The wokeness virus

Institutions need leadership. That leadership needs to be focused on the goals of the organization. Obviously, a leader needs to take his followers with him, but he cannot afford to be held hostage by them, or their ideas, at least if those ideas conflict with the aims of the organization.

Understanding an organization’s goals is not always clear. Some have clear constitutions and founding documents. Others, especially very ancient ones, evolve and have a purpose which is not always immediately apparent and might even seem at odds with modern morality.

The demise of religion has turned us all into freethinkers. We no longer fear censure by religious authorities, and exclusion from the community of faith that in previous times was at the very least a meal ticket and in some cases was essential for admission to all the positions of power in society.

The result is that it’s much less fun being a leader now. Whether one leads the National Trust, or the BBC, or the Army, or even the government. The Right argues that this erodes the effectiveness of the institutions. That the original purpose of it is destroyed in the service of promoting gender equality, or trans rights or whatever the cause du jour is. The counter argument is that it’s good that institutions can adapt themselves to the changing moral framework of society without having to be destroyed and replaced. After all, they were, presumably created to reflect the priorities of the time they were created. If the army had the same code of leadership now that it had in Wellington’s time it would, surely, never attract any soldiers.

This is, sadly, bound up with the increasing polarization of society. Someone like Trump actively stirs up conflict to advance his own agenda, without much regard for the objective truth of his remarks. As a response to this, for example, we now instinctively reject his assertions, even when they might well be true. One case in point is his speculation that COVID-19 was the result of a ‘lab leak’ in Wuhan, something that now is accepted as likely, at least by one major US government agency.

The pendulum swings, but the Overton Window also slides up and down according to the direction of the winds of cultural change. In the 1970’s the power of the unions went unchallenged, even by Margaret Thatcher, the new leader of the Conservative Party. But as a consensus built that this power was excessive it was challenged, and laws ended up being passed which pushed the pendulum back, and the Window closed. Although wokeness now seems impossible to challenge, its equivalent in the past century was not. It seems likely that it will not be in the future, and surely if our institutions have survived for hundreds of years, they will tolerate a few years of imposed wokeness.

This is not to argue that the constrained decision-making that modern sensitivities impose on ancient institutions does not impose a degree of inefficiency. After all, democracy itself is highly inefficient and messy: Mussolini made the trains run on time! It challenging to lead a democratic institution, but I think the task is more rewarding, and those leaders who rise to the challenge allow those institutions to endure over centuries.