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General Comments / Re: 80% of Americans view "Political Correctness" as a problem. But what is it?
« on: October 19, 2018, 04:04:10 PM »
You can listen to the whole debate on Jordan Petersen's podcast.
From a quick look at an article, Fry complains about:
Statue removal. This is a big one for a lot of people, and they often equate it with "erasing history", when nobody on the PC side is advocating removing anyone from the history books, they just want to remove these people from a place of honor and admiration.
Trigger words. The idea that literature must be avoided because it contains ideas of racism and other items.
I'm curious about the source of the article. A transcript is available with a mumbership to Munk Debates that requires an email address. A bit of Fry, sans Laurie:QuoteNow, in agreeing to participate in this debate and stand on this side of the argument, I'm fully aware that many people who choose —incorrectly, in my view — to see this issue in terms of left and right, devalued and exploded terms as I think they are, will believe that I am betraying myself in such causes and values that I’ve espoused over the years. I’ve been given huge grief already, simply because I'm standing here next to Professor Peterson, which is the very reason that I'm standing here in the first place. I'm standing next to someone with whom I have, you know, differences, shall we say, in term of politics and all kinds of other things, precisely because I think all this has got to stop — this rage, resentment, hostility, intolerance; above all, this with-us-or-against us certainty.
A Grand Canyon has opened up in our world. The fissure, the crack, grows wider every day. Neither side can hear a word that the other shrieks; nor do they want to. While these armies and propagandists in the culture wars clash, down below in the enormous space between the two sides, the people of the world try to get on with their lives, alternately baffled, bored, and betrayed by the horrible noises and explosions that echo all around. I think it’s time for this toxic, binary, zerosum madness to stop before we destroy ourselves. I’d better nail my colours to the mast before I go any further than this; it’s only polite to give you a sense of where I come from. All my adult life I have been what you might call a leftie, a soft leftie, a liberal of the most hand-wringing, milksop, milk-toast variety. Not a burning man-the-barricades socialist; not even really a progressive worth the name. I've been on marches, but I’ve never quite dared wave placards or banners.
Am I a loathed member of that band, an SJW — a social justice warrior? I don’t think highly of social injustice, I have to say, but I character myself mostly as a social justice worrier. My intellectual heroes, growing up, were Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore, liberal thinkers, people like that, writers like E. M. Forster. I believed, and I think I still do believe, in the sanctity of human
relations, the primacy of the heart, and friendship and love and common interest. These are more personal interior beliefs than they are political exterior convictions, more a humanistic version of a religious impulse, I suppose. I trust in humanity, I believe in humanity — I think I do, despite all that has happened in the forty years of my adulthood. I am soft, and I can easily be swept away by harder hearts and harder intellects. I'm sometimes surprised to be described as an activist, but over time I have energetically involved myself with what you might call causes. I grew up knowing that I was gay — well, in fact, from the very first I knew I was gay. I remember when I was born, looking up and saying, “That’s the last time I'm going out one of those!”
I'm Jewish, so I have a natural, obvious horror of racism. Naturally I want racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, bullying, bigotry, intolerance of all human kinds to end. That’s
surely a given amongst all of us.
The question is how such a golden aim is to be achieved. My ultimate objection to political correctness is not that it combines so much of what I have spent a lifetime loathing and opposing: preachiness (with great respect), piety, self-righteousness, heresyhunting, denunciation, shaming, assertion without evidence, accusation, inquisition, censoring. That’s not why I'm incurring the
wrath of my fellow liberals by standing on this side of the house.
My real objection is that I don’t think political correctness works. I want to achieve, I want to get to the golden hill, but I don’t think that’s the way to get there. I believe one of the greatest human failings is to prefer to be right than to be effective. And political correctness is always obsessed with how right it is, without thinking of how effective it might be. I wouldn’t class myself as a classical libertarian, but I do relish transgression, and I deeply and instinctively distrust conformity and orthodoxy. Progress is not achieved by preachers and guardians of morality but, to paraphrase Yevgeny Zamyatin, by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics. I may be wrong — I hope to learn this evening. I really do think I may be wrong. I'm prepared to entertain the possibility that political correctness will bring us more tolerance and a better world. But I'm not sure, and I would like this quotation from my hero, Bertrand Russell, to hover over the evening: “One of the painful things about our time, is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.” Let doubt prevail.