[csours]

In a word, righteousness. The human mind grew up in a world of divided bands and fighting. Us vs Them is a very comfortable paradigm. So now we have people fighting about Woke-ism or Gamer's Gate. People get bitterly angry about this because their personal morality is challenged; shame is a knife to cut the sinner. We feel a shared sense of righteousness with our own band - how dare they oppress minorities / how dare they challenge the way I was raised / how dare they take away my rights and personal choice / how dare they behave so recklessly.

Maybe you're angry about one of those things right now. Anger is an emotion that tells you to change something. If you can't change the thing you get angry about, then you get angry at that feeling of not being able to fix things; you get angry at people that get in the way. You get angry at people on 'the other side'. Then they respond by defending themselves and saying things that make you more angry. Once the fighting starts, you have the original problem and the original feelings about the problem, and you also have anger about the fighting, which quickly becomes bitter.

I don't know how or if humanity will stop this at scale. A path forward would be choosing not to use shame and righteousness, but that is a deeply alien feeling. Of course you want racists/wokists to feel bad; they are doing harm and they want you to feel bad! It would be unrighteous to not attack them!

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I do not believe wokism is a problem in the way that racism is a problem. I believe that many people experience historic structural inequality. I believe that some people want their own race to prosper ahead of other races. I believe that people try to advance their own personal interests without regard to the power structures they participate in. I don't believe that shaming non-minorities really helps fix this.