What is woke?
Agents of chaos love emotionally charged and seemingly pithy phrases that defy definition because they mean everything and nothing. Caveat emptor.
What does it mean to be woke?
Better still, what is wokeness?
If you asked ten people on the street the meaning of these words, then you would likely garner a wide range of disparate answers. Yet these words are seemingly everywhere in our media system. It does not matter what digital media bubble you reside within, or your political leanings, the words woke and its many derivations are ever present. Depending on the context, as well as the political leaning of the media, woke can be used as a derisive ad hominem or a compliment. In the not-too-distant past, the word woke was invoked by Morpheus to represent Neo’s new found awareness of the Matrix. However, times have changed since that film and the definition even more so.
How is this possible?
Aren’t words supposed to have specific meanings?
The metamorphosis represents something very interesting that is occurring within the broader context of culture.
To delve into what is occurring, by examining the contemporary usage of these words to research this particular phenomenon, we need to find an example to dig into. Although there is rarely a shortage of examples, this week afforded a very intriguing usage of woke that represents a tremendous socio-political shift within our culture.
I found the example on a website, I am a bit ashamed to admit, that I visit fairly often: Dailymail.co.uk. I can assure you my predilection is certainly not for the journalism, to the contrary, it is for the narratives. To me, this news outlet is a canary in the coal mine that provides insight into emerging news media narratives. To be clear, not all Dailymail narratives manifest resonance and stick. That said, for those who wish to wade through the schlock published by the Dailymail, it can provide a barometer of what is to come, which is why Maureen Callahan’s recent article raised my eyebrows.
This article reveals a coalescing of multiple narratives. The omnipresent narrative of woke melded with the narrative of the ever-present and constantly expanding scourge of anti-Semitism. This rhetorical consolidation will be operationalized as an emotionally laden meta-narrative, which dredges the ignorant in its wake. These narratives are purposefully imbued with emotional rhetoric that renders it difficult to sit on the sidelines and ruminate on what is actually conveyed. Unable to see the forest for the trees, the viewer is ostensibly enticed—seemingly coerced via pathos and impassioned manipulation—into choosing a side. As such, just choosing a side affords the viewer the opportunity to morally castigate the opposing side. The news media continually strip mine these societal fault-lines to ensure a veritable chasm emerges within society. Caveat emptor.
I want to draw your attention to Callahan’s usage of the word woke. Callahan is a right-leaning journalist. As such, her employment of the phrase woke-think is a derisive ad hominem. Where Callahan aims her derision is what is intriguing and a harbinger of things to come.
The conundrum is that the word woke is rarely defined, especially by those who carelessly throw this word around. Callahan is often guilty of this.
As such, the reader is left to their own devices to determine what the author is attempting to convey, which allows the reader to imbue the word with their own connotations…and that is the rub. Because the definition is broad and opaque, and left so by those who often throw this word around, it instigates meanings in the minds of viewers that may not have been intended by the author. But it matters not, so long the author has emotionally hooked the viewer into choosing a side, then their job as an agent of chaos is done. The viewer can virtuously, and often virtually, puff their chest out in moral indignation toward ‘the other’…and so the chasm grows. This is the actual process of the news media strip mining.
The actual meaning of the word is irrelevant. In fact, all the better if it is devoid of meaning. We could look up the word in the Cambridge dictionary and the definition would closely resemble the one found in Merriam-Webster. Both of these dictionaries seem to take a more positive view of the word, certainly not pejorative. Conversely, Oxford Learner dictionary defines it more as a disparaging noun. Dictionary.com does a nice job of fence straddling by defining it both positively and disparagingly.
Consider the profundity of some of the most renown English dictionaries having completely discordant meanings. The implications regarding effective communication are tremendous. It provides a playground for agents of chaos who exploit this lack of rigor.
Callahan infuses the understanding of woke with anti-Semitism, which is a novel turn. Formerly, the word woke would have been used by Callahan, and others in her right-leaning milieu, to represent those who focused too much on racism. Yet, now the woke are racists? That is a huge change from just last week when they were supposedly anti-racists. This narrative bonding of anti-Semitism with woke, or DEI (Diversity-Equity-Inclusion) which is an arbiter and perpetuator of woke policies throughout society and the economy, is confounding to say the least. However, it is a narrative that is picking up steam and it is a dangerously slippery slope.
One of the most well known of this right-leaning cadre, and self-professed member of the intellectual dark web, is Dr. Jordan Peterson. His tweet this week echoed many of Callahan’s sentiments:
What is of “crucial importance” to Peterson represents nothing short of a monumental shift within the societal zeitgeist. The woke mafia, which cancels those it deems too far right of its ideological views, has birthed a corresponding anti-woke mafia that is attempting to cancel those it deems too far left of its ideological views. Apparently, two wrongs do make a right. As such, cancel culture, formerly denounced by the right, is spreading within the ranks of the right…or at least right-leaning agents of chaos are attempting to sew these poisonous seeds. What is confounding is this new anti-woke mafia previously positioned itself at the vanguard of those vociferously advocating for free speech.
When did Jordan Peterson become an officer in the ranks of cancel culture? Just two years ago Peterson railed against cancel culture and even equivocated it with feminine bullying by stated, “the feminine use of aggression tends to be reputation destruction and cancel culture is a manifestation of that.” Yet, it was women who testified before Congress this week and advocated, in the face of extreme adversity, for freedom of speech.
Just one month ago Peterson published this Youtube clip to his channel: This Is Why We Must Protect Freedom of Speech
Now Peterson is calling for the canceling of not one, but three presidents of formerly esteemed institutions, one of which he previously taught at. More to the point, the central issue involved is freedom of speech, which will be illustrated shortly.
At the moment, I want to call attention to the photo used by Peterson as the placard for this YouTube link. Did you notice the suit is two colored, as it has red on his right and blue one his left? It is semiotically very interesting and salient to a broader point as his role as an agent of chaos. One half blue and the other half red, which are the colors often associated with either sides of the two-party system in American politics. As if to re-enforce this notion, wittingly or otherwise, his tie is also blue and red. Semiotically this represents his ability to play both sides. He is an agent of chaos—albeit a highly erudite one—that can manipulate thoughts to occupy whatever side of the political aisle suits his argument of the day.
The man built a tremendous following, and I listened closely during his early days, railing against post-structuralism and its ability to untether anything from meaning, pushing back against cancel-culture and its attempted elimination of unfettered free speech, among other issues. Yet, now he just calls for the cancelation of individuals who, under unbelievably difficult circumstances, defended free speech before congress.
Nietzsche was right: if you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.
In the above video, Peterson was speaking at the Buckley Institute at Yale University. According to the Buckley Institute’s website homepage, it is dedicated to “promoting intellectual diversity and free speech.”
In his talk, Peterson stridently indicated his belief that “Free speech is not a right among other rights, it is the predicate of all rights, it is also the predict of a functioning psyche.”
I could not agree more. So why specifically are Peterson and Callahan, and many others in the media, calling to cancel the presidents of U Penn, Harvard and MIT?
Did the President of Harvard, Dr. Claudine Gay, initiate a witch-hunt against Dr. Roland Fryer, the “second-youngest professor, and the youngest African-American, ever to be awarded tenure at Harvard”? Had Gay “emerged as the central figure in the Ryan Enos data fabrication scandal?” Or had Gay been credibly accused of extensive plagiarism? Or was it that Gay remained silent while Jorge Domínguez, a professor and colleague in her department, sexually harassed students, which culminated in 18 complaints being filed against him?
All of the aforementioned questions could be answered in the positive. However, these issues are not the ire of Callahan’s or Peterson’s umbrage.
Could it be that Ben Shapiro was prevented from speaking at one of these institutions, similar to what has occurred at academic institutions in the past? Or was it Gay’s weaponizing of the herd mentality to lead a cancelation of Professor Ronald Sullivan at Harvard? Or maybe it was MIT and Harvard’s close ties to known pedophile Jefferey Epstein?
Alas, all of these questions could be answered in the positive as well, and yet none of these issues drew such ire from Callahan and Peterson.
If any of the aforementioned reasons were the impetus of their discontent, then I might have been inclined, based on further documented evidence, to agree.
But none of these issues were the reason.
Instead, they were demanding these presidents be fired or resign due to testimony they gave before congress, particularly as it relates to free speech. Peterson’s call is not only strange, it is absurdly hypocritical You may recall that Peterson was forced to undergo “re-eduction” for compelled speech at the hands of his own Canadian government. It is bizarre for an ostensible free-speech advocate like Peterson to call for the heads of these presidents, especially considering these individuals all took great pains—and spent the majority of their respective allotted five minute introduction time—to excoriate Hamas, the attack on October 7th, as well as any anti-Semitism present on their respective campuses. Nonetheless, these presidents walked a sliver thin tightrope and stood up to defend the freedom of speech against incredible odds. Yet, both Callahan and Peterson called for their collective resignations. In fact Peterson virtuously referred to it as the “honorable thing.” Caveat emptor.
What I suspect triggered Callahan and Peterson were the responses provided by these presidents in defense of free speech.
The most intense questioning of the day was led by Representative Stefanik (R-NY). Below is a video of Stefanik’s grilling of U Penn’s President Liz Magill and Harvard’s aforementioned President Gay. Parts of this particular clip made the rounds in the news media to such a degree that it earned Rep. Stefanik a new paragraph entry in her wikipedia page. Congrats Elise.
The two university presidents, under extreme emotional duress, stood up for freedom of speech, albeit speech that is unquestionably deplorable. This comprehension invokes Evelyn Beatrice Hall, the biographer of Voltaire, who summed up Voltaire’s belief as: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” I remember the first time I heard this quote as I ruminated on the profundity of it, so much so that I committed it to memory. I would have thought that at least Peterson would be familiar with this quote. Are these not the exact circumstances that invoke Voltaire?
Apparently not for Callahan or Peterson. Free speech be damned because people were mean with words, because that is ultimately all that happened. Please used words, sayings, and slogans that they did not like or agree with. Were they mean-spirited, even ugly? Absolutely. But Voltaire, right?
While the answers of the presidents of Harvard and U Penn—especially for representatives of such renown academic institutions—were awkward at best, and disastrously inarticulate at worst, especially given the weight that the anti-Semitism accusation carries in America, they nonetheless towed that fine and difficult line between speech and action.
This is exactly the knife’s edge threshold determined by the Supreme Court in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), which established that “speech advocating illegal conduct is protected under the First Amendment unless the speech is likely to incite “imminent lawless action.””
Does anyone really believe polysci undergrads at Harvard are truly planning to execute the annihilation of Israel over breakfast in Annenberg Hall? Or sociology students on the first floor of Stouffer College House at UPenn are actually devising the means of genociding Jewish people?
I find such notions quite difficult to believe and quite frankly, ridiculous.
Yet, Peterson and Callahan were not alone in connoting that anti-Semitism is woke, as well as calling for the cancelation of these institutions.
It seems the right is attempting to adopt policies of the left, while the left has never moved. If true, then this indicates some right-leaning agents of chaos are attempting to coalesce traditionally left-leaning cancel culture with their right-leaning constiuentcy.
Taking a step back from the chasm and looking at this issue from a dispassionate aerial view, one can see a variation of Hegelian dialectic resolving into its synthesis.
What is Hegelian dialectic?
Without writing a dissertation on the subject, which has been done many times over, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a 19th-century German philosopher who, according to Stanford University’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy, had determined:
“Since Being and Nothing have each been exhaustively analyzed as separate concepts, and since they are the only concepts in play, there is only one way for the dialectical process to move forward: whatever concept comes next will have to take account of both Being and Nothing at the same time…The next concept, then, takes Being and Nothing together and draws out those implications—namely, that Being implies Nothing, and that Nothing implies Being. It is therefore Becoming, defined as two separate processes: one in which Being becomes Nothing, and one in which Nothing becomes Being. We can picture Becoming this way…”
In other words, Hegel determined that Being and Nothing are not simply opposites that are diametrically opposed and exist in a vacuum. Instead, the existence of one begets the other, or in other words, they are two-sides of the same coin, not individual coins. But even more interesting, this process of ostensible opposition—Being vis-a-vis Nothing—instigates a synthesis of each side into Becoming. This process is often distilled as Thesis (Being) juxtaposed to Antithesis (Nothing), then begets Synthesis (Becoming).
Peterson, Callahan and others had formerly adopted staunch positions against the woke/DEI/critical-theory crowd, particularly the weaponized of mob-mentality via cancel culture. These same individuals are now adopting that very doctrine—cancel culture—they formerly opposed. In other words, the Thesis (woke/DEI/cancel culture), which was treated with contempt by the Antithesis (Peterson, et al.), is now becoming the Synthesis (Peterson engaging in cancel culture).
This is an incredibly dangerous and slippery slope. If we allow the Synthesis to become codified within the cultural zeitgeist, then all bets are off and nothing is safe. Clearly freedom of speech is not immune. If Peterson is correct, as I believe he is, that freedom of speech is the predicate of all freedoms, then nothing is safe.
The agents of chaos on the right side of the political aisle were formerly dormant, in so far as they were not truly at the helm of power. But tides seem to be shifting. Sure, they were vociferous in their indignation and castigation of the myriad of misdeeds involving the left side of the aisle, but they only had abstract power, which could not be weaponized to effectuate tangible change—outside of swaying minds. They were sewing seeds by spreading their populist message, garnering an audience, and laying in wait. They accumulated an audience by selling a message that millions were desperate to hear.
It was this formula that brought Peterson, and many of his ilk, tremendous success and an enormous following.
Yet, when these agents of chaos sniff even a whiff of real influence and power, what do they do? They instigate similar patterns that they formerly thrust contempt upon. Peterson openly called for the cancelation of individuals, who at great personal risk, stood in defense of free speech…again, speech that should be admonished. But at the end of the day…Voltaire, right? Peterson’s audience is now faced with the gambler’s fallacy, and many will likely not see the forest for the trees. Instead of questioning, why is woke now anti-Semitic? Many will go along with their calls for cancelation, when just a few years or even months ago they personally, with bellicose in their bellies, were denouncing such practices that emerged from the left.
Synthesis.
I do not mean to single out Peterson or Callahan in particular, they are just two individuals among many.
However, speaking as an American who truly values the freedoms gifted by our forefathers, and who understands the need for media and rhetorical literacy, I think now is the time for all of us to take a step back, take a deep breath and evaluate what is really going on. It is far too easy, in this digitized day and age, to get caught up in the emotional swells continually broadcasted and repeatedly banged on like mantras by the omnipresent media.
To be clear, I am neither Palestinian or Arab, Jewish or Israeli. I have never lived in nor visited either country. As such, why would I take a side in such an impassioned issue that I likely know very little about? Do I want the killing to stop. Yeah, I am definitely not for death, no matter the justification or motivation, murder is bad. The fact this even needs to be stipulated indicates how far our society has fallen. Yet, many people with even less knowledge or awareness of the region than me will take an impassioned side. I do empathize because the emotional rhetoric and beseeching images are almost too tempting to resist. The simplistic framing of the issue—by whatever digital bubble you are ensconced in and the political leaning it resides within—renders it seemingly obvious, almost overtly logical, which is the “right choice” and correct side to take. It is always the moral side.
Moral murder. Funny that.
These issues are infused, and often purposefully confused, in order to sew chaos within a society. It is this very chaos that ensures those of us in the 99%, who have much more in common are fighting amongst ourselves, instead of looking at the true sources of power that influence and perpetually degrade our day-to-day lives, which I assure you is not Hamas. How far we fallen from the days of Occupy Wall Street when it seemed we all had a common cause and vision.
That said, I do think the Palestinians have been treated unfairly by Israel in a myriad of ways, full stop. There is no question.
But I stop short of taking a position as I think America has NO BUSINESS taking a side in this conflict, or in any of the wars the country engaged in during my lifetime. The laundry list of murders committed by this country clearly indicate, to me at least, we should not be the moral arbiters of yet another conflict. We should be taking the side of Americans and trying to fix this precipitously sliding nation.
Oddly, if you adopt Peterson’s position, which many of his followers will, then you are adopting the supposedly moral side of the argument that also happens to be for abridging freedom of speech. The same freedom of speech that in Peterson’s own words, just a month ago, was the predicate of all rights. I agree with him fully, in so much as freedom of speech is the predicate of all rights, which is why I adopt this unpopular position of neutrality and contemplation.
I am aware that I certainly will not make any friends with my position and many will agree with Peterson.
So who is correct?
He is a well paid agent of chaos and I am just a nobody who enjoys ruminating and writing.
Caveat emptor.
I woke this morning but wasn't awake until I had coffee. A woke mind just needs the right stimulation to awaken.