The Origins of Wokeness

January 2025 The word "prig" isn't very common now, but if you look up the definition, it will sound familiar.

2025 年 1 月 “prig”这个词现在并不常见，但如果你查一下定义，它听起来会很熟悉。

Google's isn't bad: A self-righteously moralistic person who behaves as if superior to others.

谷歌的人还不错：一个自以为是的道德主义者，表现得好像比别人高人一等。

This sense of the word originated in the 18th century, and its age is an important clue: it shows that although wokeness is a comparatively recent phenomenon, it's an instance of a much older one.

这个词的这个含义起源于 18 世纪，它的时代是一个重要的线索：它表明，虽然觉醒是一种相对较新的现象，但它是一个更古老的现象的一个例子。

There's a certain kind of person who's attracted to a shallow, exacting kind of moral purity, and who demonstrates his purity by attacking anyone who breaks the rules.

有一种人被肤浅、严格的道德纯洁性所吸引，并通过攻击任何违反规则的人来展示自己的纯洁性。

Every society has these people.

每个社会都有这样的人。

All that changes is the rules they enforce.

唯一改变的是他们执行的规则。

In Victorian England it was Christian virtue.

在维多利亚时代的英国，这是基督教的美德。

In Stalin's Russia it was orthodox Marxism-Leninism.

在斯大林统治下的俄罗斯，这是正统的马克思列宁主义。

For the woke, it's social justice.

对于觉醒者来说，这是社会正义。

So if you want to understand wokeness, the question to ask

所以如果你想了解觉醒，就要问这个问题

is not why people behave this way.

这不是人们这样做的原因。

Every society has prigs.

每个社会都有自以为是的人。

The question to ask is why our prigs are priggish about these ideas, at this moment.

要问的问题是，为什么我们的自以为是的人此时对这些想法感到自以为是。

And to answer that we have to ask when and where wokeness began.

为了回答这个问题，我们必须问觉醒是何时何地开始的。

The answer to the first question is the 1980s.

第一个问题的答案是20世纪80年代。

Wokeness is a second, more aggressive wave of political correctness, which started in the late 1980s, died down in the late 1990s, and then returned with a vengeance in the early 2010s, finally

觉醒是第二波更具侵略性的政治正确浪潮，始于 20 世纪 80 年代末，在 1990 年代末平息，然后在 2010 年代初卷土重来，最后

peaking after the riots of 2020.

2020年骚乱后达到顶峰。

What was political correctness, exactly?

到底什么是政治正确？

I'm often asked to define both this term and wokeness by people who think they're meaningless labels, so I will.

经常有人要求我定义这个术语和觉醒，他们认为它们是毫无意义的标签，所以我会的。

They both have the same definition: An aggressively performative focus on social justice.

它们都有相同的定义：积极关注社会正义。

In other words, it's people being prigs about social justice.

换句话说，这是人们对社会正义的自以为是。

And that's the real problem — the performativeness, not the social justice.

这才是真正的问题——表现性，而不是社会正义。

[ 0 ] Racism, for example, is a genuine problem.

[ 0 ] 例如，种族主义是一个真正的问题。

Not a problem on the scale that the woke believe it to be, but a genuine one.

这不是一个觉醒者所认为的规模问题，而是一个真正的问题。

I don't think any reasonable person would deny that.

我认为任何有理智的人都不会否认这一点。

The problem with political correctness was not that it focused on marginalized groups, but the shallow, aggressive way in which it did so.

政治正确性的问题不在于它关注边缘化群体，而在于它这样做的方式肤浅、咄咄逼人。

Instead of going out into the world and quietly helping members of marginalized groups, the

他们没有走出去，默默地帮助边缘化群体的成员，

politically correct focused on getting people in trouble for using the wrong words to talk about them.

政治正确的重点是让人们因为使用错误的词语来谈论他们而陷入麻烦。

As for where political correctness began, if you think about it, you probably already know the answer.

至于政治正确是从哪里开始的，你想一想，想必已经知道答案了。

Did it begin outside universities and spread to them from this external source?

它是从大学外部开始并从外部来源传播到大学的吗？

Obviously not; it has always been most extreme in universities.

显然不是；在大学里这种情况一直是最极端的。

So where in universities did it begin?

那么，大学里的这种现象是从哪里开始的呢？

Did it begin in math, or the hard sciences, or engineering, and

它是从数学、自然科学、工程学开始的吗？

spread from there to the humanities and social sciences?

从那里蔓延到人文社会科学？

Those are amusing images, but no, obviously it began in the humanities and social sciences.

这些都是有趣的图像，但不，显然它始于人文和社会科学。

Why there?

为什么在那里？

And why then?

那么为什么呢？

What happened in the humanities and social sciences in the 1980s?

20世纪80年代人文社会科学发生了什么？

A successful theory of the origin of political correctness has to be able to explain why it didn't happen earlier.

一个成功的政治正确性起源理论必须能够解释为什么它没有更早发生。

Why didn't it happen during the protest movements of the 1960s,

为什么它没有在 20 世纪 60 年代的抗议运动中发生？

for example?

例如？

They were concerned with much the same issues.

他们关心的问题大致相同。

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