WOKE ORIGINS. Can we find a method to the madness of woke ideology that has swept over the US in only a few years? Yes, says Catholic philosopher Bishop Robert Barron. We can find it in the combined influence of 19th century philosophers Marx and Nietzsche and 20th century philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault. Their often dense, complex writings have filtered through universities into our youth culture. And those youth grew up to become the main woke and DEI enforcers of today.
Firstly, Marx held that a minority gained economic profit only by oppressing the majority. They used the government, military and religion to enforce their economic advantage. Therefore, Marx promoted revolutionary overthrow of that minority by the working-class majority.
Secondly, Nietzche claimed that man—partly under Marx’s influence—had already overthrown religion. Because “God is dead,” all objective truths based on God as the ground of being had become obsolete. Without God, reason or morality, life became a power struggle of clashing wills. So the one with the strongest will-power—the Superman—would win. Many say this philosophy opened the way for Hitler to will his way to international power.
Without God, life is full of blanks
Thirdly, Sartre wrote that lack of objective truth, reason or morality made life a blank canvas. Nothing in life had any identity or essence, except what each individual gave it. Therefore, each individual could fill in the blanks as he saw fit. Without God to limit or judge him, he had unlimited freedom to create his own identity and make his own world around it.
Finally, beginning in the 1960s, Michel Foucault combined those three radical outlooks with his own. But he added that each generation had built its own foundational identities on the blank canvas. Now we have to do “archaeology” to uncover different identities of race and gender and critique them. Thus we can find out the ways that one race or gender has oppressed others, and tear them away. Then we will have a real blank canvas on which to paint our own identities.
The madness behind the method
Foucault shows us the method behind the madness. But there is also madness behind the method. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1). For “has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” How has the resulting woke ideology become both mad and foolish?
Because we can prove the truth that chromosomes make boys into men and girls into women. We can prove that hormone treatment can’t change chromosomes. We can prove that skin pigment doesn’t change job performance. And we can prove that equal opportunity doesn’t guarantee equal outcomes. Yet discrimination based on race or gender creates injustice.
But if anyone works as unto the Lord, “all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). Notice it says “with God.” Sartre and Foucault say we have a blank canvas where all things are possible without God. But not without air to breathe and food to eat. Who made the means for all that?
God can be “understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). Let’s deal with the way He made us and the way He made the world, and find His good purposes. If we try to remake it all in our own images, we will end up like Narcissus, in isolated self-absorbed madness.
Unfortunately, Marx spent his last years in psychological distress and Nietzsche in insanity. And all four philosophers died, but the word of the Lord stands forever. Try out His words, and you will learn to trust them more than any others.
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Photo: Karl Marx Monument by Soviet sculptor Lev Kerbel in Chemnitz, Saxony, Germany, altered.
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Tags: woke ideology, DEI, Equal Opportunities Bill, equal rights, LGBT agenda, spiritual warfare, Respect for Marriage Act, same-sex weddings, Rasmussen Reports, religious freedom, predatory lawsuits, demonic principalities, Marx, Nietzsche, Sartre, Foucault
