1/ Many have observed that "Wokeness" is a kind of religion. But what kind is it? Christianity isn't a good fit, since redemption isn't offered through faith or works. I have been thinking more and more that it resembles a form of pre- or proto-Christianity: Gnosticism.
2/ Gnosticism was an esoteric faith where the redemptive vehicle is the occult knowledge itself. Humans inhabit a cosmos permeated with evil (in the Woke world, racism & oppression). The world is a matrix created by lesser demons.
3/ Gnosis (knowledge) is required for the seeker to transcend this world and ascend to the Godhead. A lesser being, the Demiurge, is an artisan-like figure who is either malevolent or ignorant, has created this material matrix which blinds the unenlightened from the spiritual.
4/ Western History and its architects play the role of this demiurge in Wokeness. The Woke Gnostics--priests and acolytes alike--are seeking to transcend this fallen world through the redemptive vehicle, which is the deeper awareness itself.
5/ At the many training sessions I have attended, the facilitators always demur when asked by the recently "awokened" for a specific program of actions to perform. It's not the actions that are important so much as the awareness. The redemptive vehicle is the knowledge itself.
6/ The knowledge *is* the whole point, which is why more and more Critical Theory must be generated. The esoteric priesthood needs more and more shibboleths to distinguish the knowers from the great unwashed tools of the demiurge.
7/ What "work" that is done is mostly reflective and internal, subtle and diligently unbinding your language and mental processes from the tendrils of the demiurgic reality so that you can free your soul.
8/ In practice, most "virtue signalling" that is performed is necessary to distinguish yourself as a Gnostic from the great unwashed who do not truly see the matrix. Activism is a form of progressive sanctification. But beware!
9/ There is a pitilessness and relentlessness to many forms of Gnosticism which chastens all penitents to discard the material and aim constantly at the spiritual. I find parallels in Di Angelo's continual chastening of whites that essentially, all atonement is false pride.
10/ The newly woke are admonished that they have only made the first step in a Sisyphean life-journey, and that we must resist the urge to "give oneself a cookie" for our insights and practices.
11/ In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus laughs at his apostles for their stupidity, and tells them they have all been fooled. Are we also fools?
