How counterfeit empathy became social control
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” — Albert Einstein
Wokeism looks like empathy. But it’s missing the one thing that makes empathy real: presence.
What we’re seeing isn’t care spreading across America. It’s a left‑brain simulation of care—a counterfeit that performs compassion while evacuating relationship. Call it the Builder wearing a feminine mask.
Before I explain what that means, let me tell you how I got here.
Two weeks ago, a friend sent me an email about an essay I’d written. He’s a smart guy. We challenge each other. Here’s what he said:
Wendy—
It jumps right out at this reader that you are describing male / female orientation to the world. As some have pointed out, civilization is basically a male enterprise. I think this is largely true and inviting great numbers of females into the management of it has caused serious damage. Of course that forces me to have to ask: why shouldn’t women participate equally? My answer is politically unappetizing: women without the roles of child-raising, home-making, and supporting husbands’ morale. . . tend to become chaos agents. I suspect this is hard-wired in our species.
Which leads further to a conclusion that the current social relations in society just aren’t working, no matter how idealistic we want to be. It also doesn’t mean that women do not have the mental capacity to understand the enterprise of civilization, when obviously there are plenty of brilliant women around — including women trying to figure out the exact mess we’re in now.
I went to two No Kings demos Saturday in my town and the town seven miles NE of here, and I was impressed with the far greater number of women in the crowd, and how obviously insane they appeared.
He later sent me a tweet from a developmental psychologist making a similar point: “Systemization is male‑coded, empathisation is female‑coded. The Great Feminization of our sense‑making institutions has been catastrophic. Order is subverted by ‘caring.’ You end up with civic chaos.”
My friend isn’t a bad person. He’s worried about the same thing I am: the frenzy, the rigidity, the performance of outrage that passes for virtue. But he’s misreading the symptom for the disease.
The Builder and the Steward
Let me define two terms I’ll use throughout:
The Builder = when analytical, categorizing, controlling thinking dominates. The part that seizes and separates.
The Steward = when present, relational, whole‑oriented thinking dominates. The part that communes and serves.
These are patterns of thinking, not genders. A man can be a Steward. A woman can be a Builder. You’ll see why that matters.
What My Friend Got Wrong
The psychologist’s tweet assumes that because empathy is female‑coded, and because institutions have become more “empathetic,” empathy causes chaos.
But would anyone say our society has become more empathetic? The direction is clearly egocentric, not empathetic.
The “caring” he sees is counterfeit. The woman who posts “Thoughts and prayers for gun violence victims” after every mass shooting, then says “I don’t feel bad for his family” when a man from the other party is shot—because “he voted against my values”—is not Mother Teresa. She is not Jesus. She is performing care—without presence.
Wokeism isn’t empathy growing across America. It’s the furthest thing from relational intelligence. It looks like care, but it’s missing the one thing that makes care real.
What we’re seeing is a left‑brain simulation of empathy. The Builder wearing a feminine mask.
Where the Builder Comes From
Every civilization has a creation story. Ours is in Genesis.
God creates the world, then the garden, then the man. The man names the animals—categorization, left‑brain work. He also recognizes the woman as “bone of my bone”—communion, right‑brain work. The original design had right brain leading left.
Then the woman is formed from the man’s side while he sleeps. She has something he doesn’t: the capacity for choice. She sees the fruit, considers it as a whole—good for food, pleasing to the eye, desirable for wisdom—and she chooses. Then she gives it to the man.
Choice. Then gift. That’s love being born.
But something else is born too. Their eyes open. They hide. The man blames the woman and stops seeing her as part of himself. He names her—just like he named the animals. The left‑brain capacity for control takes over their relationship.
The Builder is born. Not as a person, but as an archetype: the part of us that analyzes, categorizes, and seizes power. It can wear any mask—masculine or feminine—to maintain control. Wokeism is just another costume.
The Builder Is a Trickster
The Builder doesn’t just analyze. It pretends to be what it is not.
It pretends to be caring—and calls that wokeism.
It pretends to be strong—and calls that patriarchy.
It pretends to be wise—and calls that ideology.
The Steward does not pretend. The Steward simply is: present, whole, relational.
When you see chaos, ask one question: Is this person performing or being?
- Performing care → Builder in a feminine mask (the woke activist)
- Performing strength → Builder in a masculine mask (the patriarchal enforcer)
- Simply being present → Steward (any gender)
The women at the protest were not “chaotic because they’re women.” They were performing care. The Builder was wearing their faces. My friend is also performing—performing certainty. Same Trickster, different costume.
Why the Builder Needs to Perform
The left brain cannot feel genuine empathy, presence, or relational knowing. Those belong to the right brain—the Steward. But when the left brain dominates, it still has to function in a social world that expects care and connection.
So it simulates.
It observes what caring looks like, builds a rule set (“say this, police that, signal loyalty”), then executes the script. The performance looks like care from the outside, but inside there’s no feeling—only rule‑following and status‑tracking.
This is why the Builder is drawn to ready‑made scripts: Victim, Oppressor, Hero, Savior. These aren’t naive mistakes. They’re control systems—ways to categorize and manage without ever touching the messy reality of a living person.
The Trickster is the Builder pretending to have what it lacks. The mask is empty.
The Left‑Brain Loop
When the left brain severs itself from the right, it enters a loop. It analyzes, categorizes, acts—then turns back on itself, analyzing its own analysis. It cannot reach a resting place because it can’t access the right brain’s sense of enough. So it accelerates: more distinctions, more rules, more enemies.
This is why woke arguments often feel circular: “You’re problematic because you don’t see your privilege, and I know you don’t see it because you’re questioning me.” That’s not insight. That’s loopy.
By “wokeism” I mean the specific ideology that:
- Categorizes people into fixed identity groups (oppressor/oppressed)
- Enforces orthodoxy through public shaming and language policing
- Accumulates grievances rather than seeking reconciliation
This is not relational intelligence. It is the left brain using the tools of analysis and control, dressed in a superficial imitation of compassion.
Why Performance Becomes Chronic Stress
Wearing a mask is not free. When you are simply being—present, grounded—your nervous system can rest. But when you are performing, the left brain is constantly monitoring: Am I following the rules? Will someone expose me? Did I signal enough outrage? Is there a heretic I missed?
The body cannot tell the difference between performing for a crowd and being hunted by a predator. Same alarm system: heart racing, muscles tense, scanning for threats. And because performance never reaches a resting state—there is always another rule to check, another enemy to name—the stress becomes chronic.
The woke activist who can never log off, never forgive, never rest—that’s not righteousness. That’s an exhausted nervous system wearing a moral mask.
The Steward can rest because she has nothing to prove.
What Genuine Femininity Looks Like
So what does genuine, integrated femininity look like? It looks like the Steward—no mask, no performance.
Consider two nurses in a hospital. One spends her shift performing woke solidarity—policing colleagues’ language, filing complaints about microaggressions, but avoids the difficult patient on the fourth floor. The other nurse quietly tends to that patient, holds his hand, forgives a coworker’s clumsy remark, and builds trust without ever announcing her virtue.
The first is the Builder wearing a feminine mask. The second is the Steward.
Genuine femininity nurtures without controlling. It builds relationships, not factions. It serves quietly, forgives freely, and does not need to scream its virtue.
And the same is true for masculinity. Genuine masculinity—protective, decisive, grounded—also looks like the Steward. It does not need to dominate or perform strength. The strong, silent father who holds space for his family without demanding credit—that is the Steward in a masculine key. The patriarchal enforcer who bullies and blames is the Builder wearing a male mask.
The problem is not women. The problem is not men. The problem is the Builder—the Trickster—that lives in each of us, waiting to seize control.
Out of the Loop
How do you step out?
Not by dismissing empathy. By reintegrating it with presence.
A Steward orientation does not need to categorize everyone into fixed groups. It sees the whole person. It does not need to enforce purity; it forgives and grows. It does not accumulate grievances; it seeks reconciliation.
Here is a practical test. The next time you feel certain that someone is an oppressor or a chaos agent, pause. Ask yourself:
Am I performing or being?
Am I seeking reconciliation or victory?
If the answer is “performance” and “victory,” you are in the loop. The way out is not more analysis or more rules. The way out is a choice—to stop analyzing and start being present, to let the Steward govern again, to remember that you are the one who chooses which voice leads.
Until we reclaim that ability, the Builder will keep looping—the Trickster in endless costumes—through anyone it can use.
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