Next Federal Election

Pop Down wrote:

etarip

I greeted a new young Guy , I had been emailing and working with , on our first face 2 face meeting , with a Friendly Hug .

He became my permanent assistant and we are good friends .

One young girl saw it and reported it 2 management .

The Boss didn't like me , so gave me a grilling and an Official Warning ( again ) , 4 Bullying .

I took them 2 Fair Work .

Fair Work said I shouldn't hug anyone , in the Office and if I don't , I will be fine .

The Bullying stayed on my record 4 six months ( still on it imo ) .

Work stopped being Fun , so I retired .

I can say one thing at my Golf Club , that is fine , at work , it's a Capital offence .

U can't say someone looks nice , nowadays , in the Workplace .

Asking , how are U , is also a no , no , 2 personal , apparently .

Woke is giving A Crazy boss or workplace , plenty of ammunition , 2 shoot an unwanted employee imho .

Woke doesn't seem to apply 2 Dress Code .

Some of the Outfits I saw worn in my Woke Office , were way too inappropriate !!!

Interesting...
I work in what would be classified as a 'woke' industry.
We hug, give each other shit, banter etc.
Anyway if it's upsetting me I'll just go watch Ricky Gervais, he cracks me up.
The term can piss off back to the USA as far as I'm concerned, just don't be a dick....

That sounds like a frustrating experience.
Seems that it could have been resolved by your colleague backing you up and saying that the hug was consensual. It sounds like it was unnecessarily escalated and poorly managed. Based on what you said it certainly doesn’t sound like bullying. I don’t know if I’d characterize it as woke.

But some work places do have no contact rules. Is there one at your previous job?

As far as different rules in different places and contexts, that’s life. I think we should expect that it is appropriate to adjust the content, tone or delivery according to the setting.

People choose to, and pay to, be part of a golf club. People go to work because they have to. But I’m sure there’s a line at the golf club that you’re well aware of.

Good lucky Dutts...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/24/peter-dutton-libe...

etarip,

In personal life, I am too polite and careful with what I say on most topics and can sense boundaries and so rarely get into confrontations.. With some highly religious relatives, I steer clear of religion in any chats, for example.

The new DEI meme has religious overtones. Tread carefully at work and socially.

At work, after four DEI training sessions (repetitive - not really new stuff in each) across the organisation in one year to the exclusion of any other training, we all learned some useful stuff but also got the message that new ideological boundaries had been put in place. And, we all sensed from the content and breakout group topics that any discussion on the merits or nuances or possible unintended consequences of being over zealous on DEI was not welcome. Open discussion was curtailed across the organisation and logic took a back seat in some cases (e.g recruitment and my example below).

I sat in a tender evaluation panel of a multi million dollar project where a senior staff member had not even read the financials of the various proposals and mainly wanted to score the tender based on the detail of the contractor DEI polices - an unintended consequence of the new shiny DEI thing consuming her mind to the detriment of the organisation (and to my astonishment).

I have noticed more and more mates describe relatives "who have gone w&ke" and it has split families - daughter will not talk to their parent anymore or where conversations are all walking on eggshells in case a racial, gender, environmental or political conversational misstep occurs and the self righteous condemnation or nit-picking begins.

There is an evangelical tone to it all that one can sense and mostly just avoid the trigger topics. But the threat of some form of cancellation or at least being tainted as a form of heretic is real in the modern workplace - even for minor transgressions of the new orthodoxy - "he used the wrong pronoun!".

In the comments sections of youtube videos, however, I have read endless accounts of careers curtailed or ruined by a DEI misstep and families struggling to relate to new "converts".

eta

The young bloke was new 2 the Firm and industry , 21 .

He never complained about it , but the Bosses , took the view of the young girl over My and his view .

Inappropriate Touching in the Office ( fn Bullying ) , they called it .

Fair Work thought it very Noteworthy , that the boy did NOT Lodge , the Complaint .

It made no fn difference .

The funny thing is that the Boy and I , were Kept as a Team lol !

We worked together for another 12 months , after the fn fiasco .

Shit happens .

He is NOW the main guy I deal with at the Old Firm .

I kept hugging him 2 , we are mates .

Is poor management the problem? Or woke policies?

I’ve got plenty of examples of management stifling open discussion and constructive criticism. There’s also plenty more examples of hush hush toward misbehaviour in industries.

I’ve seen 30 years of the latest fad and buzzwords being incorporated across government and industry. Adopted then discarded. Some of the current crop will endure. Hopefully the good parts, like Andy said above. ‘Don’t be a dick’

Caught up with a friend the other day. She's early 20s.
A kookaburra landed in the tree nearby and i commented how beautiful it was.
"it's an introduced species" she hissed at me.
Even the kookaburras aren't safe.

Slackjawedyokel wrote:

Perhaps the best and most relevant example of Woke in Australia is the deployment of the accusations racism and bigotry to silence concerns about population growth rates / levels of immigration.

As these accusations originate both from the corporate right and the socialist left side of politics, we can see that Woke is not the realm of just one side of politics. It’s more likely a technique used by the horseshoeing extremes of ideology against the sensible middle.

Thats a very good unique example, that shows wokeness or being against wokeness should not be a right vs left thing as people above keep trying to paint it as, i guess because most woke views come from post modernism.

Wokeness is about caving in to conforming to social pressure of an expected view point, in a sense its almost a type of fascism, you must act and think this way because this is how we think you should think and act, the extreme point is if you dont think and act this way, then we will cancel you or at least silence you.

Another good example is the typical woke viewpoint of accepting that anyone who feels they are the opposite sex should be seen and treated exactly as the opposite sex, including sharing safe spaces or competing in sports or sharing prison cells etc and science and biology and physical difference's should be ignored.

Those that most strongly oppose this are often feminist the most famous JK Rowlings not at all from the right.

Actually if you take the most well known people vocally opposed to wokeism only one you could truly say is from the right, Trump, the others would be JK Rowling, Elon Musk, & Joe Rogan.

All have one thing in common they are un-cancelable, but that hasn't stopped people trying all have been hunted down and tried to be cancelled probably more than anyone on the planet.

A couple of years ago my management team and I were dealing with a reasonable sensitive personal issue involving a transgender member of staff. The issue itself was non-work related, but we needed to manage some of the fallout.
Anyway, there was much teeth-gnashing about what pronoun to use to describe ‘Gemma’, as many of the crew knew her as a him before she transitioned.

In all the angst, people had just missed that she wanted to be called she. It was that easy in the end. And it hurt no one to do that.

Did it make any of the women in the team feel less like a woman? I don’t think so. Would our team have been worse off if we’d lost a really competent and respected technician? Absolutely.

When I look back at the behaviour that occurred in the Office , in the 80's and 90's , there has been a huge improvement .

The testosterone levels were 2 high and 2 Many DH's were allowed 2 get away with Way 2 much .

There IS more respect for females , in the Finance Industry , today .

Most of the Woke ish Work Place rules are good and are easy , to abide by .

I stopped touching or hugging females in the Workplace a Decade ago .

When those rules go against normal human behaviour , the Rules can easily B exploited .

The Women working in Finance in the 80's , 90's and 2000 -10 . would NEVER wear some of the outfits I see today , being worn .

The Guys would have gone berserk , with Cheering .

You can wear and look how you what , but must B Super Careful , with what U say ( or look at ) .

I wasn't allowed 2 wear a singlet 2 work , females do .

Most people and organisations have Professional Standards ( a no DH Policy ) .

Its not easy .

The notion that you were racist if you voted no in the Voice referendum is an example of wokeness ie a delegitimisation of a viewpoint based on a fraudulent statement.

So is the discussion of population growth / immigration. Wokeness is used to shut down nuanced debate ie only racists are against mass immigration.

Wokeness is sewn through our lives in Australia so to get upset because people put an identifying label to it seems ridiculous. Then again it appears that many choose to misidentify the problem to avoid inspection of it. Examples from this thread alone are wokeness being defined as empathy, tolerance, acceptance, open mindedness. Even opposed to genocide has somehow been alleged to be woke.

None of those things are woke. Those who deploy wokeness would have you believe they’ve got a monopoly on virtue, kindness , acceptance, tolerance etc. Nope….wokeness is the art of using sanctimony to disguise arguments built on fraudulent statements.

Slackjawedyokel wrote:

The notion that you were racist if you voted no in the Voice referendum is an example of wokeness ie a delegitimisation of a viewpoint based on a fraudulent statement.

So is the discussion of population growth / immigration. Wokeness is used to shut down nuanced debate ie only racists are against mass immigration.

Wokeness is sewn through our lives in Australia so to get upset because people put an identifying label to it seems ridiculous. Then again it appears that many choose to misidentify the problem to avoid inspection of it. Examples from this thread alone are wokeness being defined as empathy, tolerance, acceptance, open mindedness. Even opposed to genocide has somehow been alleged to be woke.

None of those things are woke. Those who deploy wokeness would have you believe they’ve got a monopoly on virtue, kindness , acceptance, tolerance etc. Nope….wokeness is the art of using sanctimony to disguise arguments built on fraudulent statements.

And how does this make you feel? Does it affect you?

Huh?

Wokeness stifling the immigration debate allows it to go on unchallenged and makes my nieces and nephews unable to find a rental let alone ever dream to own their own home. It makes me unable to ever find a GP if I wanted one. It makes the environment directly surrounding my house turn into endless koala-killing housing estates as people flee the infinitely overcrowding cities. Come the next drought my water bills -from the days I’m allowed to use water- will be through the roof.

Wokeness prevents this problem from being rationally debated.

It makes my life much, much worse. It’s making life worse for yourself and your family too but you can’t recognise the connection because it seems like you’ve been duped by the woke bait and switch.

Wokeness is also being employed to usher in a new paradigm of censorship across the Western nations. This is a disastrous retrograde step for society. You said earlier that people should be canceled for saying things that are insensitive! This is the road to oppression for us all….yourself included. You just don’t realise it because you associate yourself with the group currently declaring what is and isn’t considered insensitive.

Woke is the faux-velvet glove wrapped around the fist of tyranny.

Another example of woke was the propagated falsehood that you were a granny killer who didn’t care about society if you didn’t think locking society in their homes was an appropriate reaction to covid. Wokeness used to turn innnocentnoeoole into villains so the social pressure makes them bow to tyranny.

Can you really not see how your life is negatively and directly affected by using fraudulent cultural statements to underpin opposition to dissent ?

"And how does this make you feel? Does it affect you?"

Standard question brought out time and time again. Just a thought though and this probably applies to boys and men of the vanilla variety, but these days what you do or say can have real world consequences. You may have acted or spoke in a certain way all your life, you've been taught and conditioned and this is how you are. Then, without thought or malice you may do or say something you've done a thousand times before. The only difference is now somebody takes 'offence' to it and you're in the shit left scratching your head or even jobless/sued/litigated or to coin a phrase- cancelled.

Pops example above is a good one.

It's easy not to be a dick, the hard part is determining what somebody else's dick tolerance threshold is.

The thing is Zen that the people who’d whine the loudest about your behaviour are not better, kinder, more tolerant or accepting humans, it’s just they they believe transgressing their personal set list of moral guidelines is the only test of character and that reason, context or intent is meaningless.

You don’t have to read these threads for too long to see the relentless bullying , insulting and pile - on by groups with full intent to either make someone else feel like shit to the point that they start withholding contrary opinions or leave the forums altogether. When that fails they are constantly appealing to moderators of the site to either censor that person or remove the topic altogether.

Wokeness is tyranny using a foundation of lies to silence opposition. The sanctimony is just flavour.

Show me the wokeness and I’ll show you the fraud behind it.

"the hard part is determining what somebody else's dick tolerance threshold is."

Especially when it's done more as a points-scoring performance than out of genuine intentions.

Slackjawedyokel wrote:

Huh?

Wokeness is also being employed to usher in a new paradigm of censorship across the Western nations. This is a disastrous retrograde step for society. You said earlier that people should be canceled for saying things that are insensitive! This is the road to oppression for us all….yourself included. You just don’t realise it because you associate yourself with the group currently declaring what is and isn’t considered insensitive.

?

Really? Please point out where I said that.
Or have you just done what you’re railing against? Put words in someone’s mouth, attributed meaning or intent where none existed?

I think Zen picked up what I was saying, tongue in cheek.

I’m all for the debate. Not sure where you’re picking up that I’m not. I just don’t see many tangible, personal, examples of people being undone by ‘wokeness’.

FWIW, I think a bigger part of the challenge is the medium by which these discussions are had. The old days of public debate and print media vs electronic and social media. We are still adapting to these.

southernraw wrote:

Caught up with a friend the other day. She's early 20s.
A kookaburra landed in the tree nearby and i commented how beautiful it was.
"it's an introduced species" she hissed at me.
Even the kookaburras aren't safe.

Ex-friend now?

southernraw wrote:

Caught up with a friend the other day. She's early 20s.
A kookaburra landed in the tree nearby and i commented how beautiful it was.
"it's an introduced species" she hissed at me.
Even the kookaburras aren't safe.

That's nuts.....

Slackjawedyokel wrote:

Huh?

Wokeness stifling the immigration debate allows it to go on unchallenged and makes my nieces and nephews unable to find a rental let alone ever dream to own their own home. It makes me unable to ever find a GP if I wanted one. It makes the environment directly surrounding my house turn into endless koala-killing housing estates as people flee the infinitely overcrowding cities. Come the next drought my water bills -from the days I’m allowed to use water- will be through the roof.

Wokeness prevents this problem from being rationally debated.

It makes my life much, much worse. It’s making life worse for yourself and your family too but you can’t recognise the connection because it seems like you’ve been duped by the woke bait and switch.

Wokeness is also being employed to usher in a new paradigm of censorship across the Western nations. This is a disastrous retrograde step for society. You said earlier that people should be canceled for saying things that are insensitive! This is the road to oppression for us all….yourself included. You just don’t realise it because you associate yourself with the group currently declaring what is and isn’t considered insensitive.

Woke is the faux-velvet glove wrapped around the fist of tyranny.

Another example of woke was the propagated falsehood that you were a granny killer who didn’t care about society if you didn’t think locking society in their homes was an appropriate reaction to covid. Wokeness used to turn innnocentnoeoole into villains so the social pressure makes them bow to tyranny.

Can you really not see how your life is negatively and directly affected by using fraudulent cultural statements to underpin opposition to dissent ?

Lots of problems highlighted there which is a reality of Australia at this point in time.
To blame them all on 'wokeness' however is a bit of a stretch.
Decades of neo liberal policies adopted by both sides of politics the more likely culprit in my view.

On another side note, just watched Insiders, fark the Aukus deal looks like Australia is bending over and copping it from both the USA and UK.
That money surely could be better used than propping up the foreign military industrial complex..

I could have left my company and worked somewhere else .

Its a lot of admin for me and clients , so at 64 , easier to resign .

Now , I am SO glad I did .

I hugged my new assistant Twice , on the first day .

First time , only one junior saw me .

Later that day , I went to the other side of the office to have another , nice chat with him .

He was in with His Manager ( getting told of the first complaint :) in her Office .

She called me in and we had another nice chat , about the document ( 20 Golden Trading Rules of Pop ) I bought 4 him .

At the end , I walked out , gave him the document and patted him on the shoulder .

His ( Dutch ) Boos went berserk at me .

U can't Do That in This Office Stuff .

After 10 seconds of this , I walked out of her office and said " Fuck me :) " .

So , with her Visual evidence , got the Official Warning ( the Second in the week as got one for getting Covid and Not going in the Office 4 four weeks without a doctors certificate ( and telling the boss 2 F off ) ) , so signed them both .

I also ended up apologising 2 her for swearing ffs haha .

She appreciated it , as told me it hurt her feelings lol .

Boss started hassling me again , he got promoted to Numero Uno , so I took the firm to Fair Work ( a fn Zoom meeting ) .

A waste of time , really ( scared the boss for a few hours :) .

I actually , feel sorry for an Employer who has a DH ( like me ) , working for them .

I could B fired , easily , if NOT making the numbers .

Lots of Small Business owners , can't fire a Slack worker or a trouble maker .

It's easy 2 hire a DH , I have done it .

People can have a good resume and present well at an interview .

After 12 months , U get 2 C how people actually work .

Unfair Dismissal Laws make it WAY 2 hard 2 employ people .

There are 2 many Written bloody rules that are hard 2 define .

southernraw wrote:

Caught up with a friend the other day. She's early 20s.
A kookaburra landed in the tree nearby and i commented how beautiful it was.
"it's an introduced species" she hissed at me.
Even the kookaburras aren't safe.

A native of Australia and Newguinea, name from Wiradjuri Guuguubarra but she musta known that?

Here you go Blackers :

“I know a few people that have said insensitive, borderline or actual racist, sexist or discriminatory shite and been called out on it.

Is that woke cancelling? Coz I’m OK with that. Should it be the basis for permanent disbarment from public discourse? Hell no. But I’ve heard a few people railing against wokeness when what they’re actually complaining about is being accountable for their words “

The point is that you are deciding what is acceptable speech or thought. That’s unacceptable. It’s the definition of intolerance. You seem fine with people being persecuted in a fashion if they transgress your personal standards.

Who knows….maybe your personal standards aren’t that much different from my own? But what happens when the window of acceptable speech moves to someone else’s standards and we both say things that they might not approve? Are we liable to lose our jobs or be censored or ostracised from society?

That’s why there’s free speech laws that don’t permit others to impose their arbitrary moral standards on us.

The problem being that tyrants begin by trying to sweet talk you into complying with their world view, then they move onto coercion. If that still doesn’t work they’re onto step three which is control of speech and then step four which is outlawing unsactioned thought. After that it’s wholesale removal of the problematic demographic ie genocide

These steps aren’t theoretical. They’ve been played out time and again by tyrannous forces throughout human history.

I feel like we are out point where step two isn’t really playing out for them so step three is in the pipeline for rollout unless it’s loudly and forcefully opposed.

The other thing is that not too many tyrants realise they’re tyrants and they never start out that way. It’s usually a process to get from step 1 to genocide and luckily most times the process never gets fully developed. Even when the process runs true the tyrants convince themselves they are doing God’s work.

Tyranny disguised as safety is the current threat.

Classic Post , Slackey :)

Wait, you’re not OK with people that say racist, sexist shit in the workplace being called out?

Calling a colleague a ‘coon’?
Making an off-handed derogatory comment about a female colleagues appearance or making inferences about their sexual behaviours?

They’re two examples that I’ve seen, that when held accountable for their actions the people that said those things have talked about ‘wokeness’.

Yes, I’ll proudly say that I am OK with people being called out for that.

You’ve built a nice little strawman there though.

The incidents you referred to are illegal so that is not the circumstances I’m describing.

Because, on the flip side of the coin, those very same off-handed comments can lead to systemic persecution of groups based on who they are and not on what they do. Silencing groups on the same basis - surely your example applies to this? And I’d argue that the historical prevalence of silencing minorities is significant. Allowing prejudicial behaviors in the workplace is a form of silencing groups whose voice you don’t value or don’t want to hear.

Just finished reading a book on Churchill and Orwell. What was striking about the penultimate chapter was the view of the US civil rights movement, at the time, that they were going too far. That they should meekly accept that progress toward desegregation was necessarily slow. That MLK was an extremist.

Those voices that wanted to sustain that system characterized him and the movement that way in order to suppress its impact.

I’ve seen some ridiculous expressions of what you might term ‘woke’. Best example was a postgrad student arguing with a lecturer that characterizing Timor Leste as economically underdeveloped was a form of racist typecasting. And the supposedly left wing academic who was the target of the rant dealt with it pretty well.

But I’ll go back to what I said at the start. I don’t see many people who rail against wokeness being able to describe it in a tangible manifestation.

Landline just said 370 of our male farmers have committed suicide between 2009 and 2019…….not counting the girls…and these are tough people.
Perhaps our city boy / girl politicians can leave the farmers alone to grow our food without constantly dumping excess regulation, excess fuel and energy prices ..etc etc…on them.
The people that supply our food should have the easiest of workplaces .
. They not only have to constantly battle the elements , but politicians and bureaucrats that sit at desks in the city and at the flick of a pen ruin peoples lives.
If you’re in govt reading this , or in a union that can help change govt minds, why not go into bat for the people that feed you daily.

eta

I have wanted 2 say a derogatory comment to many people ,I thought needed calling out over their behaviour .

Mostly do .

I will use the same example .

I am not a prude , but I don't like "Things being On Display" , in the Work Place .

Its rude imho , but I am Old Fashioned .

I can't say 2 anyone , that Dress is Unacceptable , in the Work Place , that's 2 derogatory .

This type of Human Reaction , Woke Stuff , has always been sorted out in a Family , a Community , a City and then a Country , over hundreds if years .

Stuff like the 10 Commandments and Koran , have helped guide our Cultural Identity .

Some of the new Woke stuff , being served UP now by the USA , transgender being an obvious example 2 , is Off The planet .

Its so insensible , it can't continue , so will disappear , eventually .

Sane heads , always prevail , we are Humans .

That’s a policy issue pops: the employer should have a clear policy on appropriate attire. It shouldn’t be up to you to police it, unless you’re the manager.

Seen people get themselves into hot water over this.

Etarip,

Management fads come and go, DEI as a "fad" is quite different in character to what has come before.

Past fads:
Management by objectives.
Matrix management.
One-minute management.
Management by wandering around.
Total quality management.
Business process reengineering.
Delayering.

Even in their heyday, all of these could be discussed and critiqued openly in a meeting and arguments put to modify or not slavishly follow some aspects of the theory without too much emotion or the risk that a wrong word or inference could have big consequences in terms of the meeting harmony and those with contrary views.

But then along come DEI in its quasi religious form as it has become.

Imagine being in a large staff meeting with HR present and a female DEI enthusiast CEO today and stating that "in our highly competitive market our engineering department is critical to our success. However, based on statistics and logic, striving in the short term, for a 50/50 male / female representation in key roles, will very likely weaken our skill base and damage our effectiveness". The result would be silence, death stares from HR and the CEO, a pile on at the wrongness of that view, followed by ostracization and career destruction.

Whereas the statistical logic is that with only 20% of engineering graduates being female, the recruitment pool for a firm seeking top level recruits (say top 10%) is 4 times larger for males than females and with DEI in full swing, demand from competing firms for the smaller pool of quality female graduates is very high. It is just not logical to pursue the 50 / 50 split quickly or probably ever, given females have a strong preference towards careers other than engineering..

I have read comments from engineers that they had engineering roles unfilled for 2 years before HR relented and let them employ a male. Others noted that they were forced to recruit poor quality female candidates to make up the numbers and had to do their work for them (engineering aptitude is hard to fake or learn on the job).

There is advocacy and there is zealotry. DEI is usually served up with a good dollop of zealotry.

"Zealotry is when someone takes a religious, cultural, or political belief too far, refusing to tolerate other perspectives or conflicting beliefs."

In addition, it is being etched in stone into policies and procedures and layers of DEI staff have been added to many organisations who must push it hard to justify their existence. What do they do all day once the policies are written? Promote them, enforce them and look for breaches. Are they tolerant, grounded in reality - not so much. The pendulum will struggle to shift back into balance.

Frog - yep. Get the maths. But surely we’ve got to let companies make those decisions and wear the consequences?

Where I suggest that management at all levels fails is explaining these decisions to their workforce and mitigating the impacts wherever possible.

But, most decision makers and managers are ill-equipped to do this.

goofyfoot wrote:

southernraw wrote:

Caught up with a friend the other day. She's early 20s.
A kookaburra landed in the tree nearby and i commented how beautiful it was.
"it's an introduced species" she hissed at me.
Even the kookaburras aren't safe.

Ex-friend now?

I like Kookaburras! So yep, it's heading that way!

southernraw wrote:

goofyfoot wrote:

southernraw wrote:

Caught up with a friend the other day. She's early 20s.
A kookaburra landed in the tree nearby and i commented how beautiful it was.
"it's an introduced species" she hissed at me.
Even the kookaburras aren't safe.

Ex-friend now?

I like Kookaburras! So yep, it's heading that way!

SR are you talking about WA?

Kookaburras are not native I believe.

quadzilla wrote:

southernraw wrote:

Caught up with a friend the other day. She's early 20s.
A kookaburra landed in the tree nearby and i commented how beautiful it was.
"it's an introduced species" she hissed at me.
Even the kookaburras aren't safe.

A native of Australia and Newguinea, name from Wiradjuri Guuguubarra but she musta known that?

Quads, Kookaburras were introduced to WA from the east coast, so they are not native to WA. Apparently to control snakes. They have less predators such as Lace Monitors and Powerful Owls in WA so they are pretty much free to run amok.

Only introduced 120 years ago too. Most born and bred WA locals don’t love the kookaburra

"Identified as a non-singing Kookaburra".

Gold!

Great posts gents. Frog, exceptional post above.

I love me Kookaburras and i won't hear a bad word about them!!
And yep, they identify as singing Kookaburras here VJ.

Distracted wrote:

quadzilla wrote:

southernraw wrote:

Caught up with a friend the other day. She's early 20s.
A kookaburra landed in the tree nearby and i commented how beautiful it was.
"it's an introduced species" she hissed at me.
Even the kookaburras aren't safe.

A native of Australia and Newguinea, name from Wiradjuri Guuguubarra but she musta known that?

Quads, Kookaburras were introduced to WA from the east coast, so they are not native to WA. Apparently to control snakes. They have less predators such as Lace Monitors and Powerful Owls in WA so they are pretty much free to run amok.

Haven't noticed any particular imbalance with kookaburraz down this way. They seem to represent a small population of a thriving ecosystem. Still a shit tonne of snakes though!

Is it discrimination to suggest they can't transition from singing to non singing and back again?

- that might hurt their feelings and be an unnecessary judgement on their capabilities or limitations ;)

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/EY4kwhK-qzM

seen references to 'performative virtue signalling' and religion getting thrown around...

Vox:

basically the journal of woke and democrat propaganda went there...

"...Both Valdary and Prior also acknowledged that across the political spectrum in 2020, “woke” seems to represent a consciously progressive mindset — but that concept is loaded with irony and cynicism. Even on the left, the idea of being “woke” can be a double-edged sword, often used to suggest an aggressive, performative take on progressive politics that only makes things worse.

For instance, consider how the phrase “woke discourse” gets used on social media: The “discourse” can be about a zillion different things, but attaching “woke” to it usually denotes a perception of embittered exhaustion at progressive semantics and arguments.

What’s telling is that the exhaustion seems to come from moderates and leftists themselves as often as from conservatives — as if there’s a shared agreement that embodying wokeness is a kind of trap, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on.

Many people across the ideological spectrum seem wary of the performative semantics associated with “wokeness,” and the way that performance can undermine the sincerity of arguments being made in support of equality. “I always saw it as a tad performative,” Valdary told me, decrying what she described as “the unwieldy jargon of self-identifying as ‘woke.’”

“I think it’s mostly performative, and at best, tells me nothing about a person’s ideas re: racial justice,” she said. “It feels like a status-seeking label as opposed to a mode of being [that is] seeking positive change.”

Prior told me she likewise was leery of the ostentatious behavior associated with “woke” — but was more distressed by the increasing tendency of conservatives to use “woke” as an insult. “I have had private conversations with pastors who have used it as a term of insult,” she said, “because it’s hard — it is hurtful to use a term that is so meaningful to people and to use it in an entirely different way, it’s just simply wrong.”

“On the one hand,” miles-hercules said, the term “has been commodified in marketing to connote a host of associations to things like diversity, inclusion, and so on, in order to turn a profit by appealing to progressive sensibilities. Additionally, it has been plundered into conservative and right-wing discourse as a means of mocking and satirizing the politics of those on the other side of the proverbial aisle.”

Yet across a broad range of political beliefs, one recurring theme is that “wokeness” has demonstrable social, even quasi-religious, power. The writer James Lindsay has argued exhaustively that “wokeness” is essentially a religion where faith in social justice ideology stands in for belief in a deity, and that regular attendance at social justice protests has replaced the role of religious rituals for many progressives.

Valdary likewise spoke of being “woke” in a figurative sense — as an awakening akin to the Enlightenment.

“My sense is that by ‘woke,’ what people mean is a new form of being ‘enlightened,’ repackaged for our modern era,” she said. “The Enlightenment was meant to be an era of new progressive ideas, and folks fancied themselves awakened by new ideas and knowledge.” Similarly, “people today who identify as woke also see themselves as having been awakened to a new set of ideas, value systems, and knowledge. The mode and the values are different, but the sensibility — the idea that previously you were blind, and now you can see — is the same.”

As Valdary’s biblical reference implies, the idea of wokeness as a spiritual awakening has a potent appeal, and some people are actively energized by it. Historian and Christian theorist Jemar Tisby told me he found the idea of a religious awakening to be powerful — even as he noted that “woke,” like so many appropriated Black words and ideas, had “hit the mainstream and then [been] voided of some of its meaning and potency in the process.”

“If you really delve into the metaphor of being woke,” he said, “it implies that in some sense you were asleep to particular kinds of injustices and oppressions in the world, and now you’ve been awakened to it.” Indeed, many conservative evangelicals have fully embraced “woke Christianity” as a way of fighting racism, using it in precisely this quasi-religious sense: awakening to the harm of racism in society and prioritizing the fight for social justice.

Tisby pointed out that this sort of ideological awakening is a documented phenomenon. “Social psychologists talk about racial identity development, and there is always a moment or a series of events that make one aware not just that race exists but that it matters,” he said. He described them as “landmark moments,” often born from experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event, that “can be sort of existential awakenings to a whole different reality.”

That powerful concept, however, “now has become either sort of kitschy or actually almost an epithet — as if there’s this sort of superficial, performative effort at justice,” Tisby said.

“Wokeness is costly,” he continued. “When people claim the label without enduring the difficulties that go along with truly anti-racist actions, then it’s in a vacuum.”

In other words, while many people on the right may be disenchanted with wokeness because they see it as an upgraded form of “political correctness,” many people on the left may be just as frustrated with it. That’s because claiming wokeness is often about maintaining the superficial trappings of progressive idealism without doing the real work to understand and change systems of oppression..."

https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-e...

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Sypkan, good post.

Those with a yawning gap in their lives for higher meaning and purpose, formerly filled by old style religion or even cults, are probably drawn in to the new "religion".

Interestingly, on the discomfort of the left with where things have gone, I have read about many long standing same sex attracted people that felt gay marriage was the peak of the beneficial cultural shift with deep meaning to them and their lives.

But, from there, they just wanted to get on with their lives in peace and find the continual focus in the media on gender politics and especiallly the rise of trans activism very uncomfortable.

For example, many female same sex attracted might be very happy just to be within the "L" community and find the rest of the alphabet very peripheral to their lives. But media and activism have taken that choice out of their hands and the wider issues are an intrusion more than a benefit.

At the end of the day, the categorising is aimed at those battling stereotypes and prejudices formed through those stereotypes in a world where social media in particular casts its participants willingly or unwittingly into two sides.
This polarization always existed but it's been exacerbated by the hand to eye to brain constant drip feed that we get from social media every hour of every day. Who's to blame? Ourselves most likely. We can always look away. Turn the phone off. Turn the TV off.
And in a world where the key component of social now exists largely in the realm of media, our own cognitive processes and spiritual growth are hindered to a degree that we continue on a path of exponential distrust and hatred towards each other.
It's all over the pages of this website and any comments section you care to read on any social media platform.
I've been guilty of it.(I know, duh!).
Can only learn through recognition of the problem and hopefully adjusting our own behaviours.
That's enough big words for me today.