Below is an excerpt from my forthcoming book…
© Mahabodhi Burton
11 minute read
The chapter ‘The Woke Mind Virus’ commences with this excerpt.
Woke: an update
Since I first published this material in late 2022, there has been a significant shift in the political landscape. While the influence of Woke ideology continues to permeate culture, there are indications that its extremes are reaching a peak. Fueled by the confinement of the pandemic and the collective hypnosis observed in mass formation, various commentators have pinpointed this phenomenon, with Elon Musk notably among them. Employing a technological metaphor, Musk has referred to it as ‘the woke mind-virus,’ a precise characterization. This virus attaches itself to and proliferates within the ‘compassion centre’ of the mind, as previously mentioned by James Lindsay in Chapter 4.
‘[Marxism has] evolved into different species to attack the West at its weakest points, through our tolerance, through our acceptance, through our openness, through our generosity, through our best traits, actually the things that we should be proud of, being the things that we are proud of being.’
Previously, I titled this chapter ‘Woke as Old Testament Religion’ because the virus also targets and proliferates within another core aspect of the psyche: the ‘fear centre.’ This region corresponds to the reptilian part of the brain, which oversees fundamental instincts related to self-preservation.[1]
Asked by Bill Maher[2] why he talks of the ‘woke mind virus’ as pushing civilization towards suicide, Musk says,
‘I think we need to be very cautious about anything that is anti-meritocratic and anything that results in the suppression of free speech. Those are the two aspects of the woke mind virus that I think are very dangerous … you can’t question things … even the questioning is bad.’[3]
Approaching Musk’s political beliefs, Maher suggests he doesn’t think of Musk as a conservative, Musk says,
‘I at least think of myself as a moderate … I’ve spent a massive amount of my life building sustainable energy: electric vehicles and batteries and solar and stuff, to help save the environment. … That’s not exactly far right.’[4]
Maher refers to a stick-man diagram Musk shared on X / Twitter in 2023, showing how the world had changed: in 2008 Musk saw himself as ‘Left of Centre;’ but then in 2012, Musk’s fellow liberal begins running in a Left-ward direction. In comparison Musk’s position appears closer to the Centre; by the time we reach 2021, Musk’s fellow liberal is now a Far Left woke progressive and, the Centre point having moved further Left with him, Musk now finds himself on the Right, despite not having changed his political position.[5]
Maher: ‘I feel that wokeness is not building on liberalism, it’s the opposite of liberalism. There are many examples where it is the opposite: including free speech.
Musk: Free speech is extremely important. It is bizarre that we have come to this point where …free speech used to be a Left or Liberal value, and yet we see from the ‘Left’ a desire to censor … and that seems crazy. I think we should be extremely concerned about anything that undermines the First Amendment. There’s a reason for the First Amendment … people came from countries where they could not speak freely. … Free speech is only relevant when it is someone you don’t like saying something you don’t like.
‘And the thing about censorship is that, for those who advocate it: just remember at some point that will be turned on you (audience applause.)’[6]
The background conditions for Woke
Reflecting on recent US history, we witnessed a notable lack of responsibility in the financial sector during the 2000s. Mortgages were indiscriminately sold to individuals without adequate security measures, ultimately culminating in the financial crisis of 2008. Measures such as ‘quantitative easing’ disguised the printing of money, while the notion of ‘too big to fail’ justified bailouts for financial institutions by the Federal Reserve Bank. I remember talk post 2008 of President Obama ‘kicking the can down the road.’ Interest rates plummeted to zero, and large corporations exploited the system by repurchasing their own stocks. Subsequently, the emergence of Brexit and the election of Trump in 2016 disrupted a complacency extant in the professional classes.
The left-leaning Establishment’s response was visceral: limbic hatred towards Trump and everything he symbolized: as evident in the puritanical tone of the 2018 Golden Globes and today in the open politicization of the US justice system, where no method presents as too extreme to silence liberal critics. The significant fines imposed on Fox News, Alex Jones and Donald Trump, along with lengthy prison sentences handed down to January 6th protesters, appear aimed at quelling all dissent against the prevailing order, sending a stark message to their supporters.
The saying goes, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ and it’s challenging not to perceive some of the current events through an archetypal lens, reminiscent of the dark female energy extant in Greek mythology. An illustrative example is the legendary conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans, who waged a decade-long war on the plains of Troy due to Paris’s abduction of Helen, famously known as ‘the face that launched a thousand ships.’
In recent years, under a ‘Woke’ US administration, a tragic situation akin to this has unfolded, resulting in the loss of manifold Ukrainian and Russian conscripts over the past two years. We might say a distain for masculine energy among ‘the woke’ has contributed to their widespread sacrifice on the altar of ‘rainbow tittle-tattle.’
Medea is another example from the ancient world: the story goes she fulfilled an archetypal role as helper-maiden, assisting Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece. Utilizing her magical abilities, Medea intervened to safeguard Jason’s life, even resorting to fratricide to facilitate his escape. Following the completion of Jason’s quest, Medea and Jason eventually settled in Corinth, where they wed.
However, after a decade of marriage, Jason announced his intention to abandon Medea in favour of marrying King Creon’s daughter, Creusa. He justified his decision by arguing that his sons would have better prospects if he married into royalty and asserted that his union with Medea, a foreigner, was invalid. As a result, Creon exiled Medea from Corinth. However, she sought refuge in Athens, where King Aegeus granted her protection. In return, she promised to use her magic to help him secure an heir.
Yet Medea wasn’t finished with Jason: In a vengeful act she not only took the lives of Creon and Jason’s new bride, Creusa, using poisoned garments and a crown, but her own two sons.[7] What fundamental message does the story convey?
‘Part of the underlying message in Medea is the power of emotion to make people do things they would normally not do. Medea had a passionate relationship with Jason, but then lets her passion turn to rage when he leaves her and marries another woman. She kills the woman, along with her own two children. Another theme, or message, is the fine line that exists between greatness and pride. Medea’s wounded pride leads her to seek revenge at any price.’[8]
Medea was the niece of Circe: a minor goddess and daughter of the sun god Helios. She was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs and would transform her enemies, or anyone who offended her, into animals.
She came to be ‘reinterpreted morally as a cautionary story against drunkenness.’[9]
‘Circe was also taken as the archetype of the predatory female. In the eyes of those from a later age, this behaviour made her notorious both as a magician and as a type of sexually free woman. She has been frequently depicted as such in all the arts from the Renaissance down to modern times.’[10]
It is worth reflecting on these female archetypes when we are considering the psychological origins of woke.
Third-wave Antiracism
In this chapter I will take a look at the origins of the word Woke in Antiracism and chart how it came to expand to become, by default, the flagship alternative philosophy to conservative values. Along the way I will explore the growth and expansion of Black Lives Matter, the killing of George Floyd and the BLM riots, the Antifa response to Trump, QAnon: it’s conservative equivalent, and January the 6th and the judicial response. I conclude by exploring Woke from a Buddhist perspective.
The first thing to say is that the problem with Woke is nothing to do with genuine compassion for minority groups or any other group which might formerly have suffered oppression: those concerns are amply covered by what have been called First- and Second-Wave Antiracism, Antisexism, Anti-homophobia and so on.
For instance, First Wave Antiracism was concerned with the overcoming of segregation a la Martin Luther King. Second Wave Antiracism was concerned with working to see black people as equal to whites; we might it is generally concerned with ‘equality of opportunity.’ Likewise, First- and Second Wave Antisexism with women’s liberation and with equality of opportunity for women. Furthermore, advancements in gay rights align seamlessly with this narrative, reflecting ideals congruent with Buddhist values.
However, Third Wave Antiracism takes a completely different turn. Contrary to what a Buddhist might endorse, Third Wave Antiracism exploits human vulnerabilities and the craving for acceptance, particularly among whites. It fosters unwarranted guilt akin to Old Testament puritanism, promoting violence, vengeance, and inherent racism. By seeking to “reverse racism” through the oppression of whites, authority figures, men, and those not aligned with progressive ideals, it perpetuates a cycle of discrimination.
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The situation is best and most eloquently summarised in John McWhorter’s 2021 book Woke Racism:
‘Third Wave Antiracism, becoming mainstream in the 2010s, teaches that because racism is baked into the structure of society, whites’ “complicity” in living within it constitutes racism itself, while, for black people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them, including a suspension of standards of achievement and conduct.[11]
An educator himself, McWhorter is horrified by the negative impact on the life skills of young blacks through the gradual phasing out of testing in schools. And being essentially a puritanical religion based in fear, coercion and manipulation, Woke relies on individuals being too timid to speak out, lest they be harassed or deplatformed:
‘Under this paradigm, all deemed insufficiently aware of this sense of existing while white as eternal culpability require bitter condemnation and ostracization, to an obsessive, abstract degree that leaves most observers working to make real sense of it, makes people left of center wonder just when and why they started being classified as backward, and leaves millions of innocent people scared to pieces of winding up in the sights of a zealous brand of inquisition that seems to hover over almost any statement, ambition, or achievement in modern society.’[12]
Woke—the Third Wave phenomenon not the ‘awareness programme’—is undermining to normal society, freedom of thought and expression, and is seen by many as Orwellian:
‘It is losing innocent people their jobs. It is colouring academic inquiry, detouring it, and sometimes strangling it like kudzu. It forces us to render a great deal of our public discussion of urgent issues in double-talk any ten-year-old can see through. It forces us to start teaching our actual ten-year-olds, in order to hold them off from spoiling the show in that way, to believe in sophistry in the name of enlightenment.’[13]
McWhorter comments that Antiracist Baby, a book by Third Wave Antiracism guru Ibram X. Kendi, on how to raise antiracist children, could mistake us for thinking we are in a Christopher Guest movie, for instance Spinal Tap.
‘This and so much else is a sign that Third Wave Antiracism forces us to pretend that performance art is politics. It forces us to spend endless amounts of time listening to nonsense presented as wisdom and pretend to like it.’[14]
Woke’s great persuasive strength—and its destructive weakness—is that it targets the unconscious. It implies that all white people are unconsciously racist. Of course, when ‘The Unconscious’ is brought in no individual has an answer; anyone protesting innocence will be countered by ‘You might say that but how can you speak of that which you are unconscious.’ There is no way a person can ever ‘win.’ Thus is the world, the individual and society deconstructed by reference to that which is invisible. Obviously unconscious racism does exist, but I do not think that the methodology Woke uses, where people can be fired for microaggressions, is the compassionate way forward for accuser or accused.
In the book McWhorter shares three case studies of ordinary people losing their jobs over an ill-chosen phrase: one person said: ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER, but also, EVERYONE’S LIFE MATTERS. No one should have to live in fear that they will be targeted for how they look or what they believe.’ He says how graduate students and professors write to him, frightened that Woke ideology will ruin their career, department, or field. How they find themselves having to communicate secretly; how influential individuals have been hounded from their posts, solely ‘because of claims and petitions that they are insufficiently antiracist.’[15] And the Woke agenda gets in the way of quality:
‘School boards across the country are forcing teachers and administrators to waste time on “antiracist” infusions into their curricula that make no more sense than anything proposed under China’s Cultural Revolution. Did you know that objectivity, being on time, and the written word are “white” things?’[16]
So much for Buddhism and its search for truth and for freedom from suffering! As a Buddhist for whom Universal Loving Kindness and mindfulness are the two key pillars in the project to overcome suffering for all sentient beings, I find the undervaluing of the qualities of capability, basic consideration and judgement necessary for both alarming.
McWhorter rejects labels such as ‘social justice warriors’ and ‘the woke mob,’ because he thinks that in the main these people are not zealots,
‘They are mostly thoroughly nice people. They are your neighbour, your friend, possibly even your offspring. They are friendly school principals, people who work quietly in publishing, lawyer pals. Heavy readers, good cooks, musicians.’[17]
Good Buddhists even!,
‘It’s just that, sadly, what they become, solely on this narrow but impactful range of issues, is inquisitors.’[18]
He draws on a term invented by author and essayist Joseph Bottum, in calling these individuals ‘The Elect:’
‘They do think of themselves as bearers of a wisdom, granted them for any number of reasons—empathic leaning, life experience, maybe even intelligence. But they see themselves as having been chosen, as it were, by one or some of these factors, as understanding something most do not.’[19]
Luxury beliefs
In an UnHerd interview[20] Rob Henderson proposes why the top 1% are so politically correct. He ‘coined the term “luxury beliefs” to explain how affluent people signal high status with ‘woke’ ideas.’[21] Henderson joined Yale University in 2015 after a difficult foster upbringing in a dead-end town in Northern California, as he outlines in his memoir ‘Troubled.’ At that time woke ideas were beginning to come in at Yale. In the video Henderson shares his experience:
‘I would say maybe 10 to 20% of the elite college students and graduates are cynical and potentially exploiting people’s sympathies and compassion to advance their own interests: and knowingly doing this. I think the other 80%, most of them have good intentions. I don’t think they reflect and interrogate their own beliefs enough to understand how much of a coincidence it is that your compassion just happens to coincide with your social and professional interests (audience laughter.) Isn’t that interesting?
‘But I think in their own mind, they are doing the right thing. People are very good at self-deception and finding ways to do the intellectual acrobatics to believe they’re doing the right thing. And then that gives me hope.’[22]
McWhorter considers the phrase ‘The Elect’ appropriate because it recalls the medieval Catholic inquisitors who passionately defended persecuting Jews and Muslims, and while: ‘We spontaneously “other” those antique inquisitors in our times, but right here and now we are faced with people who harbour the exact same brand of mission, just against different persons.’[23]
He says in 1500 the problem was about individuals not being Christian, whereas in 2020 it is about them not being sufficiently antiracist:
‘They do not see that they, too, are persecuting people for not adhering to their religion.’[24]
The chapter goes on to explore the issue of Taking Offence.
[1] See in ’Emotion.’ Bernard J. Baars, Nicole M. Gage, in Cognition, Brain, and Consciousness (Second Edition), 2010.
[2] ‘Elon Musk (Full Interview) | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO).’ Real Time with Bill Maher. YouTube. 29 April 2023. 5:30-9:00 mins.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFEaTk–tZo
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Chris Anderson. X. 29 April 2022.
https://twitter.com/ChrisAndersen/status/1520113238528065537/photo/1
[6] ‘Elon Musk (Full Interview) | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO).’ Real Time with Bill Maher.
[7] See ‘Medea.’ Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea
[8] ‘What is Euripides’ message in “Medea”?’ Study.com.
[9] Circe. Wikipedia. Accessed 17 March 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circe
[10] Ibid.
[11] McWhorter, John. Woke Racism. Swift Press. Kindle Edition. p13.
[12] Ibid. p13-14.
[13] Ibid. p14.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid. p15.
[16] Ibid. p15.
[17] Ibid. p26.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid. p27.
[20] ‘Rob Henderson: How luxury beliefs took over the elite.’ UnHerd. YouTube. 13 March 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lz_vBQsVuQ
[21] Ibid. Video description.
[22] Woke Racism. p27.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid. p15.
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