Can ''Woke'' Values Survive Without Central Heating?

How does a values-set created during a time of plenty exist in a world of material hardship?

During this morning’s daily doom-scroll of the news I noticed that the issue of soaring fuel prices and the prospect of fuel rationing was being raised by the mainstream media once again. The manner in which the media is reporting on the energy crisis is refreshingly straightforward and realist — in effect, simply telling the public ‘‘Get ready, you’re going to be sitting in the cold this winter’’. However, the manner in which the media reports on the reasons why the public will be sitting in the cold this winter is far less realist and straightforward, but we’ll leave that for another time.

The situation in Germany appears to be particularly chronic with the Guardian recently carrying the headline ‘‘Germany braces for ‘‘nightmare’’ of Russia turning off gas for good’’. Britain is far less dependent on Russian energy supplies but we’re being prepped for the pain too and we’re already feeling it in the pocket.

About ten years ago after a disastrous relationship came to its catastrophic conclusion I found myself alone, in debt, unemployed and living in a flat which was slapped with the Tory ‘‘Bedroom Tax’’. Suffice it to say, I was living in abject poverty the likes of which I never knew was possible in a nation such as Britain.

I had a pre-paid stick for the electric and a pre-paid card for the gas which needed to be routinely ‘‘topped-up’’ at the local shop. The electric always took priority over the gas because it powered both the shower and the cooker. Indeed, I began to view gas as a luxury which became relegated to third place in my list of priorities, after electricity and food.

However, even a meter standing dormant accrued a daily charge of 20p which meant that, even though I had not been using the gas, I was steadily sinking into a quagmire of mounting 20p surcharges.

January and February were the worst months. The fuzzy glow of Christmas had dissipated and all that remained was the long slog toward spring. I mainly lay in bed to keep warm, reading books to pass the time.

My experience of drastically reduced material conditions served to move me even further to the right than I had been previously. I grew to despise the symbiotic relationship between the government’s unemployment meat-grinder and the parasitic jobs agencies. I became conscious of myself as a resource which was being ruthlessly exploited.

And so, putting away my violin, I cannot help but wonder how even worse material conditions will affect people who hold more abstract values and who have never known any hardship whatsoever.

Namely, Shitlibs.

We’ve been told incessantly for decades that, for example, diversity is our strength. It was certainly a strength for the date-line corporations who benefited from the free flow of capital and labour. However, let us be honest, the multicultural society has never truly been tested in an existential sense. What happens when the food is rationed and one ethnic/religious group suspects another is being ‘‘privileged’’?

Consumerism may well have been soul-crushing and repulsively materialistic, but at the same time that was also its greatest strength. Products and plenty created a civilization of softness, detachment and decadence. What today pass for the dominant values of the West were built on top of that decadence.

Think of a gay marriage wedding cake featuring two male figurines holding hands while standing on a giant fat-filled marshmallow sludge-pile.

In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane quips ‘‘Nobody cared who I was until I put on the mask’’. Similarly, in the West of the 21st century, nobody cared about transsexuals until we could no longer order an Albanian to bring us a pizza on a moped at 1am via our Galaxy I-Phone GS 30000.

Given that the term ‘‘Vulnerable Groups’’ is enshrined into British law, does it not stand to reason that such groups would be even more vulnerable in times of an energy crisis or food shortage? If so then surely the modern liberal cannot complain when such groups are made less vulnerable by being fast-tracked through the bureaucracy and into free supplies of both.

The society of plenty allowed intelligent people to convince themselves that political correctness - which is to say, the social values of neoliberalism - was simply about being nice to people, like holding open a door. There were rumours about police forces covering up mass rapes because of it, but who cares when you can have Indian lager and weekend trips to Bruges?

The world was only ever going to increase its capacity to deliver life’s creature comforts, and thus through the nexus of neoliberalism the left’s core progressive beliefs could be simulated and made manifest, as if being carried along in the slipstream of the capitalist jumbo-jet.

The question then arises as to what happens to the social values if the goods and services which allowed so many people in the West to live in lala land disappear.

The mass media told their bourgeois water-carriers to support Ukraine in the Russia/Ukraine conflict, and they did. But they did so at a time when it was without consequences, just as they supported mass immigration because it didn’t affect their areas.

Let us then increase the stakes somewhat. Will people still be praying for Kiev when they’re wrapped in woollen blankets and deciding whether to stay warm or eat healthily?

A scenario presents itself wherein the media is still debating whether ‘‘trans women’’ should be allowed in female toilets while woke parents hear their children cry in the cold, snot running down their faces as their fingers go numb. Perhaps the Ukraine flags and the BLM flags and the rainbow banners can be stitched together to form an extra layer of warmth when the true scale of the folly of slavishly adhering to elite narratives becomes clear.

And this isn’t even to mention food shortages.

I’ve often heard it said that ‘‘wokeism’’ operates in a similar fashion to a religion. It’s a view I’m not convinced by entirely but let's run with it. A soldier in World War One might have had his Christian faith shaken by witnessing his mates being blown apart by shells. Alternatively the phrase ‘‘there are no atheists in foxholes’’ does indeed carry some truth.

Real, genuine religions survived wars, famine and plagues and the everyday misery of life in which material comforts were in extraordinary short supply. In fact many people would argue Christianity was the very thing people turned to when the hard times arrived.

But who will be checking their white privilege when the frost hardens on the inside of their windows?

Fundamentally wokeism, cultural Marxism, Anti-Whiteism, Political Correctness or whatever we wish to call it, was a by-product of an extraordinarily soft and decadent civilizational phase.

If the age of material excess is coming to a close then we have no more need for its bastard offspring values set either.

However, even if the masses of compliant shitlibs finally lose faith in their dogma the mass media and ESG shackled corporations will continue to flood the culture with the same messaging. The adverts would still be comprised of happy black families travelling the Scottish Highlands on whisky drinking tours and every Hollywood movie would still be a generic and bland ode to strong women.

It’s just nobody would pretend anymore, because, and we can hope, they’d all be normal again.