A Guest Post Part 2 from Lorna Cal
Suicidal empathy
Another aspect of ‘woke’ is that it exploits ‘suicidal empathy’ (Lebanese Canadian, Gad Saad). Those who have the ‘sacred characteristics’ must be elevated to a plateau of purity which appears to be a ‘let out of jail free’ card for them while, simultaneously, white people are held to be answerable for their forebears’ colonialism and slavery. It is a peculiarly infantile and simplistic narrative but it beats having to face reality.
In truth, Britain’s, and Scotland’s, power and national wealth, as opposed to individual wealth, lay in heavy industry – iron and steel, and mass manufacturing – rather than mercantile tobacco and sugar, and the overall, direct benefits were not shared by the mass of the population. Some of the sugar and tobacco merchants did redistribute their wealth in the form of endowment of fine buildings and charitable works, but the bulk of the population remained alienated from the profits, and also, incidentally, from the profits of heavy industry and manufacturing, too. Con artists, scammers and those who see the main chance, or ‘feel’ that they have been ‘victims’, need only cite their characteristic/s, and they must be treated as unimpeachable.
No one alive today has ever been a colonial slave, and no one alive today has ever been a colonial slaver. Many white people were sold into slavery by Vikings, Anglo Saxons, Greeks, Romans, Arab white slavers. Will they all be expected to pay reparations?
The pernicious quality of another ‘woke’ trope is the climate change argument. No doubt that man-made causes are responsible, but to what extent, and how much can be put down to natural fluctuations in the planet’s atmosphere that would have happened anyway?
We have to try and reduce carbon and other emissions, of course, and we most certainly need to delve for new sources of renewable energy, and invest in them, as a matter of urgency, and in co-operation with other nations, climate change being a global event, but the wholesale stoppage of all future fossil fuel use is simply unworkable until we have serious alternatives.
China still mines for, exports and burns coal on a scale unimaginable in the West. Until such times as we have secure and long-term renewable sources of energy that may be tapped into locally and domestically, and that may be stored successfully and safely without destroying the planet, we will be held hostage to conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Loss of expertise
Expertise is being lost so that our young people have few mentors with the requisite knowledge and experience to pass on to them or the industries of the future.
No state-owned oil company now, and no refinery either, so oil and gas will have to be transported from elsewhere, causing greater climate problems. Journalist, Iain MacWhirter explained that Rosebank and Jackdaw fields are drill-ready, but that the Greens would almost certainly protest their exploitation. The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran should be a lesson learned by the hard of thinking, but will it be learned?
The rise of ‘lanyardocracy’, as it is called, infects the civil service and every other bureaucracy attached to all our public institutions and organizations. It is profoundly middle-class, university-educated and, largely, insulated against its own luxury belief system while it forces it on the working people of this country through DEI in the workplace, through school and university curricula.
Globalism
Globalism will hold us to ransom for our food supplies and many other necessities. If we do not grow more food locally and domestically, instead of importing so much of it, as we do now, any conflict could see us starve.
As in WWII, we would be dependent on the equivalent of the convoys bringing in food, and our carbon footprint would be even higher. Small farms are being forced out of business and much of the land turned over to housing and development.
Antithetical propositions
We cannot have open borders (supported by the Greens) and consequent mass house building without losing agricultural land. They cannot advocate open borders, and, on the other hand, Scottish national independence.
The two ideas are completely antithetical, polar opposite, propositions. No one should doubt their stance on immigration, but everyone should question their Janus stance on Scottish independence.
Post structuralism and post modernism are different, but overlapping. They are today’s rebuttal to the Enlightenment with its emphasis on reason and objectivity, Christian morality and universal truth. Both are essentially French philosophical concepts, as espoused by the likes of Baudrillard, Barthes, Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault, among others.
They have challenged historical and social construction: overarching Western cultural norms are nothing more than rigid social constructions, rather than universal truths. The most evident truth, however, both subjective and objective, is that post modernists/post structuralists/queer theorists are just as liable, perhaps more so, to misuse power as any other form of societal rule.
Language, for example, as we have seen with the ‘trans’ lobby, can be suborned to confuse and deny reality; science is undermined to deny the reality of biology and used to propose new forms of identity of self, which cannot stand up to any strong scrutiny, being wholly subjective; and history is rejected as being skewed to collude with the overarching story that the West has constructed. In fact, history, although it may be interpreted in various ways, does have a powerful foundation in reality.
The data that we collect every day reinforces our reality and cannot be wished away as a construction of events that simply chimes with Western ideals. Two and two do not make five; they make four. That can be proved scientifically and mathematically.
If you allow any male person to access female single-sex spaces, you must allow all men to do so or risk discrimination. If you were standing on a mat and someone pulled it from under you, you would probably fall and you could be hurt as a direct consequence. That is what the ‘woke’ alliance is doing to our society. They are hurting and harming it in ways that must lead, eventually, to either confrontation or to a disintegration of what we have known for over 1000 years because there appear to be no brakes being applied voluntarily, and ‘trans’ is a regressive men’s rights/sexual rights movement.
Canaries in the coalmine
Women, in truth, have been the canaries in the coalmine for the whole ‘woke’ project and foresaw long ago where it would lead (Kelly Jay Keen).
Can we accept, as I tendered at the beginning of this piece, that our society has been steeped in centuries of Greek philosophy, art, literature, science, language, in common with Western Europe? Can we agree that it has been enriched further by Roman jurisprudence, literature, philosophy, etc., then overlaid by Christianity and its struggles to achieve a semblance of justice and equality, further enhanced by the Enlightenment?
Then, we must ask ourselves if we are willing to have it all overturned in favour of equity which seeks to enforce certain outcomes, which, in themselves become onerous and unjust if not based on equality of opportunity and ability but on perceived oppression that is more subjective than objective?
We know, from observation and data, that believing in/having certain characteristics opens doors (Q Manivannan) to all kinds of opportunities while, simultaneously, barring others who will not bend the knee to the prevailing orthodoxy. This is pure totalitarianism and it engenders a kind of terror and paralysis in the whole society. There can be no hierarchy of rights which displaces some people and their rights in favour of others, yet the parliament at Holyrood is the perfect example of a ‘woke’ takeover, where a parasitical latching-on to established parties to ensure conformity to ideological strictures ensure selection and election.
Totalitarianism
The rest of the population waits in fear for the next tranche of ‘woke’ policies that will strain the social consensus to breaking point, destroy the economy beyond recovery and alienate the electorate to the point of no return. Numerous examples exist from history, of both far left and far right totalitarianism: Mao’s China, the Stalinist Soviet Union, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, East Germany post WWII, Pinochet’s Chile, Videla’s Argentina…
EHCR.
Violent men have been placed in the female prison estate where they share some facilities with female inmates. Rhona Hotchkiss, a deputy governor and governor of the women’s estate, has described the predictable consequences, but the Scottish government still refuses to bring in legislation to put a stop to this sadistic, inhumane treatment even as the British government has released the long-awaited European Human Rights Commission’s (EHCR) proposals which back the Supreme Court’s Ruling.
That the Scottish government continues to flout the law in this area, and others, will lead, ultimately, to the disintegration of society. Having a degree or a PhD is no indicator of ability in politics and, although technically clever, some of the politicians lack depth: an intellectual void that cannot be filled by ideology, although they try very, very hard.
Scotland will be independent, because the UK, as a cohesive unit, is already coming apart at the seams, but the four constituent parts will not survive the ‘woke’ impositions intact unless they ensure it has been weeded out before all four embark on independence – which all four parts will be forced to eventually, willingly or otherwise.
I have tried to spell out why they will not survive unless they act now. Scotland may well survive as something very different from what it is now, of course, as might the other three parts.
The West itself will cease to exist as its very foundations are dismantled by those who want to tear it all down and replace it with something very, very different. If I have not convinced the reader of this, I have failed.
I will say is that those who have cheered for this ‘woke’ takeover, in the mistaken belief that it will lead to something better, will be the first to be eliminated by the new order. That is a certainty.
Very cogent, very aspirational Lorna.
But sadly one wonders if there is any real momentum or desire for change..
Just look around us. Aspiration for change is for many non existent and apathy the reality.
People were genuinely enthused by the Yes campaign. They wanted a better fairer more prosperous Scotland. Many still do. But too many are all to prepared to live with the begging bowl and meagre rations for the masters table.
And that is why dangerous people like Alex Salmond had to be taken out and why quislings like Sturgeon played the part they did in emasculating and destroying a movement.
And that is why we need to get our mojo back. That is why some continue pushing through platforms like this. The desire for better needs to be pushed with all our efforts.
We can win and staying a winner will always be a challenge, but it can be done. The dream.has not died.
I cannot disagree with that. It is a very depressing time we are living through, but, you know, south of the border, things are very much worse and it is there that the cracks are showing. It will not result in a pulling together of the UK, I think, but in its disintegration because the dam will break. If England goes, we all go, and I believe that is what will happen. Most of the modern nation states have been built from the ashes of the fall of empires, and the UK, though a monarchical Union is also a kind of wee empire. I’m a realist, Willie, and I know it will be hard, but it will be worth it eventually for us all, including the Unionists. We need them – and the middle-class on board – which, you know, I believe will happen once the UK starts to fail and fall. They will see independence as our only option, which, unfortunately, they simply do not at the moment.
I don’t know anything about Lorna, but everything she says strikes a chord with me. I greatly enjoyed reading her.
I hope she will become more than just an occasional contributor, Roddy.
Och, I’m jist a wee wifie, Dave, who has been an independence supporter since my very early teens. This ‘woke’ stuff is causing a lot of unnecessary pain and misery and has to be stopped, I believe. I shudder to think what is coming down the line from that quarter – mainly from the Greens who will play their ace because of the parlous state of the SNP, who, truth be told, are a spent force through their own hubris. Sad, sad times.
Didn’t read it. I have read other stuff written by this man hater and she always boils it down to men are the problem.
Then you should have read it to discover that it was about nothing of the kind. I don’t hate men at all. I often hate the things some men do. That is just your own conscience talking to you, Anonymous – or spite, or because it’s a woman writing, or all three. The fact that you took the trouble to write that you hadn’t read the piece says a great deal about you, sir, whether you understand that or not. However, I’m not looking for a fight, so we’ll leave it there.
I recall going into a large office which was full of Civil Engineers . On noticing that around half of them were women I tongue in cheek enquired of the engineering director as to where did they all come from, it full of women. Civil engineering used to be male oriented.
In response and with a wry tongue in cheek response I got the quip …” some of them are actually quite good ”
A bit of light hearted craic perchance but the answer was actually quite profound. Some of them are quite good just as some of the men are quite bad.
And that is think hits the nail on the head. And you know what there’s lots of them doing other things too, and very well at that.
Mind you, when you look at some of the harradins that Sturgeon surrounded herself with, maybe you do have to wonder if granting the universal vote was such a good thing. In fact, maybe there should be an exam to be allowed to vote.😇
Have a good Sunday y’all.
The compensation for all those female engineers, Willie is that any profession into which women enter in numbers almost immediately is downgraded as to remuneration. The old myth that women work for pin money persists.
Are you suggesting that women should not have the vote? I absolutely agree with you about the calibre of many of the women (and many of the men, incidentally) in the Sturgeon era and the post Sturgeon eras. Will we ever see the likes of Mr Salmond again? I pray that we do. Personally, I am not really in favour of quotas, but, if the person is good at the job, works for Scotland and Scotland’s people, that is all that should count. I don’t care of it is a male or a female, black, white, tall, short, thin, fat…