Caleb Anderson
First published nzcpr.com
It is not uncommon to hear musings that wokeism bears religious (even cultic) hallmarks.
I have some sympathy for those holding this view.
I am going to use some typically religious terms here. I am not taking any specific position concerning these terms, or concerning religion. I am using these terms simply to support my contention that wokeism resembles a religion in certain key respects, and because there are few sufficiently similar secular terms. I am also using them in the sense that they were used and understood by pioneering psychologists after many hundreds of hours of counselling.
After deep-diving into people’s struggles, as nuanced as they necessarily are, I find significant commonalities.
I have become convinced of the following.
Most people …
1. Have a sense of some sort of standard that they have difficulty living up to … and in respect of which they fall short (i.e. sin).
2. Having fallen short (i.e. having sinned) they feel shame, and a sense of guilt … which simply will not go away.
3. Have a pervasive feeling that (someday) they will have to account for this… necessitating some sort of atonement (or sacrifice).
4. Need to find some sense of meaning (a functional worldview) if there is any hope of resolving the above.
The earliest psychologists (Freud, Adler, Frankl, Jung, and many others) have recognized these themes and sought to deal with them in various ways.
They generally saw these as religious (type) responses or drives.
Freud saw them simply (or not so simply) as ego-defence, Adler as the pursuit of perfection, Frankl as denial of an inherent God consciousness, and Jung (in part) as a manifestation of the collective unconscious, and as a denial of meaning.
No matter what, therapy, in large part, was directed at finding constructive ways to deal with the guilt arising from a pervasive sense of falling short of some sort of standard (of having sinned).
Irrespective of time, place, or context, all societies have sought ways to deal with issues of ethics, sin, guilt, and atonement. Most ancient religions practised atonement (sacrifice) of one form or another, personal as well as corporate.
Interestingly, very eminent, neuroscientist, Iain Mcgilchrist, describes all religious systems, (and we might loosely include wokeism in this category), as fundamentally psychotherapeutic (or pseudo-psychotherapeutic) systems (i.e. systems designed to help people deal with internal conflicts by providing a functional framework of meaning).
Modernity has its equivalents
Ego conflict indicates a neurosis (conflict of ideas) of some sort, a conflict that needs to be reconciled, and a “sin” that needs to be atoned for … by someone, somewhere.
In a sense, even things as inane as progressive tax rates, affirmative action, carbon taxes, climate mitigation, apologies for the actions of one’s ancestors (assumed and actual), payment of reparations, occasional concessions toward a political opposite, and charitable donations, etc., might also be seen, in part, as works of individual, or semi-collective, atonement for having fallen short (a Freudian might see these as examples of ego defence).
Atonement always involves the death of something (metaphorically speaking) and its replacement (re-birth) with something else … a sort of trade-off.
Even warfare can be an example of collective atonement at a macro level.
The carpet bombing of Germany at the end of World War 2 was, in a sense, a collective atonement (or retribution) for the devastation of war and the horrors of the holocaust. Some believe that many of Germany’s (and Europe’s) current dilemmas (e.g. mass immigration) are derivative of a perpetual atoning for the “sins” of the early twentieth century.
So just how relevant is this to wokeism?
It seems that climate change and anti-racism are the new moral domains (the new religions) toward, and within which, morality and ethics are weighed, measured, and shaped, and on which restitution (atonement) is exacted.
Configured to the four points above this looks as follows …
1. The promulgated views (and necessary presuppositions) around climate change and race now constitute the standard to which all will be held accountable, and ultimately judged.
The West, and Westerners generally, come(s) short of this standard (i.e. is/are guilty of collective sin).
2. Having fallen short (having sinned) the West, and all Westerners, bear associated guilt.
Because every aspect of the Western worldview is contaminated, efforts to void this guilt, or even to atone for it, simply implicate the West further.
3. Therefore it is imperative that the West accounts comprehensively for falling short.
The only way the West can atone for its past sins is to disembowel its culture (decolonize), re-write its history, disown its achievements, make endless reparations, and submit to re-education.
4. That all of the above (in fact almost all things) are understood only in the context of a worldview narrative that has oppression and power as the primary drivers of thought and action.
Woke – postmodern – cultic doctrine
This is certainly not a pitch for religion, that is not the point.
It is just a statement that, no matter our propensity to deny, no matter how uncomfortable this makes us feel, we are fundamentally religious at our core, we construct (and inherit) structures of meaning to make sense of incomprehensible things. We naturally seek answers to questions, and solutions to problems, that only “religious-type” systems are equipped to explore (and note I said “religious-type”, not “religious”).
The demise of a good portion of institutional Christianity in the West has created a void that wokeism, and post-modernism (of which it is a variant), have been delighted to fill … and to which many vested, and vulnerable, people have allied themselves.
And while materialistic science is impressively equipped to explore matters relating to the observables, it is stuck with supposition beyond that.
Physics is courageously leading the way into domains of knowing that make materialist determinists feel mighty uncomfortable, but it has a way to go.
For many, wokeism appeals because it provides simple answers to complex questions – complexity is replaced by a near singularity.
With only a few exceptions, all things are viewed through the worldview lens of power and oppression as the pre-eminent motivations of human action. Nothing else is considered to matter and all other potential variables are eliminated from the equation.
Critical thinking is frowned upon, and unthinking, and blind, acceptance of the promulgated dogma is the highest of all virtues.
Wokeism provides a sense of belonging to a cause, of community, of collective purpose, of self-stroking (in the psychological sense), of voice, and of meaning. Wokeism has allusions to falling short (sinning against the disadvantaged and against creation), it provides a suite of actions to remediate this sin (atonement), it demands the unquestioning acceptance of its dogmas (e.g. around climate and race), deals ruthlessly with those who question (heretics), and wages relentless crusades against those they see as the enemy (including against free thought and free speech more generally).
It is also noteworthy that the leaders of wokeism invoke prophetic and apocalyptic scenarios that bear a striking resemblance to their religious equivalents. The end of the world is nigh and it is the woke elect (the already moral) alone who can save it!
Wokeism brings its adherents within arm’s reach of the promised land and invites them to take their failings, their struggles, their insecurities, and their fears, and to lay these at someone else’s door and, having done this, to insist that they pay for what they have done (i.e. atone on their behalf).
And they must atone endlessly!
Wokeism allows its adherents to feel the illusion of being OK while someone else picks up the tab.
But, of course, all illusions are temporary. Because wokeism exists only as long as its latest cause, and the most recently discovered oppression, it must perpetually find new stones to overturn, new injustices to uncover, new reputations to ruin, new enemies to destroy, and new causes to champion … the West’s death is by a thousand cuts.
The woke are willing to sacrifice enlightenment values, virtue, free expression, open inquiry, public discourse, and civility (things becoming almost unrecognizable to them), on the altar of ignorance and intolerance. As atonement always demands the (metaphorical) death (sacrifice) of something, and the (metaphorical) re-birth of something else, herein lies their “acceptable” trade-off.
Postmodern wokeism needs to be exposed for what it is, a monumental act of collective projection (scapegoating).
It needs to be stripped of its counterfeit virtue, exposed for its inherent totalitarianism and returned to the dark abyss from which it has come, and from which it will no doubt come again.
In the words of Sir Roger Scruton, postmodernism, in its various iterations, has “… replace(ed) the doctrine of liberty with the doctrine of condemnation”.
The West’s crisis is an existential one … and it needs to rediscover itself while it is still capable of doing so.
