I’m tired of ‘wokeness’. If you need me to define the word for you, this blog isn’t for you. I say I’m tired of it and mean it with as much vigour as a heterosexual, blonde haired, blue eyed male can say and mean it.
I’m tired of ‘wokeness’ being seen as a means to be cool and hip as if it’s a badge of honour that deserves praise because you post a few things on Twitter and Instagram as if it’s a passing fad.
I’m tired of us all acting like being socially aware of systemic constructs and seeing them play out daily are a means to self-praise and intellectual snobbery, the same uppity attitude that leads only to brick walls in discussions instead of doors opening.
I’m tired of us all acting like being aware of the injustices, political movements and efforts of the overall rigged and biased system isn’t tiring in and of itself, that it isn’t soul-crushing whenever you see a privilege or another member of the public being a statistic due to their race, gender, faith, sexuality and/or social class.
It is tiring being woke, it is a reaction to the terrible atrocities that occur daily throughout the world. It is the seeing between the lines of the courts, the schools, the media and our own homes and recognising that there are deep rooted ideologies at work constantly and daily people suffer from these concepts coming to fruition and staying there.
It is not cool to act as if because you singularly are aware of things that the problems will go away magically. The purpose of being ‘awake’ to these things from the natural sleep that the world tries to force-feed us into is to recognise that the problem is bigger than any one person. That if the world is truly to become a better place, that our own personal egos are not to come into play in the bigger picture of things.
I weep over humanity’s tendency to build idols, within ourselves and to others. I am not exempt from this. I have been and constantly am letting myself down with my own thoughts and actions, and also by people I highly regard with their views on society. My growing apathy sickens me. Staying human is the struggle.
I weep over the daily injustice and recognising that another statistic is made whenever there is another death, another wrongful conviction, another wrongful release, a stop and search based from racism, job rejections based off any form of discrimination and an overall silencing of the oppressed.
To go from this to seeing people flaunt their ‘wokeness’ as if it’s a requirement to be seen as cool on social media in this modern age is a sickening part of it all. I fear people will view these faux-models as bespokers for a cause they are only in for the betterment of themselves.
It’s bigger than this subject alone – our hyper-narcissism today affects every fabric of Western society but I just cling to the hope that in this phase of ‘wokeness’ being popular, that a high enough % cling to what they learn so when the lights go off and the attention fades away from wokeness to another trend, this % of people carry on the fight behind the scenes away from the spotlight simply because they’re convicted.
All the martyrs we hold in high regard were mocked. Let us be mocked now and have the last laugh when our work is done.