THE LIAR’S Little Stings

The Infinite Regress of Woke

Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

By Dan Clemens

I’d like to call the reader’s attention to an info-sheet called “THE LIAR” which I’ll attach at the end of this article, you may wish to scroll down and see that first.  What follows is my commentary but first a quote:

"Postmodernism destroys things by making them die the death of 1000 qualifications.

It isn't a tiger that bites the throat of it's prey, it's a swarm of bees that kills via 1000 little stings.

There was no single blow that killed meaning, it was a swarm of postmodern criticism." -- Wokal Distance

I've heard that there is an apropos term used in informal logic "death by definitions" i.e. that one can kill an argument through an ostensibly rigorous but deeply disingenuous demand for definitions of anything and everything. One needn't persuasively defeat an argument on its merits if you can cudgel your interlocutor via paradoxical demands for absolute clarity that only muddy the water.

You may have heard ‘the woke won’t debate you,’ but they will engage with you; note the difference.  It's a behaviour of asking endless but disingenuous questions, it feigns very superficially to seek voracity or even to seek truth – it’s anything but.

One hindrance to productive everyday discourse that I believe rests more with the woke interlocutor.  I want to emphasize the quotidian scope of this missive, that it applies to normal everyday situations, typically of friends and family or with colleagues.

Partly this fallacious counter-argumentative style is rooted in the scientistic worship of so-called experts. So a reasonable, sane, or otherwise normal person articulating a common sense position can barely get a point across without being inundated with ostensible demands for proof, evidence, stats, facts, or figures [or the like]. Often this is just stated in the ‘how do you know?’ form. It could emphasize the YOU or the KNOW. The more polite-seeming version emphasizes the latter, as in ‘but how do you know that, for sure?’ The quasi ad hominem version is how do you, non-expert, really know about that?

It must be stated that, yes, claims require evidence and people need to back up what they’re saying. But even in casual situations with woke people there’s an immediate jump-down-yer-throat reflex that parades itself as virtuously demanding rational justifications for true beliefs. It extends a scientific, academic, published, or broadcast standard to just talking to someone you know. And this is why we can say it is often done in bad faith. It is not at all ‘a seeking to understand’ that elaborates the topic, it is done so repeatedly until you just have to say, you don’t know. Something that seems common knowledge is doubted, of course, should you then try to research it in real time?  Likely the source will be disputed as untrustworthy dis/mis/mal information. Even if a highly credible source is proffered, can you dig into the research methods to defend it further, expertly? So, it is an attempt to shut-down a perspective on a topic rather than bring it into relief.

It is also clearly very condescending. Rather than let people say what they think and why, the more radical discussant implicitly nominates themselves as the mediator, as the one who will decide what speech is acceptable based on their imposition of a burden of proof into the conversation. This petty hall-monitorism creates a kind of a time-crunch to beat the clock, they have to force an admission of ignorance on any point, before their lack of decorum and insufferable condescension become too socially unacceptable. But they’d be just as happy with said normal person to just give up on the conversation due to the characterological insufferability, which the woke person may misinterpret as a job well done on their part.

A further problem here is zealotry. The normal penalty for antisocial behaviour is that people pull away from you, distance themselves from you. But since those people are bad, and this signals to other rabid conversants your phony purity, one persists. And the opposite effect, the person vetoed/canceled will tend to speak freely only with other open-minded, classically-liberal people. So, the silo effect this has seems to have a proximal benefit [cancellation] but frays the social fabric. So who loses? Everyone, right? Well, those who value the social fabric more will be more inclined to maintain it, unlike the self-syled revolutionary. So, not offending the antisocial participant becomes a kind of neo-value inside the otherwise [or, heretofore] healthy group dynamic. Don’t ‘provoke’ the heckler’s veto, don’t invite it upon yourself, as it produces an infinite regress into not being able to prove every salient point due to being held to a formal/professional standard of evidence in an otherwise casual/informal setting. And all too often, people seem not to recognize that discrepancy, that interrupting and interjecting to halt momentum and to hijack the speaker with a perverse sophistry charade may seem more truth-seeking [in good faith] than it is. It is more likely an attempt to ‘disrupt’ the proceedings and frustrate someone, as if you’re a mad-dog muckraker and they’re speaking from the podium [or, pulpit].

So why isn’t this just good old-fashion ‘holding someone’s feet to the fire’? Simply because it emulates the heckler’s veto. If you kick and scream and make a scene, you can ‘cancel’ someone from speaking because most people wish to avoid the whole ordeal. But the net result is that the minor disruption cancels the speaker’s opportunity in the interest of preventing it from becoming a major disruption.  And what I mean by a scene, ordeal, or disruption is the way this argument spoils the mood of an otherwise pleasant social gathering.  Anyone in the periphery or on the outside looking it may not distinguish between you expressing your non or even anti-woke opinion, which can of course be done calmly and rationally, and the woke person who turns it into a non-debate engagement, or, conflict.  Such a person would prefer ‘the two of you’ just don’t do this – failing to notice that one party is clearly the bad actor in close analysis.  But it is understandable that someone would simply with to avoid the scene, and take not sides.  Thus the woke person has shut you down through their own antisocial engagement which may nevertheless enjoy the benefits of just seeming to be ‘asking questions’ or engaging in ‘debate.’

So often, you can’t even get your point across against this wokish onslaught. Not because you’re unable to articulate the point for lack of intelligence, but due to the impolite interjectional imposition that won’t allow the point to be articulated due to constantly jumping in [as I’ve said: interrupting, disrupting, now interjecting.

Because the following examples are not socially coded as clever variations of “shut up”: 1. How do you know that? 2. What proof do you have, 3. Why should I believe it?  But sometimes, they are clever variations of “shut up” and so should be socially coded as such.

Any of those three questions above could be used totally respectfully and in good faith, as ways to enrich a conversation.

The problem should become clear, that the woke logic is, in effect:

“You don’t get to speak unless your every point is backed up by sources I personally endorse.” Put another way: you don’t get to disagree.

It puts the cart before the horse, in this way:

“In order to persuade me, you need to first establish the persuasiveness of what you’re just starting to say, at the outset…before I’ll allow you to proceed…{Though, I already know I refuse to be persuaded at all!}”

Usually someone makes a point, and is allowed to say their say, and then it can be discussed further.  The tactic infuses the rightful after-discussion into the point-making.  So, you can’t even make a point or state a position without simultaneously justifying it.  So instead of making and [then] proving points you have to prove your point while making it, ongoingly and concurrently.  And this is why in formal debates decorum is recognized as a point-category, you can’t badger the interlocutor because it's antithetical to the spirit of debate.

So, it is a tactic to prevent any dissent, cloaked in a demand for justification(s).

The true message here is ‘why should I or anyone keep listening to you, you don’t seem to have an expert’s level of hard proof’?’

One variation of this is a barking demand for myriad definitions, in real time.  But they’re just playing “gotcha” – they’re LARPing as a smarmy interviewer.

They don’t actually want any clarification, their minds are clearly already made up: they don’t like where this is going and they’re taking it upon themselves to stymie it. This is what’s meant by bad faith, they’re just pretending that if you make great points backed up with either facts or logic they could be convinced. Not because they’re bad people, just because they think no one in the world could think that way, they’re conditioned to think differences of opinion in social or political matters are necessarily explained by a lack of moral or intellectual fibre on the part of the opponent. So, the conclusion is ready-made, and so persuasiveness is moot.

So if it doesn’t ruin the topic of conversation altogether due to the unbearableness that’s created [heckler’s veto ‘a’] it may simply devolve it into a tedious conversation about how to have a conversation - wherein no political challenge to woke orthodoxy is likely to emerge [heckler’s veto ‘b’]. In such a case, you’d likely just insist upon some breathing room to say your say; the other person will say fine and follow up all-too-eagerly: OK, go ahead, what’s your point?  This creates undue pressure, puts you under the gun, and even if you’re able to be articulate while badgered, they’re likely signaling non-listening and will adjust their body language to further provoke, as they’ve said something that suggests they’re now finally willing to listen and yet signal in every other way they’re unwilling to do so.

Sideline, frustrate; derail to deride.

The result is a falsely felt victory: ‘well that person will think twice before they try any anti-woke stuff again!’

So why is it an infinite regress?

I forget where I heard this phrasing but it’s like when a child just keeps asking “why?” until you’re eventually attempting to explain the nature of the universe or the very nature of reality.  Is the child seeking intellectual satisfaction to slake wondrous curiosity?  Unlikely.  Will the infinite “why’s” even if answered with erudite aplomb ever appease?

Don’t be too easily duped into believing perfectly justified arguments will ever satisfy the woke interlocutor. ‘And how do you know THAT?’ ad infinitum.  ‘Oh, because you’ve seen it with your lyin’ eyes? Because you have three, or thirty, examples?’ That’s not enough, it never is.  You can go down the recesses of these regresses as far as you wish, but you don’t have infinite examples or unlimited proof.

This leads to the ostrich problem of wilful ignorance or knowledge-avoidance.  The myriad examples simply cannot exist in the person who may have a cultivated media experience.  And media sources providing examples that contradict The [Regime] Narrative would be discounted.  You’d have the same problem, as a source of these examples, you’re only - to their mind - proving your own lack of credibility.  It’s the old joke: “Sure, it works in practice, but does it work in theory?”  Examples that counter the narrative are proof of the disreputableness of the source, sources are retroactively negated via disloyalty to theory.

Remember “the woke won’t debate you” – at best you’ll end up in aporia, that “well, we just see it differently” – which of course was the starting point anyway. So this is a loop, not quite a regress, but the difference is negligible in this case.

But like sports, the intrigue of stimulating conversation lies in the uncertainty of the outcome. Like Kramer coming to blurt “The Mets blew it!” to Jerry’s chagrin; once the outcome is known, the bloom is off the rose. The intent is to put you onto an MSNBC-esque hot-seat across from a [to note two famous examples] would-be Ben Affleck contra Sam Harris or Cathy Newman contra JBP.  Anything you say must be categorically false as a matter of faith, you’re a known heretic against the woke religion.

Chilled speech results in a contrived collegiality: don’t rock the boat.  Most normal people wish to avoid this, and so they’re much more likely to police the non-woke people into not upsetting the woke people, because reasonable people know they ought to appeal to the more reasonable party in avoiding conflict…rather than fruitlessly seeking to elevate the engagement into a real debate which first necessitates that you civilize the instigator.

I mean, the rest of the social body would prefer you modify your behaviour by not provoking the irrational one.  Why?  Because they can reason with you.  And because you’re more invested in relationships because you’re not slavishly wedded to a corrupting ideology.  So the bad actor gets a pass, because they can’t be reasoned with anyway and smooth social interactions are a lower priority.

The “LIAR” creates such an unpleasant mood that anyone else around would rather just ‘not talk politics’ and thus: if you can’t say something woke don’t say anything at all.

From Courageisahabit.org :

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read The Twin Inversions of Activist Teachers

Also, for more evidence of the ideological indoctrination in Canadian education, read Yes, schools are indoctrinating kids! And also, Yes, The University is an Indoctrination Camp!

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