#wokeness & rewriting history

Like many people I have been concerned and irritated (putting it mildly) by woke virtue signalling and where it is leading. Too often it appears superficial and hypocritical. Many people - especially young people - have fallen into the trap of judging the past by today's standards and think the right thing to do is erase it rather than learn from it. They have also fallen into the trap of believing they have a unique insight - a unique virtuousness - which gives them the right to condemn anyone that does not comply with their views and their interpretations. The sad thing is it often undermines - it detracts from these issues being dealt with by serious people.

I have intended to write a blog about it for some time but have struggled for focus.

A journalist and writer whose opinions often chime with me is Douglas Murray. He recently wrote this short article for the Telegraph. I have copy and pasted it below. He sums up how I feel.


ARTICLE BY DOUGLAS MURRAY - Telegraph 19th June 2020

Historians will look back at us and ask: what on earth were they thinking?

Far more productive than this Maoist assault on the past would be to turn the exercise on ourselves.

How wonderful it must feel to stand atop history as judge, jury and statue-executioner. You can see it in the faces of the crowds, whether they are shouting at statues in Oxford or stamping on them in Bristol. These people are getting high on the feeling of being superior to their forebears. How racist, colonialist, sexist and homophobic all those people were. What did Cecil Rhodes ever do for trans rights?

Cultural conservatives have argued for decades that the decline in the teaching of history would lead to mass ignorance. Now we know what the stage after such ignorance is: mass presumptuousness.

It is so easy to point to the past and find it guilty of failing to live up to our current standards. Especially when our standards change as swiftly as they now do. Just yesterday it transpired that a “trigger warning” has been added to Sky’s listing for the Disney movie Aladdin. “This film has outdated attitudes, language and cultural depictions which may cause offence today.” The movie – starring Will Smith – came out in 2019.

But far more productive than this Maoist assault on the past would be to turn the exercise on ourselves. Every era in human history has done things we look back on and wonder: “What on earth were they thinking?” So unless we have become uniquely virtuous of late (which, of course, the woke think they have), perhaps we should perform this exercise on ourselves. What might we be doing that people after us will look at with horror? What statues that we put up might future mobs want to tear down?

Even the biggest self-appointed “progressive” might be able to identify some offence of which they are guilty. Perhaps the fact that we continued to rear, kill and then eat animals will be looked back on as barbaric. Why did our age not know about the meat substitutes that will be plentiful in the 2050s? Or what about our demands for fast fashion which mean our society buys unbelievably cheap, swiftly-disposed of clothes? All thanks to the slave labour employed in China and other sweatshops in the Far East. “How did they not know where their clothes came from?” a later generation may ask. When they find out that we did, I suppose down will come our statues.

Personally I think it at least equally likely that a future generation might look at the easy way in which our society views abortion in a very judging light. Certainly they could look at the push for euthanasia in such a way. But we will never know for certain. In fact we have no idea. Because that’s the thing about history. When you’re going through it you don’t know where or how it’s going to go. Let alone where it might end.

A sobering thought. And one that our cultural revolutionaries might reflect on. If reflection were their thing.

BACK TO ME
Douglas Murray has prompted me to come up with a short list. Here are one or two of my observations that future generations might feel "what on earth were they thinking"!
1) Being totally irresponsible with public spending and burdening future generations with our debt.
2) Failure of our society to face up to and deal objectively with, our problems because of an over weaning political correctness. (leading to breakdown in the rule of law and law and order).
3) Failure of many in the political classes - particularly the liberal elites to support the principal of our democracy by trying to deny the result of the Brexit Referendum. This had/has long-term repercussions because losers consent has been diminished as a result.
4) How political bias was allowed to develop at the BBC - the public service broadcaster - with the consequent lack of trust in their output.
5) How uncontrolled immigration was allowed to run causing untold damage to our physical and social fabric through inevitable overcrowding (in a small nation) and inadequate planning that results from no control of numbers. Most notably perhaps - the ridiculous assertion that millions of economic migrants coming into the country had/has no bearing on housing shortages (and the social deprivation and disunity that inevitably results). 
6) How casual litter dropping and the impact of plastics and tins have been allowed to degrade our planet. (Just look at the aftermath of music festivals or a busy day at the seaside. Shameful. So hypocritical.)