Woke

Historian Ahmed.

History puts it in perspective.

The term counter culture is subjective…and the culture is constantly shifting.

In the 60’s the hippies were the counter culture.

Before that it was the Beats.

In the 40’s they were called Hipsters.

In the Roman empire, the Christians were the counter culture.

(The powers that be) say that our country has always been a conservative. The founding fathers, they are conservative to us in 2019, but in the 1700’s they were pretty progressive for their time. I’m not advocating for George Washington or Tomas Jefferson, but realize, they in themselves are products of a cultural revolution called the enlightenment. The constitution was an enlightened document. They were progressives.

So, defining the idea (of counterculture) is complicated, because what is the culture now? Are we just counter to the conservative culture? I would argue the conservative’s culture is not the main stream culture. It’s the political culture, but American culture, I would say, is not conservative.

Being Woke is more culturally accepted than it’s ever been. What that means is again subjective. It’s not negative nor positive to say the culture is Woke. Because the new culture is Woke, it is cool to be Woke.

I’ve seen more people become aware. I believe a collective minority makes the best change, a motely crew, so to speak.

I’m for people being aware to the social situation but the problem is it’s co-opted by popular culture. It’s commodified… to get more likes on Instagram or such. So, it has its merits, but it has its problems. Nothing is purely good or evil.

There has always been a push and pull between conservatives and progressives thought.

Now we have this Woke culture and we have so much social media, and it is in the court of public opinion now. I ask myself, what happens when a person we know is guilty, we’ve seen the evidence that he is guilty, goes on trial. And we are all paying attention, we are all Woke, we’ve all judged this person as morally wrong and he goes on trial… and gets off. What happens in this Woke culture? The thing is, as a person who has studied the history of a lot of revolutions, I know that the person who wants a revolution is a person who has never seen a revolution; because it’s not fun, there is always collateral damage.

There are different levels of revolution, but we are looking at one on a federal level. So, you have to ask yourself, what is going to be torn apart?