Woke Piety
“We shall never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative· where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.” - From the essay The Death Of The Author by Roland Barthes (referring to the story Sarrasine by Honoré de Balzac).
In other words, there are no independent or individual voices contained within written works. Everything is an amalgam of everything that came before. This “realization”, according to Barthes, is the death of the author.
To the uninitiated, the above quote may seem esoteric and harmless; a mere creative lens to reevaluate how one views the world. This lens, however, underlies the ascendant epistemology of our times, and it’s material impact in education, public policy and law is very real.
To the initiated, the quote is a testament of postmodernist worldview, or to be slightly more granular, a post-structuralist worldview. These ideas exploded in popularity amongst the intellectuals lining the halls of academia since the 1960s when Barthes wrote his famous essay, The Death of the Author.
One may observe that the language sounds almost religious in nature. Or at least abstract enough to be comparable to religion or myth; the type that convinces one an author's voice is an irrelevant distraction that “slips away” into “oblique space.” The rub; once an author’s voice is made irrelevant, the game is set to overlay any interpretation onto a written work that may suit outside motives (including dogmatic ones).
Charles Pincourt has encapsulated the sentiment of “The Death Of The Author” through his “Subject Principle” described in his book Counter Wokecraft: A Field Manual For Combatting The Woke In The University And Beyond. The “Subject principle” expands upon the framework laid out by Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay in their book Cynical Theories, where they describe the “Postmodern Knowledge” and “Political” principles of Critical Theory (the theoretical baseline for “woke”) .
Understood collectively, these principles offer a snapshot of postmodernist worldview:
The Postmodern Knowledge Principle - The true nature of reality is impossible to know because everything is a “social construct.” The knowledge you think you have is constructed by the society you are a part of.
The Postmodern Political Principle - Oppressors are actually responsible for the socially constructed knowledge. It’s all for the advantage of the oppressors and the disadvantage of the oppressed.
The Subject Principle - Individuals are subjects of (and subjected to) their group identity. “This implies people are oppressors or oppressed according to what group/groups they are identified with…it is assumed that people unconsciously speak to and perpetuate the oppressive power structures to which they are subject.”
The Death of the Author is Barthes poststructuralist idea which asserts the author as “subject” to his socially constructed environment has no authentic voice. Or at least not one of any significance when compared to Barthes pronouncement that a given author's voice is really an aggregation of all past authors and “points of origin.” A pattern emerges, not unlike what you would expect in any good cult or religion; the woke promote ideas that dissolve the individual into the collective. These three principles are clung to religiously, irrationally. They are not used simply as intellectual tools in a toolbox of options, they are the only tools! Not a lens but a religious worldview where adherents believe they are practicing a morally superior critical consciousness. They do not realize they have become unreachable zealots.
Pincourt’s Counter Wokecraft is a manual to help “woke dissidents'' survive in a world increasingly dominated by these religious converts. He explains the founding principles of this new religion and constructive tactics to help counter it from taking over. As Pincourt explains, “the woke believe in the CSJ (Critical Social Justice) perspective with a fervor that is difficult to appreciate outside of religious movements”.
Another author shedding light on the theological nature of “wokeism” is John McWhorter. His latest book, Woke Racism, asserts straightforwardly that wokeness is an actual religion. When you view it this way, the once seemingly incoherent behaviours and arguments of believers begin to make perfect sense (imagine the futility of trying to convince an ardent creationist of the robust science behind the theory of evolution). The whole point of religious faith is to believe in defiance of facts or reason. There may be something to be admire in the commitment to faith that the religious exude. But in the case of wokeism, the tenets of the religion are fundamentally at odds with liberal society. Specifically, it’s tendency to lean toward totalitarianism, perhaps expressed most noticeably in the woke’s intolerance of dissenting viewpoints.
Pincourt explains the “woke ethos” which “compels the woke to always seek out and expose oppression that they believe to be omnipresent,” and serves as a rationale when they routinely employ illiberal means (justified by their religious sanctimony) to further entrench their ideology. In other words, we may see them doing things undemocratic or illiberal, but because they believe they are doing these things for a greater good, they feel absolved of any wrongdoing, since they rationalize their conduct as in pursuit of a higher good.”
Never-the-less, an alarming aspect of this religious movement, ever present on the minds of those who manage to resist the divine urge to collapse into the collective comfort of wokeness, is the inexorable bi-product of people divided along a frustratingly primitive in-group/out-group binary. A false dichotomy, created by the clerics of the woke, leading countless hapless souls (and minds), many not yet fully formed, to conclude that the entire human condition is reducible to a simplistic duality.
Every successful religion breeds collectivism. The frightening power of the woke collective is exemplified through mob tactics, seen routinely these days with online witch hunts. Calls for the firing of heretics, met with immediate acquiescence (and ultimate cancellation/retraction of any given offense or offender), are regular occurrences. This is best understood as a new form of religious extremism, one rapidly creating a collectivist culture throughout the institutions of our society. Only religiosity can explain woke acceptance and the social contagion by which this ideology spreads and divides.
In Woke Racism McWhorter comments, “Electism” (his term for “Wokesim”) simply fills a hole left after a the secular shift among thinking Americans especially after the 1960s. Under this analysis, it is human to need religious thought for a basic sense of succor, such that if institutional religion no longer grounds one’s thoughts, then some similarly themed ideology will come in to serve in its place.”
In McWhorter’s view, and I tend to agree, you can not reach the woke. They are beyond reason. No different than any person thoroughly indoctrinated into a cult. In a chapter titled “Beyond ‘Dismantling Structures’: Saving Black America For Real,” he offers a beautifully simple and realistic three plank plan to combat racism: “There should be no war on drugs; society should get behind teaching everybody to read the right way (phonics); and we should make solid vocational training as easy to obtain as a college education.” Notice the absence of convoluted theories and dogma’s?
Speaking in London, England in 1983 on the occasion of his acceptance of the Templeton Prize, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, a former Russian Gulag inmate and internationally celebrated author, had this to say:
“Men have forgotten God. The failings of human consciousness, deprived of its divine dimension, have been a determining factor in all the major crimes of this century”. Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn goes on to explain that the origin of this problem traces back to World War I “when Europe, bursting with health and abundance, fell into a rage of self-mutilation which could not but sap its strength for a century or more, and perhaps forever.” European leaders had “lost awareness of a Supreme Power above them” and with this apostasy came the unthinkable: “Only a godless embitterment could have moved ostensibly Christian states to employ poison gas, a weapon so obviously beyond the limits of humanity.”
In an interview with Antonio García Martínez, historian Niall Ferguson explains: “I'm somebody who was brought up an atheist, and I therefore don't actually have the delusion that atheism is right. On the contrary, I have the terrible realization that it's just another religion and a rather unsatisfactory one at that.”
In discussing the role of religion in society and the ideas found in Tom Holland’s book “Dominion” - specifically Holland’s observation that liberalism is a secularized version of Christianity - Ferguson observes the following:
“The key insight I had as a historian working on the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century was that, however possible it may be to live as an atheist, as a family, as an individual, it is a very unsatisfactory operating system for a society. Regimes that proclaim themselves atheist and seek to eradicate Christianity have been among the worst regimes in history.” - Niall Ferguson
In Yuval Noah Harari’s much loved international best seller Sapiens, Harari explains the importance of “legends, myths, gods and religions” in providing the glue that binds organized collectives of humans:
“We can weave common myths such as the biblical creation story, the Dreamtime myths of Aboriginal Australians, and the nationalist myths of modern states. Such myths give sapiens the unprecedented ability to cooperate flexibly in large numbers” - Yuval Noah Harari
In recent history, the success of western nations can be attributed to the shared societal acceptance of the “myth” of liberalism (with its foundational tenets rooted in Christianity). But presently, cultural movements emanating from the progressive left aim to undermine this. Wokeism, a new religious ideology emerging from the ashes of Western traditions, consistent with the modern atheist condition, contains myths about gender, racism and history, and seems to be taking the place of our founding liberal/Christian doctrine. As Solzenitsyn reminded us in 1983: “It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that “revolution must necessarily begin with atheism.” That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as organized, militarized, and tenaciously malevolent as that practiced by Marxism.”
Identity Marxism, a term coined by James Lindsay, best describes the new Marxian religion that now fills the hole left by the absence of the church. Jordan Peterson has made the point that it is the Messianic urge actually drawing people to woke activism. I grew up in Ontario, Canada and the vast majority of my friends, family and associates are atheist (and left of center politically). We know so little about the religious and foundational traditions which inspired the liberal projects that evolved into the most peaceful and prosperous nations the world has ever seen. Perhaps because we were born into such privileged national conditions we never learned to fully appreciate the history of their creation. In the same sense we do not fully appreciate the sentiments of those who have come to our peaceful Western shores from untold numbers of places where human rights and equality under the law simply do not exist.
When Solzhenitsyn speaks, do people of the West hear him?
For those that do, the woke dissidents, allow me to refer you to Charles Pincourt & James Lindsay’s Counter Wokecraft Manual. Especially for those within organizations, who have become cognizant of woke entrenchment in the places they care about. This manual serves as an effective guide on how to understand and deal with the phenomenon. Less than one hundred pages in length, this promising volume is the most thoroughly concise written effort on this topic I’ve yet to encounter.
Recognizing Woke as a successor religion helps us understand the power of the phenomenon that we are dealing with - frighteningly, it also gives us insights into just how far the movement could go.
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