Metaneos

It is very often important to use correct words in arguing/debating with political opponents. However, it is also very important to protect the words we do use from co-optation by our opponents who would attempt to render them meaningless. Take the word, Woke, as an example. Woke, in its terminology, when used by Black activists was used as a shorthand for knowing about Institutionalized Racism. That government service agencies were often built with anti-Blackness right into their foundation. That someone was woke meant they knew things were wrong at a foundational level for Black people and other minorities. Extreme right-wingers though have been working to co-opt this term, wanting to render it meaningless, using it to describe some "woke" army of people who'd tear apart the whole of society with "wokeness" to appease some special interest groups that are themselves anti-society. To be honest, it is laughable how far these extremists are going to use this form...

Yanis Varoufakis has described a state of affairs which should have us all worried: capitalism has been replaced but not by socialism but instead techno-feudalism (Technofeudalism: What killed capitalism (ISBN: 9781847927279)). That instead of moving forward, Western economies have instead retreated back into a neo-feudalism. That non-wealthy people have been transformed from free people to renters, and owners of corporations into rentiers: "(People) will own nothing, and be happy", as European technocrat had put it some time ago. There is much to what Varoufakis has argued: the things we buy have turned into boxes that can hold licences. Computers programs have transformed into apps which require yearly rental fees instead of being programs that we buy once and can use forever so long as the disc lasts. We can no longer buy movies, music albums, and games but instead licenses to play the movies, music, and games, which can be revoked at any time by the license issuers. We c...