The Days of Woke and Rows
October 29, 2023 Leave a comment
The Roots of “Woke”
“Stay woke, keep your eyes open” is heard in a recording of Black folk singer Lead Belly. He’s talking about his 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys”. Radio host Lana Quest says it’s the first documented usage of the term.
Lead Belly, born Huddie William Ledbetter, advises all “colored people” to stay alert to deception–especially of law enforcement—after the injustice done to the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama. “Staying woke” was a basic survival tactic.
“Stay woke, keep your eyes open” @ 4:30 mark.
“Woke” and “stay woke” have their origins in African American Vernacular English. But since the time of Lead Belly, “Staying Woke” has been co-opted to become the watchwords of identity politics and the politics of class struggle or wealth distribution.
What is “Woke” Today?
Professor Robert George of Princeton University, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program at Princeton, attempted to define “Woke”:
Recently, on Gab social media, Lindsay posted the following challenging the praxis of “Wokeism”:
“DEI violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Corporations do not have the right to subject their employees to systematic psychological abuse. Public institutions have less standing. Compelling a worldview in addition to speech through psychological torment should be a criminal offense.
DEI programs compel the adoption of a systematic worldview that answers fundamental questions about the world and man’s role in it while demanding certain duties of conscience. They demand people act in the world through the view that the world is ordered by systemic oppression.”
James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose co-authored a book:
Lindsay also participated in a Heritage Foundation panel: VIRTUAL EVENT: Wokeism at Work: How “Critical Theory” and Anti-Racism Training Divide America | The Heritage Foundation
Lindsay begins by describing wokeism and its philosophical roots. We then learn from the other panelists about the weaponization of Critical Race Theory and about the machinery that’s built up in our government to continue the woke programs. Government employees, fearing for their jobs, obey the mandates of compelled speech. I was recently made aware of one such example:
“The Department of Health and Human Services, headed up by Biden transgender Admiral Rachel Levine, has enforced a mandate requiring all employees to use preferred pronouns and “acknowledge the gender identity of their colleagues.”
Biden’s HHS Forces Employees to Use Preferred Pronouns (independentsentinel.com)
~~~~~
“This is what Woke’s Kingdom is like,” said Marcuse. “Once upon a time a professor sowed seed of critical theory in the minds of his students. Every night he went to bed; every day he got up; and the seed sprouted and grew without much effort on his part. Social media produced the growth by itself: first the Tweet, then the “Likes”, then the complete thought reform. But when the crop of activists is ready in goes the media’s call for radical activism, because the revolution has arrived.
-The words of Jesus (Mk. 4: 26-29), converted to the secular world view.
~~~~~
Codified “Woke”
Every social institution has been affected by “Wokeism. A handful of 60s and 70s laws have reached into our legal system, our education systems, and our corporations like invasive weeds. Legislative outgrowths have had their effect on the landscape of human resources and admissions. Institutional wokeness has made space for some groups and some thought while choking off all others.
Richard Hanania, in his book The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politicsmakes the case that “Long before wokeness was a cultural phenomenon it was law.”
Christopher Caldwell, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, wrote in his 2020 book “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties”, that The Civil Rights Act of 1964 became a “rival Constitution”, incompatible with the original one. It “emboldened and incentivized bureaucrats, lawyers, intellectuals, and political agitators to become the ‘eyes and ears,’ and even the foot soldiers, of civil rights enforcement.”
“Over time,” Caldwell noted, “more of the country’s institutions were brought under the act’s scrutiny. Eventually all of them were.”
In The New Criterion’s October 2023 issue, editor Roger Kimball, Introducing “The new conservative dilemma: a symposium” with The abnormal as the new normal, references the above legal history and comments about the situation we find ourselves in:
“The hypertrophy of the Civil Rights Act did not take place in a vacuum. Its progress was directed by the essentially Marxist ambitions of those radicals who plotted the “long march through the institutions” of the 1960s and beyond. . .
“If the Civil Rights Act is the engine behind the transformation of liberal society into an illiberal, proto-totalitarian compact, the designers of the cultural revolution of the 1960s—from Frankfurt School Marxists like Herbert Marcuse on down—provided both the plan and the fuel. The result is a weird, almost surreal situation in which the most common realities and institutions are undermined, transformed, inverted. What is a family? What is a man or a woman? What is free speech? We used to be able to answer with confidence. Can we still?”
What Happened to Woke?
“Stay woke, keep your eyes open” was an early call for Black people to be aware of deceitful practices and prejudiced people and to be awake to racial and social injustice. We all should “Stay woke” and keep our eyes open to see human rights injustice and to fight it.
But yesterday’s “Woke” has taken on a sectarian set of values – the dogma of Critical Theory. Per Aja Romano in his article What is woke: How a Black movement watchword got co-opted in a culture war – Vox:
“. . . across a broad range of political beliefs, one recurring theme is that “wokeness” has demonstrable social, even quasi-religious, power. The writer James Lindsay has argued exhaustively that “wokeness” is essentially a religion where faith in social justice ideology stands in for belief in a deity, and that regular attendance at social justice protests has replaced the role of religious rituals for many progressives.”
Woke fundamentalist thinking thrives across the political spectrum. Monologues of shouting and abuse emanate from those who are certain that they can’t be wrong, that truth and justice are all on their side, and that there is nothing to learn from their opponents, who must be evil or deluded.
Woke fundamentalist thinking, which demands policing of speech and opinion, is antithetical to the open-mindedness and readiness to compromise that animate democracy. Woke Is the Handmaiden of Totalitarianism claims Thorsteinn Siglaugsson.
There’s a lot to take into account regarding the current state of Wokeness:
Consider, says Siglaugsson, that “One of the key characteristics of woke ideology is its utter disregard for reason; for rational thinking, and we see this perhaps most explicitly in the absurdities in the narrative around Covid-19. To the woke, all that matters is their own personal perception, subjective experience.”
Consider that intellectually bankrupt ideas have achieved acceptance in our culture. Truth, abandoned for Woke fundamentalist thinking, has taken on the postmodern understanding of the politics of power.
Consider that Woke conflict theory—separating the world into oppressor-versus-oppressed classes— with zero-sum conflict, offers no ability to agree or understand one another.
Consider that the Woke are antagonistic as everything is understood in terms of conflict: oppressor vs. oppressed power plays. The Woke, thereby, fragment culture as every relationship becomes transactional. “If I don’t get what I want you’re racist and I’m outta here.”
Consider that the Woke self is incoherent and contradictory as it is based on internal feelings. “What’s in here is more important than what’s out there.”
Consider that the Woke won’t let anyone speak into their lives. As such, there is no accountability and therefore no need for repentance, forgiveness, and redemption. There is no need to be reconciled with others and with truth.
Consider that in Woke thinking there are good and bad people. In Christian thinking there is good and bad in each one of us.
Consider that the Woke self is extremely fragile and needs constant affirmation. In the current culture, having power over others is seen as affirmation.
Consider that the Woke self is illusion, its outworking a virtue-signaling performance.
Consider that many on the job are undergoing critical theory consciousness-raising struggle sessions forcing a disconnect from reality and causing anxiety and depression, and, perhaps, suicide.
Consider that many on the job are undergoing Woke diversity training, e.g., being compelled to use preferred pronouns, even though compelling pronouns and worldviews are First Amendment violations.
Consider that our children are being taught, by the Woke, that the country they live in is racist and that all white people are racist.
Consider that Woke school boards and librarians want to place deviant pornographic material in the hands of our children.
Consider that the Woke advocate for pediatric sex changes.
Consider that the “egalitarian” Woke locked down schools for COVID, disproportionally affecting black and brown kids.
Consider that the “oppressor vs. oppressed” Woke support Islamist terrorist regimes.
Consider that the nonsensical Woke mock big business and worship Big Pharma.
Consider that there is something mentally off in the Woke push to defund the police, in eliminating bail, and in releasing violent offenders back into the public to await trial – all done under the rubric of oppressor-versus-oppressed ideology.
Consider that there is something mentally off in listening to climate alarmists and their insane and unscientific push for “Net Zero” emissions, an Eco-Woke version of the oppressor (mankind, fossil fuels) versus oppressed (earth) ideology.
Consider that there is something mentally off with Woke protestors. The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution. Comrades march in solidarity.
Consider that there is something mentally off with a Woke government looking at plans to “cull” 200,000 cows to meet its climate goals to satisfy the European Union’s (EU) net zero requirements.
Consider that Woke Climate alarmism is mental health abuse of young people. Should anyone be concerned about having children because alarmists have convinced them the planet is ending?
Consider that there is something mentally off with a Woke government on track to pass a massive ‘hate speech’ bill criminalizing social media posts likely ‘to incite violence or hatred’.
Consider that wokeism is characterized by thinking unconditionally or un-contextually, in binary. Behavior is to be condemned regardless of its reasons. And so, people are having to walk on eggshells around the Woke fault-finding terrorists.
Consider that “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
And, consider that
. . .
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
. . .
Excerpt from the poem The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
~~~~~
The Woke kingdom has burgeoned, promoting surreal incumbering effects. And so has mental illness. Correlation?
Consider also that Woke-derived mental illness has produced enablers:
“In fact, the culture of woke in academia is referred to as the Critical Social Justice Theory (CSJT). CSJT adherents seek to identify an enemy and project their own intolerance and guilt onto the enemy. Most of these CSJT adherents are members of the demographic that they are against, which is generally the rich, white elite. They justify themselves as being allies of the oppressed and often speak in a self-deprecating manner to show they are “woke” and striving to be less like the oppressor class. This mentality and the activism it has spawned have created a class of mental health practitioners who are more interested in “social justification” of maladaptive behaviors than actual social justice.”
Woke Mental Health -Capital Research Center
~~~~~
Here are some voices talking about the mental illness of Wokeism
Wokeism Is a Mental Disorder, 10/5/2023 Watchdog on Wall Street with Chris Markowski | Listen online (getpodcast.com)
Podcast for Independent Investors | The Watchdog on Wallstreet
~~~
The Mental Health Side Effects of Wokeism
Princeton professor Dr. Margarita Mooney Suarez shares her expertise as a sociologist and experience as an educator to talk about woke ideology and cancel culture and how they’re affecting the mental health of young people. She talks about the rise in loneliness, depression, anxiety, and suicide in pre-teens, teens, and young adults, and she shares a potential solution to the problem: refocusing on beauty.
Episode #229 – The Mental Health Side Effects of Wokism – Doctor Doctor Podcast
~~~
Bishop Robert Barron speaking on “The Philosophical Roots of Wokeism.”
“Wokeism” is arguably the most influential public philosophy in our country today. It has worked its way into the minds and hearts of our young people, into the world of entertainment, and into the boardrooms of powerful corporations. But what is it precisely, and where did it come from”
~~~
“Will Cain sits down with Environmental Progress founder and author, Michael Shellenberger, to discuss why the worshipping of wokeism as an ideology is inherently dangerous to a society, as well as what Michael and Will believe are the real greatest threats to the American experiment.
Will and Michael look at issues such as climate, energy, food policy, as well as drugs, mental illness, homelessness, and crime to give an overarching view of places where well-intended but naive policies have had disastrous unintended consequences.”
Michael Shellenberger: Why the religion of wokeism is so dangerous | Will Cain Podcast – YouTube
~~~~~
Woke Mental Disorders Portrayed:
I would like to ask the young women in the picture and the women of the WEF video “Where are you going with this?’ and “How does doing/saying this make you feel?”
Wokeism – the religion of “never enough!”:
~~~~~~
~~~~~
Mentally Disordered Laws for Mentally Disordered People:
“Reduxx has learned that a trans-identified male was arrested in Perry County, Illinois, after making threats to commit a school shooting and murder children on behalf of the transgender community in response to transphobic “bullying.”
. . .
“According to Perry County court records, Willie has not yet entered a plea on his charge of resisting arrest, but Sheriff Howard explains that even if he is found guilty he will likely walk away with a fine.
“It’s more or less going to end up going to be a hearing. Now with the state of Illinois having the SAFE-T Act, which went into effect on September 18, those types of crimes are no longer containable. You just bring [a suspect] in for booking, processing, and biometrics and then you release them with a court date and it is all handled by the courts from there on out.” (Emphasis mine.)
Willie’s next hearing is scheduled for January 2, 2024.
Mentally Disordering Social Media:
Dozens of U.S. states are suing Meta Platforms (META.O) and its Instagram unit, accusing them of fueling a youth mental health crisis by making their social media platforms addictive.
In a complaint filed on Tuesday, the attorneys general of 33 states including California and New York said Meta, which also operates Facebook, repeatedly misled the public about the dangers of its platforms, and knowingly induced young children and teenagers into addictive and compulsive social media use.
…
But the states said research has associated children’s use of Meta’s social media platforms with “depression, anxiety, insomnia, interference with education and daily life, and many other negative outcomes.”
Meta’s Instagram linked to depression, anxiety, insomnia in kids – US states’ lawsuit | Reuters
Dozens of states sue Meta over addictive features harming kids – POLITICOMeta sued by 33 states for child-harming business practices • The Register
Informed Dissent:
New Non-mRNA ‘Emergency’ Vaccine Authorized for COVID (mercola.com)
CONSUMER ALERT: The Deadly Reason Tylenol Should Be Removed from the (greenmedinfo.com)
‘Adulterated’ Covid Vaccines Should Be Pulled From The Market: Experts (substack.com)
Fast Food Loaded With Antibiotics, Hormones, Heavy Metals, but Few Nutrients (mercola.com)
~~~~~
Beauty isn’t boring. Read Evie Magazine.
A boy sits and reads among the ruins of a bookshop that was destroyed during an air raid in London, United Kingdom in 1940.
Cindy Wity 
Binary Beckons for More from You
October 15, 2023 Leave a comment
Two options guided my early incorrigible years: “Either you do what I say or your father will deal with you when he comes home” “Either you clean you room or lose your allowance” “Either you are home by 9 or you will be grounded.” The church, too, presented two stark choices: “Either you get saved and go to heaven or you go to hell”; “Either walk the straight and narrow or walk the wide way of the world.”
The either/or binaries of my early childhood were meant to prepare me for life. I learned that if I wandered off into “or” territory there was sure to be consequences. My parents guided my behavior from their own experience of walking within binary guard rails.
They had learned that from the simplest safety issues to the most important issues in life, honest straightforward either/or choices are required. My late mother shared one such either/or choice.
My father, having grown up in the Dutch Reformed church where smoking was the norm for men, was given a choice by my mother when she was dating my father: “Either you stop smoking or that’s it.” Thankfully, my father didn’t “or” the situation. I wouldn’t be here if he did.
With knowledge of their own either/or choices and exposing me to the either/or choices of the book of Proverbs, my parents either/or’d my youth. Binary guard rails were set in place for my time in Jr. High and High school.
When I attended Moody Bible Institute after high school (early 70s), the binary thinking infused in me by the church came into question.
A first-year class called “Personal Evangelism” was taught by Mr. Winslett. During that semester Mr. W described different religions. As he did so he labeled the churches of the Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness and others as cults. When he came to the Catholic church, he said it was a cult because Catholics worshipped Mary, had a pope, and put tradition ahead of scripture. I remember hearing this and thinking that we’re better than all of them. But something felt off.
(Per Article I of The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy found on the Moody Bible Institute website, the Bible, not tradition, is the authoritative Word of God.)
The highly partisan Mr. W, a representative of MBI, had sallied Catholicism: MBI represented real Christianity and Catholicism, a “cult”, did not; either you are with us in Bible first thinking or you are not one of us. (Mr. W was the only teacher I met a MBI like this. But there are many who preach and teach the same binary “us and them” thing.)
I was raised Protestant. Differences of Protestantism and Catholicism were minimally noted in my church. But I had read about Luther, the Ninety-five Theses, and the Reformation. I knew about the abuses and corruption of the Catholic church. Those include Johann Tetzel selling indulgences.
But faith in God and his salvation coupled to Mary, the pope and tradition were not Christianity deal breakers for me. For without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.
Instead of imposing exclusionary theology, abide by the words of the old hymn: “God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform . . . God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain.”
Years later I came across the same “us and them” attack. I brought my daughter to an Awana program going on at a Baptist church. On the night that she and I were to race the Pinewood Derby Car we had crafted together, the speaker bad-mouthed the Catholic church during a promotion for the Baptist church we were standing in.
He said something to the effect that their Baptist church wasn’t like the unsound Catholic church. I was shocked. There were members of that Baptist church and other churches in attendance. What did they walk away with that night?
I’ve seen this attitude surface so many times by haughty either/or Protestants. I’ve also seen it in either/or Catholics. Both groups interpret Church teaching in a narrow way, then argue that whoever disagrees with their tightly wound interpretation must—by the fact of that disagreement—be in opposition to Church teaching. The Either-Or fallacy used by both Protestants and Catholics: “I can’t be in error therefore YOU must be!”
Another anecdote of the “us and them” attitude: One night I was sitting in a donors meeting listening to a presentation. The Episcopal church I attended wanted to annex and refurbish the house next store and make it ministry usable. At front and center of the room that night was a picture board showing the proposed design. The crossway from the existing church building to the house showed a cross in relief in the arc above the passageway. One woman remarked that we should get rid of the cross because “we’re not Baptists.”
Look. Our family and church backgrounds teach us to think in opposites – basically in terms of good and bad. We are presented with two options and they appear as your only options and mutually exclusive. We then bring unmediated polar extremes into adulthood.
Either/or thinking integrated into our lives and then reinforced by our respective cultures can produce a worldview in stringent binary terms: as a one or zero. Black-and-white thinking is used to reduce the world to something we can handle which then provides a sense of certainty and security. But “a one or zero” thinking can be adversarial, dividing people into “us vs. them.” A few examples:
“I am right and you are wrong.” (How does that work out in marriage? With our neighbors?)
“If you’re not with me, you’re against me. I have friends and enemies but not acquaintances.”
“Either I win or I lose in this situation.”
It can also produce all-or-nothing false dilemma fallacies which are really manipulative setups:
“If you care about your neighbor, you will get vaccinated” and “Putting others first will get us through he pandemic” “Getting vaccinated is loving your neighbor as yourself.”
“Social solidarity is the most precious tenet of our democracy.”
“You’re either pro-choice or anti-woman. There’s no other moral stance.”
“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
“Either you let your child change their gender or they will commit suicide.”
“You are either racist (by not agreeing with me) or you are anti-racist (by agreeing with me).”
“If you are against LGBTQ books in the library you are a book banner.”
“If you question what is being taught in public schools, you are a domestic terrorist.”
“If you question the 2020 election you are a MAGA extremist.”
“If you don’t accept the climate science consensus (or COVID science consensus), then you are a science denier.”
Either/or “us and them” thinking tends toward exclusion and not embrace. It tends toward absolutism, authoritarianism, fundamentalism and judgement. We see it in Hamas’ attack on Israel. We see it in climate activism. We see it in cancel culture. We see it in the murderous history of totalitarian regimes. We see it in church teaching and we sing it: “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war.”
We see it in the teachings and practice of Christians, Muslims, and the Progressive Left which would have us believe that they are the opposite of conservative either/or thinking while mandating their own anything-goes version of it. Theology, ideology and government policies are marketed with the dichotomy of good and bad.
It seems that many have retained their childhood’s unyielding binary worldview. It is used as a defense mechanism, as a means of protection from the “hazards and vicissitudes of life”. (From the statement made by FDR when he signed the Social Security Act.)
I’ve seen the binary thinking defense mechanism employed by Christians. Though it comes across as holding fast to the faith and Sola Scriptura, faith vs. science messaging reduces the supposed conflict to “us vs. them” binary thinking which allows no quarter for God’s revelation in nature as revealed by science. Yet, God has revealed himself in both scripture and nature. Science is a tool for understanding God’s revelation of Himself in the physical world.
When I told my eighty-nine-year-old Godly mother that, based on research, I believed the universe to be billions of years old and that God used evolution, she didn’t reply “That’s interesting. Tell me more.” She said “That’s heresy!” Her defense mechanism alarm bell went off. She was reacting from what she had been taught and how she had been taught to think about what she was taught.
Becoming emotionally invested in extremes may lead to the exclusion of people, as “Heresy!” suggests. Such binary thinking can produce unrealistic portrayals of others and it can become used, as mentioned above, as a weaponized defense against others.
Certainly, there are people who watch news commentators because they relish the mocking and “owning” of the opposition. Certainly, there are people who go to church for the same reasons. But there is nothing mature about participation in bad mouthing others. I see nothing of this in Jesus.
I come across Jesus-whipping-the-money-changers-in-the-temple memes on social media. These are extrapolated as Jesus is “destroying” his enemies, so we can do the same. Horrible nonsense.
Relying solely on binary thinking is intellectual and spiritual laziness. An open both/and questioning mind is not a slippery slope and it’s not anything-goes Progressivism. Seek truth and not the comfort of tribal consensus.
Consider that no one has all the information – not your pastor nor MBI nor Anthony Fauci nor climate scientists. It’s OK. Consider that not everything is black and white. Knowing the difference and knowing when to introduce AND with “perhaps” is wisdom.
The Creator of the universe is not a small-minded Person. He holds a universe of disparate thought, theories, and faith in his hands. He is not threatened by any of it. A follower of the Creator of the universe lets God hold the messiness and uncertainty of life in His hands and does not feel threatened.
Finally, a reductionist’s worldview makes it incredibly difficult to hold space for the uncertainty and messiness of others. But there is a better way, a much better way: love and maturity.
Love is great-hearted; love is kind,
Knows no jealousy, makes no fuss,
Is not puffed up, no shameless way,
Doesn’t force its rightful claim,
Doesn’t rage or bear a grudge,
Doesn’t cheer at other’s harm,
Rejoices, rather, in truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things;
Love hopes all things, endures all things.
As a child I spoke, and thought, and reasoned like a child; When I grew up, I threw off childish ways.
I Cor. 13:4-7, 11
~~~~~
(Note: I’ve summed up a lot so as to make this post accessible. I was involved in the Jesus People movement during high school. Along with those in the movement I questioned a lot of the binary thinking of the church. I’ll share that story in another post.)
~~~~~
Science and Faith
In this episode, we focus on the apparent tension between science and faith.
“Many people believe that science and religious faith are bitter enemies with conflicting views of the universe. One the one hand there is the scientific account of the origins of life and then there is the story of universal origins told by the bible. But is this tension real, or is it based on a deep misunderstanding of what the Bible is and how it communicates?
. . .
“Consider this a crash course in reading the Bible as an ancient cross-cultural experience.”
Science & Faith (bibleproject.com)
~~~~~~
Kate Boyd | Science and the Messy Middle
Kate Boyd has been learning to live out her faith in the messy middle in a culture that rewards picking a side. While her journey didn’t begin with a conflict between science and religion, her story explores the complexities of understanding the Bible in today’s context and anyone who has struggled with issues of science and faith will resonate with this conversation.
149. Kate Boyd | Science and the Messy Middle | Language of God (biologos.org)
~~~~~
I’ve been told that I’m either naive or stupid.
I’m not sure which side I’m moron.
Rate this:
Filed under Christianity, Psychology, Science, social commentary, totalitarianism Tagged with absolutism, Authoritarianism, binary thinking, Catholicism, Christianity, either/or, fundamentalism, Protestantism, psychology, Science, totalitarianism