Why the Western World Went Woke
Over the past few years, many of us have been totally mystified by positions that are growing in popularity that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
The list is long but three quick examples include: giving puberty blockers to children, the movement to defund the police, and the claim that, not voicing your agreement with certain brand new ideologies was the same as committing physical violence.
I don’t want to talk about the arguments for or against these positions because so many of these conversations serve to hide the real root of the problem.
And that root is really simple to understand.
First, it’s important to note that the root of the problem is not individual radicals. In every age, there are tiny minorities that have radical opinions and that will never change. That is not why these ideologies are growing in their popularity with a larger segment of society. There are many smaller causes that all contribute to this change but I want to put forth the single cause that I feel is most responsible for why these movements grow and this thesis will also help predict what other ideologies will grow and spread in the future.
Here’s my take in three words: Premature Institutional Success.
Premature institutional success happens when a movement funded and led by a group of institutions is growing in momentum but achieves its original goals too quickly. What do the leaders of these institutions do? They have two choices:
They can declare success and encourage the donors and supporters to move on to other more worthy causes.
They can find smaller agent causes to direct their ever-growing power toward in order to keep the movement going.
Which one do you think they choose?
Which would you choose if you dedicated your life to a movement?
A perfect example of this happened during the movement to legalize same-sex marriage. This issue resonated deeply not only with those personally impacted by it but with a much wider group of supporters. The result was that huge, well-funded organizations with talented activists emerged and prepared for a pitched multi-decade state-by-state series of legal and legislative battles. And then it happened almost overnight. Right as the movement was hitting its peak financial and popular support state after state legalized same-sex marriage. The supreme court issued a ruling, the republican party removed its opposition from its platform, and victory was achieved. So what do these institutions and activists do at the peak of their power? In order to survive they must find new issues to funnel their finances and energy toward and they found that issue in this little-known area called trans rights.
This pattern is playing out over and over again. Because of social media, it’s becoming far less expensive and much easier for activist institutions and individuals to get their message out and sway public opinion so they keep achieving this problem of premature success which forces them to focus on smaller and smaller issues.
The need for LGBT+ institutions to find systemic examples of homo and transphobic incidents is far outstripping the supply.
The need for anti-racist organizations to find examples of systemic racism is outstripping the supply.
These organizations need to find more victims and most importantly they need to identify more and bigger oppressors.
If they can’t find them then they’ll have to make them.
Activists activate.
They don’t deactivate.
And deactivation is often what is needed in the face of premmature success.
The first time I remember this happening was when the manager at a Starbucks with outspoken leftist views decided to call the cops on two black men who wouldn’t buy a drink in order to stay at their table. The image of the police handcuffing two black men and escorting them out of a Starbucks was all that was needed for every anti-racist organization to declare this manager as racist.
I found this so confusing at the time because it seemed common sense to investigate whether this woman had a history of racism or whether it was just circumstantial that these men were black and whether she would have done the same if they were white.
But the supply of racism was at an all-time low at the time and powerful organizations were on high alert to find examples of racism. They had been prematurely successful and their very survival depended on increasing the supply.
Since then I could list hundreds of more recent examples of this which is why I’m searching for the root and I believe this is perhaps the most important element to understand.
This same pattern plays out in every institution.
In the government, the Department of Education cannot get behind educational endeavors that make them less significant. That’s why effective decentralized educational strategies will be ignored and sometimes even opposed. That’s how something called the Department of Education can actually oppose education. Institutional survival comes before the mission.
This is easy for me to relate to because I’ve seen this play out in Christian institutions that I’m familiar with. A founder of one of these organizations once told me they had achieved their original mission but right as they crossed the finish line they had more donors than ever lining up to support them so they had to find another mission to keep going. This is a perfectly understandable pattern but its impact on a culture when you have activist organizations with millions of dollars and nothing meaningful to do, is tearing us apart.
Let me end with one glimmer of hope.
A Christian organization called Wycliffe Bible Translators which started in the 1940’s and I once heard that they wrote into their original charter that once they had translated the Bible into every language in the world they would shut down the organization. I love this idea. I can’t find any evidence of this self-destruct clause online but ever since hearing that I wondered if there might be a way for a mission to have an organization rather than the other way around.
Churchill once said we make “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us,” and I think the same can be said of activist institutions.
(Stay tuned for a podcast episode on this essay with Chris Kuehl)
I think this idea has a lot of merit. But I'm not sure I would call it the root - maybe more like a primary mechanism. It's a helpful insight into the organizational dynamics at play, but surely the root needs to be found in the heart and psychology of the individuals who embrace this ideology and shape their whole lives around it.
When I saw you were treating this topic I thought for sure you were going to make a link to family breakdown. Are you familiar with the work of Mary Eberstadt? She has been developing a thesis for a number of years through books and articles that family breakdown is at the root of a lot of our societal issues, including secularism. In this powerful article she makes the link between wokeness (in the form of aggressive activism and rioting in the summer of 2020) and fatherlessness. Key quote:
"Deprived of father, Father, and patria, a critical mass of humanity has become socially dysfunctional on a scale not seen before." (https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/12/the-fury-of-the-fatherless)
She sometimes overstates her case, but I think her argument has a lot of merit. The phenomenon of wokeness has been so pervasive and rapid that it deserves as much clear thinking as we can manage.