To what, precisely, are we woke?

The late Mrs P.’s contribution to this blog used to be to prevent me overstating my case. I used to write it from our bed at home in Moscow, hours ahead of my target audience. I would then pass it to her and go make coffee. When I hit “send,” it would be on her toned-down version. The main reason I have blogged less since she died is despair. A secondary reason is that I lack confidence in my own restraint. I don’t want to taint worthy ideas with my own crudeness of expression. I miss my editor. 

I am far from alone in my weakness but at least I am aware of it. Calm, reasoned arguments are rarer than at any time in my long life. It seems we can’t easily now be friends with people of different opinions. A conversation that has flowed for decades without a moment’s fear or pause ended earlier this year with the mis-description by an old friend of Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide.” it was made clear that, for our pleasant evening to continue, I must say nothing further on the subject; not even to contradict that lie.

Recently, a family member told me she doesn’t want to see me again for a while because she interpreted my expressions of concern about her happiness as calling her a failure. I said no such thing. My admiration and respect for her abilities are boundless. I simply asked why she’d persist with a career she didn’t find socially or financially-rewarding when she could choose to do anything she pleases? If I am ever to see her again, apparently, I must learn to edit my every word as if in the presence of the Stasi.

This from someone who’d not hesitated to tell me that my mind was poisoned by over-exposure to “far-right” social media and that I had wasted my retirement in consequence because I hadn’t engaged positively with society. I spent a few days thinking about that criticism – and praying about it. I accepted it was offered kindly. I didn’t erupt and flounce. 

I still love (and not in the way I’m now required as a Christian to try to love everyone) those misguided friends and family, but the relationship is altered forever by the requirement of silence. True friends are those with whom we can be ourselves without fear. Besides, if we were all of the same opinion, what would even be the point of conversation? 

Most puzzling to me, these new social rules often don’t seem proportional to the importance of the subject. We have “feminists” who focus on mansplaining, manspreading and other such trivia while defending regimes, religions and ideologies that actively oppress women. We have #MeToo enthusiasts who “believe women” unless they’re Jews, or white working-class girls being raped by Muslim gangs.

It’s as if the concerns of a small privileged slice of society are now the entire range of permitted discussion. As if we have a new ruling class focussed on its own inward-looking, rather trivial regime of manners. The rest of us simply don’t count. We can be disparaged, slapped down and silenced with cries of “far right”, “racist”, “Zionist” or “Islamophobe” by people who – for all the resources devoted to their education – it often seems are just uncritically spouting received wisdom. They may be “woke”, but they’re barely thinking at all.