The Wokers: a new religion?

Woke: the past tense of wake. 

In today’s society “woke” means becoming aware of injustice in our culture, especially racism. It is a heightened state of social, political and cultural consciousness. It’s like an individual who, having been asleep, suddenly woke up to see injustice and prejudice rampant in the world to which they were previously blind. Let’s call these individuals “wokers”. The Wokers’ recognition of their new awareness releases their dissatisfactions about the unfairnesses in this world. 

Intrinsic is that wokers are cleverer, more finely aware and sensitive than the rest of us. They have seen the light and a way to assuage their frustrations.

Wikipedia expands further: “Woke” is a term that refers to awareness of issues that concern social and racial justice. It is sometimes used in the African-American Vernacular English expression, “stay woke”. Woke resurfaced in 2014 in the Black Lives Matter movement, as a label for vigilance and activism concerning racial inequalities and other social disparities, such as discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community, women, immigrants and other marginalised populations.

So in what way do those who have reached this higher state of consciousness differ from the rest of us? Allow me to summarise, or rather plagiarise, an article by Michael Harriot published December 2017 in an online publication, The Root: The 6 Degrees of Wokeness (theroot.com).

The author points out that among Wokers there are different levels of wokeness, in approximate ascending order of religiosity. 

Asleep: people who are non-racist and perfectly happy with white and black friends. They believe all lives matter.

Groggy: people who are just beginning to notice things previously ignored, like oppression, racism and historical truth.

Newly woke: the neo-woke are the most extreme segment of the woke community. Once they realise they live in a capitalist society built on oppression, they alter their lives.

Eyes wide open: this stage is the newly woke realising they still have to live in the real world and begin to take advantage of the rules and regulations to stake out their claims.

Woke AF: is achieved when a Woker adopts a stereotyped lifestyle, becomes vegan and uses phrases like “unpack issues” and “problematic” and “microaggressions”.

Insomniac: is the highest form a Woker can achieve. Facts that do not meet their view of society are belittled or ignored. They have one belief and one narrative: that the West is institutionalised against specific minorities, namely black people, women, LGBT and Muslims; the oppressors are white males, capitalists and Jews.

I could go deeper into each of these levels but, should you, my reader, be sufficiently interested to find out more you can refer to the original text.

One thing that becomes more obvious is that, as a woker ascends through the various levels of wokeness, it becomes clearer to them that there are increasing numbers of things wrong with the way the world works and society is organised. This realisation then gives rise to the insight that society needs to be reformed so that the unfairness of each issue is eliminated. Their laudable task is to make the world a better place. More specifically, wokers believe that the rest of the world needs to wake up and become woke and join together with the newly converted Wokers.

Thus a new religion is born. It is taking root in the politically correct and environmentally friendly West. As it waxes, more traditional religions wane. Like most religions, it is highly political and intolerant of those that do not share its views. Its adherents exude moral rectitude. Their aim is to become powerful and dominant so that they can bring about, peacefully or forcefully, the essential changes needed to save the world and make it conform to their vision of nirvana. In this world fairness is the driver of change and equality is the watchword of progress. In other words, a society that is truly socialist.

The twentieth and the early years of our current century have shown where this path leads. From the collectivism of the Bolshevik Revolution to the gulags in Siberia; in Venezuela from the Chavez concepts of liberty, equality, social justice and solidarity, to the Maduro government‘s stacking the courts with judges who make no pretence of independence, while the rulers have been repressing dissent through violent crackdowns on street protests, jailing opponents.

The oppressed become the oppressors and the primacy of the individual gets abrogated by an all-powerful, intrusive state. The rights of the collective supplant the rights of the individual. 

How far has Western society travelled along this road? 

All you need do is to review the six states of wokeness identified by Michael Harriot  and summarised above, and then look around you at the wokers busily and pleasurably at work. 

Then you can make up your own mind and judge whether our society is heading to a utopian or a dystopian future.

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