The Culture Wars

In recent times it is increasingly common to hear a reference to the culture wars. Some politicians decry the so-called woke community. I’m not sure that many actually know what it is they are attacking. What is it that many fear? The intention is often to deliberately divide the community and consolidate what it is they stand for. What I will outline is an explanation of why wokeness has arisen in recent times as society transitions into one of the most significant periods of history.

Foundations of the Conservative World

For a little over two thousand years society has been developing its mental rational capacity. In the millennium prior to the life of Jesus communities began the development of literacy. Ever so slowly writing emerged and developed the earliest forms of education. As simple as it was it slowly changed the way people understood life. In Jewish society, a class of scholars referred to as the scribes, edited the simple oral traditions having been carried on down through the former centuries. During this previous era, the primary means of interpreting life was with mythic expression. In Greece, philosophers as early as Thales, began a new era of philosophical and mental reasoning.

Karl Jaspers refers to this era of transition from the mythic to the mental rational during the period of 800BC to 300BC, as the first axial period of history. Jaspers notes this transition taking place across the world including the Buddhist and Confucian worlds.

For some two thousand years the knowledge base of life gradually grew through the early centuries of the new millennium, progressing through the renaissance period while reaching its pinnacle in the enlightenment period of the 17th and 18th centuries. What is important here is that through these centuries the long period of establishing the foundation of Christian belief was established, which set the traditional beliefs of the western world. It is very difficult for the conservative world to change from this foundation.

A Liberal Awakening

The nineteenth century was a further significant turning point in human thought. Gradually the new world of science saw a dramatic shift in understanding. A crucial discovery in the early years of the nineteenth century gave further impetus to the move toward a new perception of life. It was the discovery of non-Euclidian geometry. Gebser notes that the significance of this discovery is highlighted by recognizing that it was an insight that allowed conclusions for a four-dimensional world to emerge. At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, Nietzsche spoke of the Death of God. Not always understood as intended, but intending it to mean the death of the mythic paternal notion of God. It could be said his explanation shook the foundations of faith and its traditional concepts. Darwin’s work on the Origin of species confirmed his theory of evolutionary biology. Other scientific minds began speaking of the world very differently from the traditional. This liberal approach to understanding life was certainly felt in both the philosophical and the world of biblical studies. By the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century theologians like Bultmann set about demythologizing the former traditional interpretation of faith. He encouraged the shift in focus from the historical Jesus to the existential notion of being. Scientific theories opened a whole new world of understanding on the back of researchers such as Bohr, Plank, de Broglie, and Einstein to name but a few. Liberal thought was shaking the foundations of the formerly traditional and conservative approach to life. Through the twentieth century, the liberal theological approach has been significantly explored. John Sponge has been one notable and popular writer of recent years.

The Contemporary Progressive Awakening

Throughout the twentieth century, the early development of the quantum world continued and opened the human understanding of life in countless domains of knowledge. Physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, social sciences, economics, and literature are just a few commonly spoken of. Most significant is the technological world with its cyber functions which have so shaped the last half century that Jaspers now speaks of the second Axial Period of History. This transition has emerged with a vastly new vision of life and with-it fresh explanations. All can be perceived as interrelated. Humanity lives as a dynamic whole. To isolate any one apparent entity from its context is to display a partial dualistic vision and remain caught in a partial perception of reality. The new non-dual vision with its comprehensive interactive whole has opened a far fuller understanding of reality in all domains of life, notably, spirituality, sociology, psychology, education, business, and culture. It is this latest understanding of the world that provides the foundation for life spoken of as progressive.

The expansion of knowledge that has brought about this vision of the world is so vast that our new era is spoken of as the information age and with it, has come to the notion of a post-truth world. This is helpfully illustrated by the Buckminster Fuller knowledge doubling graph. It points out that at the commencement of the twentieth century, knowledge was understood to double approximately every thousand years. This changed dramatically by the mid-twentieth century when all it took to double was some 25 years. By the 1980’s IBM estimated by 2020, it would double every half day. We are now so overwhelmed by information that no one can know all there is to know. It is almost impossible to know what is truth. Nevertheless, the knowledge we do have presents so many new possibilities and understandings of life. What is important is to grasp that the world is interrelated and non-dual. It requires an awakening to life’s great depth and breadth of such reality that creates an enhanced understanding of values. Some examples include gender identity and equality, racial equity, same-sex marriage, and treatment of the aged or those afflicted by disability. Beyond the immediate human experience, the issue of climate change reflects awareness of the world's new vision. This new world with its new perception and values is referred to as being woke. It is one of the signs of the evolving progressive world. Of the culture wars, one target is the politically correct use of language common in the woke community. The significance of such language is that it is the outward sign of a great new knowledge foundation that more accurately describes the contemporary world.

An Era of Crisis: Cultural Tension and Conflict

The conservative, the liberal, and the progressive stand out as the three primary domains from which people function. These are the foundation approaches of the culture wars. Wokeness speaks of the new insights of the progressive knowledge base approach to life. Many resist, but the world must move forward in its most informed way.

A challenging question lingers in the background of this variety of cultural options. Why do the changing stages of culture have to be associated with an attitude we call war? Culture speaks deeply to our identity. It speaks of the way we see ourselves in the context of our broad community. While many of us can add a description to who we are and the way we live, more significantly culture is really grounded in our deep emotional state of mind, taking us beyond our personal identity to cross a threshold of the collective unconscious. The archaic or primitive depths are aroused. The crisis of change stimulates our flight or fight response. We do whatever it takes to preserve our existing personal stability. The conservative, the liberal, or the progressive approaches to culture arouses the fundamental sense of who we are so that instinctively we react to preserve our psychic well-being. Gebser has described the history of the human mind through the times of major evolutionary transition. He notes that humans have always found it a time of crisis, so difficult to accept change. Gradually increasing numbers explore new ways in search of a more suitable future. The cultural story of humanity in change is deeply divided and engulfed in fear, but as history has illustrated the future will in time resolve its journey forward.

Building Humanity's Future

A harmonious solution will emerge. Today we await such a resolution. Some are dedicated to this prosperous future. Wilber speaks of increasing numbers of people moving into this future world of integral perception. He claims 5 percent of the population is forming this cohort of the population. Once it reaches 10 percent, it will have reached the turning point and the new world will increasingly appear and dominate. In their defense, the conservatives and the liberals will defend their deep and meaningfully held beliefs. Such positions need not be seen as wrong, but in light of the extraordinary new knowledge base of the information age, they are speaking from a passing foundation of knowledge.

Commitment to a Flourishing Future

In my early years of life and ministry, I was certainly very conservative. But my pursuit of answers to questions humanity has struggled with has led me to grow with each era of life to eventually embrace the progressive vision. I am committed to a world of future prosperity. It involves attitudes spoken of as wokeness, attitudes open to what humanity now understands of life and its people. It is learning to live in the world of ever-expanding information with an openness to new understandings and an interest in the contributions of others. It is the highway to a humanizing global community.