"Woke" is just another way of saying "unhappy, anxious, and depressed," according to a pair of new studies — but which is the cause and which is the effect?
Before we get to the juicy stuff, a little science courtesy of the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. The studies found that having "critical social justice attitudes" — i.e., being Woke — meant seeing people "foremost as members of identity groups and as being, witting or unwitting, perpetrators or victims of oppression based on the groups' perceived power differentials."
That isn't your beloved Aunt Mabel who always has candy in her purse. That's a victim of the Patriarchy and she doesn't even know it. But you can (and must) help!
Because of their worldview, the Woke must "advocate regulating how or how much people speak and how they act if there is a perceived power differential between speakers, and intervening in action or speech deemed oppressive."
If I were to define Wokeness, I'd say that Skynet took vanilla political correctness and manufactured a cybernetic organism out of it — living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. It's the Terminator T-101 of political correctness and it can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop — ever, until you are as unhappy, anxious, and depressed as it is.
Very briefly put, what the studies found is that "self-reporting as woke was also correlated with depression, anxiety, and (lack of) happiness. Anxiety, depression and (lack of) happiness were strongly correlated with each other."
Men were far less likely to report being Woke — and suffering from being unhappy, anxious, or depressed — than women were.
Like this guy.
Are Hamas misunderstood? pic.twitter.com/Bl9vnMBoZ5
— Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com) March 18, 2024
The studies only covered Scandinavian peoples but the samples were big enough — and the topics broad enough — that I'm confident the results apply to this country, too.
How miserable is Wokeness really? Over at The Stranger, Charles Mudede can't even enjoy a lovely spring day, and he doesn't think anyone else should, either.
"Let's turn to this weekend's unusually warm weather," he wrote on Monday, which the Seattle Weather Blog described as "perfection."
"As much as I admire Seattle Weather Blog," Medude warned, "the last line in their March 17 tweet is alarming, if not horrifying, and certainly bad social engineering."
You will not be allowed to enjoy the sunshine because we're literally killing the planet.
While I usually love the New York Post for its in-your-face tabloid sensibility, the paper's writeup of the Wokeness study just goes to show you that the Woke are everywhere, ready as ever to inflict their worldview upon the unwary. Reporter Hannah Sparks opened her article by asking "Is ignorance bliss?" because to be unwoke is to be ignorant. She then noted that these totally mysterious symptoms for some reason occur among enlightened "socially conscious citizens." To be unwoke — based, as the kids say — is to be antisocial and unaware.
So I went to her author page to find that Sparks "is an assistant senior features editor and writer who has relentlessly pursued stories featuring diverse and provocative perspectives."
Woke AF, as the kids say. I hope Sparks is okay. But I digress.
I'm not the first to ask whether Wokeness creates miserable people or if those who were already miserable chose Wokeness as a creative outlet for their preexisting emotional pathologies. It may turn out that some people adopt Wokeness the way other people (with a yuge overlap in their Venn circles) keep wearing masks to ward off the evil COVID spirits and to display their superior virtue for all to see.
Misery — and the insistence on spreading it — is a powerful social proof for those so inclined.
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