Raising Awareness about people Raising Awareness

Guilt is out, 'awareness' is in. Welcome to the new age of secular sermonizing.

“My art is raising awareness of…”

Is it awareness-raising, or is it power-mongering and social control? The new moral regime wants your attention, but at what cost?

How about this? Just stop it. If I need my awareness raised I’ll do it myself. I’m a citizen. I know my job. I’ll do the work I need to do to form an opinion.

Hey Pop Culture! I’m a pretty serious person. I work to help. My conscience would never release me from the problems of the day. But you gotta stop. I don’t need my awareness raised. I don’t need to be taught a lesson. I don’t need to be educated by force, shame, shouting, embarrassment, cancelation, or wildly bombastic strawman arguments.

I know where to go to get information, facts, and lessons. And it’s not on the fashion runway, at the bank, or in prime-time TV entertainment.

Michelangelo's Last Judgment, between unveiling and censorship, salvation and damnation

Pop Culture

They call it Pop Culture for a reason—it’s supposed to be popular, of the people, for the people. It’s meant to reflect the interests, desires, and diversions of the masses, not the moral hand-wringing of a self-appointed elite. Pop culture was never supposed to be an exclusive club for ideologues pushing their agendas. It’s the cultural playground where everyone, no matter their background or beliefs, can come together to enjoy the moment, share a laugh, sing along, or get lost in a story.

At its core, pop culture thrives on its ability to tap into the collective consciousness, to reflect the zeitgeist while offering an escape from it at the same time. It’s not about forcing a message down your throat; it’s about creating something that resonates with as many people as possible—entertainment that’s catchy, accessible, and, most importantly, fun.

There was a time when you could turn on the TV, watch a film, or listen to a new song without feeling like you were being force-fed someone else’s tedious ideological agenda. Back then, pop culture was about fun, escapism, a bit of mischief, and maybe even a dash of rebellion. But now? Now it's a slog through sanctimonious messaging, dripping with condescension, thanks to the modern activists on a never-ending crusade to "raise awareness."

What is this thing?

Let’s get one thing straight—"raising awareness" is a lazy euphemism for manipulation. It’s a veiled threat, an excuse to bully, browbeat, and blowhard people into adopting a narrow, often shrill worldview, all while pretending that it’s for the greater good. The implicit message? "You’re too stupid, too privileged, or too evil to know better." And all those cast into the pit of victimhood are too weak, as individuals or groups, to get their share of the pie without the goading and guiding hand of righteousness lifting their poor weak bodies. It’s as if without the noble crusade, we’d all be wandering the streets, ignorant and dangerous, lost and forgotten. They want to rescue us from ourselves—from each other.

But here’s what: most people already get it. We’re not the bigots or the unthinking drones these culture warriors believe us to be. We’re good people, trying to live good lives. We already treat others with respect, and we know right from wrong. But that doesn’t matter because in today’s pop culture, you’re either constantly repenting for the sins you didn’t commit or being re-educated about problems you’ve long been aware of.

Mixing Pop and Politics - a Socialist Perspective

If you don’t believe me, listen to your own. Here’s the Standford Journal of Social Innovation. Dedicated to Informing and Inspiring Leaders of Social Change. Their advice? Stop Raising Awareness Already!

Returning to the defining math of all my writing in this Substack, ALL LINES ARE CURVES. There is no infinite good. A little pop in your politics or politics in your pop every once in a while is a refreshing treat. Now, this has all gone way way to far.

We’re All Good And Decent People

If you did a cross-Canada tour lasting your whole life and assumed every person you met along the way was a good and decent person who wanted the best for everyone, was keen to learn, was reasonably aware, and self-aware, and hoped for everyone to be treated fairly, you would be right 99.8% of the time and you’d have a damn good life.

And that’s where the real insult lies. How awful and stupid do they think we are? Do they believe we need a film about a superhero discovering her girl power to learn that women can be strong? Do we need every comedy to wedge in a lecture about systemic oppression to remind us that prejudice is wrong? We got it. Please. People aren’t tuning in to entertainment for a sermon. If we wanted that, we’d watch TED Talks. And there’s a reason we’ve set aside the guilt and sin power-mongering of the Church.

This is precisely why we set aside the guilt, shame, and sin of the church—because we were tired of being told that life was a never-ending moral tightrope walk, one misstep away from eternal damnation. We rebelled against that constant state of judgment. We wanted to live without the weight of someone else’s imposed guilt and the ever-present threat of sin lurking around every corner. And yet, here we are again, under a new moral regime.

The Church of What’s Happening Now

What’s so ironic is that we’ve traded one form of sermonizing for another. Back in the day, it was religious leaders telling us we were sinners, unworthy unless we repented, followed the rules, and lived according to their strict moral code. Now, it’s activists and ideologues with a different gospel, but the same judgmental tone. This new secular religion of “awareness-raising” brings with it its own kind of original sin—whether it’s privilege, unconscious bias, or systemic something-or-other—and the message is the same: you are guilty, whether you know it or not.

The church at least promised salvation, a chance to be redeemed through confession, penance, and good works. But what does this new ideology offer? Perpetual guilt. There’s no forgiveness, no atonement, no getting back into the good graces of this new priesthood. You can say the right things, and perform the right rituals (posting the hashtags, reciting the correct slogans), but there’s always another sin waiting just around the corner. The goalposts keep moving, and no amount of self-flagellation seems to be enough.

Instead, pop culture has become a drag—an endless slog through issues, causes, and “awareness” campaigns where the medium takes a backseat to the message. It’s no longer enough to create music that makes you feel something or shows that simply entertain. No, now everything has to mean something. It’s not art anymore; it’s propaganda, and it’s insulting.

They’re Not Happy Until No One Is Happy

This shift isn’t just ruining art—it’s ruining the entire premise of entertainment. Pop culture used to be the place we went to escape the noise, to laugh, cry, and feel something beyond the grind of everyday life. But now, it’s just another platform for the woke brigade to lecture us, wag their fingers, and tell us how we’ve failed to meet their enlightened standards.

The worst part? It’s working. Major studios, broadcasters, artists, and creators are terrified of the backlash if they don’t toe the line. Nobody wants to be the next target of an outrage mob. So, they cave. They preen. They bow down to the very voices sucking the fun and life out of what they create. What we end up with are bland, one-dimensional pieces of “art” that follow the script, play it safe, and leave us wondering why we even bother watching in the first place.

Now the artists and industries can’t even openly say what they all know is wrong. No one is watching, no one is listening, and no one is paying. The great audiences, more hungry for entertainment, more in need of a break, more willing to pay than ever, just sit scrolling YouTube and fast channels lamenting the glory days of peak TV, and listening to the old music hits of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s to escape the rain of judgment that never ceases.

It takes a lot of Government Assistance to make this much of a mess for everyone and get to the point where absolutely no one is happy. That means you’re part of it. Hundreds of millions in tax dollars to create a cultural Tower of Babble in Canada.

What happened to irreverence? What happened to one love one people? What happened to peace love and understanding? What happened to a Canadian identity? What happened to entertainment that was just for fun? That pushed boundaries in a way that made you think or laugh instead of scolding? Where’s the fun? Where’s the danger? Where’s the joy of seeing something that’s just a little bit messy, a little bit controversial, without a pre-packaged, moral-of-the-story message tied up with a bow?

Do you know who else is “all in” on this let’s-teach-Canada-a-lesson business? The CBC.

How’s that working out for them?

Disaster. They’ve even somehow managed to alienate and divide their most diehard supporters. No one is watching. No one cares. No one wants to pay.

Now a pop political party says shut down the CBC and … and crickets.

I visited the CBC Death Star building on Front Street in Tronto this week. It is literally, by design, the biggest waste of space I have ever seen. It is on maybe one the the most valuable pieces of property in Canada. Inside, it looks like the old department stores when they were going out of business. But even Zellers and Woolco never seemed this sad.

I got to sit in on a conversation this week with CBC president Catherine Tait - a zealot of modern ideology, marching through pop entertainment with the fervor of a crusader - who framed the entertainment world as CBC in an existential battle with the Internet where everything Vile and Disgusting lived and where people could just say or do, or watch, anything if they choose. The arrogance of her unassailable superiority complex took the air from the room. Her job, from her Virtue on a pedestal view, was to lead the armies of salvation to guide the lost souls of Canada back to purity with the hand-on-heart rallying cry Diversity, Diversity, Diversity - diversity before all things, diversity at all costs, forgoing questions of their product like “Is it good?”, “Is it popular?”, “Is it helpful?”, “Is it right?” For her, pop culture is not for pleasure or for bringing Canada together—it’s a battlefield, and CBC is an army of unyielding soldiers, marching forward, eyes fixed on their goal, deaf to any other call but their own.

This is all going to end in tears.

Progress Is Progress

It’s time we take a stand against this nonsense. Not because we’re anti-progress or anti-awareness, but because we’re pro-people. We’re pro-art. We’re pro-entertainment that doesn’t treat its audience like a classroom of children in need of constant correction, division, scorn, and awareness raising.

So, the next time someone talks about "raising awareness," remember what it really means: they think you’re not smart enough to have already figured it out. And the next time you see a film or hear a song that’s all message and no fun, know that you’re not alone in feeling exhausted by it.

It’s all so obviously about power and control. As Evelyn Waugh said about politicians,

“Politicians are not people who seek power in order to implement policies they think are necessary. They are people who seek policies in order to attain power.”
— Evelyn Waugh

Pop culture doesn’t need more awareness. It needs a break. It needs to get back to what it was always best at—entertaining, uplifting, and reminding us that, sometimes, life is better when we stop dividing everything and everybody.

Raising Awareness is not progress—it’s a return to the same old song and dance, just dressed up in new, passive-aggressive modern garb. What we really need is to remember why we rejected that kind of moralizing in the first place. We need to reclaim our right to live, think, and feel without someone standing over our shoulder, telling us what to be aware of next. We need to hoe our own row and run our own race. We need to be let out of the cages of race, gender, sex, politics, and all the other boxes that the awareness raisers put us in.

In the end, it’s not awareness that we need more of—it’s freedom. Freedom to enjoy life without guilt, without shame, and without constantly being reminded of how we’re falling short – oppressing, being oppressed, including, excluding. We’re doing our best OK. Change is a long game. And like everything else there can be too much too fast. There is no infinite good. And if you were being honest you don’t know where we’re all going or what’s objectively good and right any more than anyone else. That’s the lesson we learned when we set aside the church’s judgment, and it’s a lesson worth remembering now.