What are they Thinking?: Understanding the Mind and Values of the Woke – Part 1 Living in “Escher’s World.”

Life in a world where there is no solid point of reference.

M. C. Escher. Relativity July 1953, Lithograph.

In 1991, Christian singer and songwriter, Steve Taylor wrote and recorded the song “Escher’s World” for his short-lived band Chagall Guevara.  Amongst the seemingly absurd and contradictory lyrics he sang:

Through the passing strange I fell
To the wide-eyed opposite
My agenda was hidden well
Now I don't know where I left it

I woke up in Escher's World today
My mother said it was ok

Up's down, down is out, out is in
Stairways circle back to where you've been
Time falls, water crawls, are you listenin'?[1]

(you can listen to the song at:

)

If you are not familiar with his reference, M. C. Escher was a 20th Century Dutch artist who is known for his prints in which he plays with perspective in order to create optical illusions.  In some of his artwork, it appears that there is no up or down.  In others, it seems that there actually can be unending staircases or waterfalls.  If you sit in front of one of these works by Escher wondering how he could depict something like this, you start to get the sensation that he is toying with your very sense of perspective and order.  Taylor therefore draws on this feeling of not being grounded or living by standard perspective. 

M. C. Escher. Ascending and Descending. March 1960, Lithograph.

In many ways, Taylor summarizes in this song the basic feel of the world today.  When one looks at the news, it certainly does seem like “Up's down, down is out, out is in.”  Consider how the protests/riots of 2020 involved groups threatening to beat up innocent bystanders with the threat that “silence is violence.”  So, to be silent is violent, but to beat someone up who is silent is not violent?  Ibram X. Kendi, author of the bestselling book How to be an Antiracist, argues that the answer to the problem of discrimination is discrimination.  He writes: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."[2]

            Particularly for what is called the Millennial Generation and those younger, this is an era of rage.  For those of us who are older, this is an era of the bizarre.  Generally speaking, this is a era of disillusionment.  The promises of progress are failing us.  The promises of life getting better and better are not panning out.  The promise that material wealth is the key to happiness is in an empty promise.  This can be clearly seen in how Scandinavia is the wealthiest subcontinent in the world, and yet it has the highest suicide rate in the world.  The optimism that the world had at the beginning of the 20^th Century led not to peace and the brotherhood of man, but to the bloodiest century in history.

As we delve into this, it needs to be noted that in many ways to address this topic in a straightforward manner will require simplification.  Many might accuse me of oversimplification, but I have neither the time, the space, nor the energy to write a 400-page treatise on this subject; and even then, there would be items left out.  Rather, my goal here is to give a general overview to help give an understanding of what is going on.

So, how did we get here? Background movements: Neo-Marxism and Postmodernism: Two Rivers that Converged

A curious debate exists within the literature regarding what philosophical movement is behind what we see today.  On the one hand, many voices call this movement a form of Marxism often referring to it as Neo-Marxism, Post-Marxism, or Cultural Marxism.[3]  Others insist that this is not Marxism, but “Applied Postmodernism.”[4]  In fact, we are stuck in the difficult position of trying to understand and define a movement as it is happening.  We lack the historical perspective to look at this to determine exactly what it is.

However, if we are going to try to respond to this movement, we need to understand it as well as we can and define it to some extent.  It seems that much of the confusion of whether this is a form of Marxism or Postmodernism comes from the fact that it is in some ways a convergence of the two.[5]  First, it is important to keep in mind that it is rare that any scholar will be fully within one school of thought without being influenced to some degree by other schools of thought.  This means that the contemporaneous nature of the later forms of Marxism and Postmodernism will naturally form a web of influence on each other.  Second, as the two streams of thought have become dominant in the larger academic world, it is natural that they should produce a generation that is a product of professors coming from both perspectives and, therefore, a combination.  For our purposes here, this combined movement will be called “Social Justice Theory.”  This movement of Social Justice Theory, therefore, can be understood to be the offspring of the intellectual marriage of later Marxism with Postmodernism.  This also means that to understand Social Justice Theory, it is helpful to understand some of the key aspects of each of its parents.

In my next post in this series, we will take a look at the transition that took place from classic Marxism to Neo-Marxism.

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[1] Chagall Guevara, “Escher’s World,” written by Steve Taylor, 1991, MCA, 2, 1991, LP.

[2] Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist, First Edition., 2019.

[3] Rev Paul Dare, Christians in a Woke World:: A Call to Courage, Confession and Love (Independently published, 2021); Charles Pincourt and James A. Lindsay, Counter Wokecraft : A Field Manual for Combatting the Woke in the University and Beyond (Orlando, FL: Dew Discourses, 2021); Noelle Mering, Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology (Gastonia, North Carolina: TAN Books, 2021).

[4] James A. Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose, “Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship” (Areo, 3 October 2018), https://areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/; Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay, Cynical Theories : How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity - and Why This Harms Everybody, First Edition. (Durham, NC: Pitschstone, 2020).

[5] Pincourt and Lindsay, Counter Wokecraft: A Field Manual for Combatting the Woke in the University and Beyond, Location 1686, Kindle.