On being woke, the Great Awokening

I started out reading a book called We Have Never Been Woke, by Musa Al-Gharbia, and finally, on page 50, I thought “I can’t do this.” I cannot finish the book. It is well-written by a new PhD who is also an intellectual, and I am reminded that I am neither of those things, and that I’ve never been curious about people who claim to be “woke.” I think it is all self-aggrandized posturing, large-scale virtue signaling. It’s made its way on to campuses, but then most campuses have long ceased to serve intelligent function, that is, producing critical thinkers who are hard-working  and serious adult humans. Instead (most) colleges offer a new kind of dumbed down.

Worse yet, Climate Alarmists have saturated campuses and schools, so that our graduating classes at all levels don’t know shit about climate and don’t know they don’t know shit. It is large-scale Dunning-Kruger. We’re in a new dark age. It’s quite a predicament.

I did not sit down to write that rant. The reason I purchased We Have Never Been Woke is because my favorite magazine, National Review, recommended it. I could easily settle for reading just the review, and now take that lesson to heart. Next time I will read the opening paragraph of a review:

What if wokeness, far from being a passionate quest for social justice, is the pursuit of injustice by other means? What if wokeness, rather than being the pinnacle of political consciousness, is deeply confused about its underlying motives – if instead of being “woke”, it is sound asleep?

There! That’s all I need to know about the book and its ambitious PhD sociologist author, for whom I have nothing but respect, but whose writing is above my pay grade. 

6 thoughts on “On being woke, the Great Awokening”

  1. I wish I could remember what my uncle said one time when we were at my grandmother’s in Chicago. He was a PhD and she had some books that included his essays or articles, but of course nobody in the family was able to read or understand them. He jokingly told us that was how you knew they were so profound and important or something. That’s the classic complaint with PhDs, they’re trained to disdain the clear and accessible, and to mystify and obscure with jargon and dense thickets of convoluted prose. Say something trivial but dress it up so much that regular people give up and just assume it must be over their head.

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        1. 🙂 I can’t say

          Haven’t even read a sample of the writing mentioned. But really, there’s a distinct difference between the spoken or written word that makes sense and vainglorious head hurting spew or the seemingly never ending word salad.
          Neither is impressive although often the person it comes from thinks it is.

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