Awakening Beyond Woke

A New Dawn is Breaking in the West!

Since November 5^th when the US election results were confirmed, it seems several changes have arrived rather quickly. This caught my attention so I thought I would explore it further.

One of the changes was the abandoning of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) policies by some big multinational companies, including Ford Motor Company, John Deere, Walmart, Molson Coors Brewing, Harley Davidson, Toyota Motor Corporation, Target, Caterpillar, United Airlines, Boeing and a host of other easily recognizable brands.

DEI was born from an ideology that declared merit-based selection to be oppressive and unfair. The ideology asserted that minority groups were being oppressed because they could not gain access to the same opportunities as other more privileged groups. This culminated in some of the most academically gifted young people in the US being denied entry into Ivy League Universities because positions first had to be granted to minority groups.

One may see some merit in the argument, but it seems clear that it hasn’t worked.

The Terminology

It seems this ideology was a significant part of the “Woke” movement, so I thought I’d take a deeper dive. But first, let me define some terms.

“Awake” is a term that has been confused and misused for some years, mostly since the emergence of social media. In the traditional sense, to Awaken is to experience a level of expansion in spiritual practice. It can arrive slowly or abruptly, but it can be described as a moment when a person’s spirit or beingness fully awakens.

In meditation, teachers talk about the watcher or witness. There is an aspect of ourselves that we realise is outside the mind, that watches the mind. It is taught that this aspect is the core of who we are, our spirit, soul, essential self, our true beingness, the source of our attention and the origin of our life. Some refer to it as our connection to God.

When this aspect of us awakens, we realise our mind is not who we are, it is just a mind, and it can be quieted. Our awareness expands and our view of life changes to one of curiosity, compassion and acceptance.

Arrival at this place takes courage and work. It is not something we can read about in a book, get a mental understanding and then start being it. It is not something that can be pretended.

People can arrive at this place, experience a powerful awakening, and still descend back into their minds. It is easy to do. It requires regular practice and a Sanga of people who are on a similar path to support us and help us to remain on track.

When enough work is done, one arrives in a deep understanding of personal responsibility. Everything I experience is my own creation. We may not create events, but how we experience them is our own.

This is very different to being with a group of people who develop a suspicion of malfeasance, perhaps the actions of government or other unknown groups, and decide they “know” what is going on. They decide they are “awake” to the evil taking place. Maybe they are right, but often their decisions are based on some level of observation with limited proof.

Then there are other groups with a focus on social issues who collectively decide how life should be. They develop theories, for example DEI, and decide that if everyone adopted such an approach, society would be better off. They build an ideology around it. And I am sure that when this happens, they are approaching the issues from a caring place.

Similarly, these folks refer to themselves as being awake, because they feel they know what is wrong with society and what needs to change. Much of this began with people viewing racist minorities as victims. African American slang altered the term awake to woke.

Sounds Good – Doesn’t Work!

Have you ever had an idea for a product, or a marketing idea for a product, that just didn’t work? It happens all the time. We get an idea, try it out, and find that either it doesn’t work, or nobody is interested in it. I have a creative mind, so I have experienced it a thousand times.

Social media has changed things. It used to be common practice that a company or group would take an idea and present it to focus groups to see if it would be accepted. This saved a lot of time and effort.

But since social media became part of most people’s daily habit, people began floating ideas to a supportive audience online and almost instantly received positive reinforcement. “Oh, that sounds amazing!” Lots of likes and positive comments and soon, something that will probably never work, gains a life of its own. With enough support, it gains momentum to become a truth and can quickly morph into an ideology.

It can be like a burning match in a field of dry grass.

Yet, its workability is never tested. It seems that DEI was one of these as corporation after corporation found it to be a significant drag on workplace culture and productivity.

Moral Codes and Virtue

There appears to be a correlation between an increase in wealth and a decrease in religious practice. I am not suggesting that it’s a bad thing, but it appears to be true. We have moved away from some form of dedicated and regular adherence to religious dedication and more into the world of material gain.

Regular attendance at Church services meant consistent reminders about our indulgences, temptations and involvements in things that might compromise one’s sense of self.

These lessons taught people about living a moral and ethical existence. The development of a personal moral code was encouraged, and it was fortified by opportunities to serve and help others.

But as we moved away from this way of living, and as we settled into more affluent societies where there were fewer obvious examples of people who needed help, our collective attention eventually became focused more on ourselves. Selfishness, whilst somewhat covert in its nature, became commonplace.

From this place, many declined into self-absorption.

The trap here is that when we are not in service to others, we do little to develop ourselves. We do little to strengthen our moral compass and we engage in few, if any, activities that leave us feeling good about who we are. This leaves a gaping void that must be filled.

Altruism is a special sustenance that feeds the spirit, as opposed to activities based on self interest that tend to feed the mind.

Nobody wants to be seen as someone of low moral worth. But alas, social media provided a shortcut that anyone could take. We were presented with a grand smorgasbord of causes we could get involved in from behind a keyboard, to signal to the world what a deeply virtuous person we really are.

In fact, we could locate the most popular causes that would render the most social credits, then ascertain our own strategy to maximise our rewards for participation.

Instead of rolling up our sleeves and doing the hard work to serve and support, we had the opportunity to make grand statements and vacuum up the social credits whilst sipping chardonnay and nibbling on expensive cheese.

How do I know these things? I’ve been there myself. It is so very tempting at times.

Creating Victims

There are all manner of victims in the world. People are subjected to things like domestic abuse, natural disasters, medical malpractice, street crime, fraud and theft, poverty, business collapse, brutality, accidents and carelessness, war, and a raft of other things.

The challenge for all of us is to help any victim to get back on their feet, to restore their confidence and help them get moving again, living their life. Treating them as a victim, as a going concern, does the opposite. It robs them of their power and traps them in their victimhood, perhaps for life.

There are some who discover that there can be great power in victimhood. Being a victim can allow one to demand all manner of favors and support from family, friends and since the second World war, the state.

In Australia for example, we have gone from the Department of Social Security which financially supported the unemployed and those who could not work, to current day where we still have Centrelink, the upgraded Social security, plus the NDIS which directs billions of dollars annually to people with disability. For many, the NDIS has been a brilliant initiative.

We can add to this support bonanza the National Indigenous Australians Agency which receives direct funding of about $6 Billion per annum.

One of the NDIS’s challenges is that there are many people fraudulently claiming from the system, either providers charging for services not delivered, or recipients whose disability is somewhat questionable.

If we look beyond this realm of victimhood, we step into a new and confusing terrain. What happens when you find minority groups and label them as victims whose cause should be championed?

We stop seeing people as individuals and stereotype them as groups. When they apply that stereotype to themselves, they have succumbed fully to the narrative and become inducted as a card carrying victim.

Unless these people are extremely strong in character, they are likely to vacuum up the support and run with it. This is what has happened with the ever-expanding LGBTQ+ group. When Gay Marriage was finally passed, it seems the activists grew bored. They had nothing left through which they could glorify their virtue whilst beseeching the evil of the establishment. In that cohort, they found the transgender people, a tiny group of souls battling with gender identity.

I have written about this area before. There has been an explosion of transgenderism in the past 10 years, also in alignment with the establishment of social media where attention seeking can be found in many a mournful post.

I have no doubt that there are a small number of cases of gender dysphoria. It is well documented and has always been a condition that appears in pre-school boys. But the tidal wave of cases in recent years has a whole new exploration from deep anxiety and mental illness to overt attention seeking.

I delve into this topic in some depth in my article “Does God have a Gender?”

When enough emphasis is placed on an issue like this, a narrative is created. If the narrative garners enough support, it becomes an ideology. Once that happens, any slightly negative or oppositional comment is labeled “anti” or hate speech. People across the world have become deeply fearful of being labeled racist or anti-trans or homophobic.

What’s more, when good people subscribe to the ideology, they then find themselves having to agree with things that, deep in their heart, they know are wrong. For example, the surgical mutilation of kids who believe their body has the wrong gender. I have been amazed at the number of intelligent people I have met who defend such evil.

Another example is Windmills. Farmers are forced to allow a windmill to be constructed on their land and endure the resulting impacts, for a “one-off” fee whilst the organisation that owns the windmill gets paid huge sums annually. It seems grossly unfair, yet good and intelligent people who have bound themselves to an environmental agenda, defend it.

As these narratives ramp up and become broadly accepted ideologies supported by sitting governments and invested media, the ideologues have their victims and their vehicle to assume unearned power over cultural norms.

Rampant Progressivism

It seems that most of the people who subscribe to these ideologies consider themselves to be progressive. The transgender issue has been taken to the point where biological males are bashing up women in an Olympic boxing ring and taking the medals, and those who have the power are too scared to speak up.

This progressivism has become rampant, but to what end. What is the end goal? I’ve asked this question so many times and nobody seems to have an answer. If I stand behind that arrow and take my best guess at its flight path, I see the destruction of society as our culture erodes into cancelling, persecution and shaming.

We have gone from efforts to help people be more accepting of people with different sexual preferences to having “new rules” like pronoun use literally shoved down our throats. Disagreement is labeled as hate speech.

Where does Marxism Fit

Marx believed that the industrialist capitalists, during the industrial revolution, were abusing and oppressing the workers. And, in many cases, they probably were. He believed that the fundamental structure of society was oppressor and oppressed.

What he failed to see was that greed was the destructive element, not the system. He saw the oppressed as victims and set about designing a system where everyone could be treated equally. As we have seen over time, this system fails as productivity plunges and living standards follow.

In this modern world of progressive ideologies, we see the same attitude. Someone is being oppressed by an evil oppressor, and the oppressor has been identified mostly as the white Anglo Saxon male with a few other cultures thrown in like Jews and successful Asians.

These trends have seen left wing political parties being swept into government across the world. The left-leaning parties have traditionally been the champion of the worker, the oppressed. It didn’t take them long to identify the new “victim” groups and their vocal activists, scoop them up with promises of major reform, and storm their way into office.

Perhaps the cleverest of these strategies was the pending environmental catastrophe movement. Whilst it is true we need to care for the environment and be gentle with mother earth, the whole carbon theory is a scam at best. Yet, millions of young people across the world have been scared witless by evangelistic school teachers and have become victims of industry, seeking a savior.

Finally, in Australia, we experienced a significant attempt to paint a picture of white invasion, genocide and profound upheaval. Some of this is true. Some of it, fantasy. I wrote about this at length in my articles in May and September 2023.

How can a society, or an economy, survive if so many people are labeled and treated as victims?

Is Masculinity Toxic

Here is the trap. When an ideology takes on a life of it’s own, it becomes a brazen power grab. Any person who speaks against it is immediately shamed, ridiculed or cancelled. This action is designed to take away that person’s power, leaving them angry, humiliated and powerless.

The virtue signaling activists, with a willing media in tow, became a force to be reckoned with. One significant force stood in the way. Strong Men!

Strong, confident men will generally not stand for such hypocrisy or outrageous nonsense. It is their natural tendency to stand as guardians over their family, friends and community. When you talk to any good man about pronouns or gender re-assignment in minors, you can feel their blood boil.

Strong fathers will not stand for transgender story time in primary schools. Emasculated men stand by and watch it happen, feebly attempting to justify it.

But the activists were not to be outdone as they discovered a powerful label – toxic masculinity. Soon it became that any sort of display of masculinity was angrily labeled toxic and shut down in a heartbeat. It is hard to play the game when you do not know the rules.

The Woke Mob

All these groups of activists, firmly entrenched on the left side of politics, considered themselves to be the only ones “awake” enough o realise how society should be. But was it little more than an idea that could never work in reality? These “awakened zealots” were and are the Woke, little more than a power lusting mob, determined to destroy anyone who got in their way.

When you take a hard stance, and become fixed in a position, anyone with a different opinion is opposed to you. Then you label them communist, racist, anti-trans or white supremacist and stop hearing what they are saying.

“Ideology is a very bad thing. It is a prepackaged set of ideas. You end up having to abide by things you do not agree with just so you can stay in the tribe. You end up having to suspend your own rational judgement between right and wrong just to appease your tribe.” Konstantin Kisin

The Game is Up

Right across the world, a change has taken place. Left wing political parties are being voted from office and conservative parties are taking their place, some in landslide election victories.

There can be multiple reasons for this. During the pandemic, many economies were driven almost into recession, with crippling inflation rates and spiraling government debt.

The pandemic response breached a great deal of trust as governments, intoxicated on their own fumes, became dictatorial tyrants, closed economies, locked people up and forced experimental medical procedures on their citizens.

I guess also that people became tired of the devastation of women’s sport. Even the most compassionate person struggled to come to terms with something that defied basic common sense.

And finally, as western countries boldly shut down oil and coal, energy costs are skyrocketing, and people cannot see an end in sight. They have lost faith in the government’s capacity to create a new and stable path to cleaner energy.

People have grown tired of trying to implement someone’s grand idea that can never work.

Woke is dying. To ensure it is banished to the past, good people must stand tall, engage their own moral compass and begin to strive for what they know to be right. Men have a huge role to play here, to stand for their families and communities, to have their partners and their kids backs, to hold a safe space where radicals are no longer welcome.

Humanitarianism is a Good Answer

Our system can work if we all choose to become courageous humanitarians. Being good and decent toward others is not that difficult. It just requires us to see our fellow human beings as our kin, our friends, people with whom we share a community.

We can be more patient. Sometimes we will encounter a person having a bad day. We don’t have to hate or punish them. We just need to give them some space. If someone is being abusive, we need to step in and stop them, make sure no harm can be done, and then get them some help.

For people who are struggling, perhaps suffering anxiety or a personal crisis, we can lend a hand, give support and get them some help. Do whatever we need to do to ensure they are being cared for.

We can encourage people, acknowledge good efforts, give people recognition, and introduce people to others with the intention of building new friendships for everyone. We can be more respectful and honor other people’s culture, perhaps even become more interested and choose to learn from them.

I have recently become much more curious, for example, about what the tribal elders of the Australian Aboriginal Community can teach us. I feel sure there is much richness in their wisdom.

An Aspiration for Genuine Growth.

In the mid 90’s, I found myself searching. I had just left a failed marriage, was a single Dad and was looking for answers about why my life had not been working and what I could do to get better.

I picked up a copy of M. Scott Peck’s book, “The Road Less Travelled.” It captivated me. For the first time, I was reading about how I could grow, improve, and become a better and more decent human being. I couldn’t put it down. When I finished reading, I picked up more books, studying life whilst reflecting on myself, excited and inspired by possibility.

In the process I read about indigenous cultures and how they had created pathways for young people to follow to discover themselves, to learn the deeper secrets of existence and to transcend the demands of their egos to land in the harmonious peace of expanded awareness, wisdom and acceptance.

Creating a deeper union with the greater mystery that some call spirit, or the ancients referred to as the Tao, seemed to be an enduring quest in many cultures. I looked around to find teachers and there were none who I could see to be living examples of the things I aspired to.

Then one day, I walked into an Avatar® Course Room. I finally found a practice, and a friendly group of guides, who could support my journey. I’ve since shared it with my kids and many others.

We can all learn the skills and understanding required to be meaningful and trustworthy mentors for emerging generations. We can create a world where everyone can stretch for their hopes and dreams, honoring their own natural creativity and path of service, where wealth is possible, simply by dedicating ourselves to an honorable path to self-improvement.

We do not need to change the system. We just need to change the way we conduct ourselves in that system.

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