"Woke" Is Nothing More Than A Rejection Of 2,500 Years Of Western Philosophy

This is a common theme in the posts and comments around here, but it bears repeating and repeating and repeating, because it really is an existential danger to Western civilization. You know; the best one yet devised.

It is a careful rejection of many things that have made us great, among them the Scientific Method, rational analysis, and, I think most of all, the simple skill of observation.

Woke Irrationality Is Undermining Civilization

It's a good article, worth reading in its entirety, but this passage encapsulates so much of what is wrong with our current culture. Here is one of the preeminent universities in the country consciously rejecting its own scholarship.

A variation on these ponderous themes is the kind of thing we recently encountered in an article published by Stanford University’s news service that seems a perfect example of largely symbolic idealism: “simple, but meaningful steps [people on campus] can take to reduce their environmental footprint.” Those steps consist of actions like converting lights to LEDs, updating aerators to save water, and reducing the use of disposable packaging and utensils.

Those actions are aimed at addressing climate change at the micro level, and there’s nothing wrong with them, to be sure. Certainly, small contributions can make a difference if they’re aggregated across a large population. But at Stanford, they seem to be missing the forest for the trees. At the same time the university encourages those baby steps, it embraces and encourages organic farming, which is wasteful of water and arable land. The university’s organic gardens prohibit the cultivation of plants crafted with modern genetic engineering technologies (including a groundbreaking one that was co-invented by a Stanford professor), and, incredibly, invited Vandana Shiva, an aggressively anti-science and anti-technology activist, to lecture to its students. Her rejection of modern agricultural technologies and encouragement of primitive farming methods in poor countries leads to low yields, vulnerability to pests and diseases, under-nutrition, and diminished longevity.

The dissonance between Stanford’s ostensible priorities—preeminence in science and technological innovation, and environmental stewardship—and its actions is a prime example of the schizophrenia of much of America’s liberal intelligentsia.