I agree with all you are saying. BUT, and a fear I will hear the eyes rolling, the word God, or Judeo-Christian values was not mentioned along with tradition. I believe the dismantling of a faith-based society, the destruction of the family, is the main tenet of wokeism, i.e. collective misery living in a ditch. Wokeism denies there are intangible values or ideals of living for your personal belief in a Creator who loves his Children. They squash any idea that reveres the rights of individual freedom.
A good article. Where I would tread carefully is in the critique of the “emergent hostility to tradition”. I am a critic of much tradition because a good proportion of it is outmoded and deserves to be challenged and undermined. We should welcome that ongoing process of modernization — it is quite different from the anti-enlightenment posture of the postmodernists, so we need to distinguish the two. I think your reference here to woke “cherry-picking” implies this distinction.
Not believing in a deistic account of reality doesn't mean that that account has no value, or that the social and existential wealth it husbands isn't an important component of our individual and collective wealth portfolio., or that our 'account' does not persist long after our deaths in the legacy we leave our descendants. The problem of salvation never disappears. Only the prisms that we look at it through change.
The rise of religious fundamentalism in a decaying world order arises from all sides. Woke fundamentalism is just the latest iteration of the trend, which started to become noticeable after the failure of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union.
Everyone is resorting to their bottom lines in the sand and preparing for war, much as we did at the outbreak of the Reformation, 500 years ago, at the beginning of the modern period.
James, I like most of what you write, but I’ll be honest, even if it means getting flamed: I don’t like the tenor of this article. It sounds like a call-to-arms. The only way we can hope to make a difference, I feel, is if we talk TO the woke, not about them. As you so rightly say, the task is to keep producing “objective knowledge” and to keep making sense. Some people (many) won’t let themselves hear it, but some will. Some will reluctantly say, “yeah, well, you’re right on that point, the narrative did kind of distort that …hm, yeah, they manipulated me a bit on that …”
Surely the greatest success to be had would be to disabuse even a few of the determinedly woke, rather than preaching to the choir and asking them (us) to raise the volume. The people we need to persuade, they'll just close ranks when they hear words like “counter-woke resistance.”
I’m not minimizing the harms of woke ideologies. I do believe we need to resist, just not with something as divisive-sounding as a resistance. If any of my progressive friends or family members were to read this article, you can bet they would be even more confirmed in their own views. And I'd lose the opportunity to reach them with any future sharing of sense-making.
To be clear, I am not saying “traditions are outmoded”… blanket statement. I am saying outmoded traditions (and we will disagree which they are) should be challenged in a free and democratic society. This can be uncomfortable.
The monarchy, being based on inherited status, not earned status, remains popular and if that is what the will of the people is, it’s not a hill I’m going to die on. However pledging allegiance should be ended. In my view the monarchy is at best irrelevant. If that’s our primary disagreement, it’s not major.
I agree with all you are saying. BUT, and a fear I will hear the eyes rolling, the word God, or Judeo-Christian values was not mentioned along with tradition. I believe the dismantling of a faith-based society, the destruction of the family, is the main tenet of wokeism, i.e. collective misery living in a ditch. Wokeism denies there are intangible values or ideals of living for your personal belief in a Creator who loves his Children. They squash any idea that reveres the rights of individual freedom.
A good article. Where I would tread carefully is in the critique of the “emergent hostility to tradition”. I am a critic of much tradition because a good proportion of it is outmoded and deserves to be challenged and undermined. We should welcome that ongoing process of modernization — it is quite different from the anti-enlightenment posture of the postmodernists, so we need to distinguish the two. I think your reference here to woke “cherry-picking” implies this distinction.
Not believing in a deistic account of reality doesn't mean that that account has no value, or that the social and existential wealth it husbands isn't an important component of our individual and collective wealth portfolio., or that our 'account' does not persist long after our deaths in the legacy we leave our descendants. The problem of salvation never disappears. Only the prisms that we look at it through change.
The rise of religious fundamentalism in a decaying world order arises from all sides. Woke fundamentalism is just the latest iteration of the trend, which started to become noticeable after the failure of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the subsequent fall of the Soviet Union.
Everyone is resorting to their bottom lines in the sand and preparing for war, much as we did at the outbreak of the Reformation, 500 years ago, at the beginning of the modern period.
https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/2205477-Luthers-Last-Laugh-Indulgermania
https://www.writing.com/main/books/item_id/2064958-The-Secular-Fundamentalist
James, I like most of what you write, but I’ll be honest, even if it means getting flamed: I don’t like the tenor of this article. It sounds like a call-to-arms. The only way we can hope to make a difference, I feel, is if we talk TO the woke, not about them. As you so rightly say, the task is to keep producing “objective knowledge” and to keep making sense. Some people (many) won’t let themselves hear it, but some will. Some will reluctantly say, “yeah, well, you’re right on that point, the narrative did kind of distort that …hm, yeah, they manipulated me a bit on that …”
Surely the greatest success to be had would be to disabuse even a few of the determinedly woke, rather than preaching to the choir and asking them (us) to raise the volume. The people we need to persuade, they'll just close ranks when they hear words like “counter-woke resistance.”
I’m not minimizing the harms of woke ideologies. I do believe we need to resist, just not with something as divisive-sounding as a resistance. If any of my progressive friends or family members were to read this article, you can bet they would be even more confirmed in their own views. And I'd lose the opportunity to reach them with any future sharing of sense-making.
To be clear, I am not saying “traditions are outmoded”… blanket statement. I am saying outmoded traditions (and we will disagree which they are) should be challenged in a free and democratic society. This can be uncomfortable.
The monarchy, being based on inherited status, not earned status, remains popular and if that is what the will of the people is, it’s not a hill I’m going to die on. However pledging allegiance should be ended. In my view the monarchy is at best irrelevant. If that’s our primary disagreement, it’s not major.
All the best!