Brett Mason Show
Forty-Three: Is Woke Bad Or Good
Woke Culture
Pros of Woke Culture
1. Increased Awareness of Social Issues
- Woke culture has heightened awareness around issues like racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination, leading to more informed and empathetic communities. This has spurred significant social change and policy reform.
2. Advocacy for Marginalized Groups
- It has given a voice to marginalized groups, pushing for their rights and representation in media, politics, and other areas. This has helped foster a more inclusive and equitable society.
3. Encouragement of Accountability
- Woke culture emphasizes holding individuals and institutions accountable for their actions, promoting transparency and integrity in various sectors, including business, education, and government.
Cons of Woke Culture
1. Polarization and Division
- The fervent nature of woke culture can lead to polarization, creating an "us vs. them" mentality. This can result in social fragmentation and reduced dialogue between differing viewpoints.
2. Cancel Culture
- The rise of cancel culture, often associated with woke culture, can lead to punitive measures without due process. This can result in individuals being ostracized or losing their livelihoods over past mistakes or controversial opinions.
3. Surface-Level Changes
- Sometimes, woke culture can lead to performative actions rather than substantial change. Companies and individuals might engage in tokenism, making superficial gestures instead of addressing the root causes of social issues.
When cause based organizations meet their goal, they pile on other causes or gin up things to keep donations coming in and their jobs secure
- Duration:
- 23m
- Broadcast on:
- 06 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
Hello there. Welcome into another episode of the Brent Mason show. I'm the four mentioned Brett Mason. This is a podcast where we cover, I guess, society, religion, controversial subjects, things of that sort. Boy, we're going to dive off into it today. I'm so tired of hearing about woke. I'm just really sick of hearing about woke. It's interesting because things that are referred to as quote unquote "woke". Most things now. I don't really think, you know, are exactly what they're being labeled as by usually the right, although the right isn't the only people that do it. But I'm actually in favor of quote unquote "woke" to a certain extent, for sure has a place. I for sure think the core of woke is a good thing, but for sure bad things. And so, you know, I gave us a little bit of thought over the past week, took down some notes and researched some of the things that the right tends to go off on about being woke and prepared a little set of bullet points so we could talk about it in an episode. So here we go. First of all, to me, generally speaking, the topics being brought up that are labeled as "woke" typically involve things in society where people are being hurt emotionally or they're being harmed in a way in terms of access to benefits, services, you know, ordinary things that everybody else is entitled to. And just generally speaking, I think that the core woke is like, "Hey, let's just not be assholes to everybody." I mean, I think that's at the core is what it is. Now, it's for sure become more than that. So you have these movements and organizations that latch on to a thing and then it just gets driven hard and then there can be really pretty substantial divisions, fissures that happen, like things that aren't necessarily great. But at its core on an individual level, I think we also be woke. We also be woke on an individual level. I think just like many other things like BLM, you know, got kind of out of hand. You know, and by the way, I'm a -- but just let me clarify this up front. Huge supporter of the LGBTQA. I don't know. There's more letters in that now. It's plus, I don't know, there's like two more, three more letters on the end of it now. I don't know. Like, I support marginalized people, especially people that are marginalized based strictly on, you know, how they choose to live their personal life. But definitely some of that stuff has gone way too far. And we'll talk about this when I get into the cons. If I remember, hopefully I've taken good notes. But, you know, a lot of positives, I think. So obviously, number one, when a quote-unquote "woke" topic starts making its rounds or they're on social media or you start seeing it on certain, you know, platforms of distribution and stuff, it for sure brings awareness to issues that either don't get highlighted enough or need to get highlighted more. And this can be, you know, racism, instances of racism, like, very specific instance of racism. I don't mean broad-based racism. I mean, you know, highlighting a specific segment of business or society or government or something where there is this egregious racism happening. It definitely needs to be highlighted or it can't be fixed. Sexism, you know, any other really form of discrimination, you know, there's a billion different ones it could be. And this often leads to one people being informed of it that may not have known it was happening. And then you'll start seeing some change. You'll see some reforms and stuff. And we've seen this happen over and over and over again. Of course, it gets carried too far. And I'll talk about that in the con section, we'll get more into that. But I think it's valuable. If you think back to when it has been that long ago, really, it's been in my lifetime. And I guess probably, I don't know exactly when maybe halfway through my lifetime. But this Americans with Disabilities Act, that started out as wokeness, man. And this is just a simple concept that we have a lot of people in society that have lost the use of their legs or their quadriplegic or whatever. And they're really just trying to be what we say, we want everybody to be, which is strong, resilient, self-supporting, you know, out there doing their thing. And you just have, you know, people all around the country who are like, yeah, but I mean, I can't get in this building with my wheelchair. Like I would love to be able to get into my car that I've had this money paid to be wheelchair or, you know, whatever handicap they have, handicap, accessible, usable, you know, I've figured out a way that I can work and all this stuff. But I can't go to the post office because I can't get in with my chair. Like, you know, that was a woke idea. These are people are just trying to access things you and I are trying to access and they're doing their best in life. Like that's it. To me, that's a woke, that was a woke issue. That was somebody got woke to that. Woke means you wake up to something you weren't aware of happening. That's what, that's core what woke means. You become aware, you wake up to this being a problem. And so look, the fact that a person now with a wheelchair for the most part can go anywhere that that a walk-in person can go and get into that building for services or business or whatever it may be is, is amazing. Now it came with some pain, right? A little extra pain on the side of business, a little extra pain on the side of government contracts and stuff where they had to be modified. We'd have changes in building codes. What was required, it was painful. But man, think about how it has allowed people to be self-sufficient. And I especially find this interesting with the political right who's, they're not about helping people out. They just aren't, I'm sorry, they just aren't. If you're on the right, I apologize if that hurts your feelings. But y'all just aren't that much on helping people. You think it's everything is communism or socialism. But if you genuinely want a person who has these limitations physically or whatever to get out there and try to live a life where they don't rely on some type of assistance or something, then I think the minimum we can do is have it to where all buildings they can get into. And in that way, you don't have to help them, right? You don't have to do these things you're not a big fan of because you think it's quote unquote communism or socialism. So this increased awareness of these issues has produced amazing benefits to people in our society who's allowing them to live their best life in every way possible. So for sure, a positive you then become aware of or you have increased awareness of groups of people, segments of the population who have become marginalized. So we've talked about things like racism and sexism, but from time to time, you'll find groups of people that are just, they're just marginalized and systemically marginalized to the point that it has become a hindrance to them in the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And it may be, it may be a multi-billion dollar conglomerate has caused this. It may be government has caused this due to some law or some statute for whatever reason. But once these things come to the forefront and you start seeing it media, show up politics and other areas, this phenomenon happens where we recognize the people, but then we start working towards solutions and we understand there's a solution. You know, we all live in our own little worlds, well, living our own little worlds and there's things happening to large groups of people out there that we may not recognize because that's not our life experience. And I think lastly, there is an accountability aspect to wokeness, right? So this quote unquote "wokeness" and again, I hate the word "woken" because it has its connotation to it. But there is an emphasis and you see it on holding people responsible where it be an individual or whether it be a multi-billion dollar business, whether it be some kind of financial institution, whether it be some institution of government, you know, there has to be accountability for actions when they are directly and unnecessarily harmful to these marginalized groups or segments of the population, etc. And so, you know, many times we would see people wouldn't be held accountable at all in any kind of a way if something like this didn't happen. And so just imagine, you know, if you aren't in any of these groups, you don't have any of these type issues. Like I gave the first off the issue of being a disabled person and just wanting to live and have access and be able to self-system. If you're lucky enough to be in that position, it may not seem like a big deal to you, but that is our brother or sister as Americans. And it's not like it's one or two people, like it's thousands and thousands and thousands of people. And same for marginalized groups, if you're fortunate enough and lucky enough to not be in one of these marginalized groups, you may not comprehend it or understand it in any way whatsoever. And so what what culture, this idea of wokeism brings it to the forefront. So I mean, I think there's a ton of positives, a ton of positives for sure. And I see them all the time. But again, I want to go back just to the core, just to the very core of wokeism is having empathy, being concerned, having a caring personality towards people who find themselves in positions that really shouldn't be. And that's core, I think that's what wokeness is. And for sure, wokeness says, "Gone rogue at times." And so we could talk a little bit about that in the cons. It's cons of just quote unquote, wokeism, woke culture. It really can cause a lot of division, right? So it gets so fervent, right? It just gets so polarizing. It becomes a us versus them. And the them is always evil. A lot of times the people aren't evil. It's just that I've been made aware of it. And then I see what I see a lot of times is the us part, the ones on the us side of this woke issue push so hard that they now push for things that are rather than just being a remedy or a solution to whatever the issue is that they're bringing awareness to, they push too far to where it's injurious towards everyone else, right? So let's go too far. They want it to actually become punitive when all we really need is just push far enough that it's solution-based, not punitive-based. I'm not saying that there's never a time that you shouldn't be punitive. If somebody's infringing in somebody else or a group of people to a degree that it is repeatable, it's perpetual, it's egregious or whatever. Of course, there should be times, I think, where it should not just be solution-based but punitive-based to some degree. But I think for the most part, we accomplish the most when we keep it in this solution-based realm rather than the punitive-based realm. And I see this happening a lot where what's happening more and more, but you know, we see in politics a lot. Republicans call Democrats evil. Like that's all we hear anymore is how evil the Democrats are. And I'm sure there's a few evil Democrats out there. But by and large Democrats, I see they're just not evil at all. They just have a different viewpoint on how things should happen and they want the best for America and themselves and their families. So advice versus, again, it's not just one side of Democrats do it too. I think Republicans are evil for this, that and the other. And so it causes this rather than a place where we can reach solutions, it just causes this constant attack syndrome. So we're always in attack mode. And so it kind of pushes solutions to the side. And it just becomes a thing of attack, attack, attack, attack, attack. Cancel culture arose out of what culture is going too far, too far. And again, leads to this punitive thing. And if it's left in the realm of the court of public opinion, usually adjudicated on social media, it harms or ostracize people. It can affect their livelihoods all over. And this is the worst part. Overall, it's something that may have happened 20 years ago. And if you don't understand that people learn and grow as humans, and something they said or something they did 20 years ago may not reflect in any way who they are, what they're doing now, then you're the one that we need to be woke about. You're the one that we need to be concerned about. Now, somebody that had extreme views or extreme actions or something that affected groups of people or something 20 years ago, and they've just continued to be that person, then it matters, because now we show a history of well, okay. But recently, all too often, who was it? Who was the guy that was going to, he was going to host the Oscars or host, he was going to host one of those award shows. And somebody went and dug up some tweet he made 15 years ago or something. And they just canceled him over it, given no thought to anything he's done since, how he's grown as a human sense, how he's handled himself since. Like, it's a big problem. Cancel culture is a big problem. And this is another thing where I see Republicans touted a lot. There's like, oh, it's cancel culture. It's evil. It's horrible. You can be canceling people. But then I see Republicans canceling people all the time. They do it too. They just do it over different issues. They pick different issues and it happens on different platforms, but it happens from both sides. And it's definitely a negative aspect of what culture. And then a lot of times, we just see these token, you know, these token things thrown at things that really need solutions that are robust. You know, I think that's the one thing. When somebody gets so popular and it spreads to social media and it kind of comes a meme, right? When the issue becomes a meme, what we generally find is the solutions kind of a meme, too. Something that can be widespread quickly really doesn't, you know, address the core issue at hand. It's like, you know, putting lipstick on a pig is an old saying that I've heard. But you see this happening a lot with companies, but you see it happening a lot in government too, where they'll do some kind of superficial thing and say they fixed it and where really they haven't. And then all they got to do is just switch the quote unquote woke mob over to this new, oh, okay. And then suddenly it gets the same thing. It's widespread, oh, it's fixed or it's better when it really isn't. I was talking about earlier about how things go too far. So you see these, you see woke, which starts out as an individual thing. It's awakening to a problem. It's awakening to something systemic. It's awakening to something that existed at noble four and it happens on a personal level. Then sometimes it gets expressed and then it's, you know, spreads to four or five people are expressed to a group. But eventually what's what's been happening lately is you'll see a cause is born and then an organization is born. And so I'll do a throwback to the thing I kind of led with early on about this LGBTQ plus plus a a I don't know, there's so many I can't keep up with if you remember way back, you know, when I was growing up, like when I was when I was growing up early teens, teenager, late teens, even early twenties or whatever, I don't want to say the word here's, I don't want to offend anybody. Although I think you still should be able to say words if you don't mean them in a harmful way, but we'll spell it out F-A-G, right? If you called somebody that when I was 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, it was fine. Usually it was done in a joking manner or whatever. But you know, there was on a serious note, there was this real extremism and prejudice and stuff against people who were homosexual at that time. And you know, people who are homosexual who loved each other had no remedy. These are people that are good people. They found somebody that they loved and wanted to settle down with. They wanted to enter into a, you know, into this, into this bonding relationship with them. And they really wanted to get married because that is the dream, right? The dream is to find somebody you love and marry them and, you know, you know, have a home together and maybe have a family together on stuff that they couldn't. And so they fought for it, fought, fought, fought, fought. This is this is the beginning of this, this LGBT movement, right? I think it was LGBT was the beginning, or maybe it was LGBT. I don't remember, LGBT, maybe, in the beginning. But you see, you had these groups that sprung up, right? Some of them bigger than others. But you know, it's like, I'm not calling names. It's one really big one, right? One really, really big one. And then a couple of satellite groups or whatever that were also pushing part pretty hard for awareness and funds and, you know, there's great, you know, these nonprofits are born and then you have people on the, you know, you have the head of the non-profit and then they hire a few people on staff who are drawing salaries and stuff and they're doing good work for sure. I'm not saying that they weren't doing good work or that it wasn't still a good organization to donate to and support. But then, you know, after years and years, a couple of decades of pushing and pushing and all this kind of stuff. Finally, they do get the gay marriage, right? And so some of these groups, the whole thing they set out to accomplish was accomplished. But the group didn't go away. So the group is still there. And so you got this guy who's the chairman. You got somebody who's the president or whatever. And then you got a couple of board members and you got some people that are hired to do this job. You know, maybe you got 10 salary people in this big group that have been a big part of this organization. And rightfully so, because it takes a lot of people to push forward. But now, you know, you have no goal to achieve, right? They have no goal to achieve anymore. So gay marriage is legal. And you see this insidious side move in and look, this is the extreme end of wokeism. We probably even have taken a step past woke, wokeism in the subject of woke, but this is the, what I would call the far extreme end of what can happen. And so you have these organizations and rather than doing what they should do, just disband and be like, they should have a big party and go, congratulations, we did it. We accomplished our goal. We're going to keep this name and, you know, we're going to renew it in case in the future, we need something else comes up when we need to band together again. But, you know, you guys that were in charge of media, you know, you need looking for more jobs, no jobs now. And we all need to start looking for new places to go get hired. And we're going to start ramping this thing down over, you know, whatever the next six months. So in the next six months, we're going to start ramping this thing down. And everybody sees and aren't looking for new jobs. And then we'll shut the doors on this. But no, what happens? Those people like those jobs, they become accustomed to those jobs working in these nonprofits and these, you know, things like that. And so what's the solution? Well, you got to find something else. The fact you got to jump on board with something else. And this is how the T gets added to the LBGT, then the Q gets added, and then the A and all the other letters get added and then there's that plus is like, oh, we're on board with that too. And so they just start fighting for things they were never fighting before. And they start coming up with things to add on. And again, I'm not saying that all or some of that isn't good stuff. But I'm just saying, these people are kind of lumped in with these people on this thing, because well, you know, the chairman wants to keep getting paid, and they don't want to go look for a job. And the board members, they, you know, they want this that and the other and the person that's in charge of media and the person that's in charge of scheduling an event and, you know, that have been drawing paychecks in this organization doing good things for sure. You know, they don't want to get out look for different jobs and stuff. Let's figure out a way to keep this going. And so I think it goes too far. And so then you find these organizations that started out with a really wholesome, pure, necessary, righteous cause of now just piling on and things get out of hand and it turns bad. So look, I think at its core, we all should be woke. That's the point I'm trying to make. You should be woke. What does that mean? Anytime you can become awakened to a travesty and injustice, you should fully support a rectifying of that for your fellow American. You just should. That's what makes America great. So when we all do that, you know, one of the things that's fundamentally misunderstood about our country, our country is founded around an individual. It's founded around an individual. It's the rights of one. It says that you as a one are just as important as any group or anything else, you as a one. And so my me, I'm standing here, my rights, my liberties, my freedoms and all that stuff that I hold boy, I embody them and I pursue them with a vengeance and they are intact and guaranteed right up into the point that they start infringing on your rights and your liberties right up to the tip of your nose. I can go right up to it, but that's as far as I can go. And so once my pursuits and aspirations and drive and things that I want to achieve and things I believe in and all that, once they start to just leech over into, you know, affecting your rights and your liberties and your freedoms and your pursuits, that's when we start getting a problem. And so we are a nation of many, but we are a nation of one. Everybody has an individual right, which I think is important about our nation. And so in that sense, I think we should not over, not only stand up and defend and assert our individual right, but also become awakened to the plight of others who have individual rights and see when there are wrongs being done and celebrate when wokeness begins to happen around that issue and awakening to the problem. Thanks for joining me. That's so sure. Appreciate you being here so much. Try to tackle stuff on here that sometimes puts my head to a ringer. This one did. When you believe that you're okay with something to an appoint and you try to figure out how you're going to defend it, it causes you to think and you have to think things through. And as oftentimes does happen with me, at the end of me trying to defend the thing, I'll find out, you know, I've learned something about my position on this. Some of it may have been wrong, which is a beautiful thing. Challenge yourself, challenge your beliefs. And I appreciate you being here today. We'll talk to you in the next episode.