Here are two important ideas that currently exist in fundamental opposition to one another: “Reasonableness” and “Wokeness.”
In advanced legal systems, we depend upon the concept of “reasonableness” and specifically a standard known as the “reasonable-person standard.” This simply asks: what would be reasonable in, or what would a reasonable person make of, a given situation?
On the other hand, the “applied postmodern” ideologies that we refer to as “Wokeness” or “Critical Social Justice Theory” posit a concept of radical subjectivism and socialization into power-laden biases. In this worldview, there is no such thing as a “reasonable person,” and nothing can be considered “reasonable,” because the very application of “reason” is a mere application of whatever is accepted by the dominant power structure at hand. No one is reasonable because everyone is biased; there are only people who speak into dominant discourses or who resist them.
These ideas are wholly incompatible with one another. It is not possible to rely upon a standard of reasonableness or to defer to a hypothetical reasonable person if no such thing is believed to exist. Even worse, the reasonableness principle is wholly undermined by the further notion that any semblance of or consensus about what is reasonable is an application of the very sort of oppressive politics that our laws and courts in free countries are supposed to guard their citizens against. As these “critical constructivist” ideas, as they’re formally known, rise in prominence in our culture, they therefore present a significant threat to the very rule of law that makes liberal societies like ours possible — to say nothing of securing equal rights for all citizens.
It should be enough, then, to point out merely that the Woke ideology is both gaining significant amounts of power on nearly all levels — social, cultural, institutional, and legal — and is wholly inimical to the legal foundations of a free, liberal society filled with citizens who are equal under and before the law. In fact, just pointing this out should constitute an emergency for all classically and traditionally liberal-minded people, left, right, and center. The fact of the problem, however, raises an even darker specter that needs to be reckoned with as well: what would the Woke replace reasonableness and the reasonable-person standard with, if they gained enough means to do so?
The answer, as it always is with the Woke, is power that suits them and disenfranchises those who disagree with them. In place of reason, we would be given Critical Theories, mostly of identity, and our legal structure would have to be reorganized around these new principles. Their focus would be systems of power, as the Critical Theories of Identity, like Critical Race Theory (recently banned from the federal government by a Trump executive order, for all the right reasons), have identified them. They would begin with assumptions like that our system is white supremacist, heteronomative and homophobic, patriarchal, cisnormative and transphobic, and so on. Our entire legal landscape would be reinterpreted under the assumptions that these unjust applications of systemic power are permanent so long as the system lasts, and therefore need constant redress.
These critical principles would redefine our legal system and thus our society not only in a way that regards equality as suspect, but also in a way that deems it an explicit tool of oppression. This is the mindset we encounter when we read Ibram X. Kendi, writing as he did in his bestselling book, How To Be an Antiracist, “The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.” It is also the mindset behind California’s Proposition 16, which seeks to remove anti-discrimination language from its state constitution.
These critical principles would also include the idea that the only people who make any sense are those who have a credible claim upon having experienced systemic oppression, again, as the Critical Theories of Identity have identified. In place of a “reasonable person,” then, the legal system would corrupt itself around the notion of the aggrieved person, where the only authentic expressions of grievance are those that match the outdated claims of Woke Critical Theorists.
Under these assumptions, our legal system will corrupt itself into an identity politics-based replica of the worst failures of history, those in which some ruling capital-P Party becomes the basis for the law and its standards. That is, these assumptions aren’t just wholly incompatible with the idea of a free and liberal society, they are the guarantor of its replacement by a totalitarian ideology and Party designed to be favored by it. In this case, that party is the Critical Theorists of Identity, and under its rule, the madness and naked caprice of this passing summer will be but a warm-up act that presages a completely new Iron Rule of Woke Law.
I don’t know about you, but I’m voting for reason and taking the side of anyone who still supports it.
This article was originally published at Roca News.
15 comments
Has anyone noticed that all the focus on “feelings” over “reason” has been preceded by the ascendance of women in power–in government, academia, the corporate world, and even in the clergy?
Get rid of the women and this goes away.
I think that the woke system of thinking has infiltrated our legal system. How else could so many courts elevate the right to vote if secured by unconstitutional means other than by state legislatures to be of more important value than an explicit constitutional mandate as to only state legislatures choosing electors in presidential elections?
…. point being (sorry for multiple posts) the Wokeys are hardly the first to see the world as a theatre of war – it’s just a new iteration of a cynicism that’s as old as the hills. Bellum omnium contra omnes 🙂
Also – Wokeys seem intent on writing loads of new laws, rather than threatening law itself. I thought that was the main complaint – they keep agitating for new laws, not the end of law.
“because the very application of “reason” is a mere application of whatever is accepted by the dominant power structure at hand”
Isn’t this like what evolutionary psychologists say – forget lofty ideas of an abstract justice, it’s really all about survival of the fittest, or genes using their vehicles (judges and lawyers) to reproduce themselves – which is basically a power game ?
And what use is law without power ? The powerless don’t make laws…. ?
Isn’t US law based in large part on Judeo-Christian religion and moralities, and maybe Roman pagan ethics, which reason has been chipping away at for hundreds of years ? Opium of the people and all that ?
Don’t forget the Magna Carta and Hammurabi’s Law as contributors to the laws America has today.
So “Secularism” is not a belief system? I oppose woke ideology as much as any writer or commenter here, but I also oppose the facile scientism and casual dismissal of religion characteristic of this site. By the way, “wokeness” is not a religion; it is a political ideology. Like other political ideologoes, including Secularism, it can have some features of religion and can serve some of the same purposes for some people, but it is not the same thing.
Are you certain you replied to the correct article?
Please allow me to go off-topic a bit here. Has anyone else thought that government mandated covid restrictions and demands is a lot like some grand-scale social psychology experiment in compliance and conformity?
Compliance and conformity is exactly, by the way, CT purveyors seek.
The thought occurred to me; and at minimum, it seems fertile ground for original research in that area.
gmmayo70-Much work has already been done by researchers on social conformity and compliance. Solomon Asch, for example, is noted for his work where people agree with group decisions even when they know they are wrong! Simply google, “Solomon Asch and social conformity experiments”. Notably, his work has been replicated by many others.
Stanley Milgram is another researcher. He’s remembered for the classic experiment where, against their moral codes, subjects delivered “lethal” charges of electricity to others. Milgram pursued this research to better understand how moral Germans could agree to participate in the actual large-scale killing of others.
Hannah Arendt, a philosopher, wrote extensively about this also. Her work is fascinating.
There are other researchers as well.
Covid seems to be the newest rationale for coerced compliance and conformity. No doubt you’ve spoken with others who realize emotions are trumping facts here. There are many for instances. Some include:
the huge reliability problem with covid tests
the failure to understand that “reported cases” do not equal deaths
is that data accurately reported-in some states, “presumptive cases” are tallied with actual ones
covid may be uncontrollable, just like tornados.
Again, emotions, not logic prevail.
By the way, I do realize that covid is a real threat to three well circumscribed groups. Their numbers are small (relative to the entire US population) and don’t seem to warrant the full-scale closure of an entire society.
Oh, I forgot to mention that Covid deaths, at least in the Northeast, have been deemed reflective of racism in American society.
Robert Cialdini has a chapter on commitment and consistency in his book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.” The masks are part of the “foot in the door” technique to recondition a person’s self-image as a compliant individual. Then the conditioners can gain compliance with many other requests.
I think the end result will have an appearance similar to what would happen if you took Apartheid South Africa, reversed it, then took the Chinese Communist Party and put both reverse Apartheid and the CCP in a blender to blend them together. Obviously, those two political systems mating would produce horrific results.
Critical Legal Theory really started way back in the 1970’s. Underlying belief: the law has inherent social biases. See this Cornell article for more info: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/critical_legal_theory
All the CT in many areas has, for a long time, made a quite and seemingly inexorable march assault on enlightenment ideas.
Today’s old hippies didn’t vanish-they just decided to teach at universities.
So they plan to replace the existing ‘oppressive’ power structure with a different and far more oppressive power structure that is however totally ‘good’ and whose actions are completely justified due to past injustices. Injustices which will never ever be forgiven and for which no amount of reparation or groveling will ever satisfy the demand for recompense. Meet the new boss, far worse than the old boss.
The acolytes of this ideology can be forgiven perhaps for they are ignorant. As for the espousers who know damn well it’s BS and are just using as a vehicle to acquire power and moolah, I’m tending towards the Dalek method of justice for them.