WOKE-MARE
Much has been done over my lifetime to confront racial inequalities, advance women’s rights, and foster gay and lesbian tolerance. Some argue these things were long overdue.
However, the pendulum of change has swung so far to the other side that western cultures now embrace feminine traits wholesale in the absence of a counter balancing masculine.
We appear to be facing an egalitarian comeuppance: a steady movement over decades towards the feminization of society, with an intolerance we sought to avoid; free speech is now in trouble.
The “woke” movement (a term originally used in reference to African American social and political issues), has been broadened to include exaggerated ideas about sexism, LGBTQ rights, racism, slavery reparations, colonial injustice, the globalist diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and white privilege. It uses power as its guiding principle and equality of outcome as its goal.
With the traditional nuclear family under attack by forces of social change in the west and elsewhere over the past several generations, Team Human has lost its footing.
As confused males failed to defend, the culture became fertile ground for chaos over order.
In describing its absurdity, professor Peter Kaufman of Birkbeck College, University of London, says woke is about “making sacred historically marginalized race, gender and sexual identity groups with equality and emotional safety as its pillars.”
The making sacred part is problematic. And since we are not all equal, so is the idea of equality.
Expecting emotional safety and fairness from mom is natural, whereas expecting it from society as an adult is irrational, irresponsible, and, ultimately, tragically immature.
Woke reaches back into history for examples of inequity, accidental or intentional, real or imagined, which are used to besmirch the character and reputation of anyone opposing the ideology.
Typical of male systemizing brains describing feminine forces, a 1990 example of this feminization emerged with Godwin’s law of Nazi analogies which asserts that “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches.”
Remember, women tend to compete by maneuvering covertly using mean remarks, social exclusion, and by winning over your friends and allies (see Susan Pinker, Sexual Paradox).
Men tend to compete head on to determine expertise in a context, or status in a dominance hierarchy, which may include teasing or bullying each other, in part to test for mettle or courage.
I’ve long contended abuse of empathy is a woman’s birthright. Ask any man in a relationship and they will tell you that in an argument with their female partner she will often resort to low blows using personal information as a way to dismiss the entirety of his point of view.
Calling someone a misogynist, or a racist, or far right (or left), or homophobic, or Islamophobic, or narcissistic, or full of white privilege, or a Nazi, is too similar to ignore. The same can be said for the dismissive, “mansplaining” as a low blow kick in the nuts. You argue with a woman at your peril.
The woke trend is largely a manifestation of feminine negative emotion, be it found in women or in men. I include men in this because with male influences increasingly absent or missing from family life and because children experience family physically, many men have much of their mother’s nervous systems (which is what runs us— conscious awareness is an afterthought).
Saying we are over-mothered and under-fathered is an apt way to describe how we got here.
To be clear, feminine negative emotion is first a gift. This evolutionary adaptation allows its bearer to spot sickness in those around them and danger in the environment. Missus can spot fever in our kids a day before it shows up. My friends’ wives are the same. Undoubtedly, women see stuff that men often miss. That’s been my overwhelming experience. However, as the French say, “nous avons tous les défauts de nos qualités.” We all have the faults of our qualities.
The downside to all that negative emotion is the tendency to pathologize (and even catastrophize) widely… and sometimes indiscriminately.
And so, we see in the fem-centric early grade schools a tendency to diagnose kids with learning disabilities and dyslexia, and with ADHD and spectrum disorders at a higher than normal rate (see Bad Therapy: Why The Kids Aren’t Growing Up by Abigail Shrier for more).
The confused masses dabble in queer theory despite its dishonest and unscientific flaws. I’m referring to its focus on the fluidity and subjectivity of sexual identity making the theory unfalsifiable, a requirement for valid science. Add to this its relativistic and unscientific “socially constructed” ideas versus clear biological reality to recognize it as bullshit to confuse you.
Similar irrational arguments apply to critical race theory and implicit bias testing. While mild awareness of personal prejudices serve society as a whole (people have preferences), seeing race as the central organizing feature of a group is an oversimplification which omits class, gender, and most critically, individual agency in the success or failure of an individual. The theory is divisive… and also unfalsifiable, making it equally invalid scientifically. It’s more bullshit to make people feel bad.
Colonialism is another oversimplification which ignores historical context. It neglects diverse perspectives and motivations as well as the norms and ethics of the time. It concentrates solely on exploitation and oppression while ignoring adaptation and resistance. It posits moral certainty and passes anachronistic judgments and fails to consider counterfactual benefits.
Flora and fauna have moved around the earth since the beginning exploiting available environmental niches to make life possible. Humans do the same… only we can defend borders. If you can’t or won’t defend your borders, you don’t have a country. That’s how it works.
Moreover, applying contemporary ethics to historical events is an act of “presentism” which any rookie historian will tell you is dishonest because it’s bound to lack nuance and leaves one open to ideological bias. The colonial decriers make many of you responsible for history: more bullshit.
White privilege is another unfalsifiable boondoggle which hits all the unscientific hallmarks. It’s ambiguous and too broad to be measurable, focusing as it does on group identity over the individual. At some point you may have read about the sacrosanct statistical rule, “correlation is not causation,” something ignored in this case. And there are plenty of losers who are white ffs.
It makes black success an anomaly. That means if you are white your success was because you were white, if you are black and do well, you got lucky. More victimizing bullshit.
All of these forces, queer theory and gender as socially constructed, critical race theory and implicit biases, and white privilege and colonialism, are manifestations of a doom and gloom “heavens are falling,” feminine negative emotion. Confused men do it too.
This has implications around the ideas of climate change, overpopulation, and other supposed threats. It’s not that we don’t have real problems to solve, it’s that the gift spots sickness in those nearby and danger in the larger environment with a downside that, well, misery loves company…
How will we answer for our modern hysterias and social contagions in the years to come? What will we tell our grandchildren when they asked why it is we dropped the ball?
Let me give you some essential truths, something you as an individual can apply to your own approach to life forevermore (and even teach to your children and maybe your friends).
You own just three things, and you have but three things to offer. All of us, no exceptions.
You own your thoughts, feelings and behaviour. That’s it. Everything else is transiently impermanent. You have three things to offer the world: your time, your talent, and your effort. These are the great equalizers.
Your thoughts are all yours, thousands per day, mostly repetitive, some new, all based on concepts formed from your databank of prior experiences.
Your feelings, however fleeting, are also all yours and no one can make you feel anything.
You own what you do, good and bad, and these actions will largely define you.
And, you have but three things to offer this world. Just three.
You spend your time wisely or foolishly, ultimately under your prerogative and control.
You have measures of talent, to be sharpened as if taking stone to steel and honed into strengths.
You decide how much effort to expend at what, hopefully making a positive difference each day.
If you came to my house and asked my two children, “What is happiness,” both will answer immediately, “It’s a decision.” As humans mature, optimistically they come to realize that no one makes us happy, or sad, without our full permission.
To that end, men need to reclaim responsibility for their part in the culture. Team Human requires collaboration, problem solving, and responsibility. That’s the path to meaning.
You were chosen for life by heavens of infinite wisdom and safeguarded for a time under the promise of orderly good intentions coupled with the chaotic reality of perfectly imperfect parenting.
You need to realize that you were once the boy your caregivers made but, as an adult, you build a man from your own experiences.
An adult male in a male-female relationship must know to not take things personally. He accepts her negative emotion as the downside of her gifts and doesn’t allow it to move him off his mission.
In this way, he defends the both of them. Society requires the same masculine force for good.
This is how he moves past the egocentricity of a childish reliance on maternal acceptance and is no longer beholden to those maternal forces which at one time were the center of his universe.
This is how he operates beyond leveraged compliance under the demands of threat and reward parenting and the insinuated possibility of abandonment.
There are women in the culture who ably team up with men and form an effective yang force in counter to the challenges of the destructive yin force and its manifest woke’isms.
These blessed sisters stress tested the culture and having found it amiss, sounded alarms.
But they are few… and they cannot fix things without partnering with male culture builders.
It is men who must emerge from their confusing hypnosis and stand for Team Human.
Only men working together can ensure society awakens from this nightmare.
Questions? Comments?
True and free…
cw
* from the upcoming book, Reverse The Flow, due out by 14Feb2025
