Why I Am No Longer Woke

The woke vision of human nature as a blank slate is ultimately why it is a flawed ideological and failed political movement, Part I

Before the transmogrification of the word woke into the pejorative slur against far-left politics it represents today, I would have called myself woke—and even a social justice warrior—inasmuch as I believe in civil liberties, civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, animal rights, and the continued expansion of the moral sphere to include all sentient beings. As the author of a book-length defense of the principles behind these social justice movements for which previous generations were woke to—The Moral Arc¹—I think I have earned the moniker, and yet because of how the word and concept has devolved, along with the ever-leftward shift into lunacy of woke social justice activists—I must distance myself from the label, ultimately because of its flawed theory of human nature as a blank slate.

Image produced by Grok: “Create an image of a blank slate model of human nature.”

What is Woke, Anyway?

Although the descriptor “woke” is today hurled by those on the political right as an invective against various leftist and progressive social activists and the movements they represent,² its etymological origin was an African-American synonym for being awake to the numerous social, economic, and political injustices primarily experienced by that community throughout much of the twentieth century and before.³ By mid-twentieth century and the rise of the civil rights movement, the phrase “stay woke”⁴ denoted one’s awareness of such inequities, along with a commitment to collective consciousness raising through political activism.

By the third decade of the twenty-first century, however, a major linguistic transformation of the word led the linguist John McWhorter to replace “the woke” with “the elect” because, he explained, “They do think of themselves as bearers of a wisdom, granted them for any number of reasons—empathic leaning, life experience, maybe even intelligence. But they see themselves as having been chosen, as it were, by one or some of these factors, as understanding something most do not. ‘The Elect’ is also good in implying a certain smugness, which, sadly, is an accurate depiction.”⁵ “Woke,” McWhorter explains, “migrated from Black vernacular to mainstream use” and that the expression “stay woke,” and “went from being insider progressive-speak to a term of derision for a progressive agenda.” At its worst, McWhorter concludes, the word “allowed many progressives, supposedly attuned to injustice, to signal their commitment to combating it without actually demonstrating an understanding of its causes or remedies.” (This is something like what the social theorist Thomas Sowell had in mind with his descriptor “the anointed” in The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.⁶)

The Woke Vision of Human Nature

This metamorphosis of “woke” from awareness of societal inequalities of opportunities to insistence on equality of outcomes was elevated to national prominence during the 2024 Presidential election campaign when Kamala Harris released an animated video story of two alpinists ascending a mountain in which one of them had a head-start over the other:

Not everybody’s starting out from the same place. So if we’re all getting the same amount, but you started out back there and I started out over here, we could get the same amount, but you’re still going to be that far back behind me. … So there’s a big difference between equality and equity. Equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place.⁷

Underlying the political policy of equal outcomes is the blank slate model of human nature, which holds that since people are inherently equal any inequalities in education, health, wealth, income, housing, home ownership, employment, crime, imprisonment, and the like, can only be the result of societal, political, and economic discrimination, rather than inequalities in intelligence, creativity, drive and ambition, personal responsibility, history, and of course luck, good and bad. Once such discriminatory policies are eliminated, blank slaters believe, such outcome inequalities should disappear.

So, the deepest problem with wokeness is that it based on a flawed theory of human nature, a point made by Thomas Sowell in his 1987 book A Conflict of Visions, in which he argued that the vision one holds about human nature—either as constrained (conservative) or unconstrained (liberal)—determines if one emphasizes equal opportunities or equal outcomes. “If human options are not inherently constrained, then the presence of such repugnant and disastrous phenomena [inequalities] virtually cries out for explanation—and for solutions. But if the limitations and passions of man himself are at the heart of these painful phenomena, then what requires explanation are the ways in which they have been avoided or minimized.” Which of these natures you believe is true will largely shape which solutions to social ills will be most effective. “In the unconstrained vision, there are no intractable reasons for social evils and therefore no reason why they cannot be solved, with sufficient moral commitment. But in the constrained vision, whatever artifices or strategies restrain or ameliorate inherent human evils will themselves have costs, some in the form of other social ills created by these civilizing institutions, so that all that is possible is a prudent trade-off.” In fact, as Sowell generalized the underlying principles, “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”⁸

In his 2002 magisterial analysis of human nature, The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker re-labels Sowell’s constrained and unconstrained visions of human nature as the Tragic Vision (conservative) and the Utopian Vision (liberal).⁹ The distinct Left-Right divide consistently cleaves the (respectively) Utopian Vision and Tragic Vision along numerous specific contests, such as the size of the government (big versus small), the amount of taxation (high versus low), trade (fair versus free), healthcare (universal versus individual), environment (protect it versus leave it alone), crime (caused by social injustice versus caused by criminal minds), the constitution (judicial activism for social justice versus strict constructionism for original intent), and many others.

Pinker’s “utopian” descriptor for Sowell’s “unconstrained” vision is apt, since in the original Greek utopia literally means “no place.” An unconstrained utopian vision of human nature holds that custom, law, and traditional institutions are sources of inequality and injustice and should therefore be heavily regulated and constantly modified from the top down; it holds that society can be engineered through government programs to release the natural unselfishness and altruism within people; it deems physical and intellectual differences largely to be the result of unjust and unfair social systems that can be re-engineered through social planning, and therefore people can be shuffled across socioeconomic classes that were artificially created through unfair and unjust political, economic, and social systems inherited from history. Such a vision exists in literally No Place.

Although some liberals embrace just such an unconstrained vision of human nature, most understand that human behavior is at least partially constrained—especially those educated in the biological and evolutionary sciences who are aware of the research in behavior genetics—so the debate between left-of-center liberals and right-of-center conservatives turns on degrees of constraint. By contrast, woke illiberals—as I shall call liberals who moved so far to the authoritarian left that they are nearly indistinguishable from the authoritarian right—are full-on blank slaters, unconstrained visionaries, and utopian dreamers with no purchase on the reality of human nature, or what, in my book The Believing Brain,¹⁰ I called a Realistic Vision. If you believe that human nature is partly constrained in all respects—morally, physically, and intellectually—then you hold a Realistic Vision of our nature. In keeping with the research from behavioral genetics and evolutionary psychology, let’s put a number on that constraint at 40 to 50 percent. In the Realistic Vision, human nature is relatively constrained by our biology and evolutionary history, and therefore social and political systems must be structured around these realities, accentuating the positive and attenuating the negative aspects of our natures—our better angels and our inner demons, in Pinker’s description.¹¹

A Realistic Vision rejects the blank slate model that people are so malleable and responsive to social programs that governments can engineer their lives into a Great Society of its design, and instead believes that family, custom, law, and traditional institutions are the best sources for social harmony. A Realistic Vision recognizes the need for strict moral education through parents, family, friends, and community because people have a dual nature of being selfish and selfless, competitive and cooperative, greedy and generous, and so we need rules and guidelines and encouragement to do the right thing. A Realistic Vision acknowledges that people vary widely both physically and intellectually—in large part because of natural inherited differences—and therefore will rise (or fall) to their natural levels. Therefore, governmental redistribution programs are not only unfair to those from whom the wealth is confiscated, but the redistribution of the wealth to those who did not earn it cannot and will not work to equalize these natural inequalities. As Friedrich Hayek articulated the problem in 1945: “There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means, as De Tocqueville described it, ‘a new form of servitude’.”¹²

I think most moderates on both the left and the right embrace a Realistic Vision of human nature. They should, as should the extremists on both ends, because the evidence from cognitive psychology, behavior genetics, physical anthropology, economics, political science, and especially evolutionary theory and its application to all of these sciences supports the Realistic Vision of human nature. There are at least a dozen lines of evidence that converge to that conclusion:¹³

1. The clear and quantitative physical differences among people in size, strength, speed, agility, coordination, and other physical attributes that translates into some being more successful than others, and that at least half of these differences are heritable.

2. The clear and quantitative intellectual differences among people in memory, problem solving ability, cognitive speed, mathematical talent, spatial reasoning, verbal skills, emotional intelligence, and other mental attributes that translates into some being more successful than others, and that at least half of these differences are heritable.

3. The evidence from behavior genetics and twin studies indicating that 40 to 50 percent of the variance among people in temperament, personality, and many political, economic, and social preferences are accounted for by genes.

4. The failed communist and socialist experiments around the world throughout the 20^th century revealed that top-down draconian controls over economic and political systems do not work and resulted in body counts numbering in the hundreds of millions.

5. The failed communes and utopian community experiments tried at various places throughout the world over the past 150 years demonstrated that people by nature do not adhere to the Marxian principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

6. The power of family ties and the depth of connectedness between blood relatives. Communities who have tried to break up the family and have children raised by others provides counter evidence to the claim that “it takes a village” to raise a child. As well, the continued practice of nepotism further reinforces the practice that “blood is thicker than water.”

7. The principle of reciprocal altruism—I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine”—is universal; people do not by nature give generously unless they receive something in return, even if what they receive is social status or self-gratification.

8. The principle of moralistic punishment—I’ll punish you if you do not scratch my back after I have scratched yours—is universal; people do not long tolerate free riders who continually take but never give. By nature we want fairness and justice.

9. The almost universal nature of hierarchical social structures—egalitarianism only works (barely) among tiny bands of hunter-gatherers in resource-poor environments where there is next to no private property, and when precious resources (such as hunted game animals) are procured, extensive rituals and are required to insure equal sharing of the resource.

10. The almost universal nature of aggression, violence, and dominance, particularly on the part of young males seeking resources, women, and especially status, and how status-seeking in particular explains so many heretofore unexplained phenomena, such as high risk taking, costly gifts, excessive generosity beyond one’s means, and especially attention seeking.

11. The almost universal nature of within-group amity and between-group enmity, wherein the rule-of-thumb heuristic is to trust in-group members until they prove otherwise to be distrustful, and to distrust out-group members until they prove otherwise to be trustful.

12. The almost universal desire of people to trade with one another, not for the selfless benefit of others or the society, but for the selfish benefit of one’s own kin and kind; it is an unintended consequence that trade establishes trust between strangers and lowers between-group enmity, as well as produces greater wealth for both trading partners and groups.

A Realistic Vision of human nature is what James Madison was thinking of when he penned his oft-quoted dictum in Federalist Paper Number 51:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.¹⁴

The resulting structure of the United States government and its nearly 250-years of successful governance is a tribute to Madison’s (and the other founder’s) realistic vision of human nature. If you have a flawed theory of human nature, however, much follows that will also be flawed, including disastrous social policies and failed social movements that have taken hold in recent years. In Part II of this essay I will provide specific examples, some of which are so egregious as to border on parody.

Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, and the host of The Michael Shermer Show. His many books include Why People Believe Weird Things, The Science of Good and Evil, The Believing Brain, The Moral Arc,, Heavens on Earth, and Giving the Devil His Due. His latest book is Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational. His next book is: Truth: What it is, How to Find it, Why it Matters, to be published in 2025.

References

1. Shermer, Michael. 2015. The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity to Truth, Justice, and Freedom. New York: Henry Holt.

2. Marsden, Harriet. 2019. “Whiter ‘woke’: What does the future hold for a word that became a weapon?” The New European. November 25.

3. Zimmer, Ben. 2017. “’Woke’, From a Sleepy Verb to a Badge of Awareness.” Word on the Street. The Wall Street Journal. April 14.

4. “Stay Woke: The new sense of ‘woke’ is gaining popularity.” Words We're Watching. Merriam-Webster. n.d.

5. McWhorter, John. 2021. Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. New York: Portfolio.

6. Sowell, Thomas. 1995. The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulations as a Basis for Social Policy. New York: Basic Books.

7. https://x.com/KamalaHarris/status/1322963321994289154?s=20

8. Sowell, Thomas. 1987. A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. New York: Basic Books, 24-25.

9. Pinker, Steven. 2002. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking, 290-291.

10. Shermer, Michael. 2011. The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies—How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. New York: Times Books.

11. Pinker, Steven. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking.

12. Hayek, Friedrich. 1945. In: Finlay Lecture, delivered at University College, Dublin, on December 17, 1945. Published by Hodges, Figgis & Co., Ltd., Dublin, and B. H. Blackwell, Ltd., Oxford, 1946.

13. I present much more details and data in support of each of these dozen points in much greater detail in two of my books: Shermer, Michael. 2003. The Science of Good and Evil. New York: Henry Holt/Times Books. And: Shermer, Michael. 2008. The Mind of the Market. New York: Henry Holt/Times Books.

14. Madison, James. 1788. “The Federalist No. 51: The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments.” Independent Journal, Wednesday, February 6.