Does ‘woke’ have a future?

Wokery: A Wake-Up Call for the West   
Edited by David Daintree | Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies, 2024, 152 pages

This work is a publication of the Christopher Dawson Press in Hobart, edited by the classicist David Daintree. It goes to prove that not everything from the “Apple Isle” of Australia is on the far left of the political spectrum.

Christopher Dawson was possibly the greatest Catholic historian of the 20th century, since one of his gifts was to connect social developments with underlying theological principles. In a similar manner many of the essays in this collection analyse contemporary social pathologies with reference to the philosophical principles underpinning them.

The book opens with an introduction from David Daintree. He suggests that the Left of today is very different from the Left of 60 years ago. The latter, he suggests, at least believed in freedom of speech. Maybe 60 years ago they did, but not 40 years ago when I was an undergraduate. I have very clear memories of microphones suddenly not working when a Liberal Club member tried to give a speech and polite conservative students being dismissed from the podium because some Marxist chairperson was offended by their “bourgeois” manners. I found myself strongly concurring with Deidre Clary and Fiona Mueller whose essay is the first substantive piece in the collection. They argued that the Australian national curriculum needs to be reinforced in the area of critical thinking and communication skills, especially debating skills. David Daintree would also, no doubt, strongly agree with this conclusion.

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Following Clary and Mueller, Kenneth Crowther proposes that “incoherence forms the foundation of the woke movement”. The poorly educated, he notes, do not really care about incoherence. It doesn’t bother them. They think it is perfectly okay to be irrational. Those who care about rationality are by definition “logocentric” and this is bad – logocentrism is for woke types an analogue for a mortal sin. The woke intellectual as described by Crowther has no loyalty, and thus can never enjoy real community, and only trusts his or her own feelings.

As an example of the incoherence factor, Crowther offers the following sketch of the typical woke intellectual:

“As a politician in one chamber he will cry we must save the environment for future generations, and in another he’ll legislate the destruction of those generations before they’re born. As a female CEO she’ll praise the advantages of a boardroom with more women than men, and then as an enlightened progressive she’ll suggest that women basically are men. As a firm supporter of women’s professional sporting teams, he’ll fight for those teams to be filled with biological males. As a state party leader, he’ll advocate for women’s rights while ejecting women from his party who advocate for women’s existence.”

Crowther concludes that “what is required is a return to reality: a full return to logocentrism”.

Kevin Donnelly then addresses the typical woke attitude that those who care about the past and wish to conserve something of the social treasure of the past are simply boring, stagnant types, who have no interest in improving anything but wish to remain trapped in some pre-modern period. With reference to the ideas of scholars such as Matthew Arnold, T. S. Eliot and Augusto del Noce, Donnelly makes the point that respect for the past does not imply standing still. He notes that it is ironic, or Crowther would say, “incoherent”, that “while the indigenous welcome to country asks everyone to acknowledge and value ‘traditional custodians’ and ‘elders past and present’, the same respect is not given to the heritage and elders associated with Western civilisation”.

Returning to the attack on logocentrism theme, Sarah Flynn-O’Dea notes that an element of wokery is shifting how we perceive reality from an accurate perception of reality “as it is” to a reality that is determined by human will. One merely needs to will something to be true for it to be so. If I want to be a cat, I can be a cat. It does not matter that I was not born with four paws, feline genetics, whiskers and a tail. Flynn-O’Dea quotes James Lindsay’s observation that the “negation of the real is established by creating an interpretative frame that deliberately causes people to misunderstand reality – disconnecting one from reality through its images and constructs”. Flynn-O’Dea then notes that the real is “replaced with a ‘hyperreal simulation’, the invisible cloth (gender fluidity, antiracism, equity, diversity and inclusion), a Utopian promise that never actualises”. She concludes that the best foil to this flight from reality is a classical education.

Karina Hepner’s essay added the expression “Goblin mode” to my vocabulary. Not only does the attack on logocentrism lead to idiocy (for example, human beings pretending to be cats) it also discourages any attempt to improve oneself. Hepner notes that according to a World Economic Forum study in 2022, one of the five most searched words was “Goblin Mode”. It means “unleashing the creature within and shamelessly embracing your inner slob”. So, if I say I am going into “Goblin mode” I assume this means something like not bothering about matters of personal hygiene and grooming, staying in pyjamas all day, and leaving the dishes on the kitchen bench until one runs out of clean coffee mugs. Hepner does not recommend this. She exhorts her readers to be “the antithesis of the cultural chaos of our time” and to thus emerge from this chaos as “hope personified”. In short, resist the temptation to be a slob!

Daniel Lewkovitz also exhorts his readers to resist the culture of wokery. His essay focuses on the manner in which businesses are imposing woke ideology on their employees. He suggests that “companies will need to learn to tell the difference between genuine complaints from pissed off customers versus hundreds of emails magically generated by a single person who’s never had a real job, sitting at their keyboard using AI software”.

In order for people to find their way back to reality and the truth that underpins it, Archbishop Julian Porteous recommends the path of beauty. Within the Catholic intellectual tradition truth, beauty and goodness are described as the transcendental properties of being. Their relationship is described as perichoretic, meaning in the manner of a circular dance. They are each gateways to the other. As a general point of principle Archbishop Porteous explains that “whether it be the pagan gods of Greece or Rome, or the ‘noble truths’ proposed by Buddhism, or the articulation of Christian virtues inspired by Sacred Scripture, societies have fashioned moral imperatives based on some form of transcendental order. The moral structures have, in their turn, defined the cultures and have been a point of social cohesion”.

Archbishop Porteous follows the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) in suggesting that if people have despaired of truth, then a way to get them back on track, so to speak, is through the contemplation of beauty. As Porteous writes: “beauty opens us to the glory of the Lord”. When we encounter beauty we are “drawn towards the source of beauty” and “taken beyond ourselves”. This in turn “opens us up to the reality of the divine”. This was also the understanding of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, who, in his Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis (2007), wrote: “Like the rest of Christian Revelation, the liturgy is inherently linked to beauty: it is ‘veritatis splendor’. The liturgy is a radiant expression of the paschal mystery in which Christ draws us to himself and calls us to communion”.

John Roskam from the Institute of Public Affairs takes the view that the educational institutions in Australia are now so “unequivocally hostile to freedom” that they cannot be renovated or “recaptured”. The logic of this judgment is that alternative institutions will need to be created. At first they will not carry the same social kudos of the older corrupted institutions but they may well be the little oases of sanity from which a new generation will arise, free from all the ideological baggage that has replaced the quest for truth, goodness and beauty. Roskam’s essay is delightfully rational. He observes: “It’s understandable a church would have a view on abortion. Why a football club should have one is less clear”.

The final essay in the collection is by Emeritus Professor Ramesh Thakur who summarises much of the above with his assessment that “the pursuit of social justice animated by group rights and an expanding victimhood hierarchy and grievance industry has become a war on truth, science, facts, merit and achievement”.

Underlying all the essays in the collection is the belief that rationality is good, that the pursuit of truth is possible, and that intellectual disagreement and debate are possible without resorting to character assassination or other attempts to “cancel” one’s interlocutor.

The collection is highly readable and could be given to students in the higher years of secondary school as well as to undergraduates.   


What is the future of “wokery” after the surprising result of the US election?    


Tracey Rowland is St John Paul II Chair of Theology at University of Notre Dame (Australia)

Image credit: Open to Debate 


 

Showing 28 reactions

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  • Rob McKilliam
    commented 2024-11-20 17:43:43 +1100
    Emberson:
    You mean like ‘racist’, ‘far right’, ‘hard right’, ‘alt-right’, ’Neo Nazi’, ‘conspiracy theorist’, ‘Fascist’, ‘homophobic’, etc?
  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-20 17:27:11 +1100
    ‘Woke’ is a meaningless term. It’s like ‘Marxism’, ‘communism’, ‘socialism’ and ‘elitist’.

    They are simply trigger words used by right-wingers to perpetuate outrage at the expense of critical thought.
  • Rob McKilliam
    commented 2024-11-20 07:51:26 +1100
    Anon: you may well be correct.
  • Anon Emouse
    commented 2024-11-20 05:11:51 +1100
    No, I think “woke” is an over-saturated term that has been co-opted by the right to use as a dog whistle to the point where it’s lost all meaning. And I think your struggle to come up with a definition of woke is reflective of that.
  • Rob McKilliam
    commented 2024-11-20 00:57:35 +1100
    Anon
    Thank you.
    Do you think woke is about inflicting your morality on others?
    If so, is that good or bad?
  • Anon Emouse
    commented 2024-11-19 23:48:40 +1100
    Rob,

    I offer you this moment to reflect upon why you think “woke” is bad when you are “woke” yourself, choosing to inflict your morality on others
  • Rob McKilliam
    commented 2024-11-19 21:21:20 +1100
    Hi Anon. Yes you are quite right. It doesn’t really compute. Thank you for correcting me. I’ll have to go back to the drawing board!

    Mrs Cracker: I modified the original to try and get round the problem of those people who believe God is the ultimate authority and who firmly believe they know what God wants (ie they ‘know’ the difference between good and evil) and who feel the need to impose these ideas on everyone else. My problem is that these people exist on both the right and the left, some being woke and others not.

    Perhaps being “woke" is just a specific symptom of a very common problem of people believing they are right (whether God-influenced or not) and wanting to force everyone else to act accordingly – for whatever reason. .

    I think government (and civil law) is just there to keep everyone from harming themselves (eg: all agreeing to drive on the left or the right) – not to impose ideas of morality.
  • mrscracker
    Per the original definition of “woke” the answer would be yes, Mr. Mouse.
    And I apologize. I know you weren’t asking me.
    🙂
  • Anon Emouse
    commented 2024-11-19 00:35:28 +1100
    Guess all those abortion bans are “woke”, Rob?
  • Rob McKilliam
    commented 2024-11-17 09:41:43 +1100
    Thank you mrscracker. Good morning to you (except I think it may be your evening?). :-)
    Yes – something like that except that everyone’s ‘dress’ (ie: moral actions) must align with what I think your dress should be.

    Here’s a second draft:
    Woke: Someone who thinks the government can and should make people act according to their idea of what is moral.
  • mrscracker
    Good morning Mr. Rob. That’s a good definition. Sort of like the Iranian morality police but Woke polices your thoughts not your dress.
  • Rob McKilliam
    commented 2024-11-16 18:24:28 +1100
    For what it is worth here is my attempt at a definition of woke:

    Being ‘woke’ describes someone who knows what morality is and who thinks the Government should force everyone to become moral.
  • mrscracker
    Hello Mr. Fedders. We are having some beautiful fall weather today & I hope springtime looks great where you are.
    I think rural issues are often better left to rural communities to come up with workable solutions . Or at least to have serious input.
    Federal programs no matter how well meaning can have unintended consequences that are detrimental to the beneficiaries. Bureaucrats in Washington have their own bubbles they operate out of, as we all do. But locally we know our neighbors, their personal needs, & their challenges.

    I think it was during the Clinton administration our area was chosen for a federal rural housing improvement project. I don’t doubt the folks who came out to determine eligibility were well intentioned but the results were typical of what happens with those sort of programs. One of our older neighbors actually died as an unintended result. She had lived her entire life in a little house without indoor plumbing. The govt. workers put her up in a motel while they made improvements to her home. Somehow she was drowned/scalded to death in the motel’s bathtub. She was completely unfamiliar with modern plumbing & suffered some mishap that led to her death.

    Some folks were given entirely new homes at taxpayers’ expense & within six months their new homes resembled the poor condition of their old ones. Home maintenance just wasn’t their top priority.

    If there’s a proper role for federal govt. in rural water issues, fine. And that goes for other programs also. I’m not a libertarian but I do believe there’s a great deal of waste & disconnect at the federal level.
  • Julian Farrows
    commented 2024-11-16 01:55:39 +1100
    @Emberson_Fedders : Wokeism is a secular theology based on K. Crenshaw’s Hierarchy of Oppression and Intersectionality. It is supplemented by a body of Critical Theory scholarship that presupposes good and evil attributes based on qualities like race, sex, and sexual desires. In its basest form a black lesbian one-legged transsexual woman would be more deserving of compassion than a healthy rich straight white man. As an idea in itself, it is crude (because it conveniently ignores socioeconomic differentiation) but relatively harmless. The danger here was that Wokeism was escaping the ivory towers of academia and being applied to areas such as medicine, law, science, and even job recruitment. It divided people into the deserving poorer and the undeserving poor based on race, sex, and sexual preference.

    This was often done under the weasel term of ‘privilege’ i.e. your material success is undeserved because your sex, race, and orientation provided you with an unfair advantage. Implied is the threat of social overhaul whereby government agencies, once committed to universal fairness, become tools of the ruling elite and its notions of social justice which are often very arbitrarily and politically applied. Such a system saps morale, prevents innovation, and abhors entrepreneurialism.

    Trump didn’t win because he was a great politician. To many people he was the only tool available for the job of clearing out the institutions of wokethink. When you wake up to your house being burgled you reach out for the nearest implement you can find. In this case it turned out to be Trump. His enemies claim he is a rude boorish narcissistic liar. They may be right, but then again these were also the same people who were very vocal in stating that civil discourse is a veneer for white supremacism. Basically, in their fanatical accusations of fascism and bigotry, they created a world that manifests their (imaginary) fears.

    Lastly, the woke are insufferable bores, I would much rather share a few beers with the most red-neck of Trump supporters than be accused by people who hate me of how my white male privilege s responsible for all the evils in the world.

    Hope this helps 😉
  • Julian Farrows
    commented 2024-11-16 01:22:44 +1100
    Trump’s election victory has been a shock to the system for the wokerati. Unfortunately, they refuse to engage in self-examination and remain convinced that the world is made up of bigoted cavemen voting against their own interests. As such their sneering contempt for those different to them continues unabated.

    Like many social justice movements, its most ardent supporters are most often its greatest detractors. I am happy to see them being removed from positions of power and I’m looking forward to consigning wokeism to the dustbin of dysfunctional ideologies. In their fierce opposition to what was quite often imaginary forms of fascism and bigotry they themselves became the very monster looking back at itself from the abyss.
  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-15 10:54:12 +1100
    Something tells me that access to clean water for rural people is not high on Trump’s list of things to do.
  • mrscracker
    I hope so too, Mr. Mouse.
  • Anon Emouse
    commented 2024-11-15 00:31:58 +1100
    mrscracker,

    The infrastructure in this country needs a lot of work. I can only hope that Trump can continue the good work that Biden did to help get those rural areas access to clean water.
    https://www.doi.gov/investing-americas-infrastructure
  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-14 10:54:31 +1100
    “This is gonna be one of these moments that goes viral.”

    Very amusing, Mr Mouse!

    And that’s the thing. Woke was originally about social justice, fairness and equality. Which probably explains why the right hates it.
  • mrscracker
    Our area has ongoing water troubles too Mr. Mouse. Lower income & rural communities tend to have those sorts of issues. Our tap water sometimes turns yellowish brown. Hopefully it’s more due to bacteria & minerals, not chemicals.
    If you want to see a municipality where pretty much nothing works, visit New Orleans. Seriously. Seriously nothing works, & seriously it’s a great place to visit. But you have to watch your back constantly & keep your vehicle doors locked at all times.
  • Anon Emouse
    commented 2024-11-14 06:58:16 +1100
    I don’t know, mrscracker – I’d say that Flint’s water crisis from 10 years ago was a systemic injustice given how long it lasted, and that today they’re still recommending using special filters. To my knowledge they haven’t entirely replaced the pipes that caused the issue in the first place.

    I’d also add the practice of redlining created many systemic injustices for minorities (lower access to financial institutions, food deserts, and lower property values leading to lower school funding).

    Also, for my friends Emberson and Steven Meyer:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-G50bhldQo&t=31s
  • mrscracker
    Mr. Mouse, it depends how you define systemic. My short answer would be no. But injustice can be a real thing.
  • Anon Emouse
    commented 2024-11-14 03:09:37 +1100
    https://www.fox13news.com/news/what-does-woke-mean-gov-desantis-officials-answer-during-andrew-warren-trial

    “During the testimony, Warren’s attorney, Jean-Jacques Cabou asked those within DeSantis’ administration what “woke” meant to them.

    The governor’s general counsel, Ryan Newman, said, in general, it means “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” "

    mrscracker, do you believe there are any systemic injustices in this country?
  • mrscracker
    Wokeness definitely took a hit in the States on November 5th.
    :)
    It reminds me of other social movements where no one is perfectly puritanical enough & eventually folks tire of it & revolt.
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-13 13:02:20 +1100
    Emberson Fedders, it certainly reads like satire? :)
  • Emberson Fedders
    commented 2024-11-13 11:16:23 +1100
    No one can even explain what ‘woke’ means beyond things that I don’t like.

    As usual around here, this article is just a grab-bag of non sequiturs to ‘prove’ some ill-defined point.

    What’s truly weird about this article is the descriptions of woke behaviour perfectly encapsulates the Republican party in America – strongly opposed to free speech, an incoherent ideological model, victimhood hood, the grievance industry.

    “The poorly educated, he notes, do not really care about incoherence. It doesn’t bother them. They think it is perfectly okay to be irrational.” And boy, does the right milk this for all it’s worth.

    Is this article satire? Wait! Is this whole SITE satire??
  • Steven Meyer
    commented 2024-11-13 09:36:33 +1100
    “wokery” will have a long life along with “cultural Marxism” and “communism”

    They’re such convenient labels to use against the bogeyman of the moment.
  • Tracey Rowland
    published this page in The Latest 2024-11-13 09:19:41 +1100