UNWOKED

Mercifully, Woke is dying in Aotearoa

The nation comprising the stolidly named “North” and “South” Islands, together with outlying islets, is reverting from Aotearoa to its atavistic former self, New Zealand. While multiple factors are contributing to Woke’s terminal decline in New Zealand, there is one main reason, which we shall discover.

Woke-Identitarianism-Critical Social Justice - call it what you will - was never home grown in New Zealand (Maori are indigenous, Woke is certainly not). Aotearoa imported Woke from the United States and Europe, mixing it with the Mandatory Mote of Maori Mysticism.

But what started out as a defensible entreaty to be aware of social injustices and inequalities, particularly those related to race and sexual orientation, has lost all shape and utility. As with any virus, Woke will linger in New Zealand society, but only in small pockets, and in more benign forms.

My brother recently sent me this “Unwoke”-inscribed ring. He’s a broad-minded, independent spirit. Steeped in literature. Wonderful husband and father. A hard-working liberal. Craves radical social change. The vast majority of New Zealanders, of all persuasions, are now heartily sick of having infantile, useless Wokeness jammed down their throats. The nation is moving on.

Internal incongruities

At its core, Woke glorifies subjectivity (feelings) over logic, evidence and science, in the context of an arbitrary pecking order of ordained societal oppressions. Arbitrarily “oppressed” groups are sanctified. Trans rights trump women’s rights. Any Maori ancestor imbues an individual with transcendent (and exploitable) magical powers to divine the mystical life force of any body of water.

But there are limits to how long a belief system that’s divorced from reality and commonality can survive. When ram raiders and other violent robbers are sanctified as oppressed victims and targeted for wrap-around care over traumatized true-victim shopkeepers, the general populace calls bullshit.

Grant Robertson shimmies effortlessly from Minister of Finance - doing more than anyone else to wreck New Zealand’s economy - to his new juicy plum number as Vice Chancellor of cash-strapped Otago University ($629,000 p.a.) , purely because he’s Woke, Gay, ex-Labour and an Otago alumni - nothing to do with merit. The Embonpoint Emperor has no clothes.

Good philosophies such as free speech endure. Woke flickered into life in the early 70s. Its flame spluttering in academia until fanned in the 21^st Century by #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter. But Woke has now consumed its unstable, contaminated fuel and is flaming out.

So, what is eating Woke? (apart from itself)

Authoritarianism

Most New Zealanders resent being hectored from on high about what to say, do and think. Wokeism is cult-like, characterized by strictly enforced adherence to prescriptive beliefs and practices, intolerance of dissent, and a tendency to zealously police the behaviour and speech of others. This form of social enforcement becomes dogmatic and authoritarian, and anathematic to New Zealand’s traditions of pluralism and freedoms of speech and association.

Parliamentary sovereignty

New Zealand’s democratically elected Parliament remains sovereign in New Zealand. We have majority rule, and Wokery has always been a minority sport. Our anti-democratic Supreme Court, local Councils, public servants and educational institutions can bleat all they like about the Government and the laws Parliament passes, but they’ll ultimately have to submit to the rule of law and the will of all us common people.

The ousting of the most recent Labour Government was a profound rejection of Wokery. The latest Curia Poll has National/ACT/NZ First at 54%, with Labour/Green/Maori at 42%. According to the Poll, New Zealanders are beginning to feel more positive about New Zealand’s direction. In April 2024 a net -9% of people thought the country was on the wrong track. Now a net +5% of people think New Zealand is on the right track. The Wokesters are having to suck up that bitter medicine.

Unaffordable indulgence

But the main reason why Woke is on the wane in New Zealand is that it’s now general recognized to be utterly unaffordable (always has been). Woke never took root in Africa, South America, China, Russia and much of the Middle East, and not because these regions are necessarily socially regressive. Wokery is a form of affluenza that’s fiendishly expensive to fund and economically destructive.

Aotearoa thought it could afford Woke. New Zealand knows it can’t. The Woke Cloak is Broke. Woke feeds on redundant wealth, but eats the wealth it requires to sustain itself.

In New Zealand, Woke took hold in bloated central and local government agencies, and in universities.

The New Zealand public service (central and local government) currently employs about 450,000 people. That’s about 20% of New Zealand’s workforce. It’s an astonishing stat. Outside of the public-facing, frontline staff, it’s not clear what constructive work most of this bureaucratic horde actually does on a daily basis. All we do know is that vast chunks of their time are spent at aimless meetings littered with Maori prayers (Karakia), DiversiDy, EquiDy & Inclusion Projects and Health & Safety. Anything to avoid doing stuff that’s task orientated and remotely sensible.

The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union has recently exposed the extent of whacky Woke wastage in the health sector. Take, as just one example, $650,000 for “Hapai te hauora: Breathing your ancestors into life” - something supposedly to do with climate change:

Indulge yourself. Check out the “credentials” of the named “Researchers”.

Or $150,000 for interviews with Pacific men and barbers to inform a “Pacific health behavior change framework in barbershops”.

And what of our Universities? Their international rankings are falling. The ones in most precipitous decline are Auckland University of Technology (thoroughly unworthy of university status), Massey, Victoria and Otago.  Predictably, these are New Zealand’s Wokest universities.

Woke is inimical to higher education. Academic excellence, on the one hand, is fostered by commitments to Enlightenment values of freedom of inquiry, rational debate, pursuit of objective truth, proper research and development and steadfast safeguarding of academic freedom in the face of transitory social trends. Wokery, on the other hand, is proudly dedicated to telling students what to think, not how to think, the ascendancy of solipsistic feelings over objective truths and universalism, bogus “research” and censorious stifling and cancellation of dissenting voices – all the while teaching nothing very useful.

Woke is sometimes characterized as a derivative or subset of Marxism. But this characterization is a mistake. Marxism is fundamentally a materialist, economic philosophy grounded in a conception of the optimal societal means of producing and distributing tangible things (food, infrastructure, housing, gadgets). Woke represents a profound – and profoundly naïve -  rejection of business activity and the necessity for any economically productive work at all.

But even debating the relative merits of traditional Enlightenment values versus Postmodernist Wokery is a luxury that New Zealanders can no longer afford. We now simply have no choice. Mired in indefinite Stagflation and with the annual interest cost of just servicing New Zealand’s national debt (simply standing still) now approaching NZ$10 billion (that’s NZ$2000 every year for every New Zealander), Woke is a now a crazy indulgence that’s far beyond New Zealand’s means.

Woke’s demise is not a mercy death. The public service and tertiary education Woke Managerial Classes are not going quietly and are fighting self-serving rear-guard actions against the Forces of Reason. Legacy media channels are howling at the moon. Internecine wars are erupting within Woke’s crazy ranks. But the Woke Carnival is well and truly…Over. Bunker down and buckle up. New Zealand’s part of the Atlas has shrugged off Woke. Who knows what the next brand of insanity will be. Rogernomics#2?