What is Woke? Definition and Characteristics of Woke People

/wōk/ 

adj.

Having the tendency to view personal or societal problems as primarily the result of deliberate or systemic bias, and which must be solved by redistributing resources such as money, rights, or attention to victims.

Common beliefs of the woke

• Economic or social problems are primarily evidence of bias or unfairness, and not differences between groups.
• Awareness of problems comes with the responsibility to solve them in a redistributive way, by taking resources from one group and giving them to another. Once you are aware of homelessness, you must champion social housing. The solution to poverty is to give money. Racial diversity should be achieved via affirmative action, and so on. The woke will claim they are fighting merely for awareness (of some type of injustice). But when pressed, the proffered solution will always be political and redistributive.
• In a paradox, woke solutions should also address “root causes”. Solely treating symptoms is not acceptable and the woke frequently invoke entire systems as corrupt and needing to be dismantled (defund this, abolish that, end white supremacy, and so on).
• Acknowledging a person’s struggle can heal their pain. Thus, “raising awareness” through activism is a moral obligation. Corollary: Discussing non-woke explanations or solutions for problems is equivalent to harm. The woke will try to suppress discussion (deplatforming, shouting down, and so on) to prevent harm.
• Righteous victimhood is the highest source of virtue. Multiple forms of victimhood can be combined to elevate virtue further (“as a woman of color…”).
• If not a victim themselves, the woke can pursue virtue in a number of ways:
  • Activism or “allyship” with victims, creating a perverse incentive to find or create new sources of victimhood which they can advocate for.
  • Wokes with oppressive-coded identities (wealthy, white, straight) may self-flagellate and put their guilt on display, diminishing their own ideas as invalid or their presence as harmful (concept of “acknowledging one’s privilege”).
  • Promoting the idea that the entire system or society is corrupt and thus we are all victims.
• Woke ideas are morally irreproachable (“on the right side of history”).
• The virtues of compassion and kindness are supreme above all others. Trying to solve a problem in a compassionate or kind way is intrinsically virtuous, regardless of rationale or outcome.
• Woke beliefs are immune from criticism since they are no different from being kind, fair, caring, or simply aware of social issues.
• The woke may insist on defining the term “woke” to avoid discussing the material aspects of an issue, or even go so far as to claim wokeness does not exist at all.
• The woke tend to fetishize:
  • Good intentions: Outcomes are less important than attempts to be kind or righteous. This holds woke ideas immune from criticism since bad ideas are always valid if the intentions are good, and “at least we tried” is always a valorous result.
  • Activism: Activist is a high-status title for the woke. Championing woke causes is always a good thing.
  • Destigmatization:  Since words can cause harm, any social stigma must be neutralized. Discussion of issues is chilled for the sake of anyone who might be stigmatized.
  • Community input: The “community” is a never-ending source of victimhood. Activists working under the guise of “community members” can always pessimistically raise problems and block progress in the name of community input.
  • Ancient wisdom: Life was better before industrialization and capitalism, primitive people were more enlightened.
  • Tearing down established systems or heroes: “Did you know the Founding Fathers owned slaves?” “Christopher Columbus was a genocidal colonialist.”
  • Problems as wholesale indictments of entire systems: Overexaggeration of legitimate problems and making an illogical leap to denigrate larger parts of society. “Racism was common during the founding of the United States therefore it is a racist country.” “It’s irresponsible to have kids in a world that’s burning.” “Getting married is a capitalist trap.”
• Different groups cannot understand each other’s perspectives because their experiences are so different (see concept of “intersectionality”). A paradox when considered with the first bullet which makes the assumption that group differences come from outside in the form of bias.

Why wokeness is sticky and self-perpetuating

• Although wokeness feels like enlightenment or solid moral ground, it is a particularly sticky belief system because it holds itself immune from criticism in several key ways.
• Because the woke believe problems are caused by bias, wokeness has the special property of disabling the believer’s critical faculties, since to question a woke belief is to imply that bias is not present or important, which is a perspective that only an oppressor can have. If a woke believer is afraid to be seen as an oppressor, or believes discussing something will cause harm to victims, they are not likely to discuss it and thus can never entertain efforts to critique it. Thus wokeness seeks to determine what subjects can even be discussed.
• Wokeness prevents progress because it sets rules about who can discuss ideas. Instead of being open to new ideas from anyone, it limits participation based on characteristics such as race or gender. An example would be someone making a moral claim and defending it by saying something like “you’re not my race/gender so you could never understand.” This conflates the valid idea that it’s impossible to truly experience another persons life with the wrong belief that their ideas are beyond criticism by certain people.
• Wokeness insists that plans, progress, or growth must be paused until the needs of all potential victims are addressed. There is always more woke work to be done.
• The woke frequently redefine or introduce new words. One stated purpose is to make language more “inclusive” (typically meaning less specific) so as to accommodate as many oppressed victims as possible (e.g. “birthing persons” instead of mothers) or they may be attempting to make a political statement (e.g. “black bodies” instead of black people, or deliberately capitalizing “Black” but not white). This has the effect of creating confusion and doubt. There is always a new cause or victim class to be identified and considered, which has the effect of making everyone afraid to say the wrong thing, which further chills discussion and limits the growth of knowledge.
• Wokeness is appealing because it offers instant hierarchical status to its believers, a one-move solution to being moral. To be woke is to be enlisted in the irresistible fight for “justice”.

Woke motivations

The woke may:

• Be misguided in their search for a better world. In a sincere effort to help, they may latch on to the woke worldview and be lulled by its seemingly easy, one-move solutions. A feedback loop occurs when they see their own morality or status raised among other woke people. In this way they become trapped in an epistemological valley, unable to grow their understanding of the world because their own beliefs prevent them from doing so.
• Like everyone, have personal problems or shameful secrets for which they fear they would be judged or penalized. But the woke cope with them by creating a “culture of inclusiveness”, or promoting the idea that flaws are normal or even good (aka “normalizing”) in hopes they will not be judged for their particular shortcoming.
• Be looking to compensate for their own unaddressed guilt of being upper class.
• Be burned out on life, hate the current system and want to rationalize their urge to check out by painting the entire system as evil (racist, sexist, transphobic, patriarchal, etc)
• Not understand how to be successful or fulfilled in their life or career and may be looking for a defined path to find success or meaning (e.g. helping an organization reach their “social justice” goals).
• Look to identify oppression to give themselves permission to express their own shadow behavior (vengeance, spite, their own oppressive tendencies).

Acknowledgements

Hat tip to David Deutsch (The Beginning of Infinity, assorted interviews) for the concept of anti-rational memes, Freddie deBoer^{1, 2} for the need for a succinct woke definition, Bethany Mandel whose embarassment at not being able to define the term spurred this post, and Thomas Sowell (assorted interviews) for the concept of “the Anointed” and non-discriminatory explanations.