Why wokeness is ‘problematic’

The reason that so many people balk and recoil at the mention of the words ‘diversity’ and ‘decolonisation’ is that they are such dismal, lazy slogans. Platitudes and clichés are not only grating to the ear and eye for being repetitious, they are also offensive to the mind. They lay bare the poverty of imagination of those who deploy them. Banalities and inanities are the verbal weaponry of morons.

This week, news broke that the Labour government is to ‘refresh’ the national curriculum, to help young people ‘appreciate the diversity’ of Britain – including how to ‘decolonise’ subject matter deemed too ‘monocultural’. The public response to this was hostile, sparking anger, suspicion of dumbing down, and the belief that such an impetus is motivated by disdain for British culture and history. It also came as a shock. With so much rhetoric in recent weeks about woke being ‘over’, many had presumed that such vacuous verbiage was on the way out.

But woke is not dead yet. This truth was reinforced by a report this week about science institutions urging the government for yet more ‘diversity’ to modernise our ‘Western-centric’ school curriculum.

Woke refuses to die because it’s an incoherent, tenacious ideology – incomprehensibility being inherent to the allure of successful religions. Such creeds rely on insemination, contagion and constant repetition. This is why George Orwell had his beasts of England forever repeating slogans in Animal Farm. As a journalist, he had seen how dogma reinforces itself through unthinking, rote incantation.

This method remains the same now, as does the belief in the magic power of words. These days, parroting the refrain, ‘diversity is our strength’, is what philosopher JL Austin would recognise as an (aspirational) performative utterance: an act of saying something in the belief that this will make it true.

And here’s an irony. It’s the same progressive teachers who so passionately abhor teaching by rote, such as reciting times tables, who are simultaneously happy to repeat the bovine mantras of ‘diversity’ and ‘decolonisation’ without questioning what they really mean or entail.

Never mind the destructive consequences for social cohesion or education standards of robotically pursuing ‘diversity’ for its own sake. Apportioning value to a text or a person according to skin pigmentation will always be the enemy of excellence, antithetic to the spirit of humanism and liberalism. ‘Diversity’ is divisive.

The advocates of woke are so immersed and mired in their doctrine that they cannot see what it looks like from the outside or recognise its provenance. The mantras of ‘diversity’ and ‘decolonisation’ are manifestations of the philosophy of hard multiculturalism. This is itself the product of a particular Western relativistic philosophy that dictates that no culture can be regarded as superior to another. It was in Europe that there first emerged, unique in human history, this idea that ‘all cultures are equal’, and the associated conceit that ‘diversity’ in itself is automatically desirable.

Talk of ‘diversity’ and ‘decolonisation’ is the legacy of a particular strand of Eurocentric Western thought, and must logically cancel itself. Hyper-liberal relativism and narcissistic self-flagellation is the last word in Western ideological decadence.

The dying art of handwriting

Ever since the National Literary Trust issued a report last June about the decline of recreational handwriting, there has been a lively and informed debate in the newspapers about this seemingly moribund form of annotation and communication.

Much has been observed about the cognitive benefits of handwriting in helping us to learn, process and retain information. More affecting, however, have been articles and letters reminding us of the emotional force of handwriting, especially of others. As one letter to The Times last Saturday put it: ‘It is not only what is written that matters, but also what is behind the writing, ie, the aura, atmosphere and the warmth of the handwriting. This encapsulates the personality of the writer.’

In this spirit, I decided to send a couple of postcards to friends this summer. These were gratefully received. I have written a piece of fanmail to a writer I have admired for decades. I have even entered into correspondence with an old flame. I can confirm that there is something profoundly intimate and magical about writing and reading the written word – literally someone else’s own written word, with all its inimitable, idiosyncratic and evocative curves, slopes and strokes.

One of the psychological consequences of the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 was that our isolation entrenched a common assumption that our bodies are mere meaty encumbrances, vehicles for our ethereal minds and ‘true selves’. Disembodied communication through the internet and via Zoom encouraged such a crude Cartesian misconception.

As French existentialist and philosopher of embodiment Maurice Merleau-Ponty summed up in 1948, ‘rather than a mind and a body, man is a mind with a body’. We are beings who taste, touch, hear, smell, laugh and cry, view and apprise, vocalise and intonate. We are brittle, fleshy entities in the physical world of other bodies and other things. That’s why lockdown was so hellish: it deprived us of human contact, engagement with other mind-body conglomerations.

Handwriting is one reminder of our necessary embodiment. The writing of another invokes and represents the body and the mind of the person we hold – and held – dear. In the handwritten imprint of another on a piece of paper, form and content are inextricably entwined.

Against New Year’s resolutions

By the beginning of January, you will have no doubt been exhorted or persuaded to make New Year’s resolutions. My advice is: don’t.

This is not to advocate a defeatist or quietist attitude to life. It’s just that resolutions are based upon a corrosive, popular delusion. This is the idea that your destiny is solely and wholly in your own hands. That your life is perfectible, an idea epitomised by that risible entreaty: ‘You can do anything if you put your mind to it.’ Such unreal expectations will inevitably lead to disappointment. Life isn’t one big golden opportunity. Life consists essentially of hurdles, of facing struggle and disappointment.

Never pursue perfection. Never seek the elusive and feigned happiness of others. Their lives aren’t ‘brilliant’ and your life will never be. Don’t seek or expect praise. Fully expect indifference or silence. Don’t try to be liked or fear to be hated: don’t be a slave to the judgement and opinions of others.

Happiness is not a goal. It is the consequence of enduring, overcoming and triumphing over adversity. Only through accepting that life is adversity can you be happy. If you must make a resolution, resolve to be resolute.

Patrick West is a spiked columnist. His latest book, Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times, is published by Societas.