The National Language Centre has finally translated into Latvian the terms "woke" and "wokeism", which are popular around the world to describe viewing all issues through the prism of racism and inequality (of the oppressed/oppressors).
At first glance, one might think that the task of linguists was extremely easy - "woke" means "awake". So - atmoda (awakening). However, in Latvian, the word - Atmoda - is already taken, and with a capital letter. Atmoda is the most important period in the recent history of the Latvian people - the struggle for the restoration of independence in 1987-1991. To use this honorable word to describe the revival of the Marxist movement would be to blaspheme this period, sacred to every Latvian. Linguists have now invented another word - sociālpolitiski atjēdzīgs (socio-politically comprehending) and sociālpolitiskā atjēdzība (socio-political comprehensiveness).
In my opinion, these terms are badly Latvianized. Even more. They have been conceptually Latvianized in a completely wrong way. I will explain why. Because the newly coined terms are closely linked to the word atjēgties (to come to one's senses). That is, the gaining of enlightenment after being under the power of delusion for a long time. From the point of view of the "woke people", everything is correct: the world has been under the delusion of white cisgender patriarchy for a long time. Now we must break free from these delusions by swimming out into the open ocean of enlightenment. But, objectively assessing the situation, we should rather speak not of coming to one's senses, but on the contrary - of being led astray.
Once, several years ago, I started watching an unremarkable, even a mildly boring film on television, in which nothing really happens, but for some reason, the film immediately caught my attention. Set in Los Angeles, the film alternates leisurely between episodes involving people of different races, backgrounds and social statuses, whose paths cross from time to time.
These characters include two African Americans, one of whom is an active "fighter" for black rights. The word "fighter" should be put in quotation marks because, in reality, he is a common thug who bases his criminal actions on racial theory. The two are walking down the street and a bus passes by. "You have no idea why they put them great big windows on the sides of buses, do you?" the activist asks his friend, who is not yet familiar with the racial theory. The latter shakes his head. "One reason only. To humiliate the people of color who are reduced to ridin' on 'em."
When I was in Los Angeles a few years later, I noticed with some surprise that the windows of the buses were blacked out. Probably to protect them from the sun, but just as well to avoid the accusations of the "socio-politically comprehending" activist depicted in the film. It was only later, after watching this film, which made a very strong impression on me overall, that I found out that it was Paul Haggis's Crash (2004), which won the Best Picture Oscar in 2005, beating that year's favorite, the gay drama/western Brokeback Mountain, by a wide margin.
There are no positive or negative characters in Crash. All are multifaceted personalities with their own flaws and human qualities. Even the truly unsympathetic racist had a sick father at home to take care of, which cost him a lot of mental effort. At the same time, an unsympathetic black medical officer refuses to help his father get the help he needs and justifies this refusal by her unwillingness to help a white man. These domestic complications seem to explain the "racist's" nastiness, but later it is he who heroically saves the life of a woman he himself humiliated because of her race the previous evening, thus breaking down the simplistic dichotomy of "good" and "bad".
This film portrays the racial and social contradictions in US society in a very apt, nuanced way, without moralizing or dividing into the good and the bad. But I mention this film only because it would be impossible for such a film to be made in contemporary America. Not only in America, but anywhere else where the new standards of "socio-political comprehensiveness" have been adopted. Just as in the USSR, until the 1960s, it was impossible to make a film about the Civil War in which the Red Guards and the White Guards were shown as equal, human characters, each fighting for their own rights. There had to be an ideological coloring - the Reds are the good guys and the Whites are the bad guys, who only wish bad things for their people and the world.
In today's world, colors have been lost and everything has become black and white. Everything is strictly divided into good and bad. The ideologues of "socio-political comprehensiveness" do not care how big or transparent the windows of the bus are. They see in them the abuses of the "oppressors" anyway, because if the bus windows were small, they could say - it's so that the whites [the rich] would not see us and we would not see the world we could live in if it were not for white supremacy. I am not just talking about the US. Exactly the same thing is happening here, except that the division is not along racial lines, but according to belonging to the "right" or "wrong" camp.
Since I mention the film Crash, I must also mention another film from the same period, which makes you realize how fundamentally the world has changed in less than fifteen years. It is Idiocracy, a 2006 film directed by Mike Judge from a screenplay by the legendary Ethan Cohen (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country For Old Men and others). Despite the screenwriter's famous surname, this film is not shown on television and has never won an award. I stumbled upon it quite by accident recently.
The film is designed as a fantastic anti-utopia. Only unlike the usual dramatically tragic anti-utopias, where authoritarian, evil militarists come to power in the future and oppress decent, freedom-seeking citizens, this is a comedy. It is the year 2500 and the world has consistently moved along its current vector of ever-greater intellectual degradation, reaching unbelievable lows. The President of the United States is a black rapper in a colorful parrot shirt, faded sweatpants and dreadlocks. People watch a film in cinemas that shows a bare butt the whole time, and when it farts, the audience roars with delight, writhing on the floor with laughter. Everyone drinks green vitaminized mineral water, which science (the producing company) claims is very healthy, unlike ordinary water, which is only used to flush the toilet. This "healthy" liquid is used to water crops, which is slowly causing a famine.
A failed experiment brings a modern US citizen, who was voted the most unremarkable in a special survey, and a mild-mannered woman who is on the run from her pimp, to this future. In the society of the future, these characters turn out to be intellectual geniuses who must save the world from the rule of absolute idiots.
As one might expect, the film did not receive a great response. It is also clear why. Because the future depicted in the film is exactly the future that the mass of cinema-goers is being pushed towards. The future that is propagandized as the most desirable and voted for by the majority. A future of anti-elitist "freedom", where everyone can walk around as they please, go to the opera in pajamas or thongs and gloat about this liberation.
If the audience is frightened that in some mystical future everyone will be walking around only in military khaki uniforms, then they accept this kind of "danger" and feel for the hero in the checked cowboy shirt who destroys this dictatorship, because nobody wants to walk around in a grey uniform. It is another thing if they are shown a possible future in which everyone, including presidents, walks around in flashy idiotic outfits and indulges in primitive entertainment. Such films confuse people. Is this not the future we are fighting for against the patriarchal boomers? What are the filmmakers mocking here? Is it not us, sitting in the cinema, munching popcorn, wanting to be entertained, not made to think.
The modest box-office success of Idiocracy, like the acclaimed Crash that performed only modestly in the box-office, are films that were possible only before the age of "socio-political comprehensiveness". Today, such films would be regarded as totally unacceptable. Not even wrong, because it is difficult to formally oppose anything in them, but simply alien and out of place in today's circumstances. Similarly, in a modern film, you could not have a positive protagonist who was also a denier of compulsory vaccination, same-sex marriage or other leftist ideas. It would break all the clichés, but the language of cinema is simple: if something is not recognizable at a subconscious level, then it is not understood or accepted by the audience.
As the monitoring of the level of education shows, the move towards idiocracy has accelerated considerably over the last ten to fifteen years. University academics are raising the alarm that the intellectual level of students is falling. School teachers point out that the level of literacy, or rather the ability to understand what they read, is declining rapidly. It is easy to read and understand a simple sentence - a dog is running down the street - but as soon as abstractions, concepts and the need to make causal connections appear in the text, the understanding of the text drops catastrophically. This is not just a Latvian problem. It is a problem all over the world.
What is the solution? Simple and exactly in line with Mike Judge and Ethan Cohen's Idiocracy: mathematics and other complex knowledge should be declared undesirable, tools to be eliminated to ensure "white privilege". Along with the fathers of these "abolishable" sciences - the abominable slavers, the patriarchal oppressors of menstruating people - the Newtons and Descartes of the world. In our country, this "socio-political comprehensiveness" movement is only in its infancy, but if society does not actively resist it (no serious resistance has been seen so far, on the contrary), we will see a dictatorship of stupidity sooner than we can currently imagine.
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