Stay ‘woke’ and make the world a better place
BRYANSTON – Future Fit events hosted a wokeness event to educate and raise awareness of being actively woke.
Future fit networking events powered by Boo Yah hosted an experience to remember at the Joe Public United rooftop on 2 May. The topic discussed was ‘wokeness’, what it meant, what it does to one’s brain and how to be ‘actively woke’.
The phenomenon of being woke is a cultural push to challenge problematic norms, systematic injustices, and the overall status quo through complete awareness. Timothy Maurice Webster, author of four bestselling books on human behaviour and brand behaviour talked about the neuroscience of wokeness. “When you are woke, you subconsciously make informed decisions because the neurons in your brain are connected,” he said.
Webster challenged the audience to pick a stranger and make five-minute eye contact with them, without speaking. At first, the audience found it weird and could not understand the importance of the activity. Only later they realised that this was an exercise to train them to not judge a book by its cover and to learn to open up to people.
“You would be surprised at just how many interesting stories people have. If only you are willing to converse and listen,” Timothy concluded.
Tarryn Pickup, hypnotherapist and head of marketing at Joe Public United talked about how being woke could change the world. She emphasised how a change in mindset could change an individual, the people around that individual, the society at large and eventually the world.
However, everything has its advantages and disadvantages, being woke is no exception. Rebone Masemola, the founder of the Woke Project, decoded the woke culture. Masemola described herself as an angry black woman and explained that the woke are often times miserable because they were outraged by the injustice that is happening in the world.
“It is totally okay to be angry and outraged but the question is, do you do something about the situation?”
Masemola explained how people tend to abuse the ‘woke’ term and label themselves as activists on social media while in reality, they were contributing the bare minimum in changing the world.
The rooftop was filled with creatives who had ample time to socialise with each other and implement what they had learnt from the speakers.
They enjoyed demonstrations throughout the show and were challenged to tweet using the hashtags #wokefit and #futurefit. The ones with the most woke tweets walked away with awesome prizes.
Related article:
https://www.citizen.co.za/sandton-chronicle/173008/businesswomen-inspired-at-networking-session/
