It's a Woke Life - A Twilight Zone Analogy

I was recently at a dinner gathering with some family friends when a name came up in conversation. The name was Andrew Zimmern. One of the party guests remembered that this person was somehow on the outs with polite society but couldn’t quite remember exactly why. He asked, “MeToo? Or was it cultural appropriation?” Which sin was it again that he committed that has rendered his name vaguely tarred and feathered in my mind?
As it turns out, it was a bit of cultural appropriation and cultural insensitivity. Zimmern is a celebrity chef who was launching a new Chinese Restaurant called Lucky Cricket in a Minnesota suburb. While giving an interview to Fast Company about this endeavor he let this sentence loose: “I think I'm saving the souls of all the people from having to dine at these horses—restaurants masquerading as Chinese food that are in the Midwest.”
Zimmern stepped on the cultural landmine and it blew up. The comment was seized upon by the internet and opinion pieces charging him of dismissing and denigrating the Chinese immigrant experience. Especially for a white man, this was quite the party foul. Zimmern went on an apology tour, hoping to navigate the controversy, clear his name, and get customers through the door. That has been only mildly successful.
Say what you want about the insensitivity of his comment and the jabs he took at the “shopping mall cashew chicken of P.F. Changs,” but that is not really what I want to focus on here. I want to pay attention to the sense that the party guest had that this name was somehow banished.
As people find the ability to deny Cancel Culture’s existence more and more absurd, we are seeing a shift in the response. Instead of denial, claims of its appearance are now met with a kind of “whataboutism” that alerts us that these progressive-liberal-woke versions of the practice have mirrors on the right. Hilary Clinton reminds us that not too long ago Republican’s tried to cancel “french fries'' when France wasn’t all that supportive of the US’s invasion of Iraq.

The party of "Freedom Fries" would like you to know that "cancel culture" is a very serious problem.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 4, 2021

And this comment speaks of experience in Christianity which made certain music and TVshows indigestible for fear of endorsing immorality or witchcraft.

The recent firings at the NY Times, or the mind-numbing scenario where the decision to hire a young woman to translate the work of the now-superstar poet Amanda Gorman into Dutch was rescinded and apologized for because the translator was white both reek of the same kind of bullying moral panic. Oh, I forgot to mention, Amanda Gorman herself actually selected that translator.
What I’d like to offer in this essay is an analogy for our current situation and to perhaps shift the conversation away from the increasingly bitter and unhelpful Woke vs. Anti-Woke framing.
What I will suggest is that Woke doesn't necessarily represent anything all that new, but there are political conditional elements that have dangerously unleashed it.
I also want to caveat that this essay is specifically about the phenomenon of Cancel Culture and not necessarily Wokeness. I’ve wondered if there can be Wokeness without Cancel Culture, and I think there can be. Through recent productive conversations I’ve begun to focus on a specific difficult moral philosophy problem, usually referred to as “the problem of unjust riches,” as the birth of what we’d recognize as Wokeness. I don’t pretend to have any easy answers there but I do have some words of caution. More on that at the end of this essay.
First, cue the Twilight Zone music in your head.

ANTHONY, THE MONSTER

In 1961, the Twilight Zone aired a perfect episode. It was entitled “It’s a Good Life” but because it’s the Twilight Zone you already know that the title is ironic.
The episode takes you to Peaksville, an idyllic “Anytown, USA.” But something strange is going on in Peaksville. We are told in the opening narration that a monster lives in Peaksville and he is absolutely in charge. We meet all the people beholden to this monster’s rule who seem rather happy, so we wonder what kind of terrible monster must lurk in this town. Something huge? Something beastly? Something wild? But then the narration soon reveals the truth:
Oh yes, I did forget something, didn't I? I forgot to introduce you to the monster. This is the monster. His name is Anthony Fremont. He's six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge. This is the Twilight Zone.
Anthony has a kind of superpower. He can change things with the power of his mind. His fleeting fanciful whims turn into realities if he just thinks about them enough. He starts by giving a gopher 3 heads—just for fun, I suppose. The town grocer is making a delivery to Anthony’s house and speaks to Anthony’s smiling mother in comically strained terms. “I ain't never seen a three headed gopher before. It’s real good that you done that, Anthony. Real good!” The horror of this situation starts to dawn on us.
You see, if you upset Anthony or criticize his decisions, he can make you disappear. He can wish you away. To where? Well, that’s not entirely clear. We never see it in the episode. He sends you to “the cornfield.” We first witness him sending a dog to this cornfield because he was bothered by its barking. His father has to swallow hard to praise Anthony for this move, choking back his anger and fright, knowing that the dog was loved by his owner.
Anthony also dislikes air conditioning, and this town is getting quite hot. Everyone is dripping with sweat in each scene. But you must keep smiling around Anthony. You must tell him you are really glad about all the things he is doing. You must endorse his rule.
Anyone who has interacted with a 6 year old can grok this nightmarish premise. We could lay the relevant lessons over families we all know where the young children seem to dictate all of the rules of the household, but you probably see that I’m taking the analogy somewhere else.
It’s the culture of pretending to like and agree with the decrees of the monster of Peaksville that I think is salient to our current situation.

STRAINED APPLAUSE

My favorite scene of the episode is when Anthony gets to make TV for everyone in the town. They are all gathered in the living room with young Anthony sitting close to the TV, smiling ear-to-ear. He didn’t care much for the “old” shows, so he is producing a new one from his mind for everyone to enjoy. It’s a violent wrestling match between two dinosaurs in the jungle. It’s terrible and boring (shhh, don’t tell Anthony).
But there is everyone behind him, clapping and smiling through strained faces, never displaying disapproval. When Anthony decides the show is over, everyone applauds and praises him.
I won’t spoil the ending for you, but let’s just say we soon get to witness another horrible “cancelation to the cornfield” when one of the guests gets a bit too drunk and wants to play a record—Anthony has very particular music tastes.
Now that I’ve revealed my thinly veiled analogy, I want to point out some important things about it. If you take away the one supernatural ability aspect of Anthony, he is just a normal 6-year-old boy— loves TV, penchant for violent games, fleeting interests, easily irritated, wants to be loved, likes attention. In fact, his “normalness” is exactly why the episode is so good and funny.
If you removed his telepathy, his parents would have disciplined him long ago to develop a social self which understood how he couldn’t always get his way. He might even start to learn the value of delayed gratification and could begin to inherit some of the wisdom of his elders.
That telepathy is a sort of political power. The episode would still work if you swapped out the supernatural ability with the earthly powers of a dictator who has an army at his beck and call. You might now be thinking of the very “Anthony-like” Kim Jong-un.

”The Kids are Alright”

I contend that Wokenss is a lot like Anthony—that is to say, common. The right of passage of teenage rebellion is as old as civilization itself. It’s always been some combination of these: a rejection of the established political and social system, an insistence that we can invent our identities no matter what they teach in biology class, a deep distrust of the inhumane economic system which you are being actively molded to fit into, a nostalgic fight against the history of injustice with clearer bad guys, angsty challenges to the truths our parents profess, and a very shallow philosophical understanding of any of these things. In fact, I would be a little worried if our teenagers didn’t exhibit at least some of them. I know I touched them all, but thankfully for everyone else, I didn’t have Anthony’s superpowers.
So, are the kids alright?
Let’s reconsider Anthony. Instead of a “monster” let’s consider him as a “victim”. Let’s think of his superpower as a kind of disease. Imagine Peaksville and Anthony 40 years later. What will it be like? Will Anthony by then have sent everyone to the cornfield? Will he be all alone? Will he still be trapped in the behaviors and patterns of a 6 year old, now, creating even more depraved TV for the few remaining citizens? Will everyone still be there clapping for him and praising his impulsive behavior? Is Kim Jong-un really philosophically developing as a human?
My questions are obviously rhetorical. I think Anthony has a developmental and philosophical handicap.
My thoughts turn to someone like David Hogg, who as a young teenager was thrust into political stardom following a shooting at his school. Predictably, Hogg did not have deeply nuanced positions ready to share with us all, but was applauded, praised wildly, and paraded across the media—the next icon lofted to progressive stardom. Was this good for Hogg’s intellectual and philosophical development? I doubt it. His specific cause was the complex effort of gun reform, but what if Hogg had unrelated views on transgender issues or economic policy that ran afoul of the crowd? Would he have even been able to carefully formulate such ideas in his own mind, let alone express them without risking his narrow fame on gun law reformation? He is now starting a pillow company after getting in a spat with the Trump-supporting MyPillow guy. So, yeah, let’s see how all that goes.
And Hogg’s fame is just an extreme example. All of us with social lives have small versions of fame and prestige to care for, which can morph into these dynamics. A recent Heterodox Academy survey finds that 62% of American university students agreed “the climate on their campus prevents students from saying things they believe.”

Precious Power

Back to Anthony and his cornfield. In the climax of the episode the drunk neighbor upon whom Anthony is fixing his dreadful gaze pleads for someone to “smash him over the head.” Just take a good whack at Anthony, kill the monster, and end the misery! But no one has the heart to do it, or perhaps they fear Anthony would quickly shift his ire towards them.
Is the only way out of this nightmare to bludgeon a child to death? Let’s perform another edit to step away from that ugly sentence.
What if Anthony’s mental superpowers depended on some kind of magic amulet—perhaps an enchanted ring which hung around his neck? What if one of the party guests could snatch this ring away from Anthony and render him…just another 6 year old throwing a temper tantrum?
If I am claiming that society has always had an “Anthony aspect” how have we given it such tremendous political power as to leave many adults faux-applauding situations for fear of its wrath? That is the topic for another essay, though I think the answers lie in structures of capitalism chasing the most brand-loyal young consumers; outdated education systems force-molding students into economic agents for a system which might not have much place for them; vapid academic outputs from now-well known champions of “Anti-racism” and “white fragility” providing a veneer of intellectual legitimacy; and the not-to-be-understated rise of social media to not only amplify Anthony’s gaze but obscure the age, status, and non-literal temperament behind much of that amplification.
The other piece of the overall analogy which bears mentioning is the vagueness of “the cornfield”. Much has been made of the overstated nature of “cancel culture”. The “cancelled” often seem to stick around just fine—making money, enjoying book sales, finding plenty of platforms. Sure, they get pushed out of the NY Times or NPR, but they find a new venue in time. Even Al Franken has a new show on SiriusXM after serving his societal time-out. Andrew Zimmern opened up the Lucky Cricket restaurants and, pandemic slump aside, might do just fine in the end.
Are we all just confusing “criticism” for “canceling”? Are we overreacting? Is the “cornfield” all that bad? The people in Peaksville certainly think so, but they’ve never been there. What if the cornfield is an awesome party with all the banished dogs and music-loving Peaksvillians dancing the night away? Well, it probably isn’t. Some “cancellations” end up sending some pretty unpleasant characters there. But you get my point: perhaps we’re all too afraid of the Anthony in our society. He isn’t Kim Jong-un, whose cornfield is actually a graveyard where Kim Yong-Jin lies for having bad posture and falling asleep during meetings.
If this analogy holds any recommendations for those entrenched in the culture wars, it would be to spend less time attacking Anthony directly—he is, after all, just a boy— and instead to focus on how to dial down his political superpowers. It is not serving him well to be given such uncritical influence. Even if Anthony happens to have a few good ideas, he won’t ever get to understand and argue for them since he doesn’t have to. What we don’t want to create is someone who understands themselves to be untouchable. The temptation to test just how outrageous one can be with full knowledge that they have a force field around them is too alluring to resist.
I often go back to this clip of Malcolm X as a prime example of this phenomenon.

The face he makes right after praising God for engineering a plane crash that killed 130 white people and praying for more reveals the game. His words and expressions there are grotesque and vile. But his cheeky grin and the murmurs from his cohort reveal a kind of “poking the bear”—something we’d recognize as shock-value trolling in today’s online lexicon. Once one gets past the intended triggering and attention-grabbing effect of the words, we are invited to get behind the psychological wounds and find more compassionate interpretations of anger and resentment which would lead to such utterances.
This kind of analysis admittedly takes a lot of effort, and sometimes that charity can be extended so far as to excuse and seemingly endorse despicable moral positions. However, there is a path to take that legitimizes the emotions but not the specific phrasing. It is not hard to justify Malcolm’s anger and resulting provocateurism with just a little understanding of the brutal racism he faced. That kind of justification can be applied broadly.
I’m pointing to a major aspect of reality which doesn't map onto my Twilight Zone analogy—the unknown history of Peaksville. We could try to imagine a sympathetic backstory for Anthony where the adults feel a kind of collective guilt towards him, or a sense of inequality where they owe Anthony something. Maybe Anthony has just learned that he’s been unjustly deprived and it’s time for him to get what he deserves?
I want to be careful with the primary analogy of this essay to not cast Wokeness as “just a bunch of 6 year olds throwing temper tantrums.” The injustices they are reacting to are obviously much more real and complex than Anthony’s weird aversion to air conditioning and barking dogs. Thus far, I have been focused on the powerful dynamic of Cancel Culture and the resulting pseudo-hostage situation in Peaksville that mirrors our current politics.
The analogy stretches to the breaking point here, so let’s leave it behind and shift to philosophical complications of the real world. That brings me to the moral philosophy question I forecast in my opening: the problem of “unjust riches.”

UNJUST ENRICHMENT OVER TIME

Unjust enrichment is actually a legal term which has fairly straight forward criteria. The legal firm Jaburg and Wilk provides this clear breakdown: To win a case based on “unjust enrichment” one must prove these five elements, (1) an enrichment, (2) an impoverishment, (3) a connection between the enrichment and the impoverishment, (4) the absence of justification for the enrichment and impoverishment, and (5) the absence of a remedy provided by law.
The law firm imagines a case where you are aware that a painter is mistakenly painting your dingy house because he went to the wrong address. You refuse to pay him after he finishes, claiming that there was no contract between the two of you. He could sue you under the notion that you received an unjust enrichment, and the absence of the contract means the law has no remedy. A judge would hear the case and come up with a fair amount that you owe the painter.
On an individual level where the infraction was recent, like in this example, the case can be dealt with somewhat cleanly and can satisfy our sense of justice. What becomes incredibly difficult is when we take this notion of “unjust enrichment” to the level of civilization and expand the timeline over several generations.
We can talk about enrichment and impoverishment and the legacy of slavery and build a compelling case to fill all the criteria. But the problem quickly arises when we realize that the line of “‘direct” enrichment and “direct” impoverishment starts to get hazy. All of the direct beneficiaries are dead—or are they?
Can we draw a straight line from slavery through Jim Crow to red-lining, to the largely racial motivations for the war on drugs and its concomitant mass imprisonment, to make the directness of those enrichments more firm? Can we satisfy the third criteria and show a direct connection between enrichment and impoverishment? Do these lines ever become strong enough that simply casting all whites as being enriched at the expense of all blacks is a coherent position in need of a legal remedy?
Can we apply this same kind of thought process to grander and older injustices like colonialism or manifest destiny and the plight of the Native Americans?
All of these questions are sticky and invite debate. But they are not easy to answer, no matter what side of the culture war is yelling at you. The age-old-Wokeness I mentioned above finds these open problems in society and smells the unresolved injustice in them. This is the precise way that Wokeness is more admirable than Anthony, whose motivations are simply the impulses of a child. Wokeness, in its best conception, is not being wrong about the sense of injustice that is unsatisfied stemming from the difficult problem of “unjust enrichment stretched over time”. But when that sense is paired with a political superpower such as Anthony’s, and it fails to converge on any practical remedy, it seems the only path is to exploit the difficulty of the problem and bully, shame, cancel, and swagger to somehow even the scoreboard of a rigged game which was played a long time ago.
If you quietly think that it's a bit outrageous that an outsider (Janice Deul) can overrule Amanda Gorman’s personal choice of a Dutch translator, resulting in a sheepish apology by the publisher and from the translator because they are white—but you fear that expressing this view could put you in a kind of social cornfield, then you can sense just how wrong of a turn we’ve made into Peaksville.
Turning down the volume and dialing down Anthony’s political power will take a collective will to fear the cornfield less, an overhaul of social media business models, a major rethinking of our education system, and common understanding that “unjust enrichment over time” is an open wound without any obvious soothing treatment.
If much of the noise is of the Malcolm X attention-grabbing variety and shouldn’t be responded to so directly, well, the Woke certainly have our attention and have shifted it towards some deep imbalances motivating that noise. Now, they must allow us to disagree with the confidence of their tactics without being cast out to the cornfield.