The Wokeness Trap

You’ve probably noticed something’s changed in the past decade or so. Maybe you’ve felt it at work, where you’re suddenly walking on eggshells around certain topics. Maybe you’ve seen it in your kids’ schools, where the curriculum can also focus on identity and the oppression of certain views rather than just learning.

Maybe you’ve watched as some perfectly reasonable opinions based on fact became unsayable, asking questions became bigotry, and disagreement against certain societal narratives creates offence, perceived hurt, or even what’s classified in the UK as a Non-Crime Hate Incident.

You’re not imagining it. Something fundamental has shifted in Western society, and it’s causing real problems for real people.

I’ve been practicing for well over 30 years in wonderfully diverse communities. I see patients from every background you can imagine. I care deeply about treating everyone with dignity and fairness, and I’ve spent my career trying to understand and address genuine health inequalities that disadvantage certain groups. So when I tell you that woke ideology is causing serious harm, I’m not coming from some reactionary place. I’m coming from watching well-intentioned ideas mutate into something else, something that’s actually making things worse for the very people it claims to help.

Let’s be clear about what we’re talking about. Wokeness, as it currently manifests, is a worldview that sees everything through the lens of power and oppression. It divides the world into oppressors and oppressed based on identity categories like race, gender, sexuality. It elevates feelings and lived experience over evidence and reason. It treats disagreement as harm. It demands constant performance of virtue and ideological conformity. And it’s captured our major institutions and governing bodies so thoroughly that questioning it can cost you your career, your reputation, your livelihood.

The ideas started well enough. Civil rights movements did crucial work addressing real injustices, expanding dignity and opportunity to people who’d been genuinely oppressed. That was necessary and good. But somewhere in the past 10 to 15 years, particularly as these ideas spread through universities and social media, something shifted. The framework expanded from addressing genuine injustice to seeing oppression everywhere, even where it doesn’t exist. The methods moved from pursuing equal opportunity to demanding equal outcomes. The goal changed from treating people as individuals to obsessively categorizing them by group identity.

The Victimhood Currency

Here’s something you need to understand about woke culture. It’s created a bizarre new status system where victimhood equals virtue. In traditional societies, you gained respect through achievement, contribution, or character. You did something impressive, you helped your community, you demonstrated integrity. That’s how you earned status.

But in woke culture, status comes from oppression. The more marginalized identities you can claim, the more moral authority you have. The more ways you’re supposedly victimized, the more your voice matters. Your arguments don’t win because they’re logical or evidence-based. They win because you belong to the right identity categories, or you have been more hard done by than the next person.

This creates perverse incentives. Instead of rewarding achievement and contribution, it rewards claiming victimhood. Instead of encouraging resilience and agency, it encourages fragility and helplessness. Instead of bringing people together, it divides everyone into competing identity groups ranked by oppression points.

I see the effects constantly in young patients. A patient of mine, university educated, comfortable background, comes in anxious and depressed. As we talk, it becomes clear she’s been taught to see herself primarily as a victim of intersecting oppressions tied to her various identities. Every difficulty, every setback, every disappointment gets attributed to these identity categories and the systemic oppression they supposedly entail. The idea that her choices and actions might influence her outcomes has been completely displaced by victimhood narrative.

This isn’t helping her. It’s destroying her. She’s developed what psychologists call an external locus of control, the belief that outcomes are determined by forces outside herself. Research consistently shows people with external locus of control are more anxious, more depressed, less resilient, less successful in every domain. We’re systematically teaching an entire generation to adopt a mindset that psychological research tells us is directly harmful, in short they get stuck in being the victim, and they hold tightly onto their problems.

This isn’t therapy. If you’re dealing with clinical depression, severe anxiety, or trauma, please see a professional. I say this as a doctor, not as a disclaimer.

The Truth Problem

Perhaps the most corrosive aspect of woke ideology is its relationship with truth. Traditional liberal societies operate on the assumption that objective reality exists independent of our feelings, that we can seek truth through honest inquiry, and that the best ideas should win based on evidence and logic rather than on who’s saying them.

Woke ideology rejects these assumptions. It elevates subjective feelings over objective evidence. It treats speech contradicting its assumptions as violence. It assumes an argument’s validity depends on the speaker’s identity rather than the quality of reasoning. It declares certain conclusions beyond question regardless of evidence.

This makes honest inquiry impossible. If certain questions can’t be asked, certain evidence can’t be examined, certain conclusions can’t be reached regardless of data, then you’re not doing inquiry anymore. You’re enforcing dogma.

I see this in medicine increasingly. There are questions we’re not supposed to ask, patterns we’re not supposed to notice, findings we’re not supposed to mention because they contradict woke assumptions about identity and oppression. This doesn’t help anyone. Medical science advances through honest inquiry following evidence wherever it leads. When ideology determines conclusions in advance, we lose the ability to help people effectively, and even worse people lose the ability to use common sense to help themselves.

There are real health disparities between demographic groups. Some are caused by discrimination, poverty, lack of access. But some aren’t. Some relate to genetic differences, cultural practices, behavioral patterns, choices. If we can’t honestly examine all factors because some explanations are ideologically forbidden, we can’t address problems effectively. We end up with explanations that make us feel virtuous but don’t actually help people who are suffering.

The Silencing Machine

One of the most chilling aspects is how effectively woke culture silences dissent. You’re genuinely afraid to express views contradicting woke orthodoxy, even perfectly reasonable views supported by evidence, because the costs of being labelled racist, sexist, transphobic, or any other form of bigot are severe.

I know doctors, teachers, academics, professionals who privately disagree with various ideologies and group think but would never say so publicly. They’ve seen what happens to people who speak up. Careers destroyed, reputations ruined, people ostracized for expressing views that were completely mainstream a decade ago. So they stay quiet, keep their heads down, and mouth approved phrases when required.

This creates a situation where public discourse becomes divorced from what people actually think. Where apparent consensus masks widespread private disagreement. Where bad ideas go unchallenged because challenging them is too costly. This isn’t healthy for democracy or truth-seeking or social progress.

The silencing doesn’t just affect controversial views. It affects anyone wanting honest, nuanced discussion of complex issues. You can’t have honest discussions about race, gender, inequality, discrimination when certain perspectives are forbidden, certain questions can’t be asked, certain evidence can’t be examined, disagreement is treated as harm.

The Mental Health Crisis

One of the most visible effects, particularly on young people, is the dramatic rise in anxiety, depression, and mental health problems. This rise coincides with the spread of woke ideology through social media and education over the past 10 to 15 years, though it also coincides with the rise of the smartphone, economic insecurity, and much else besides — untangling how much any one factor contributes is genuinely difficult, and I’d rather be upfront about that than overstate the certainty of what follows.

Where I do think the ideology is doing real damage is here: parts of it teach people, especially young people, to see themselves primarily as victims of forces beyond their control. To interpret any discomfort as potential trauma. To focus obsessively on how they might be oppressed. To develop hypervigilance for anything that might be offensive. To locate problems externally rather than developing agency.

These are precisely opposite what psychological research says promotes mental health. Resilience comes from developing agency, learning to cope with challenges, believing you can influence outcomes through choices and efforts. Mental health improves when we develop realistic perspectives on difficulties, learn emotional regulation, build genuine competence and connections.

But woke ideology systematically undermines all protective factors. It encourages fragility rather than resilience. It promotes external locus of control rather than agency. It teaches people to interpret normal difficulties as evidence of oppression rather than as challenges to overcome. It encourages rumination on grievances rather than action to improve circumstances.

I see the effects constantly. Young people who’ve internalized woke ideology are more anxious, more depressed, more prone to seeing themselves as victims, less resilient, less capable of coping with normal challenges. This isn’t helping them. It’s genuinely harming them.

The Merit Problem

Woke ideology has a troubled relationship with merit. The basic assumption is that if outcomes differ between groups, this proves discrimination. If one group is underrepresented somewhere, the explanation must be bias or barriers. The possibility that differences might reflect different interests, choices, abilities, or effort is dismissed.

This leads to pressure to abandon merit-based selection for selection based on identity categories. To use quotas and preferences to ensure representation matches demographics regardless of qualifications. To treat competence and achievement as less important than diversity of identity.

There are several problems with this. First, it’s insulting to people it supposedly helps. It implies they can’t compete on merit, that they need special treatment to succeed. Second, it undermines legitimacy of achievement. If you suspect you were hired primarily for your identity rather than merit, that’s not empowering. Third, it can compromise excellence in fields where competence really matters.

I want my surgeon to be the most skilled person available, not someone filling a diversity quota. I want bridges designed by the best engineers. I want to be treated by doctors chosen for competence. This isn’t bigotry. It’s wanting competence in roles where competence matters.

The Way Forward

So what do we do? How do we address genuine injustices without falling into woke ideology’s traps? How do we have honest conversations when the cultural climate makes them dangerous?

First, we need to reclaim the ability to speak honestly about what we observe. That means being willing to say true things even when uncomfortable, even when they contradict woke assumptions, even when there’s social cost. If we can’t speak honestly about reality, we can’t address problems effectively.

Second, we need to return to treating people as individuals rather than as representatives of identity categories. People aren’t their demographic characteristics. They’re unique individuals with their own experiences, beliefs, capabilities, agency. Reducing them to group memberships is dehumanizing regardless of intentions.

Third, we need to rebuild culture that values resilience, agency, and competence rather than victimhood, fragility, and identity. That means expecting people to rise to challenges rather than constantly lowering standards. It means teaching young people they have agency, that choices matter, that they can influence outcomes through effort.

Fourth, we need to insist on evidence and reason rather than feelings as the basis for claims about reality. Feelings are valid as feelings, but they’re not reliable guides to truth. Lived experience is valuable but it’s not data. Claims about reality should be supported by evidence and logic regardless of who’s making them.

Fifth, we need to create space for honest, good-faith disagreement. That means assuming good faith from people we disagree with rather than immediately attributing bad motives. It means engaging with arguments rather than dismissing them based on who’s making them. It means accepting that reasonable people can reach different conclusions.

None of this means tolerating genuine bigotry or stopping caring about fairness. It means we need better ways of pursuing these goals than woke ideology provides. We need approaches that actually help people rather than encouraging them to see themselves as helpless victims. That bring people together rather than dividing them. That seek truth rather than enforcing ideology. That treat people with dignity as individuals rather than reducing them to demographics.

The stakes are high. Woke ideology isn’t just annoying or politically divisive. It’s actively harmful to individuals and society’s capacity to function. It’s making young people more anxious and less resilient. It’s making honest discussion nearly impossible. It’s undermining institutions that took generations to build. It’s corroding trust and social cohesion.

We can do better. We can care about fairness without embracing harmful ideology. We can address genuine problems without seeing oppression everywhere. We can treat people with dignity without walking on eggshells. We can have honest conversations if we’re willing to brave the social costs of speaking truthfully.

It starts with individuals being willing to speak up, to say what’s true, to resist pressure to conform to ideology that contradicts evidence, fact and common sense. It continues with institutions finding courage to prioritize truth and excellence over ideological conformity. And it requires all of us to remember that treating people as individuals with agency and dignity is more genuinely respectful than reducing them to identity categories and treating them as fragile victims needing constant protection.

Further reading

• Haidt, J., & Lukianoff, G. (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind. Penguin.
• Campbell, B., & Manning, J. (2018). The Rise of Victimhood Culture. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Sowell, T. (2019). Discrimination and Disparities. Basic Books.
• McWhorter, J. (2021). Woke Racism. Portfolio.
• Rotter, J. B. (1966). ‘Internal Versus External Control.’ Psychological Monographs.