Is Woke Baked Into America Culture?

I plead guilty!

Over time a fair number of commenters have, er, remarked on my optimisim—some in a positive way, others disparagingly. I admit that I make an effort to be project optimism. Without optimism there’s no reason to engage in a struggle.

Today, in response to my quoting Roger Kimball’s optimistic projection that Americans would rise against Wokedom, a reader sent me an OTOH link. It’s to a substack that basically argues, well, here’s the idea in the author’s own words:

I want to use my mandatory annual forecast to dump a few gallons of cold, contrarian water on what seems to have recently become a fashionable prediction: that the “woke” ideological revolution roiling the West has peaked and will soon be in full blown retreat.

I don’t actually think that, but I was intrigued and read the whole article—and I liked it!

No, the Revolution Isn’t Over

None of the fundamental drivers of “Wokeness” have relented

Now, the author provides 20 “twenty reasons to get woke and despair.”

I refuse to despair. I also refuse to provide all twenty reasons. But that’s OK, because the first six reasons are very much in the vein that I openly espouse—especially in my antipathy for classical liberalism, aka libertarianism. And that’s what the first six reasons for why America will remain mired in Wokedom amount to—America’s basically libertarian mentality has been a strength but its lack of philosophical foundations have led us down the path of secularism to the Woke mud wallow our culture has descended into.

Here is a summary of those first six—out of twenty—reasons for why turning America around, making America great again, will be the work of generations:

1. One does not simply walk away from religious beliefs. What is called “Wokeness” – or the “Successor Ideology,” or the “New Faith,” or what have you … – rests on a series of what are ultimately metaphysical beliefs. The fact that their holders would laugh at the suggestion they have anything called metaphysical beliefs is irrelevant – they hold them nonetheless. …

The world is divided into a dualistic struggle between oppressed and oppressors …, all false authorities and boundaries must be torn down (deconstructed), and power redistributed from the oppressors to the oppressed; all injustice anywhere is interlinked (intersectional), so the battle against injustice is necessarily total; ultimate victory is cosmically ordained by history, though the arc of progress may be long; moral virtue and true right to rule is determined by collective status within the oppression-oppressed dialectic; morally neutral political liberalism is a lie constructed by the powerful to maintain status quo structures of oppression; the first step to liberation can be achieved through acquisition of the hidden knowledge of the truth of this dialectic; a select awoken vanguard must therefore guide a revolution in popular consciousness; all imposed limits on the individual can ultimately be transcended by virtue of a will to power…

I could go on, but the real point is that these are faith-beliefs, and ones capable of wielding an iron grip on the individual and collective mind. ... And that’s unlikely to change anytime soon, because…

2. The void of meaning still hasn’t been filled. I mean, did the gaping hole of meaning in people’s lives created by the uprooting forces of secular liquid modernity get resolved in some alternative way while we weren’t looking? You know, the spiritual void that this creepy chimeric faith-ideology and its romantic political crusades rushed to fill in the first place? Has there been some kind of genuine, organized religious revival? Has decadent nihilism stopped being the defining sentiment of the age? … No. And in fact, meanwhile, it also seems that…

3. Social atomization hasn’t reversed. It sure seems like the kind of robust communities, civic associations, and “little platoons” which once served to fortify society against the revolutionary (per Burke) and totalitarian (per Arendt) forces that thrive on atomization haven’t suddenly been rebuilt from the ground up. In fact even the most basic such unit, family formation, appears to be continuing to decline precipitously. And that may be because…

4. Atomization is probably the inevitable byproduct of liberal modernity. That is: liberalism made the autonomy of the individual its highest good. … Liberalism has thus acted as a centrifugal force, severing all the centripetal counter-forces that once kept individuals connected to recognizably human communities and launching them outward towards solitary orbits where they can drift cold and alone in their pods.

… And this hyper-individualism has now collided head first with the technological revolution, which increasingly positions itself as offering hope for the boundless potential necessary to escape from any natural limits whatsoever, including by fracturing any solid definition of what we once thought it meant to be human. And, speaking of technology and fracturing, meanwhile…

5. The information revolution is still reverberating. Ultimately, what’s more important in driving societal change: ideas, individuals, material conditions, or technological forces? That’s a fascinating question to debate, but for now all that matters is that it’s become manifestly clear that the ongoing revolution in information technology, most notably the internet and social media, has been a tremendous driver of cultural and political change. ... In part, we’ve already seen how its disintegrative effect has helped ensure that …

6. There is no authority. Who or what institution today is now able to establish any kind of common metaphysical framework, common moral narrative, common vision of a properly ordered life, common norms, or even a common reality that most of society will respect, trust, follow, and collectively defend? CNN? Ted Cruz? Yeah no, we can move on. But how then can this ideological upheaval quickly be put to rest, exactly?

And there are 14 more reasons, waiting for you at the link.

I personally find the author’s argument quite compelling as an analysis of why America seems defenseless against the Woke mob. The one caution I would add, however, is that predictions of this sort presuppose a sort of stasis. True, inertia is a powerful cultural force, but history has a way of disrupting what in the present appears to be the inalterable direction of the march of progress. Things just happen.

And so I say, Fight on, remain hopeful.