Who's afraid of Woke Culture

Just ask the people at the mall

If you read Substack writers like me, you know how the Woke Wars are going. You are aware that there are public demonstrations in front of the hapless Ontario College of Psychologists in support of Jordan Peterson’s right to speak his mind. They seem to think that they can win their confrontation with JP, and I wish them luck with that. If they win, it’s not just Peterson who loses; the entire West will finally have to admit that freedom of speech in the west is dead. You have probably read Murray’s The War on the West and lately, been following Konstantin Kisin, the Russian-British author of An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West, who delivered one of the best monologues on Woke Culture at The Oxford Union Society. They recently hosted a debate that declared: this house finds that woke culture has gone too far, inviting several speakers to spar in the best British tradition of free speech. It’s not hyperbole to say that Kisin’s response was by far the most coherent and persuasive because he argued that the most damaging aspect of woke culture is that it teaches young people that they are weak, have no agency and should just give up. Bingo.

If you are following all of this, you are concerned if not downright afraid of where all this is heading. I was going to devote this post to all of that. But I am increasingly frustrated that I am generally preaching to the choir. And when one of my readers told me that as far as he knew, ‘woke’ meant nothing to the average guy he encounters at the barber shop, I decided to check this out for myself. Since I don’t go to barbershops much, I opted for the next best venue for finding Mr and Mrs Average: the Mall. In this case, Hillside Mall in Victoria BC Canada. A sprawling monster that houses Walmart and Canadian Tire, among others. So on a cloudy Wednesday afternoon I got into a cab, excited at the prospect of doing actual face to face interviews, something I haven’t done since my days as a starving freelance journalist. I was planning to sidle up to likely looking individuals and ask them: Do you know what Woke Culture is?

Admittedly out of practice, I managed to buttonhole a grand total of six people, my cab driver, a sociology major, a handsome man in his forties eating lunch at the food court, a twenty something clerk at an art store, an elderly professor type on a bench, and finally, a kindly, slightly frazzled caregiver in her mid-fifties. I also asked my grandson via email. What I found was fascinating, surprising and in the end, proved my friend right as well as wrong: some people did know what it was, indeed, were living examples of how it warps one’s mental world. But taken together, these random conversations gave me a startlingly clear overview of the confusions about wokism.

Let’s unpack this. The guy who knew absolutely nothing was the cab driver. He thought it might be about being awake. This was surprising since he was intelligent and well informed on other subjects we discussed during the 15 minute drive, and he also meets lots of different people. But they never mentioned it, he said. It simply wasn’t on their or his radar at all. I guess ignorance might be bliss after all.

The elderly professor type knew even less, if that was possible. A man in his seventies, with granny glasses, well dressed. I did my elevator pitch on woke culture but failed to light a fire in his mind. He wasn’t interested though very worried about Putin and the war in Ukraine and wanted to know why nobody was stopping all of it. And then he launched into a minute explanation of why he hated his razor. It was the reason he wasn’t clean-shaven and I wasn’t to think that was normal for him. As I suspected, he was a former teacher, someone who spoke German as well as French and had taught abroad, but he basically didn’t want to learn anything new. Maybe it was my poor pitch, but I came to the conclusion that this nice old, educated man was beyond hope and beyond woke, period. At this point you may wonder just what my woke pitch was. I said that it was an idealistic notion about the perfectibility of humanity that had gotten out of hand and become a totalitarian monster, a kind of thought police that would have made Stalin happy. And that it was getting people fired simply for saying something the woke mob didn’t approve of. And making victimhood sexy. I know there’s more to it, but it was the best I could do under pressure. What I should have done is given him the answer my grandson, a third year university student, came up with:

I would say it is the culture of people thinking they are morally superior or virtue signaling by assigning levels of victimhood to different groups and thinking that the western world is a framework of systemic oppression and tyranny. I think it is extremely dangerous and has worrisome similarities to how the soviets and Nazis assigned people to groups with differing levels of victimhood or blame. A bunch of my friends talk about it but most people don’t or they buy into it.

The third man, eating his lunch in the middle of the busy food court, was another exception: as soon as I asked the question, he reacted viscerally: yeah I do know what woke culture is, do you have a few hours? He seemed stung, like a person with PTSD, and then told me he just didn’t want to talk about it though he clearly had opinions. Who knows, maybe someone had cancelled him. I wish I had been able to make him talk.

I moved on to the big mall bookstore and struck up a conversation with a young woman, about 26, a sociology major with the kind of ethereal looks reminiscent of Da Vinci’s drawings. Oh yes, she knew what it was, and was willing to tell me about it. For her it was a very positive thing, something important in society, because we clearly had a lot of problems to overcome, such as colonialism. And racism. I listened for a while and then asked her if there wasn’t a negative aspect to it, since so many people were getting cancelled, losing their jobs simply for saying the ’wrong’ thing and so on. At this point she began to retreat and told me that she wasn’t sure about all that and anyways, she didn’t know those people. I gather that this kind of attitude is rather common at our institutions of higher learning where critical thinking was once taught.

I moved on again to an art store. There I interviewed a woman in her early twenties, a bit disheveled in an old sweatshirt and loose hair, the only clerk at this place. She not only knew what I meant; she was living it and eager to explain that the woke movement had helped her discover that she was a victim of violence and trauma, and that it had given her the words and concepts so that she could talk about it though some people thought she was too self-involved, well, too bad, she had a right to be that way….and did I know about this case in the news, about this girl that was killed, and on and on she went. For at least ten minutes, she talked and talked about the pleasures of victimhood. I couldn’t get away though I made several futile attempts. Finally, I just thanked her and walked away quickly, thinking that she perfectly embodied ‘victim culture’ and everything that Kisin has repeatedly warned us about.

Finally, I collapsed gratefully on the comfortable, brand new living room furniture provided by the merchants, next to a woman in her fifties, who was talking to someone in a wheelchair. She looked a bit tired but had such kind, intelligent eyes that I thought she might have something to say. After her wheelchair charge had left, I asked her if I could talk to her and explained what I was doing at the mall. Oh yes, that was fine. Woke was something she had only heard about via her thirty-year-old son; he was always upset about it and trying to get her interested. Otherwise, she knew nothing. But she asked me to explain it and when I did, she wanted to know more and asked me questions, which lead to an actual conversation. Of all the people, she was the one who really wanted to know what it was, and the more she knew, the more interested she became. In other words, here at last was a woman with an open mind. I asked her about her work as a caregiver and she told me some depressing stories about frazzled nurses and compromised health care in BC. Yes, she knew all about that. Then her phone rang, and her wheelchair charge returned only to leave again. We resumed our conversation. The more I listened to this woman, the better I liked her. She finally told me that she was going to talk to her son about the woke thing from now on and that she would tell him about me. But what can I do, she asked as we parted.

Good question: what can we all ‘do’ about this sinister, quasi-communist threat that manages to sound so well-intentioned? I told her to speak her mind and not be intimated by people who want to pin negative labels on her. Being aware and freely speaking your mind is the first step to winning this battle for the soul of the west, I said. Courage, both civic and moral is needed, I said. She nodded and smiled. I smiled back, thinking, here was someone who would never fall victim to the woke message of victimhood. She had people to take care of, after all. She had purpose and she was interested in the world beyond herself. And she wasn’t afraid. With people like her, we are going to be fine.

I headed home to ponder what I had discovered. On the one hand, the absence of woke knowledge was better than being confused or a victim of it. On the other hand, there was a yawning gulf between people who read and those that didn’t. And clearly, the confusion in the minds of ordinary folk was the result of an enormous failure by the media to grapple with this subject honestly. Still, nobody had told me to get lost or made snide remarks about what I was doing. That was the good news. And I wondered, should I do more of this experimental talking to total strangers (and my grandson) about the state of the world?

I almost think I should. It energized me in a way that reading articles and watching podcasts doesn’t. And in a strange way, it made me feel more hopeful. Less anxious. It might be a new way of tackling anxiety in a world that looks more chaotic by the day. Ask the people. Yes. It’s what I am planning to do more of. I will become a mall rat, at long last.