The Great Awakening

And just like that, it was over...

Rather than offer my relatively uninformed thoughts about the Israel-Palestine war, I want to consider what has become an increasingly recognized corollary to the events of October 7 and the vicious progressive response to them. But what is the corollary and what is the great awakening?

In his wonderful book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, (still in print after 180 years) Charles McKay explored the phenomenon of mass psychosis, the economic and social bubbles that are created by this phenomenon, and the effects of the unsupported fabric which drapes uncomfortably over everyone caught up in the nonsense when the balloon pops.

He dealt humourously with the Tulip Bubble (1634 - 1637) which embarrassed and fleeced several wealthy Dutch traders, the South Sea Bubble (1713 - 1720) which almost bankrupted the British Crown, and the Mississippi Company Bubble (1716 - 1720) in which John Law did bankrupt the French Crown and destroyed any argument in support of Modern Monetary Theory for those who remembered the history. The breadth of his investigations went well past economic folly and dealt with successful scammers, witch trials and The Love of the Marvellous and the Disbelief of the True - the title to one of his chapters. It is this chapter that has the most relevance to the insanity of the past five to ten years of modern, western life.

The covid experience was a major accelerant of this insanity and the incredible “disbelief of the true” spawned its own renaissance of investigations into mass psychosis. Hannah Arendt was resurrected, and Professor Matthias Desmet became a featured speaker to assist in understanding the phenomenon in a modern context. Following covid, the insanity exploded. The documentary “What is a woman?” became a cult classic by demonstrating that people across the West couldn’t answer the question while people in the rest of the world wondered why the question was being asked. When confronted with the question during a nomination hearing, the latest Justice of the US Supreme Court said that the question was inscrutable to one not in the medical profession. And that Justice is a woman!

I had developed a well-reasoned argument suggesting that the Ukraine War was going to be the event which popped the bubble of the egregious and near universal mind fart of the past few years. I may have been directionally correct but perhaps chose the wrong war.

A couple of weeks ago, British satirist Konstantin Kisin wrote a remarkable piece for The Free Press entitled The Day the Delusions Died which he started by saying,

A lot of people woke up on October 7 as progressives and went to bed that night feeling like conservatives. What changed?

His thesis, taken from Thomas Sowell’s Conflict of Visions, is a pure worldview dialectic. The horrific scenes of the Hamas attack on Israeli noncombatants, when juxtaposed against photos of young students screaming “Gas the Jews!” and “One Solution” even while holding the completely incongruous sign, “Transpeople for Palestine” caused such a cognitive dissonance that former liberals decided that they could no longer ignore progressive insanity.

The leaders of corporations that a month ago were busily filling out ESG scorecards were suddenly pulling job offers from Hamas-supporting graduates and publicly denouncing university presidents whose craven cowardice ended the flow of large alumni cheques.

An article by Drieu Godefrid suggests that the wave of antisemitism sweeping Europe is adding strength to the electoral winds of anti-immigration parties. How is it possible, people wonder, that such obscene moral equivalence can be supported? Did 500 plus Jewish civilians really deserve to die?

Even as President Biden gave full throated support to Israel, his chief spokesperson, in response to a question about rising antisemitism in the United States suggested that the real problem was the bigotry shown towards Muslims. In a later clarification following the uproar, she said that she didn’t hear the question very well. “Antisemitism” and “Muslim” sound virtually the same apparently.

The cartoon South Park has weighed in on the controversy suggesting that the Panderverse has made “all Disney movies suck” prompting Elon Musk to state that the “great awakening from woke” has begun. Increasing numbers of people are publicly declaring that Donald Trump was right and now it is time to ignore the vessel and attend to its contents.

“He is not my guy but everything he said was right and there were no wars during his presidency.”

What in the world is going on?

In an interview with Tucker Carlson, Mr. Nayib Bukele, the very popular president of El Salvador, explained that “wokeness” is not a lasting phenomenon because truth can never be subsumed for long. All that is required is a moment of sudden realization. In the cult classic Matrix movies this is called a “red pill” moment. Take the red pill if you want your eyes to be opened and to gain a shot at freedom. Perhaps we are witness to a huge distribution of red pills.

This great awakening should not be confused with a religious revival because the latter does not involve pills of any colour. The two religious Great Awakenings of 1730 - 1760 and 1790 -1840 in England and the United States were remarkable for how they caused dramatic paradigm or worldview shifts in those countries. These shifts arguably resulted in the American War of Independence, the ending of slavery in the British Colonies, and a US Civil War which freed 4.5 million slaves. So, awakenings and revivals can have significant consequences.

The awakening referenced by Elon Musk and the religious revivals of the 18th and 19th centuries differ in the mechanics of how eyes are opened, but they might be quite similar in cultural impact. It is too early to tell, but if the rebound in culture is in direct proportion to its previous fall, then we may be in the early stages of the mother of all paradigm shifts.

Jordan Peterson and a host of fellow travellers have formed an organization called Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) that is fertilizing this change in worldview. This past weekend they and 1700 interested attendees held a conference in London, England dedicated to laying out the structure of a new, robust model of citizenship. I would urge you to check it out and watch the conference videos. It is interesting stuff that provides a counter to the current steady stream of bad news. Instead of fearing the insane mob, here is a group of leaders willing to ignore the maddened crowd and put their reputations on the line with a challenge to “Cancel me if you will!”

We are in for some interesting times which may turn out to be epochal.