11 Comments
Mar 21·edited Mar 21Liked by Guy Duperreault

Great post Guy. Thank you. 🙏♥️

Do you ever wonder if woke is (in part) the opposite and equal reaction to controlling, judgmental, shame-based religious hypocrisy and bullies who tell people who are different to kill themselves, etc.?

Expand full comment
author
Mar 21·edited Mar 21Author

interesting question. i am going to say, tentatively, no. why?

in a later substack essay i address that and from my look made the decision to stop using the phrase 'woke' because it ascribes to a 'side' a behaviour common to both 'sides'. your list applies to the non-woke tyrants equally. in a very early essay called 'death by freezing' i look at the religious 'bully' to death nature of economics. if curious, it is on my old blog, not in substack as an essay. maybe it is time to put it here, too? hmmm. anyway, if curious here's the link: https://egajd.blogspot.com/2008/12/20081227-death-by-freezing.html

i realised that when the large telecom i was working for had been invaded by mba ideolotry (mba-itis) that mbas were a precursory form of woke that came from the so-called right. it is possible that the managers of the world understand that with the large corporate community having become pretty much a manifestation of communistic economic structure through government have become owned and/or beholden to corporate ownership, that the way to introduce the precursor to woke was through business. as chomsky has astutely observed, the power structures of big business are very simple tyrannies.

both 'sides' use the same power dynamics and bully language and self-righteous hubristic puffery. so, divide and conquor: get everyone to believe that 'woke' is over there in the bad guys camp and fail to see it in the good guys camp while the puppet masters do what they want because the two sides are in a rigged mma caged fight.

if you want to jump to that it is here: "Good-Bye Woke: It Was Fun While It Lasted"

https://gduperreault.substack.com/p/good-bye-woke

examples: i went into a very old established shoe company and was surprised to see that there had stopped selling men's shoes. the mbas back east had noted that only 20% of sales where men's shoes and so 'wisely' stopped them. i said to the franchise owner how stupid that was. she agreed and two years later that chain had collapsed. at the local safeways the brussells sprouts had been put high up on a steep angle so that whenever anyone touched them they fell out of their space onto the floor. one day the produce manager was there, on his knees picking up the sprouts. 'wouldn't it be smarter to put the sprouts in a different place?' 'yes. i cannot. the mba's back east tell me where to put them based on colour or other 'selling' points.' when i asked the hygiene manager for a product he said that he can't sell it. he is forces to put these things - he pointed to the large display of something - which no one wants to buy. a few years later safeways declared bankruptcy. i have more examples, although those two are the ones i like the best.

does that answer your question?

thank you for reading and for your questions. great to get me thinking. goodnight. time for sleep now.

Expand full comment

This is very insightful. It makes sense and I can see how it would play out over time. 🙏🌹

Expand full comment
Nov 28, 2022Liked by Guy Duperreault

In what way(s) is the term “mass formation” helpful, necessary or adding to your already multifaceted delineation of the phenomena before us? I wonder.

Expand full comment
author

Great question. As my exploration continued I consider it to be a subset of obedience to authority, a special case when the deserving beginning isolating and then killing the undeserving.

Expand full comment
Nov 28, 2022Liked by Guy Duperreault

Interesting, thanks

Expand full comment
author

Initially I began my query puzzled at not thinking about obedience to authority with all that is going on. When I thought about it I realised I hadn't because, at least in part, mass formation had become THE conversation.

Expand full comment
Nov 28, 2022Liked by Guy Duperreault

Do you mean that instead of focusing on ‘obedience’ the focus was on ‘mass formation’ a nebulous concept instead of a clarifying one...?

Expand full comment
author

Yes.

I don't think it was deliberately done. More likely using a concept like mass formation connects more easily with the head space we occupy. Full of disembodied knowledge and so therefore appealing to those not well grounded in their bodies. 90% (?) of western world. A nice correspondence to injection rates. That would be a nice sociological study: level of groundedness to rates of injection rejection.

Have you read the book "Obedience to Authority'?

Expand full comment
Nov 28, 2022Liked by Guy Duperreault

Yes, I thought of it as ‘academize’... as it’s absolutely a visceral reaction, not to abide & no I didn’t read the book, I’ll check it out. Thank you, also for engaging. All the best .

Expand full comment