With the election of Donald Trump for a second term in 2025, the War on Woke, now officially sanctioned, has greatly intensified. And other figures such as the neurologist and writer Dr. Iain McGilchrist, best known for his work on the hemispheric functioning of the brain, have taken up arms in the fight: not against the war but in support.
And yes, I do appreciate that anything, including wokeness, can be taken by some to unfortunate or grotesque extremes. But for the majority of ordinary, everyday, law-abiding, sentient people, to be woke means to be aware of injustice and to have sympathy, compassion, and empathy for the vulnerable and the downtrodden.
Weaponization
As Neo says to Bugs in the 2021 film, The Matrix Resurrections: “How am I doing? I don’t know. I don’t even know how to know.”
To which Bugs replies: “That’s it, isn’t it? If we don’t know what’s real... we can’t resist. They took your story, something that meant so much to people like me, and turned it into something trivial. That’s what the Matrix does. It weaponizes every idea. Every dream. Everything that’s important to us.”
