Venkatesh Rao

Much of wokeness is - whether this is good or bad - about amplifying the gain on social sensitivity. I call the worst negative utility monsters, but in general it is in opposition to stoicism.

@vgr may be right in terms of alignment of the fandom. Woke does act against stoicism through things like the phrase "your silence makes you complicit" and Western Civilization & rationality antimemes, but not sure how much of this is design vs instinct or accident.

I sense it is a mistaken categorization to put Stoics in the anti-woke category. Non-woke would be more accurate.

Stoicism is non. Not sure how many self-identified stoics would also identity as anti-

My reasoning is based on the attitude towards emotional self-regulation. Stoicism is rooted in the desirability and moral value of emotional self-regulation, and this puts it in odds with woke because woke is partly about legitimacy of making my emotions your problem to manage.

Cf discourse around "emotional labor" -- who does the work of emotional self-regulation, and who gets to enjoy emotional free expression is not a neutral thing and an expression of power gradients etc etc. Stoicism can be used as a moral stance to beat up on "snowflakes"

Ie, the very fact of emotional self-regulation in a stoic mode implies access to a free choice between regulating and not regulating that's revealing of privilege. "The waiter must smile, the diner can be rude" basically.

I've always thought "you can't control what happens, but you can control how you respond" to be uncontroversially true and available to anyone, but I guess that is debated in woke circles? If you can't sleep or eat well, it does become harder.