These are simple, inarguable, Objective Facts: Some are born significantly more intelligent than others; some with greater physical strength and endurance; some with genetic mutations that deviate from the biological norm; still others with an inexplicable drive to succeed, whatever the limitations of their condition.
These used to be considered the simple Facts of Life, facts unequivocally responsible for the disparate outcomes of various peoples. Yet in the absurd Ethos of the Woke, they are inherently unjust. This valuation is the result of the Marxist insistence on seeing all of Human History as a matter of Oppression. As I have suggested in several earlier blogs, this perspective was implicit in the rebellion of the 19th C. Romantics against the Rational prescriptions of the Enlightenment. William Blake, for example, saw the realities of the Objective World as inherently oppressive. Deemed insane by many of his contemporaries, he literally suggested that Man had every right to simply ignore Reality in his pursuit of self-fulfillment. This would seem to be the informing principle of “Wokeness.”
Yes, attack genuine prejudice and social injustice wherever they occur! But in the world of the Woke, any criticism of a person deemed to be a member of a persecuted minority is immediately, mindlessly, declared to be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.. This conveniently precludes the need to actually discuss the substance of that criticism while granting its target the right to live the most irresponsible of lives with no accountability whatsoever. The young person who ignores school, joins a gang, uses drugs, fornicates recklessly and ends up homeless is, in the bizarre world of the woke, Society’s Victim!
U.S. TV is presently flooded with messages from candidates running in the upcoming elections. There is a distinct tendency, I have noticed, for female candidates to simply denounce their male opponents as misogynists, whatever the legitimacy of their politics. Over the years I have accumulated a stack of newspaper clippings suggesting “conservative” criticisms of the ideas and behavior of individuals such as A.O.C., Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, etc., etc., are but veiled expressions of patriarchal arrogance. In none of these articles, of course, is the integrity of their ideas and behavior actually discussed, integrity, in this Postmodern world where every point of view is deemed equally valid, no longer a matter of importance.
Always looking outward for the causes of one’s unhappiness means never looking inward with any degree of honesty. Twenty-five hundred years ago Socrates et al. saw self-awareness as essential to both human achievement and morality. As it is a Principle that has been marginalized by the contemporary Left, we live in a world where even our “intellectuals” seem committed to avoiding genuine intellectual/moral discrimination on behalf of the revered cause of “inclusiveness.” Tune in to CNN or the CBC any day of the week to watch this comedy of the absurd unfold.