There is much
discourse in our modern culture about the topic of being woke. This movie is
woke, that book is woke, the new T.V. show is woke, everything is woke, woke,
woke. More people are probably aware of the term than what it really means. But
most have the general ability to spot something that is woke. Essentially, woke
refers to someone who is purports to be acutely aware, really obsessed, with
the perceived or claimed injustices of a particular minority, and who is
willing to change the rules to favour that minority. The term originally came
out of African-American communities in the post-civil rights era in the United
States and has now been greatly expanded to include a vast array of “oppressed”
groups within western society.
The woke want
to turn every genre or film, books and video games, they want to forge every
institution, they want to craft every law and human rights document, and make
every sermon, conversation, and broadcast, into an opportunity to push “the
message” or their woke agenda. And people are getting increasingly tired of it.
The woke is,
as the Social
Justice warrior, who is,
as the
cultural Marxist, who is,
as the
intersectionalist,
who has a
much higher chance than average of having unnaturally coloured hair, a useless
university degree, of using anti-depressants, and a voting record to the left
of the Greens parties.
And they are
also not new. In fact, Nicholas Berdyaev writes about these types in his
letters, which have been compiled together into a book called The Philosophy
of Inequality. He writes there about these people we could call wokians,
“People
of your ilk, hostile to me, have given little thought concerning nation and the
national problem. Ye are wont even to acknowledge the state on utilitarian
grounds. But ye have proven incapable of penetrating into the intimate mystery
of the national manner of life. True, you admit of the rights of oppressed
nationalities and for these nationalities ye are ready to become quite extreme
nationalists. Many of you tend to posture under your sign for the right of
self-determination of nationalities. But this proves also, that to the mystery
of national lifestyle you only can approach at it 
externally, that inwardly it is
beyond you. You are ready to admit of the national lifestyle and national
rights of the Jews or the Polish, of the Bohemians or the Irelanders, but
amidst this, the national lifestyle and national rights of Russians ye never
could admit. And this is because, that it is the problem of oppression which
has been of interest to you, while completely uninterested by the problem of
nationality. Ye proclaimed the right of the free self-determination of
nationalities, not so much out of any interest for the nationalities themself
and even not believing in the existence of such sort of realities. You merely
need this "free self-determination" as a means of struggle for your
political and social ideals, for an abstract equality and freedom, and nowise
for the concrete national manner of life, not for a national flourishing.”[1]
Berdyaev
identifies that these so-called advocates of justice are not really interested
in justice for people of various oppressed groups. Rather they can see in the
causes of these people a means of going after the perceived oppressor, in this
case the Russian people. They see in these causes a means of upturning the
order of the nations in which they seek political power. To consider the
national rights of the Russian, in his context, is not even on their radar,
because to do so would mean that they would have to pursue actual justice. But
that is not what they really want, they really want to deconstruct the society
in which they live and disenfranchise the majority. To do so they need a shroud
to cover their true motives.
In fact, the
concept of true justice is alien to them, as Berdyaev writes,
“Indeed,
in the national lifestyle there is for You an ungraspable irrational mystery,
hidden deep in the earth. Ye have never penetrated thence, ye always remained
at the surface…No, your struggle…is merely the international struggle for
levelling an equality, a struggle for man in the abstract, for an abstraction
of man. Ye do not know the concrete man in flesh and blood, in race and tribe,
the man national. Your struggle for the liberation of oppressed nationalities
and for their equality is an international struggle, a geometric struggle, a
struggle abstracting and tearing the national man off from the living
countenance, from his maternity and fatherland.”[2]
If your tear
a man from his “living countenance, from his maternity and fatherland” you
weaken him, and you make him rather incapable of defending himself. That is
their true strategy.
The wokians,
these social justice warriors, these fake justice promoters, do not really have
a deep regard for the people whom they say they are advocating for. They simply
see in their plight a means of pushing for equality. The equality they want,
and really the only type one can really pursue, is the levelling of all to a lower
level of prosperity and well-being. Because to get to a form of equality you
need to denationalize the oppressor and the oppressed, making them both less
than they should be. Really, their goal is the destruction of national
identity, not just for the “oppressor”, but for all, because inside a national
identity is a framework for preserving its members. These people use justice as
a guise for a very different goal,
“The
"oppressors" of nationalities sometimes acknowledge them more, than
do the "liberators". "They oppress" is of the living
national man in terms of race and tribe, flesh and blood, whereas "they
liberate" is of an abstracted geometric man…The secrets of every national
manner of life merits sympathy. It is needful to get down into it even then,
when the discourse goes hostile to us as a nation. The German people was our
enemy and we had to fight against them. But the unrepeatable uniqueness of the
German, the most intimate thing in the German spirit, the genuinely individual
in the expression of the German visage always, even at the moment of struggle,
seemed to me to merit of sympathetic consideration. In our international struggle
for the liberation and equality of nationalities there is no feel of perception
of national visages, there is not in it the love for the national image.”[3]
When Berdyaev
says here that the oppressor often acknowledges the oppressed more than these
“warriors for justice” he means simply this: they at least acknowledge the
people they disagree with have a genuine and real identity. He is not
commending the oppressor, he is simply noting that they at least acknowledge
the people they oppress have a real national identity, or at least they often
do. The Marxists did not even do this, they do not acknowledge this identity. Rather,
they wanted to strip the man, the woman and the child, of their national
identity and seek to raise them up again in their own image.
Berdyaev goes
on to say,
“K.
Leont'ev was correct, when he declared your national politics merely a weapon
of worldwide destruction and espied in it merely the triumph of democracy and
cosmopolitanism. Your principles of the "right of the self-determination
of nationalities", so bally-hooed about in the Russian revolution, is
anti-historical an abstraction, of contrived theme which deny the unrepeatably
unique reality, which is called nationality. Nationality cannot be severed off
away from the concrete and
its right cannot be merely a matter of abstract history, investigation.”[4]
These
wokians, these anti-justice warriors, want to destroy what is unique in each
people’s identity and then call it liberation, cries Berdyaev. In other words,
he is observing that that their solution is worse than the problems they cry
out about.
I read Marx
and Engels, myself, many years ago. I read the Communist Manifesto twice
and worked my way through a chunk of Das Capital. A lot can be said
against these works and has been. Berdyaev is doing that in his letters in this
book. But I would simply sum up my perception of their position as this: they sometimes
correctly identify problems of inequality and injustice in society, and they
propose solutions which are far worse than the problems they diagnose. That is
what Berdyaev is saying here. These Marxists will use tyranny to solve problems
and create far worse problems, because they deny the very nature of humanity.
They rage more against creation than against injustice.
He goes on to
say that,
“Each
nationality within the various periods of its existence possesses various
rights. These rights cannot be merely watered down. There exists a complex
hierarchy of nationalities. It would be thoughtless and absurd to compare the
rights to self-determination of the Russian nationality and the nationality of
the Armenian, the Gruzinian or the Tatar. It would be thoughtless and absurd to
approach with the same abstract measurement the rights of the German
nationality and the Spanish nationality at a given moment of world history. In
the life of nations there occur periods of flourishing and periods of waning,
periods of the high exertions of their powers and periods of weakness. And
their rights to self-determination in these instances are varied. The question
about the rights of the self-determination of nationalities is not some
abstract juridical question, this is first of all a question biological, in the
final end a mystically-biological question. It rests upon the irrational
grounding of life, which is not subject to any sort of juridical and moral
rationalisations. All the historical nationalities possess quite varied,
unequal rights, and they cannot be put forth under the same pretensions. In the
historical inequality of nationalities, the unequalness of their real weight,
in the historical predominance now of some, now of other nationalities there is
its own great truth, there is the fulfilling of a moral law of historical
activity, so dissimilar to the law of individual activity.”[5]
In other
words, Berdyaev is arguing here that every nation, and its current situation,
should be evaluated as it is, and treated accordingly. Their issues should be
taken on a case for case basis. Nations should not be treated as though they are
always all in the same position, because they are not. By noting that they have
‘unequal rights’, he means simply that in some periods nations rise above
others and then fall under the sway of others. He is describing what we see
often occurring in history and in our world today. There is a rise and fall of
nations, some become empires, some attempt this and fail, some have achieved
this and then they fall. Nations have periods of greatness and then periods of
humility. There are times when a nation should be encouraged to exercise its
right to self-determination, and there are times when nations have taken this
too far.
Berdyaev is
saying something I have written about often: equality is a useless principle
when dealing with human beings, human entities, and human institutions. Humans,
and the nations derived from those humans, are so different, so diverse, and so
varied in their ranges of experience, capabilities and experiences, that their
needs and situations require great care and attention. Applying a broad-brush
stroke approach to their issues by seeking to force them all into some form of
equality is harmful, as they often need different things, depending on their
current situations.
Berdyaev here
is writing about the very same kinds of people we call woke. The kinds of
people who use the shroud of social justice to bring about social degradation. These
ideas did not originate in modern universities, even though they have overcome such
institutions. These ideas go back far earlier. I am sure we could find these
evils at work in other nations in other ways. But we can at least trace this
error back to the French revolution which unleased the falsehood of the cause
of equality on the world.
Berdyaev is
warning us that often those who make pretence of caring for so-called
minorities often have far more nefarious intentions.
List of
References
[1] Nicholas
Berdyaev 1923, “Fourth Letter: Concerning Nation”, The Philosophy of
Inequality, pp. 83-85
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Nicholas Berdyaev 1923, “Fourth Letter: Concerning Nation”, The Philosophy of
Inequality, pp. 83-85
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