How Elitism and Wokeism Are Suffocating Gen Z

As I have stated many, many times, the world is an inherently polarised place, everywhere you look you will see polarities, ancient philosophies and texts stated this long before modern people became gripped by the modern culture war, and they will reign on long after we are all gone. Humanity will never escape these universal laws, and moreover, any attempt to do so has proven time and time again to merely make the situation far worse.

When I ponder over why the world, and it's inhabitants are struggling so much in 2024, my mind jumps to the recent influx of the two ideologies stated in the title. Wokeism and Elitism. The growing proliferation of these two pernicious ideologies is creating an existential chasm that modern people are being forced to either cling on to one side, or fall into the abyss that lies in the middle.

Whilst Wokeism is commonly considered a compassionate ideology, there lies an insidious underbelly that we wrestle with whenever we pedal it's agenda or promote it's ideas. It isn't so obvious to detect and I understand why many people do not, or cannot, perceive it, but nevertheless it exists. The reason it exists is because it weaponises compassion and mandates you to view the world through the lens of ‘oppressed’ and ‘oppressor’, without allowing any room for nuance. Therefore eliminating the possibility of someone from an ‘oppressor’ group to be viewed as a victim, and vice versa, rendering anyone from an ‘oppressed’ group effectively incapable of being perceived as a perpetrator.

With regards to the dangers of Elitism, we can all understand what that entails. The proclivity for humans to elevate themselves above another person or group is an inate part of being human, we are all susceptible to it and often require societal infrastructure to preclude our ability to exercise it. Historically speaking, when elitist ideology gets the upper hand there is a tendency to bring about some of the most dire situations ever recorded in human history. This is clearly not something to dismiss.

So what happens when these two, polarising, yet near identical ideologies penetrate the cultural zeitgeist and leave an imprint on its population?

You end up with a confused, disenfranchised and lost generation. They are confused because they do not know who they are, or where their place in society is, they are disenfranchised because they are labelled as oppressive, toxic and a ‘cancer on the planet’ and they are lost because they are receiving little mainstream guidance from those that should be helping and advising them.

Overall, it paints an exceptionally dreary and negative picture.

So how do we move forward? We move forward by understanding that radicalisation and ideology can attack from any angle and under many guises, we become aware of our innate proclivity to be susceptible to ideological ideation and we accept our capacity for discrimination and stereotyping, as well as our ability to demonise ‘outsiders’ and the dangers that can ensue as a result.

Hopefully then we can regain greater levels of societal stability and move forward in a mutually productive and ethical manner.

Until next time,

OxJ