weaponizing woke
The topic of ‘woke’ is isolating these days, but I would like to pull a few ideas together in an effort to simplify… ;-)
Starting with where most resources say “woke” was first used, around 100 years ago, it pertained to racism and discrimination. Around 2010, it become slang for a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism and LGBTQIA2S+ rights.
In more recent years, ‘woke’ quickly became politicized, and conservatives now use it as an insult, a sarcastic joke, and worse, something that insights anger and disregard. Fear of change is likely the root of this reaction; instead of seeing change as the realization of better ways to treat each other and this planet, it has become a weapon to use against each other.
Yet change is how we move forward as a society, and we have overcome some amazing challenges in our past:
Women’s rights (currently being challenged, again)
Voting rights
Smoking restrictions and laws
Gay marriage
We also have many current battles that require big changes still… and they could also yield amazing results, especially for our sustainability on this planet:
Water contamination
Farming practices
Plastics
Garbage
Chemicals in products, food & drinking water
I could go on for a while with that list, but you get the point. We have forgotten that we are all connected in this life together, and my hope is that we can bridge the gap, and stop using words as weapons… “woke” is not a bad term, we do need to wake up to some important issues in order to keep this world the beautiful garden of creation it is meant to be.
Which reminds me of the book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, and “how the sixties offered an ingenious and disorganized effort to escape from captivity. Failure came due to failure to find the bars of the cage. If you cannot find what is keeping you in, you get confused and ineffectual.”
I believe we have a crisis of motivation… since the 50’s we have put our focus on money as the ultimate end goal to power and status, so consumerism rose to a destructive level of our environment. We then started giving corporations more money by way of tax cuts and loopholes, while we watched the middle class dwindle, schools collapse, infrastructure crumble, environment corrode, and the list goes on.
This is where I likely lose half my audience because it all sounds so overwhelming, seeing the whole seems impossible, and hearing all the broken pieces makes one angry. So what do we do? Let’s pick a word to use as a weapon against all this, just like an elementary school bully, making someone/something less than, animalistic and harmful… Elon Musk made it a tragic virus!
I am of the opinion that we need to change our end goal to a higher value; we need to put our health and sustainability first, and we need to change a lot of our systems to get there. The us against them political battle has shown itself to be an unreliable joke, and it seems to be obvious that we need to wake up to the truth. The truth does not require faith, it just is, and the truth is that most of our systems are outdated… without throwing blame, this is just a fact.
I can draw an example to my battle with cancer; accepting that after ten years, cancer is part of my life; it cannot be ignored, or boxed up to be placed into storage. I worked hard to rid myself of the disease ten years ago, and thought I had won, then six years later I fought again. It was after that battle that I hid from the disease, I knew it was there but I chose not to mention its’ name and never gave it a possessive noun. The problem with this plan is that I was off my game, I lost the joy of living free; I was trapped by my desire to hide my facts (from myself) – never a good plan.
I now accept this disease because it is the only way to keep improving; the only way to make the right choices each day, and the most graceful play on my emotions. I have proper expectations of what I can accomplish during chemo, and do not wish for what cannot be. I also allow for my fears to have a voice, but do not allow them to rule my choices.
This same process can be used successfully in society if we allow each side to be heard and respected; we need to make sustainability changes and work together to come to equitable solutions. Leaning one way only will never solve our issues; we need to all feel a part of what we are healing. As with my conversations with oncologists and surgeons, if I did not have a say in my treatment, I would resent, challenge and even blame my results on anyone but myself. But since I am very invested in every decision, I feel powerfully equipped to make these decisions and then live by those choices.
I am not delusional, lifestyle changes are not always easy, but they are built on what is best for my life. Finding this bridge for our political issues should be our focus, what is best for our lives and how we can better respect the grassroots needs of essential change. Name-calling is beneath us, and bullying is ridiculous as an adult. The little kid in us is scared (including our entire youngest generation), and sometimes it just takes acknowledging this simple fact in order to take his/her little hand in yours and go about the right way to make the changes that need to be made.
At the heart of my curiosity
sits a young girl,
wiser than my years.
Patient and unwavering
always staring back at me,
never leaving me cold.
Love is this kind
when we are mindful,
to ourselves and others.