Wokeness and the Worship of Wounds

“Wokeness is merely the use of victimhood and vulnerability as a new religion.”

Russell Brand

This is not a dismissal of injustice. It is not an attempt to invalidate pain. It is a challenge to the growing cultural tendency to wear suffering like status and elevate outrage as virtue.

Once, religions taught us about humility, forgiveness, and transcendence. Today, a new doctrine whispers that identity equals truth, that being wounded grants moral superiority, and that outrage is a form of righteousness. The currency of this new faith is pain, not the kind that seeks healing, but the kind that demands validation and public display.

When Pain Becomes Power

There is a fine line between acknowledging harm and using harm as leverage. The first leads to empathy. The second leads to entitlement.

In this emerging ideology, the most wounded voice holds the highest authority. Disagreement is treated like heresy. Nuance is seen as betrayal. People are judged not by the quality of their ideas but by their position in a hierarchy of historical grievances.

What happens when victimhood becomes identity? When vulnerability is rewarded more than responsibility? When emotion outweighs evidence?

The Risk of Emotional Absolutism

We must ask ourselves: what is the end goal of a culture built on grievance? Does it unite or divide? Heal or inflame?

To be clear, vulnerability is essential. Empathy is human. Justice matters. The problem arises when those values are used as weapons. When disagreement is met not with dialogue but with cancellation. When seeking understanding is seen as complicity. When pain becomes permanent, not something to move through, but something to build a platform on.

From Consciousness to Control

What started as awareness has, in some cases, turned into control. The language of inclusion becomes a checklist of offenses. The desire for fairness becomes a demand for perfection. In the pursuit of justice, some lose the very compassion they claim to protect.

This is not a call to reject progress. It is a call to question the belief that pain itself grants authority.

A Better Way Forward

True progress does not ask us to stay wounded. It asks us to heal. It asks us to acknowledge our pain without making it our identity. It asks us to seek connection, not control.

The most powerful movements in history were built not only on outrage, but on vision. Martin Luther King Jr. did not preach victimhood. He preached redemption. Nelson Mandela did not use his suffering to seek revenge. He used it to unite.

So let us not create a culture where your value depends on your pain. Let us not glorify wounds while forgetting the power of healing.

Let us be bold enough to feel, wise enough to question, and brave enough to move forward.