As a word, ‘woke’ is a culture war casualty. It’s a word that once meant ‘pay attention, your life might depend on it’ is now tossed around like a slur—or worse, a joke. ’Woke’ was originally a word of deep awareness and resistance in African-American vernacular; to stay woke meant survival, vigilance, and solidarity. But in recent years, it got meme-ified, watered down, politicized, and weaponized. 

Today, “woke” is quite the loaded slang term. It’s got teeth, backlash, history, co-optation, virtue, and villainy—all in one little four-letter word. While I’ve resisted being overtly political in my published writings over the years, if anyone’s going to unpack this word with wit, nuance, and no apologies, I suppose it has to be Miss Cynical Moderate Pragmatist herself, little old me.

According to Merriam-Webster, woke is an adjective with two distinct definitions, one much more polarizing than the other. The first refers to someone who is “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” In this context, this term only defines one’s active awareness and attentiveness to important facts and issues in the current moment. I’d be considered exceptionally ‘woke’ by that standard. But of course, that’s not how most people use the word these days.

The flipside of that same definition suggests that the term ‘woke’ is “often used in contexts that suggest someone’s expressed beliefs about such matters are not backed with genuine concern or action.” And I’m hyper-aware that this is often the case; many so-called inclusionary programs and initiatives are, in fact, often just vanity projects for PR and hollow virtue-signaling, without a true humanist core to back them up.

Now, the second, and much more popular definition, comes into play: ‘woke’ used disapprovingly to refer to those who act “politically liberal or progressive (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme.” Remember the Black Panthers. ‘Woke’ folks can get militant; history has made this blatantly obvious. 

So, while I would be considered very much ‘woke’ by the first definition, I DO have genuine concern and take actions through choosing not to blindly support liberal initiatives and programs for ‘inclusion’ because mostly what they do is simply reinforce stereotypes and create further segregated subcultures. While I certainly support the LGBTQ+ community, I find myself on the outside looking in because I don’t fit certain performative boxes or openly mock conservatives and ‘straight’ people in general. 

I’m not ‘woke’ in the sense we see right-wing nutjob talking heads and political figures rant about; ironically, they are just as ‘woke’ as I am by that first definition. They just want to be on the wrong side of history, apparently, as authoritarian puppets of corporate and religious oligarchy. The difference is that I’m a strict humanist who values all human beings, even those who would love to resurrect Hitler and let him finish what he started. I get where they’re coming from, even if their reactions and thought processes are far out of line with universal physical principles and generally accepted morality.

Meanwhile, I’m quite wary of the excesses of ‘woke’ culture, even if I actually generally support the causes they’re supposedly fighting for in earnest. In our noisy, polarized culture, only having this sort of dual awareness gives us the power to cut through the noise. I’m not going to sneer from a right-wing soapbox or march blindly in lockstep with corporate rainbow capitalism–which is a whole can of worms that deserves its own essay. 

So, today I want to reclaim ‘woke’ in its first meaning, in its original meaning. Stay aware of the issues, yes, but also don’t give in to what seems to be progress when it’s just a way to raise money for tax shelters and increase bottom lines for businesses who use these initiatives to cover up more glaring issues with their operations. 

I’ve been to more than a few businesses over the past few years who have initiatives to hire more openly queer people; it goes well for a little bit, then suddenly one day, all the queer employees just vanish, replaced by the most gender-critical backward folks you can imagine. It makes me think that all these businesses are just window dressing to cover up ownership that’s deeply bigoted while staying in business with a more ‘woke’ culture. But it’s extremely unproductive, and in the case of making predominantly queer hires as a ‘fashion’ statement, it’s actually hurtful to people.

Yes, I could write a whole book on this subject, but plenty of people have and are continuing to do that, so I’ll just go on for a little bit about how I choose to be ‘woke’ in a much quieter, but more productive way.

First, we need to ask ourselves, “when does Awareness become Dogma?” This is the real tension, right? At what point does staying awake turn into insomnia? When does fighting for justice mutate into performing it for clout, or enforcing it like a purity test? You don’t need to condemn the word to question its trajectory.

But unfortunately, I have to agree that the “woke-washing” by brands and institutions is getting out of control. Yes, we absolutely need to celebrate diversity and inclusion! Sometimes there are positive gains being made by some organizations. But in general, it’s all financially motivated. Especially Pride celebrations, which are organized for local tourism and getting people downtown. It’s not actually a celebration of diversity and inclusion; it’s just an excuse to get people to spend more money. Often, capitalism shows up louder than actual queer people. I’m fine with these events in spirit but not in execution, which is why I personally don’t attend them. 

I also just greatly dislike using the term Pride for these celebrations. That’s another loaded word for another essay, but if Pride were being used as a synonym for self-respect or group solidarity, I wouldn’t really have a problem with it. These events seem to always reward conceit, you know, the “deadly sin” version of pride. Solidarity is great and should be encouraged. Going out of your way to scream performatively and make a spectacle out of the stereotypes people associate with your particular group is absurd. 

And the funniest part about all this? These so-called conservative Christians are the exact opposite of humble that they preach themselves! Just like George Carlin said in his 1999 special You Are All Diseased, everybody is full of shit. People on opposite ends of the spectrum are more than happy to delude themselves in performing their own stereotypes that they’ve chosen to identify with tribally. It’s all frustratingly absurd to me.

While I do appreciate the efforts to better educate both primary and college students about racial and social injustice, I feel like there’s too much simply talking about injustice and letting our awareness of it give us some sort insulation from our actual lived truth. There seems to be a generational tension between those who lived injustice and those who discovered it in college. Entire subcultures go to war with other subcultures, because our consumer culture that’s dopamine-addled and polarized lives for the constant political warfare. 

Perhaps there’s a psychological toll of constant moral alertness that we’re all taking on, but there shouldn’t be because the very simple solution is just treat your neighbor as a fellow human being and just let them have their opinions and activities as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else. But nope. So many of us have taken on a sort of “parasocial morality,” where we’re “woke” if we follow the right influencers or “anti-woke” if we follow others.

I’d argue that humility is part of true awareness, about anything whether it’s social or scientific. Being too locked into your own opinions, becoming inflexible without accepting new information that doesn’t fit your bullet point list of things you believe must be true, only causes more problems. Many of us seem so sure of our social virtue, but then treat others like they’re treating us in return. Yeah, there are a lot of hateful things said about LGBTQ folks and entire racial groups, but the response is usually incredibly dismissive and sometimes even more hateful. Whatever happened to ‘agree to disagree,’ let people have their group-think clubs and just go about your own business? 

Of course, the real issue is that along with the societal rot of declining educational standards, the proliferation of mind-numbing algorithm-driven social media, and a rapid decline in meaningful work, the systemic racism and bigotry built into many social structures both in America and worldwide do need to be dealt with in a timely and productive manner. But again, these Christians that promote ‘family values’ yet hate their homosexual children or even biracial marriages (yes, this is still a thing) shouldn’t be the masters of morality. 

The contradictions present in the teachings of so many Judeo-Christian denominations have been obvious pretty much since they first came into existence. But ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ is great advice, long as you actually love yourself, and it seems to me that self-loathing is at an all-time high. If you hate yourself, why would you love anyone else? More secularly, ‘be the change’ and ‘it all starts with you’ are also good advice, but again, that puts all the pressure on the individual to change reality. That’s just not realistic. We all need to collectively understand that we’re all interdependent and whether we ‘like’ each other or not doesn’t matter, long as we can just coexist. 

We need to build better systems, especially in education and public safety and oversight for the government (not governmental oversight), that teach current and future generations that we just need to stop fighting each other over nonsense, be free to believe what we want amongst ourselves, and go about our days in peace. But unfortunately, capitalism has made negativity more profitable than ever. 

If we can figure out a way to end this bias towards negativity and flip the script, then we could all be ‘woke’ in the best possible way and be actual positive forces in our world. Is that too much to ask for? Yeah, probably so. But as ‘woke’ as I might be in principle, I’m not giving into the performative ‘wokeness’ because it’s not productive. It’s just fueling the polarized culture to an eventual explosion.

While I’ve never called myself a Social Justice Warrior (SJW, for short), I sympathize and even agree with what they are trying to do. They’re trying to bring balance to the Force, so to speak. But, no, the real change has to be a collective agreement to just be better versions of ourselves. 

If that’s what ‘woke’ taught on a regular basis, then I’d be at every event that I could physically attend. If ‘woke’ meant striving to be better humans together — less noise, more grace, actual justice — I’d be the loudest voice in the room. But until we stop selling empathy for profit, and capitalist performative ‘woke-washing’ is still pushed as ever, I’ll stay an armchair philosopher telling the truth as I see it. My goal is to help us reclaim awareness, not as a branding exercise, but as a daily practice. We need far less outrage and much more action, less performance and more patience. Let’s be awake, not just ‘woke’, and not at war.

~ Amelia Desertsong

P.S. To anyone wanting to leave hateful comments, they will not make it live on this post. I know it’s not me you’re really mad at, and I get where you’re coming from. You are forgiven in advance for using my article as a punching bag. Hopefully, you’ll likely better yourself with the conclusions you make because of it. However, constructive criticism, especially in direct disagreement with my points here, will be accepted and encouraged. I want to see your side and better understand it so we can all come to better conclusions about what will make society better for all of us together.