Woke(ness)

Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass features this telling exchange between Alice and Humpty Dumpty over the meaning of a word in which Alice says, "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" to which Humpty Dumpty answers "Of course you don't -- till I tell you . . . when I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less" to which Alice responds, "The question is whether you can make words mean different things -- that's all" to which Humpty Dumpty closes down the exchange with, "The question is which is to be master -- that's all"

Which is to be master, that's all. The dynamic applies most anywhere, whether determining the meaning of a word, of language, of culture itself. The master of "our" culture -- involving reason, science, logic, the very reading of history -- largely emanated out of western thought, from Socrates to the Enlightenment to the Founding Fathers, largely as white as the face on a Quaker Oats box. Culture has bestowed many with such a blessed existence that we tend to take it for granted and find it difficult to even define it, like a fish trying to describe water.

Until now. 

Mr. Jones knows something is happening here but you don't know what it is. What's happening here is woke i.e. the activist-driven awakening that would call out "our" culture as one of oppression, inequality, and exploitation. What's happening here is nothing less than an exercise in power dynamics challenging what's heretofore been an alleged white man's construct.

An underlying point of such a calling-out is one that we had actually approached two years ago -- the appearance of postmodernism ( MM (2/26/18)/Postmodernism). The notion of truth, posited back in the days of the Enlightenment, was rooted in the "real" world of thought, logic, and reason. Enter then the influence of psychology and, with it, the era known as postmodernism in which the sciences deal, less in the natural sciences of physics and chemistry and repeatable experiments, and more in the world of human dynamics. 

Language accordingly became provisional, incorporating terms like relativism and constructivism. Things such as truth and morality were seen in relative terms. The upshot was that truth became: something made, not found; essentially reduced to the exercise of power; defined and replaced by perception. 

Per our lead discussion article, such is at the very root of wokeness ( The Roots Of Wokeness ). The top-down re-ordering of language, the argument goes, is the product of an esoteric academic discipline called critical theory. The author invites us all to take a deep dive into this "impenetrable" philosophy to understand how it is that the very notion of truth has been hi-jacked and has devolved into a display of this raw exercise of power, all to the detriment of traditional liberalism. And, so, becoming woke to these power dynamics alters one's perception of reality, such that our multicultural and multi racial democracy is a mere front for "white supremacy." Students are advised to "check their privilege" before they even open their mouths.

We are admonished to be aware of our own station in life as we weigh in. There is some irony here where a rational discussion concerning the nature of truth -- if reduced to a battle of perceptions -- becomes suspect where reason itself is held to be a reflection of white supremacy.  

Essayist Lance Morrow, the very personification of Socratic and Enlightenment thinking, expresses the view that wokeness and the cancel culture represent not idealism but virtue gone clinically insane (see the article of the week, posted elsewhere in this edition). It's high time, he maintains, that some strong adult leaders step up to this cancel culture pack -- the so-called military wing of wokeness -- as the fear conjured up by this hysterical mob carries with it the whiff of McCarthyism and in a like way threatens us all, including many of the minorities it purports to represent.

Pause here for reaction. Member Monday is no stranger to the issues of racism (e.g. Confronting the R-Word/1619 Project; Now Listen, Whitey) so one question for discussion is how the matter of wokeness might be the same, similar, or somehow different. There are suggestions that the animating force behind the movement, more than simply one for social justice, is part and parcel of a much broader socialist drive, one even referred to as Woke Marxism.

In any event, one must remain "awake" to shifting sentiments or else risk being on the "wrong side of history." That brings to mind those past monarchs, bewildered and unshaven, as they were led out into the palace courtyard to be shot, thinking to themselves, "Maybe the people do have a point."