Why People Become Woke

People do wokeness because they try to derive meaning from their ego. They call it identity but that’s what it is.

Everybody needs to feel like they matter. Humans need to do something important. If there’s nothing in the outside world to create and improve, people start fussing with their bodies and mental states. Their selves become meaning-making machines. You can’t legislate this away or explain to them they are being stupid. It won’t work.

But if you give them something outside of themselves that will help them find meaning, they’ll forget the woke stuff.

My university passed a land acknowledgement requirement a year ago. Every meeting had to start with a reading of the blasted acknowledgement. We also adopted a set of anti-racist objectives. I wrote about how we were forced to read “anti-racist” books and all that.

And then something happened. A calamity. And guess what? There has been exactly zero land acknowledgements read since then. Zero anti-racist book clubs. It’s all gone.

Did that happen because the state of Illinois passed a law banning this shit? Don’t make me laugh. It happened because people suddenly had something real to care about.

I’m not saying that everybody needs a calamity in the form of an austerity maniac like our new administrator. But you can’t persuade people to find meaning in something that exists outside their egos if you yourself find your meaning in discussions of their ego games.

Ultimately, what do we care if woke ego maniacs sew on penises, euthanize themselves, and crawl in the mud to flatter their racial guilt? We can concentrate on the important stuff we are doing.

Is there important stuff we are doing? Or does our only source of meaning consist in reacting to their ego trip? Honestly, that would be even more pathetic than finding meaning in carving out a fake vagina on one’s own body.