Thoughts by Richard Bleil
You cannot spell “evolve” without “love”. That thought occurred to me today, and it seems particularly coincidental today. I look at the people who are “woke”, and those who refuse to be so, and see that the difference is love.
I’ve written before (more than once) about how we should be evolved. There are certain things that I do not, and probably never will, understand. Although I wrote many posts referencing evolving, the example I presented here is about people referring to themselves as “incels”, or involuntary celibates. These are angry and immature men who seem to believe that every woman owes them sex. This shows a lack of evolution to the point of respecting women as individuals, seeing them as little more than walking ovaries.
To be woke is not difficult, honestly. It’s accepting that others have rights the same as yourself. It’s recognizing that certain things hurt others and respecting them enough to avoid those things such as words and phrases. It’s accepting that the lifestyles of others have no impact on yours and is just as valid as your own. Its loving, as the Bible says we should, our neighbors and respecting their choices.
But have you noticed how angry the anti-woke movement seems to be? To be woke is to give up the illusion of certain freedoms, freedoms that should have never been given in the first place. It’s simply recognizing people as brothers and sisters, and not wanting to see them suppressed, or hurt. It’s a kind of love for our fellow human beings, a concept on which this country was presumably built. To be anti-woke is to walk in hate and anger, and is, frankly, the opposite of patriotic. The people involved in the January six insurrection was attempting to bring about a coup to overthrow the government, to discard the Constitution and to put their revered leader in a position as a fascist dictator. Regardless of the words they use, this is the opposite of patriotism, and they were not trying to protect the Constitution. Rather, they were trying to put into power a man who reflects their own unevolved beliefs, to put women and minorities back in their place so the white Aryan race can again rule the country. How can you love if you want to suppress people, and how can you be evolved without this love? These anti-woke people simply wanted somebody who is as unevolved as they.
It’s been suggested that animals that have empathy for another of their species is a survival tool. Birds share food with their young because they don’t want the young to be hungry. Sometimes you’ll see animals, such as wolves in packs, protect the elders and more enfeebled in their group by surrounding them with younger wolves to protect them from predators. Empathy derives from evolution and can be viewed as a form of love. Elephants, on coming to the skeleton of their kind, will stop, and perform a kind of ritual, embracing the tusks, and shifting from one side to another in a kind of funeral dance. They cannot know anything about this elephant, if it was lighter or darker than others, if it was intelligent or not. They only understand that one of their own kind has been lost, and at least appear to show respect and remorse.
And yet, sadly, a significant portion of our own society fights evolution, and chooses to live in hate and prejudice rather than simply to show love and respect. They can call themselves anti-woke, and yet in reality, they’re unevolved. They prefer to live in a past long gone, like the Nazi’s who lived in hatred and fear of the Jewish people thanks to the propaganda of the Fascist Hitler regime, and the rebellious south who enslaved human beings. Both of these groups were defeated in their attempt to spread their hatred.
Evolution is the pathway to survival, for humans, and for our nation. But to evolve is to embrace love and reject hatred. These concepts are espoused in the Bible, although those who don’t want to see it won’t. In a way, I feel sorry for those who fight so hard against being “woke”. Living in hate is not a good place to be. Even finding others who are like-minded is not finding love. It’s simply finding the flames of hatred, and amplifying them, and flames always hurt those engulfed by them whether or not they are aware. Anti-woke rallies are filled with hatred, anger, and calls for marching and destruction, but “woke” rallies are found at music fests, art gatherings, and other social events. Me? I’m woke. And happy.
Bleil's Banter 