibbi's more recent writing is, to me, a lot like listening to someone who is perpetually on the uncomfortable cusp of realizing that his liberal journalistic background, among other things, might have led him to making some pretty seriously wrong conclusions about how the world works. Reading Eugyppius' s stuff is much like that, except for its coming from someone who previously inhabited the world of academia instead. It is interesting to read somewhat similar perspectives/realizations coming from two quite different experience sets. I suspect a lot of people, from a whole of lot different backgrounds, are currently 'flowing' down into the same mental 'water course' as the two authors named here.
The last paragraph (yours) was a doozy and made me feel good!
Well done, eugyppius. A very interesting exercise. The interviewer has "forced" you to spit out some really nice coherent paragraphs. It's not illegal to do something like this every so often, please...
The premise that the left is intent on overcoming their animal origins in any way possible strikes a note with me.
I guess I had never thought about it.
I love dogs, and in having conversations with fellow dog lovers, they have asked how it is that I can take an eight year old, untrained dog, and within months, turn it into a docile, well mannered pet.
The first thing I say is something I learned early .
Take away the natural instincts passed down through generations, and the intelligence left to work with is that of a five year old child.
When I say this to a leftist, in usually get lectured on how humans are NOT animals, and they have no comparison to dogs.
This has always baffled me as my view is so obvious that, "even a caveman could see it".
I sometimes like to goad a little further by telling them that in some ways dogs are MORE intelligent than a five year old.
The truth is that the intelligence was not learned, but qualifies as instinct, passed down through generations of conditioning.
Last paragraph of the interview, your thoughts seem to parallel the central premise of The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher: withdraw to smaller, isolated communities to keep essential truths alive. Do you think that's a fair observation?
I haven‘t read Rod Dreher, but something along those lines, yes. maybe even enormous isolation is not necessary, i think about ethnic enclaves in cities (chinatowns, e.g.), etc.
Yeah, he's not suggesting everybody move to rural Idaho & live off the grid 1800's style, but small private (or home) schools, small or home churches, etc. And seeing the delta between a small unapologetic & distinctly unwoke private school, and what I read about the disasters of U.S. public schools, I have to agree with his prescriptions. It's not that we don't know how to educate children over 12 years in preparation for college and adulthood, just that too many schools ignore this wisdom passed down over the generations. Over 20 student-years (and counting) of private schooling has been expensive, but I don't regret it for a moment!