THE WRY POST

—by Rey Pierre DeWitt, Chaos Coordinator.

Cultural Evolution & Its Discontents: From Whig to Whiggerism.

Ironic Teleologies, Inherited Dogmas, and Cultural Auto-Tuning

(Telos: from the Greek, meaning “end,” “goal,” or in this case, “cultural faceplant disguised as destiny.”)

Instead of a riposte to Turner Frazier’s piece, I offer a bipartisan impalement.

And since no one else has made the connection between Wigger and Whiggerism, it is up to us to expand on this concept born of a pun. We believe we must incorporate this into a C-of-C-C motto:

Puns, contrary to academic disdain, are not mere jokes—they’re compressed metaphysics, verbal Janus masks that reveal the simultaneity of cultural meanings. Whiggerism was not plucked from the ether for shock or mockery, but because it names a convergence that had already occurred, linguistically and civilizationally. The term wigger, a fraught artifact of 1990s slang, always implied mimicry—white identity performing Blackness. But the evolution from wigger to Whiggerism is not just phonetic. It’s ideological: the Whig’s moral arc has bent into cultural impersonation, absorbed by markets, exported as cool. We defend the pun because the universe itself is punning: “Each electron is a Janus, always having two opposing faces, but turning only one of them toward us… The universe is witty, made up of quantum puns,” as James Geary observes.[1] Whiggerism is one such particle—both a joke and a judgment, vibrating with the tragicomic energy of unintended outcomes.

Let us now begin at the beginning—or at least where the Whigs thought the beginning should end.

The Whig theory of history, born in the Enlightenment and raised by reformers, insisted that the march of time had a direction—and better yet, a moral one. From darkness to light, from tribe to republic, from torch to smartphone. The Whig gaze saw history as a staircase, with themselves several flights ahead, benevolently calling back down to the rest of us: “Come on up! It’s better up here!”

This outlook—polished in parliaments, burnished in textbooks—eventually took on theological overtones: history itself would save us. Culture evolved, ideas evolved, democracy evolved. And where did all this evolution point?

To us. Or rather—to what we now call modern liberalism, with its internationalist secularism, its gospel of markets, its obsession with novelty disguised as freedom.

But what happens when evolution turns out to be a circle in disguise?

What happens when the end product of Enlightenment isn’t some radiant cosmopolitan—

but a suburban teenager dressed like he’s from the Bronx—lecturing the world on tolerance via TikTok by day, then descending en masse on the mall to orchestrate chaos through flash mobs coordinated on X and Facebook.

Enter: Whiggerism.

Not just a pun. A symptom. A reckoning.

The final form of Whig evolution is not a philosopher-king but a cultural mimic—a child of privilege echoing a culture of resistance, remixed into lifestyle branding, and exported back to the world as authenticity. Whiggerism is the global manifestation of what began as Whiggish confidence: the belief that “we”—the West, the Enlightened—had cracked the code and could now teach the rest of the world how to walk, talk, and dress.

“The broad concept of ‘evolution’… has been an invaluable ally to modern societies… These maintain that, by finding themselves at the apex of the process of societal evolution, the cosmology they incarnate could not be but the best one… As a consequence, a Single Thought is imposed upon the world, along with a Single Behavior.”

— Guido Mina di Sospiro [2]

Here, di Sospiro names the mechanism perfectly: evolution is no longer description—it is doctrine. It gives cover to the cultural colonization carried out not by missionaries or armies, but by apps, ad campaigns, and algorithmically delivered slang.

Whiggerism becomes the exported mask of this process—cool, performative, weaponized soft power. It is the airbrushed face of Guido’s “Single Thought,” the musical jingle of Single Behavior.

This is not cultural exchange. It is cultural hegemony in a flat-brimmed hat, wrapped in market logic, and sold as liberation.

CLOSING DIAGNOSIS

(C-of-C-C style):

What began as the Whig celebration of liberty and refinement has evolved—organically, inevitably, ironically—into a monoculture of mimicry, where real rebellion is stylized, sold, and stripped of risk.

From powdered wigs to autotuned slogans, from John Locke to locked-in streaming content, From Montesquieu to monetized gestures—Whiggerism is the endpoint of Enlightenment evolution.

Not a new thought, but a Single Thought with a wardrobe change.

And yes, we’ve reached the End of History—

though instead of Fukuyama’s grand civic harmony atop Olympus,

we appear as Ichi Scrachimori observed, to be rapping on the side of Mount Fujiyama with a ring light.

ADDENDUM

Why the Council Dresses the Way It Does

Against this backdrop of performance and mimicry, the Council-of-Concerned-Conservationists offers a quieter philosophy:

Function is dignity.

To serve a purpose with integrity is more dignified than to perform a pose.

We do not dress up—we dress rightly. The jumpsuit, the khakis, the flannel, the yellow gaiter: these are not costumes. They are uniforms of intention.

We wear what works, because work itself is beautiful.

We hike not to perform movement, but to go somewhere.

We walk in order—not because we rehearse—but because we remember.

Simplicity in service is truer than complexity in performance.

To be practical with honor is more elegant than to be fashionable with emptiness.

That is why the Council’s aesthetic, though unassuming, carries grace.

Respectfully submitted,

Rey Pierre-DeWitt

Chaos Coordinator

Council-of-Concerned-Conservationists

Filed under: Accidental Apocalypses, Market Darwinism, and the Harmonization of Dissonance

FOOTNOTES

[1] James Geary, Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It (W.W. Norton, 2018), pp. 122–123.

[2] Guido Mina di Sospiro, “Evolution Upside Down”, essay available at https://www.newenglishreview.org/articles/evolution-upside-down/ Accessed June 1, 2025.