So, what do you get when you combine cultish self-esteemism (which is really just a way of conditioning children to be self-loathing narcissists…but that’s another essay…) with helicopter parenting, added to at least a generation of youths trained to spend all their recreation time saving the universe in lifelike 1st person video games and watching super-hero movies and television, with the complete lack of moral structure, and no existential threat to one’s life, livelihood, or standard of living. What do you get when you combine those disparate elements? Does it sound problematic? Does it sound like much of contemporary America? Does it sound like a recipe for disaster sufficient to undermine our society and disintegrate our body politic?
If it sounds like it’s a recipe for disaster – it’s because it is.
The “youth” of America are struggling with a coalescence of bad ideologies, both political and pedagogical which have been and are being promoted by people who fundamentally hate God and hate America. The existence of such a fusion of destructive beliefs forces us to ask questions about our society. But the question is not, whether this cluster of ideas which results in Wokeism is destructive. That question is being answered before our very ideas every day. The question we should be asking is, “why are these ideas popular?” Why, in the wealthiest, most affluent, freest society in history, are people rioting and burning and looting to “protest” the evils of our society? Moreover, why is it, in large part, those who have most benefited from this system [1] who are the most virulent in their speech and violent with their actions? Why are wealthy elites burning cities?
The answer is pretty simple, though the explanation is a bit more complex. The answer is: because their lives lack meaning. Why they lack meaning takes some unpacking. So, let’s unpack it. Let’s begin with the thesis that: wealthy, predominantly white, urban and suburban, well-educated, unemployed or white collar youths are attracted to the philosophy that America is fundamentally evil and racist because it gives them a cause and a crusade which will validate their lives, while simultaneously, costing them nothing. Because let’s not play games. Wokeism is on a crusade. But in this crusade they have everything (or so they think) to gain and nothing to lose. So, in a sense, it’s a crusade because they have a religiously driven desire to conquer. But in another sense it isn’t a crusade because crusades involve risk to persons and property.
I mean, crusades are fun and all, but, historically, crusades are costly. Especially if there are a lot of people with scimitars trying to rain on your parade. Literally…by raining arrows on you when you try to parade into the holy land. Real crusades where you face a real and entrenched enemy can come at a great personal cost. But crusading, in a video-game fashion, where there are no real consequences for your actions is fun – especially when you can actually effect change without incurring any risk! Not only not incurring risk, but being lauded for committing deeply antisocial and criminal behavior.
So, we have to begin with the idea that burning down cities and looting stores and bullying people into expressing political slogans is a religious crusade that Wokeists are engaged in. But why? Well they’re committing acts of terrorism because committing acts of terrorism is actually very fun. It’s fun in the same way that a rapist or home invader has fun. It’s the demonic (and I use that word literally) the demonic fun of exerting power over another, especially if one feeling virtuous insodoing. Perhaps for rapists their taking their “justified” rage out against women. For the home invader they’re “getting theirs”. People, reasonable people, nice people, decent people, these people ask, “how can these kids burn down their own cities?” But that’s really a question that completely misses the point. The people who don’t understand the violence don’t understand it because they presume that all people are good, nice, decent people who would prefer to build than destroy. It’s a stupid question.
This should be no mystery to anyone who has raised or is raising children...Or anyone who has been a human child. Or anyone who has heard of human beings at all, ever. Let’s give an example: If child 1 builds a tower out of blocks what does child 2 do? Let’s make this multiple choice (Amazing Amy would like this game). Will child 2 (the child who witnesses his sibling or playmate build something): A) Praise child 1 for their effort and seek to participate in the improvement of the block tower B) Ignore child 1 and continue to entertain him/herself with something else C) Go full on Godzilla-mode and destroy for the sheer joy of destruction and spoiling someone else’s hard work? Take your time. If you don’t know the correct answer, ask the parents of children ages 18 months to 5. The answer is obvious. Child 2 will, the vast majority of the time, destroy for the joy of destruction. Children have to be TRAINED to cooperate. Why? Because cooperation is unnatural and a lot less fun (at least in the short term) than destruction. Breaking stuff gives you the immediate adrenaline shot and also some of that sweet, sweet dopamine. Constructive cooperative play creates long term satisfaction – but not all the juicy, chemically, feels that come from rampaging.
It shouldn’t surprise us that young kids are burning cities – because burning cities is fun! It doesn’t result in long term satisfaction, but children have to be TRAINED to ignore impulses and seek long-term satisfaction.
Which leads us to another aspect of WHY these kids’ lives are meaningless. The fact that antisocial behavior is fun engaged in by the antisocial is an evidence that their lives are meaningless, but doesn’t, in itself, go so very far in explaining the WHY? So, let’s ask WHY these people are so antisocial? Why are their lives meaningless?
I blame the parents.
Seriously.
Now, look, I know that even great parents can have a kid go off the rails. It does happen. And that’s why, when looking at individual exhibits of antisocial turdery amongst our youths it’s unwise to blame the parents as the certain cause of the behavior. But human behavior, while hard to predict and diagnose on an individual basis, is extremely predictable in groups (if you actually understand the mechanisms which drive human behavior, that is). And statistics exist BECAUSE people, while highly unpredictable at an individual level are highly predictable in large groups (also, individuals are predictable in iterative behavior…an important thing to remember about human nature — these are often called habits). So, sure, there are probably outliers who had good parents, but on the whole, the reason these people are burning down cities and advocating the overthrow of the nation largely comes down to “their raisin’.”
So, what kinds of parents did these terrorists have? By the way, I will not cease to call them terrorists. They are trying to effectuate political change by acts of violence directed at civilian and military targets intended to create fear. If you doubt, at all that this is political blackmail through violence (otherwise known as TERRORISM) then read this.
Well, we already know the kinds of parents they had, don’t we? The kinds of parents who gave them lots of material things and never cared for their souls and spirits? The kinds of parents who wrote their college entry essays for them but never prayed with them. The kids of parents who never read the bible to their children but bought them iphones. They’re the kinds of parents who never spanked but hosted parties where kids drank and smoked pot in their basement. They’re the kinds of parents who bought their sons the most egregiously violent games imaginable and put their daughters in bikinis from the time they could toddle. They’re the kinds of parents who never missed a soccer game and never made it to church. They’re the kinds of parents who never spanked and tried, oh so desperately, to be the “cool mom”. Absentee fathers and margarita moms who gave their children everything except a framework for living to please God and to have meaning in their lives. Because, despite what many Americans believe – it is possible to gain the whole world and lose your soul. And I ask you, what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
The problem with living as though there is no God, is not that God is offended – although that is a very important part of the problem. The more immediate and existential aspect of the problem is that it denies the primary purpose for which we have been created: which is loving fellowship with God. We were made to love and be loved by God. We were made to enter into the community of the Trinity, by inclusion into Christ. We are called to PARTICIPATE IN THE DIVINE NATURE! God’s calling for humanity is bigger than “worshipping God and enjoying Him forever.” Yes, the Westministerians were right. It’s not less than that, but it is far more than that. It is Oneness with God!
And in this world, when we seek God in Christ, we get to have a foretaste of the consummation of our union with God. We get to experience what giving eternal value and meaning and purpose to our actions feels like. We get to experience what it’s like to live with a τελός – a final end for which we live. Because the truth is that all things are moving in a direction. All things are either moving eternally closer to the Person of God – this is what it is like to be in Heaven. Or they are eternally moving farther (I mean farther not further…I know the difference) from the Person of God – this is what it is like to be in Hell.
Heaven is where God and Godliness and Godlikeness pervade all things and eternally become more Godish. Hell is where God is not, and ungodliness and ungodlikeness pervades all things and eternally become more unGodish. Heaven is the perpetual expansion of God’s personality through all of Creation. Hell is the isolation of the self from all other selves. Heaven is the place where every tear is wiped away by God Himself. Hell is where there is endless weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The problem with living as though there were no God is that you are already on the road to Hell – indeed you’re making your own little version of Hell, and many find, to their sorrow, that Hell is Hellish. When life has no purpose in the God who created it, you have to invent one.
Have you ever noticed that some of the most “successful” people are godless people whose personal lives are abominable, pathetic tragedies? Read some biographies. People generally become great for one of two reasons: their desire to glorify God through work; or their desire to supplant God and narcotize the soul with achievement. Now, for the generation that grew up watching the Brady Bunch, you could supplant God with a $100k salary and an upgrade-wife. But for a generation raised by Playstation the stakes are higher. When you can save the universe between bouts of compulsive masturbation and pot smoking, you get some pretty high expectations of what you’re capable of and what kinds of things will satisfy you. Add to that pornography and the hook-up culture, which erased the prime motivator for many men to grow up and get a job and take on the most rudimentary functions of manhood to become the kind of man a woman would want to have babies with. Why become a real man when porn and girls trying desperately to be a “cool girl” will give you all the sexual satisfaction and masculine affirmation you could ever desire?! Add to that parents who’ve been telling little Johnny that he was a little world-changer from birth, that everything is the [teachers’, coaches’, polices’] fault. Add to that the complete lack of anything meaningful to do – well, nothing meaningful that appeals to an effete and self-centered poli-sci dilettante. What do you get? You get a meaningless life. And you get a telic-vacuum.
The telic-vacuum wants to be filled even more desperately than the “God-shaped hole” because the “God-shaped hole” is often experienced through the telic-vacuum. People’s lives need purpose. And if people have been socialized to live Godless lives and also to have expectations for themselves so great that the run-of-the-mill delusions don’t work, then you have a psycho-spiritual crisis (incidentally I think this leads to a lot of psychoses we see among youngsters…but, again, another essay…). No, if you reject God and reject the petty-bourgeoisie distractions then you need some kind of world changing crusade to give your life meaning. A 401k and getting hammered in Cabo isn’t gonna cut it. You need something revolutionary.
Well, guess what. There’s a revolution out there and Uncle Karl Wants You! Is communism sufficient to give life meaning? Is Antiracism? Is Wokeism? No. Of course not. Nothing but living for God is [2]!
But, like all forms of legalism, when you don’t find any satisfaction in Wokeism it’s because you don’t have enough faith. If only you cared more, you’d do better. If only you REALLY confronted your racism. If only you really denied your privilege. If only you…get the picture. Wokeism is atheistic legalism. It promises rest for the weary by adding a cruel and cumbersome load. Its yoke is not easy and its burden is not light. Like Bunyan’s Moses it knows not how to show mercy. All it knows it “social” justice.
And like all idols, Wokeism disappoints. And like all idols, when people see that their idol has failed them, they do 1 of 3 things. They hate the idol, they hate themselves, or they live in denial. Or sometimes they do 2 of those 3…sometimes all 3! Wokeists will never find deep and abiding satisfaction in Wokeism. Sure, maybe it’ll get by for a few months or years. But eventually, that telic-vacuum will keep growing because legalism can never give a man a purpose worthy of living. And eventually the Wokeist will have to confront their shattered and meaningless life and either repent and turn to God, or dive even deeper into their godlessness.
But one thing I know, and I know plainly and clearly. The destruction: rioting, looting, murder, terrorism, blackmail, intimidation, harassment, and all the rest — it might be very satisfying in the short term. But in the long term, like everything that isn’t God, it will be subject to the law of diminishing returns. So the low-rent Apollyons of our society will either give up their madness, and turn to God, or they’ll run to another distraction to assuage the pathetic and pitiful emptiness of their lives…or they’ll dive in even deeper, growing more puerile, more violent, more radical, and more satanic. Because people are always and forever becoming more like themselves. They are either becoming more like children of God. Or they are becoming more like children of Satan. And those who are becoming more like God are having their most mundane actions infused with eternal weight and purpose. And those who are becoming more like Satan are finding that the best laid plans of mice and men are nothing more than empty and hollow pits full of nothing but unfulfilled longing – full of wailing and gnashing of teeth.
NOTES…AT THE FOOT…FOOTNOTES:
[1] “Systems” is a word fraught with semantic overload. When anyone talks about systems — you should ask them to define “system”. Not to be a jerk, but for clarification. Also, maybe to be a jerk. Multitasking is important.
[2] This, of course, is the whole point of Anna Karenina — a book so often misunderstood as a piece about the “fallen woman.” It is. She is the eponymous anti-heroin. But Anna is a foil to Levin. She shows what living for self leads to for a woman in her position in society. Living for self destroys everything around her — including herself. Levin is the hero because Levin grows. He learns to live for God, which to him seems profound, but to all the happy and satisfied people in the book, people like Kitty — isn’t the grand conclusion of their lives, but its very foundation. And thus Levin, the great introspective, forward thinker, finds himself truly understanding the peasant and Kitty only at the end of his searching by coming to the very beginning of their worlds.
I mean, I know that this piece wasn’t about Tolstoy, but if we can’t talk about Tolstoy at the end of a 2,500 word essay about telic-vacua when can we? Actually…there are probably a lot better and more appropriate places to talk about Tolstoy. Whatevs.