Battle Lines Drawn: Abundance vs. Human Nature

Wokeism has been brilliant where traditional faiths have lagged. It has emerged from abundance to speak to our elite in a language that resonates. Traditional faiths will have to do the same.

The American Spirit Essays #37

(continued from A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind)

The Appeal of Wokeism

With the rest of the world covered, let’s turn back to the challenge we face here in America and what we can do about it.  The elite appeal of Wokeism is not hard to see.  Using only the contemporary metaphors and scientific language with which they resonate, it provides answers to many of their spiritual questions:

Racism provides an explanation for persistent unfairness and inequality far more tangible than some amorphous sense of “evil.”  It relates to events well within American historic memory and manifests itself in current events.

The Trans Movement enshrines the concept of an inner self, far truer than the physical shell of the body, capable of addressing questions of identity, individuality, and uniqueness—as well as those concerning existence before birth and after death.  It does so using language far more concrete and pseudoscientific than references to an immortal soul.

Apocalyptic climate change spins an elegant tale of the end of days.  It provides an organizing theme for an Armageddon worth avoiding, a call for repentance and reformation aligned with the prescriptions of the faith, and a vague set of predictions that can never be disproved.  It achieves these tasks neatly, using only the language of science, without reference to anything as metaphysical as divine judgment or messianic deliverance.

Covid extremism handed this nascent religion a glorious gift.  From inception, it arrived as a plague of biblical proportions that only the appointed, enlightened, elite experts could tame.  Their various pronouncements and prescriptions gave rise to a wealth of religious markings and rituals.

Cancellation provides a mechanism for policing adherence to—or at the very least, recognition of—religious norms that sounds far less archaic and draconian than anti-blasphemy laws. 

The absence of an obvious deity is far less troubling than it might first appear to be.  It is hardly unlikely that, at some point, some Woke faction will feel the need to define the originating source of Wokeism’s various beliefs.  For most believers, however, the devoted belief itself is far more important than its source.

In short, Wokeism fills many of the same spiritual needs that past humans have felt without forcing today’s urban, credentialed, professional, elite classes to delve into unrelatable pastoral metaphors or deep metaphysics.

In the long run, however, Wokeism cannot succeed.  It cannot succeed because—notwithstanding its ability to avoid antiquated language and concepts that have limited the appeal of traditional faiths—it is no better than those traditional faiths at addressing the primary spiritual challenge of our time.  It is, however, far less attuned to human nature.