Humans Are Not Moderate

They often exceed reasonable limits and become excessive.

I was standing in front of the recycle building a while back, talking to a long-time friend, when this local lady walked by and barged into our conversation with, “there’s a couple of liberals.” Although I have known this lady for some time, obviously she does not know me at all. For various reasons known only to her, she assumes that I am a bleeding-heart liberal, which I am not.

I’m not a liberal nor a conservative, I’m nothing more than a rural raised kid who has retained his awareness and never lost my freethinking mind. I am not blinded with a closed mind and at times I like to point out the senseless and what I see as fundamentally wrong. However, even with a freethinking mind, we must watch the quagmire of influences that surround us. They can and will place stumbling obstacles in front of your thoughts.

Every choice and exercise of will has an influenced impulse which varies according to personal taste. Humans are not moderate, they often exceed reasonable limits and become excessive. These extremes are mostly a derivative of pleasurable things that feel good to them. Knowing these origins is seeing the keys to their will. Often these excessive likes are the lowest part of their nature. Appealing to this ruling passion, you will set into the motion of temptation and will conquer their freedom of will.

As we are so easily manipulated by vision, we wait for the conditions of everything is nothing, or nothing is everything. This is nothing but a choice of what you see. Look for the good and you will see good. Look for the bad and you will see bad.

It’s like putting on a pair of rose-colored glasses and filtering the world as we try to understand it. When you look at a situation through rose-colored glasses, you see only what you want to see. Therefore, your view of what you see is unrealistic.

Take for instance, “woke.” To some it’s the battle cry for freedom in the war of discrimination and prejudice. To others it has become nothing more than a whining and complaining four-letter word that has become offensive to them.

According to Gordana Lazić, a communication studies scholar, woke refers to "a heightened awareness of social inequalities and injustices".

Vox's Aja Romano, a cultural reporter in New York, writes that woke evolved into a "single-word summation of leftist political ideology, centered on social justice politics and critical race theory".

The political right argues that “woke” individuals are overly sensitive to language and actions, leading to what they perceive as excessive political correctness. This focus on identity can often lead to a division rather than some type of unity. They also criticize wokeness as interfering with free working-class solidarity.

There are numerous forms of discrimination, and they all are terrible things that go directly against the fundamental principles of equality and freedom. Humans have inalienable human rights. Prejudice, bullying, and endangering others’ mental health are simply wrong no matter what your beliefs are.

Because of the supersized mentality that has become part of who we are, we take everything to the limits beyond the extreme, but we often neglect to bring along commonsense. The once well-intentioned recognition of rights and wrongs turned into woke. The foundation and substructures have broken down and now have everyone overreacting and trying to over-correct.

It is not clear when being woke was first used as a metaphor for political engagement and activism. The earliest found use was with the paramilitary youth organization, the Wide Awakes. They were formed in Hartford Connecticut in 1860 to support the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln. The group spread rapidly and “triggered massive popular enthusiasm" around the election. The political aggressiveness of the group also alarmed many southerners. They saw in the Wide Awakes a confirmation of their fears for political belligerence with the northern Republicans.

Woke has been used in African American English since the 1930s. Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, used the phrase "stay woke" when speaking after a 1938 historical recording of his protest song, Scottsboro Boys.

Scottsboro Boys tells the story of nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white woman in Alabama in 1931. In the recording, Lead Belly says he met with the defendant's lawyer and the young men themselves. "I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go through Scottsboro, best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”

By the mid-20th century, woke had come to mean 'well-informed' or 'aware' in a political or cultural sense. In a 1962 New York Times Magazine article titled "If You're Woke You Dig It" by African American novelist, William Melvin Kelley, unfolding the misappropriation of black slang by white beatniks.

Woke acquired political connotations by the 1970s and gained further popularity in the 2010s. In one of its contemporary meanings, it began to gain more popularity at the start of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014. The Ferguson, Missouri, protests that year spotlighted the social injustices and police brutality following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown.

Over time, woke has come to be used to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities, racial Injustice, sexism and denial of LGBTO rights. A “cancel culture” quickly is in full force, characterized first by higher academia, activists, the media and businesses calling out and trying to stop all hurtful things

What really broke the woke divide wide open was when families became aware that children were being indoctrinated in school. Elementary students reportedly were being told that they could be any gender that they felt was right for them. Children of all ages supposedly were learning critical-race theory.

Critical-race theory emphasizes that race is a social theory, meaning it's a category created by society rather than a biological reality. It suggested that biological boys could go into girls' bathrooms and locker rooms if they considered themselves to be female. It also could edge out biological girls in athletic competitions. With this, woke gained the power to raise blood pressures and become a four-letter word.

Over the last 70 years, woke has linguistically evolved, contorted and inverted itself. The term has been so fast-changing and socially burdened that Merriam-Webster stated that the meaning, as well as power that came with it to rally, organize, and signal a common mission, has quickly flipped. Woke is being applied by some as a general derogatory word for anyone who is, or appears to be politically left leaning.

Woke is now used as both a compliment and an insult, a signal that you’re in the know, and a bullhorn to accompany outbursts on anything from LGBTO rights to book banning. Hardcore woke followers and believers seemingly are the first to resort to attacking and assertively rejecting beliefs and institutions or established values and practices. They have become masters of blacklisting, scapegoating, deplatforming and ritual humiliation.

Wokeism is just another platform to keep our country divided. It is a disapproving term used to describe progressive left-wing attitudes and practices, particularly those related to social justice and opposing discrimination. The aftermath is nothing but biased discrimination from both sides of the spectrum.

Trying to become free of deception and error within the communication of thought, we use words and conversation. It must be remembered that when you hear or see anything favorable, something that can be believed and trusted to reality, it too must be accepted with great caution. - dbA

You can find more of the unfiltered insight and the Art of Dan Abernathy at www.contributechaos.com.