The Fallacy of Woke

In 2009 journalist Bill Bishop wrote a compelling book, The Big Sort:  Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. He makes the case that over the past several decades people have been living, working, worshipping, recreating, and vacationing in places where other people are more and more likely to think and vote the same way. Bishop demonstrates that the gulf between different perspectives is growing wider—and people are less willing to understand one another, making it easier to cancel the other side out. If there is no relationship, there is little pain.

On the flip side of cancel culture is the pride in being “woke,” yet another relatively new cultural locution. It refers to being awakened to the realities and injustices suffered by others. I am more familiar with woke from the progressive side, but it also exists on the conservative end. Conservatives by and large acknowledge the scourge of slavery and racism, but have become woke to what they portray as an insidious attempt by progressives to rewrite America’s past by force-feeding whatthey consider a skewed history called critical race theory to its students.

Woke progressive people make the claim that they can see systemic racism, white privilege, and the urgency of climate change while others can’t or won’t. Addressing systemic racism, white privilege, and climate change are laudable and necessary enterprises, but embedded in the language of “woke” is an arrogant belief that some are awake and others are asleep. Implicit in woke language is that non-woke people need to think, speak, and see as the woke do. Listening loses out to sermonizing; and any discussion is framed in a calculus of win/lose.

When I arrived in Japan fresh out of college in 1973, I carried some pride with me that I had purged myself of “Ugly American” tendencies, which was the pejorative phrase of the day. My engagement in the anti-war movement had, I thought, cleansed me of cultural imperialism. It hadn’t.

About a year into my two-year tenure, something felt off. My Japanese housemates and I weren’t understanding one another as well as we had when I arrived. I was missing something. I sought out a graduating senior, who had been the most critical of my presence, for some feedback.  He did not hesitate to provide it. He said that I seemed to be unaware (unwoke?) to the fact that I was younger than all the seniors but commanded a level of authority that I didn’t deserve (age is a very important benchmark in Japanese culture). He said that all the Japanese students in the house where we lived were committed to speaking in English. Most of them were fluent in the language, but my facility in my native tongue meant that I would invariably win every argument and dominate every conversation. And I was bigger than everyone else, he said, and I lorded my size over them.

I got woke. It was devastating. It broke my heart. But the conversation opened me up to new and uncomfortable dimensions of myself. And because it was so painful, there was a part of me that never wanted to go through that again. I didn’t want to be woke again. Which is the problem with woke; it gives the illusion that one has arrived; that one’s vision is completely clear. That all the necessary growth has taken place.  Growth in awareness will inevitably involve pain—the pain of our myopia and self-centeredness, and the pain of inflicting pain on others tomaintain our own sense of stability.

A corrective to the arrogance of “cancel” and “woke” comes from South Africa and the Zulu (Bantu) language: ubuntu. As it has been presented to me, ubuntu means “I am because you are.” It is deeply relational. Ubuntu implies a desire to really see someone else—not as a category or projection, but as another fully actualized human being. It is not possible in the framework of ubuntu to cancel each other out because we are linked together, whether we want to be or not. The irony of ubuntu is thatit comes from a part of the world where cancel culture was official policy, carried out in horrific ways.

To my knowledge there isn’t an English equivalent to ubuntu. But if there is not a language correlate, there is a process one: listening with respect. Listening not to fashion the most effective retort, which is an egoresponse; but to listen to and for the soul. A listening that can open our eyes to new ways of seeing. Where is the person’s center? How might we be alike? Where and how do we share our humanity? How can we truly see one another? Such a process makes it much harder to cancel, dismiss, or demonize.

The Bombings We Are Not Paying Attention To

In the last few days the country, if not the world, has had a crash course in bunker buster bombs, ever since three of them literally crashed down on a nuclear weapons development facility in Fordow, Iran.  Delivered by a stealth B2 bomber, the pretext, subtext and...

No Permanent Allies? No Permanent Enemies?

No permanent allies. No permanent enemies. That was a foundational mantra of a ten day community organizing training that I received nearly 40 years ago.  It was a new idea for me, and I struggled with it. Growing up during the height of the cold war, I had been...

Love More. Resist More

  I have recently engaged my mind in a paradox that both strengthens my resolve and soothes my soul.  Love more.  Resist more.  Normally it is thought that loving and resisting need to be kept separate from one another:  you can’t love someone or something you...

A Spiritual Antidote to Fear

In 2008, toward the end of a three-day retreat in Canterbury Cathedral for about 700 Episcopal and Anglican bishops from around the world, Archbishop Rowan Williams finished his brilliant presentation on love and grace, and then asked us to reach out to another. Find...

Preferential Option for the Poor: A Needed Edit

“A preferential option for the poor” became a foundational component of Catholic Social teaching when the term was first issued by Latin American Catholic leaders and theologians in the mid-1960s. The phrase echoed the many admonitions from Jesus as recorded in the...

Emerging Moral Obscenity

It is a moral obscenity.  It is said by some that white Afrikaners in South Africa are the victims of genocide, but there is no data to support the claim. It is said that the cohort of Afrikaners coming to America are refugees, but there are indications that they are...

The Ordering of Love: a New Debate in the Culture Wars

Several decades ago, a national debate raged over a question that helped launch America’s ongoing culture war:  who can you love? One side was insistent that love – which would involve intimate sexual expression – should be confined to a man and a woman. A popular...

Make America Great Again: A Clamping Down on Paradigm Shift

In April of 1970 the United States decided to invade Cambodia, thus expanding the Vietnam War. I was nearing the end of my freshman year in college. Campuses around the country rose up in angry indignation. Protests were planned, strikes were proposed, marches were...

Teach Us to Care and Not to Care: T.S. Eliot

It is becoming harder and harder to achieve emotional, spiritual and in some cases physical distance from what is happening in this country.  I hear more and more people saying that they are reluctant to buy, sell or make changes to their home because the economy is...

Ep 22 – “The Greatest Unifier” with Rick Joyner

In this episode, I welcome Rick Joyner, a prominent Evangelical leader, author, public speaker, and founder of Morningstar Ministries. We explore how to respectfully build mutual understanding and work together across differences. Rick shares about his life-changing conversion, his strong support for President Trump, his belief in God as the greatest unifier, and the challenges and hopes that he sees for the country. We also discuss finding unity in diversity and the ongoing pursuit of liberty and justice for all.

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join my mailing list to receive the latest blog updates.

You have Successfully Subscribed!