The Toxicity of Woke Culture

When political activism is based on destructive emotions, we all lose

“Toxic” is a word very much in fashion these days. In progressive circles, it is common to hear talk about toxic masculinity, toxic relationships or even toxic people. But calling people ‘toxic’ is confrontational and detrimental to their self-esteem.

Nobody considers whether some of the tactics of political movements may be also toxic. In particular, modern activists have weaponized destructive emotions like anger, fear, guilt and shame and use them indiscriminately. I argue in this article that this is counterproductive and, in some cases, unethical. By seeping themselves in an environment of emotional negativity, activists are wasting their own energy and poisoning the minds of anybody that reaches to them.

My education in political activism

I was brought up in the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei. After leaving the Catholic faith at 15, my political awakening took place in college. Those years — 1975 to 1980 — were when Spain was transitioning from the Franco fascist dictatorship to democracy, and the university was a cauldron of political activism. I was not only educated by my professors but also by my class-mates who militated in various socialist, communist or anarchist organizations. Meanwhile, my father got himself elected to Parliament in the center-right party Unión de Centro Democrático, which ran the government directing the political transition. In 1981, the wake-up call of witnessing a coup against the new Spanish democratic government while I was in the army made me realize that political activism was my duty. That’s how I became involved in the founding of the Spanish Green Party and in the struggle to keep Spain out of NATO. I even ran for elections in the Green Party ballot. That experience left me disillusioned about politics. There was too much ego, too many petty fights, too much negativity.

After coming to the USA, my involvement in politics became centered in keeping myself informed, voting, donating to worthwhile organizations and attending the occasional demonstration. When political correctness came into the picture, I knew it was bad news. Since then, I have watched the progressive movement become more dogmatic, more angry, more centered in group identities. The negativity I witnessed in Spain in the 80s seems to have gotten worse, but I found it hard to pinpoint what was wrong.

What is toxicity?

One of the core messages of the recent summit Science and Wisdom of Emotions is that well-being is not a given, but something that should be cultivated and protected. Well-being originates both internally and externally.

Internally, well-being originates in our intentions and attitudes. It is also important to know how to develop positive emotions (love, kindness, empathy, joy, gratitude, curiosity, wonder, awe) and manage negative emotions (anger, fear, guilt, shame, mistrust, indignation).

Externally, well-being depends on how we give to others and how we receive from them. Emotions are contagious: we transmit our positive and negative emotions to those around us. By showing loving-kindness, curiosity and gratitude to others, we increase their well-being and even more so our own. Conversely, if we are angry, mistrustful or anxious, we spread that mental state to others. So, it is not that a person is toxic, but that people can be in unhealthy states of mind and that those are contagious.

“In Buddhism, emotions are destructive the moment they disturb the mind. In psychology, emotions are destructive the moment they are enacted in a way that’s hurtful.” Eve Ekman in the summit Science and Wisdom of Emotions.

I tend to agree more with the Buddhist vision on destructive emotions, which is similar to that held by Stoic philosophers. Some emotions cause harm by leading to unhealthy mental states, even if they are never acted out externally. Neuroscience, using modern imaging techniques like PET and fMRI, finds that there are toxic mental states like rumination and catastrophizing, which exacerbate diseases like depression, anxiety and chronic pain.

Social movements can be toxic if they disseminate negative emotions and lack positive ones. From this perspective, woke culture is toxic because it runs on negative emotions and does not encourage positive ones.

Anger and hatred

Undoubtedly, anger is a source of energy and motivation. Denying the right of exploited people to feel angry about injustice is a form of oppression. Because of that, allies do not dare to say that courting anger is making a pact with the devil. There is a hefty price to pay down the line.

From antiquity, sages in Buddhism, Stoicism and other philosophies have advised that we should nip anger in the bud. Its intoxicating energy comes at the price of becoming unable to reason clearly.

Anger evolved to be a momentary emotion when we face danger or an adversary. However, the systematic cultivation of anger in politics turns it into something chronic. Anger is a form of stress — it raises adrenaline and cortisol — and science has shown that chronic stress is unhealthy. Anger burns our bodies from the inside. It is contagious. Activists pass it from one another, leading to a political culture steep in anxiety and distress.

Chronic anger also becomes indistinguishable from hatred. Hate is not just an emotion. Like its opposites, love and compassion, it is a mental phenomenon made of emotions, intention and cognition. Hate grows out of anger, but it also comprises other emotions like indignation, mistrust, rejection, self-rightfulness and contempt. Activists cultivate all of them, unknowingly building hatred. Some of them have even begun to openly embrace hate. Hate feeds an opposing hatred in our adversaries, leading to violence. Just the fact of hating other people is violence.

Fortunately, some people are making the point that compassion is more useful than anger, and that it is wrong to misappropriate anger when you are not the victim.

Fear and pessimism

Together with anger, fear is the most destructive of the six basic emotions. It evolved to elicit the flight response so that animals can avoid danger. However, it also triggers freezing: a paralyzing response so that animals can take advantage of their camouflage. But many fear responses are not helpful in modern human life. Flight can easily become panic. Freezing has a paralyzing effect on our lives. Chronic fear, manifesting as anxiety and depression, saps our energy and leads to despair.

Woke culture weaponized fear in several ways: as a misguided way to motivate activists, to attack its enemies, and as to punish those who deviate from its dogmas.

Using fear as a motivation tool takes the form of mandatory pessimism. Any attempt to celebrate a current victory or the successes of the past is immediately quelled for fear that it would lead to complacency. Conversely, any advance of the conservatives is blown out of proportion. Oppression is exaggerated by parading its victims.

This has led to a warped worldview in which things seem to be much worse than they really are. Instead of motivating activists, it has created a climate of despair in which many wonder if it is worth living in such a horrible world anymore. If things are hopelessly wrong, why keep fighting? People are even thinking that it is unethical to have children.

However, reality is very different. In The Better Angels of Our Nature, renowned psychologist Steven Pinker present overwhelming evidence that we live in the best time in history in terms of decreased violence and crime, and increased health and prosperity. Ironically, this is largely due to the social activism of the Left that it refuses to acknowledge and celebrate.

Yes, we have extraordinary challenges ahead, climate change being the main one. But even that is being exaggerated. Anthropogenic raises in greenhouse gases and global temperatures are undeniable, but we have more time to correct course than we think. Changes in technology, like renewable power sources and electric cars, are well under way. Now we know for certain that we are due to dodge the population explosion that seemed impossible to solve in the 20th century. We need to act, but victory is within reach.

Woke culture also uses fear to attack its enemies. Identity politics runs heavy on mistrust, promoting the dogma that people from different races and cultures can never understand each other. Some feminists cultivate the mistrust of men, arguing that, since it is impossible to tell the good men from the bad, it is rational to marginalize them all. Then they conflate hate and mistrust, as if they were the same thing. Fortunately, some women know better.

Finally, cancel culture is used to punish heretics and those whose behavior or suspected misdeeds do not conform to strict ethical standards. Canceling is real. It has ruined careers and destroyed jobs. But its worst effect is the fear that it could happen to you, and the chilling effect this has on public debate.

Ingratitude

“Privilege” has become the favorite bad word of the Left. However, privilege, in itself, is not bad. What is bad is that some people lack privilege, the unjust distribution of privilege. Yes, some privileges are unethical, like the ability to exploit the work of others. But most privileges are good. Like having healthy food to eat, living in a nice house, feeling safe from violence, access to healthcare, enjoying the beauty of nature and art, etc.

We should feel grateful for having those things, while we fight for others to be able to enjoy them. When the only thing that we are allowed to feel about our privilege is guilt, we lose the ability to be thankful for it and to savor it in peace. Gratefulness and savoring are important components of our well-being. It is unhealthy to turn them into guilt.

Denial of agency

One of the most toxic beliefs of woke culture is the idea that we are irrevocably conditioned by our origin, group identity and upbringing. We cannot change that because that conditioning manipulates us from our subconscious. Not only that, but denying that we have that bias is a mortal sin, a sign that we are not aware of our privilege and the systemic injustices into which we were born. The affirmation of our agency is the ultimate sign of un-wokeness.

A corollary of that is that intention doesn’t matter. If we do or say something wrong, we must confess and atone as dictated by those enlightened by their victimhood. Good intentions don’t matter, what matters are the misogynistic or racist strings that manipulate us from the inside. We are powerless to cut those strings. Our only hope at redemption is to let people from one of the oppressed groups cut them for us. Whatever we say is just an excuse, our privilege speaking.

This dovetails neatly with philosophies that deny free-will. Freedom used to be one of the fundamental values of the Left, but not anymore. Sadly, in the Covid-19 year of 2020, security became the goal of the Left and individual freedom the rallying cry of the Right.

Guilt and shame

Guilt and shame are two powerful human emotions that evolved to control social interactions. As such, they are ideal weapons to drive social change. It is okay to direct them to the enemy to force them to change: to the racists, to the misogynists, to the war-mongers, to the rapacious capitalists, to the neo-colonialists, to the exploiters. However, we need to keep in mind that they are weapons, are therefore able to do harm.

They should not be directed to fence-sitters, and much less to fellow activists.

Maybe you disagree with not blaming fence-sitters. Isn’t the inactivity of the many responsible for the continuation of injustice? Yes, it is. However, if you respect individual freedom, you have an obligation not to coerce people to join you in the fight. They may have valid reasons not to do so. Maybe they agree with your goals, but not with your methods. If woke culture is as toxic as I say, people owe to themselves not to join it.

There is a weird feeling when activism comes from a place of guilt and shame instead of a genuine sense of justice, compassion and generosity. People who do so have an air of insecurity, even hypocrisy. The fight is still about them, about defending their egos, and not about freely giving and protecting others. This shows, and it evokes suspicion in other activists. That may be why so many political struggles degenerate into a circular firing squad.

It is right to shame people for what they do, but not for who they are, or for what others that belong to the same group have done. Shaming people for what they do may get them to change their behavior. Shaming people for who they are (men, White, privileged) turns them into enemies, because they can’t change who they are. It is an attack on their self-esteem and their dignity. It is not an act of justice, but merely reproduces previous injustices by directing them to people who belong to the same group as the oppressors.

The right tool to motivate altruistic behavior is not shame, but its opposite, praise. Pride is a positive emotion and can be quite intoxicating. The gay movement achieved great victories by running on pride, and by welcoming allies into their pride.

Final thoughts

I do not propose to silence anybody. Quite the opposite: I hope that these ideas will encourage people to speak up and voice their opinions, even if they are out of the norm or politically incorrect. Injustice and oppression still need to be revealed and discussed. What I am proposing is that this needs to be done in a positive tone, without unnecessarily raising negative emotions. In particular, harmful speech involving rage, fear, blaming and shaming should be handled with extreme care, always mindful of the damage it may produce in bystanders and allies.