Where Political Correctness Went Wrong

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21 Jun 2017, 1:09 pm

I think this is a pretty good, insightful analysis. A big problem with people on the left is that they have more passion than brains. Consequently their advocacy efforts are more obnoxious than effective.

SJWs would get much better results if they employed a bit of tact and psychology.

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Drake
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21 Jun 2017, 1:15 pm

Sorry. I started the video but I can't get past that first sentence.

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21 Jun 2017, 1:30 pm

Well, after about a minute later when the initial reaction had worn off, I found myself feeling curious about where the video was going to go from there, if only to find out why they think PC is so great. I've heard that rhetoric before, about how progressives think people feel that reject PC when confronted by PC from progressives. I've never felt that way. I'd be curious if anyone else has.

But then, a pleasant surprise. I consider myself to be polite. I am I suppose a believer in politeness. I am drawn to people who are polite and repelled by people who are impolite. So by the time the video was done, I agreed with it. But now I am puzzled why that opening sentence was even spoken at all. Was it just a hook to get PC people to listen with an open mind?

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21 Jun 2017, 1:52 pm

Drake wrote:

With regards to that first sentence, the idea that everyone is worthy of politeness and consideration (the legitimate PC) is a relatively new concept in human society. Simply pointing this out and acting upon it was PC's original intent before being hijacked by well meaning, but tactless people.

Also, a few right wing culture warriors mischaracterized the concept to gin up conflict...

Tl;Dr
Because things went wrong and people are as*holes who thrive on conflict and manufacture them when they are not justified.

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Drake
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21 Jun 2017, 2:06 pm

GoonSquad wrote:

Isn't that just common courtesy?

I've never known political correctness be anything other than a bad thing. I wanted to show you a video where people describe PC in two words, some of them are very creative and apt. But the video and channel are gone... :evil:

I've been thinking, and it is rare, at least in my experience, to find someone who believes in Political correctness, and is also polite. PC police and SJWs and such generally reject politeness as a concept. They're not interested in being polite, they want to take direct action and force people to submit to their worldview.

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21 Jun 2017, 2:47 pm

Drake wrote:

GoonSquad wrote:

Yeah, as I said before, I think that sort of behavior comes from an over abundance of passion and good intentions but a profound lack of self-awareness, tact, and understanding of basic human psychology. I get why people loathe stereotypical SJWs.

Most of these people really are just trying to advocate for what they think is right. Unfortunately, a lot of them jump to confrontation as their first mode of engagement. That's never good for progress.

As a professional SJW I always try to appeal to the other side's values when possible and try use confrontation as a last resort...

Of course, that doesn't always apply to my Internet behavior. I come here mostly to vent...

The internet is probably a big part of the problem. I do most advocacy in person and I need to get actual results for clients. That greatly reduces my urge to be an as*hole. :lol:

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GoonSquad
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21 Jun 2017, 3:04 pm

Another thing goes to how we define 'common courtesy'.

I'd say it is courteous to call a trans person by their pronoun of choice, and to refrain from calling children with downs syndrome ret*ds...

Some might call that PC.

I'd also say abolishing thanksgiving and cowboy Halloween costumes is silly, but teaching school children about the trail of tears should be required.

I certainly don't want to piss on common ground, but the devil is in the details.

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21 Jun 2017, 9:17 pm

GoonSquad wrote:

The people who complain about political correctness often don't realize their standards of politically correct are already largely in place - at least until those standards are questioned. There's nothing wrong with being and advocating for decency and respect, but one shouldn't become belligerent to advocate for those ideals.

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21 Jun 2017, 10:46 pm

I've watched and enjoyed a lot of Alain's videos, a few gave me some good ideas.

This one confuses me though - ie. I'm not sure if he was forced to make this one and didn't want to or whether he was just hoping he could make a video, duck a dangerous projectile (ie. political label of being left or right) that could damage or at least endanger the reputation of his channel and hence it's ability to be the 'School of Life'.

Either way - this video seems to attempt the slight of hand to offer politeness as the middle-ground remedy when politeness not only won't end the grip of the patriarchy or the dominant white-privilege culture in the United States, rather worse; politeness, chivalry even, has been stock and trade tools of the patriarchy, of the dominant culture, and it's always disadvantaged those who weren't raised in wealth. It's the way certain things 'go unspoken' and typically did go unspoken prior to the civil rights movement. I'm sure any feminist worth her salt could lecture us about the politeness of women in the 1930's or 40's who were married to men who were destroying them physically but who kept a stiff upper-lip for the family name (I know that sound like an exaggeration or not at all what Alain was saying but you have to think of the system clock right now in our culture being set by people who truly see the world through the lens of victims needing reparation and stopping short of anything they believe is needed to make it so as cowing to slavery and oppression). I can't imagine most people left of center-left watching this video and not seeing it as a side-door endorsement for oppression where solutions to massive social inequity are answered by 'just buck up and be polite'.

As far as I can understand the context for this video - I think Alain's just not the guy for the topic. He has too much skin in the game with the rest of his work and has to be a bit mealymouthed unless he wants a major scandal and boycotting of his channel.

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21 Jun 2017, 10:54 pm

The other problem, to try and target any audience on the right I'm not sure who it would be. The alt-right!?

I experience with neoconservatives, paleoconservatives, Evangelicals, anyone small-town to country, is that when you're out where they're in the majority it's as polite as a gun range - both literally and metaphorically. I think plenty on the left see that as well and even measure that sort of veneer as a sign of enmity.

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22 Jun 2017, 3:19 am

PC went wrong at its inception as a means of controlling the herd with psychological whips.

Read "Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War" by Wilfred Trotter, which inspired Edward Bernays, who was himself one of the earliest practitioners of Political Correctness as propaganda.

"Political Correctness is communist propaganda writ small" - Theodore Dalrymple from this interview.

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22 Jun 2017, 10:57 am

Politeness is something you do on an individual level and teach children, it doesn't have anything to do with political correctness which is forced upon other people by the self-righteous which by itself is not a very polite attribute. I can't really buy anything the video is saying since it fundamentally goes against many of the arguments made by SJWs and PC supporters, isn't asking people to be a polite just a 'tone argument' anyway? :roll: In 2017 it is not okay by the rules of political correctness to say things like "I don't see race" or "all lives matter", it is a very specific totalitarian left wing worldview that they believe in. My suggestion to people that believe in the aspirations of political correctness and particularly minorities is to dump the far left loons who want to use to as a means to their political ends, they are not and have never been anybody's friends but themselves. We shouldn't be teaching people to be more afraid of each other over words, all those no-no words have been given a 1000x the power it would of had otherwise.

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22 Jun 2017, 11:36 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

So, I think you've missed the point of the video entirely. It is not about ideology. It is about tactics and the psychology of persuasion.

From a tactical point of view, political correctness is worse than a failure. Political correctness is not only unconvincing as an argument, but it also inspires hostility and zealous opposition. If one is actually interested in undermining 'the patriarchy and system of white privilege' doing so by arguing for political correctness is worse than doing nothing.

The first half of the video does a brilliant job of explaining WHY political correctness fails at a psychological level. The second half of the video then gives us a psychologically effective/persuasive alternative.

And just to be clear, no one is suggesting that politeness on its own is a remedy for oppression, but nether was political correctness.

In its current form, political correctness is just a silly distraction and a tool used by 'the patriarchy' to rally support. Reframing political correctness as politeness and consideration takes away that rallying point.

When you get the other side to admit that everyone is worthy of politeness and basic respect, you make it much harder for them to justify ongoing oppression of specific people and marginalized groups.

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22 Jun 2017, 6:59 pm

GoonSquad wrote:

So, I think you've missed the point of the video entirely. It is not about ideology. It is about tactics and the psychology of persuasion.

Nothing you said either here or below this mark was particularly persuasive that I missed anything.

If i understand this correctly you're coming from the direction of seeing the current left as a group of people holding the light of reason who want to do little more than teach a group of rustic and uneducated people (ie. right of center) how to live in a multi-cultural, science-centered 21st century. I have to fundamentally disagree with that analysis of what political correctness, or the left for that matter, is about. From where I'm standing politeness in lieu of political correctness is about the same as Jimmy and Timmy from South Park bringing America and the west back together again with marshmallows and ginger ale.

There's only two things that I think have any hope of solving or at least vastly alleviating the pressure that's currently out there right now: 1) reasoned debate/dialog and de-tribalizing - which people seem to be quite deliberately running away from, 2) some kind of economic restructuring, like UBI, that would both greatly reduce the pressure at the bottom and allow capitalism to operate in the general sense the way it needs to in the background.

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22 Jun 2017, 11:33 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

If i understand this correctly you're coming from the direction of seeing the current left as a group of people holding the light of reason who want to do little more than teach a group of rustic and uneducated people (ie. right of center) how to live in a multi-cultural, science-centered 21st century.

No, that is not where I'm "coming from" and it is not what the thread or the video is about. What it is about is exactly what I stated before: PSYCHOLOGY and methods of EFFECTIVE PERSUASION.

In the OP I wrote:

goonsquad wrote:

A big problem with people on the left is that they have more passion than brains. Consequently their advocacy efforts are more obnoxious than effective.

SJWs would get much better results if they employed a bit of tact and psychology.

I am actually extremely critical of the left here, as is the video. I think these people mean well, but their mode of argument is obnoxious, and does more harm than good to their cause.

That's all.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

I have to fundamentally disagree with that analysis of what political correctness, or the left for that matter, is about. From where I'm standing politeness in lieu of political correctness is about the same as Jimmy and Timmy from South Park bringing America and the west back together again with marshmallows and ginger ale.

Again, this really isn't what this thread is about. If you want to debate what political correctness is, start another thread.

For the purposes of this thread "the aim of political correctness is to spread empathy, justice and fairness" as expressed in the first 30 seconds of the video.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

There's only two things that I think have any hope of solving or at least vastly alleviating the pressure that's currently out there right now:

Completely off topic.

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

1) reasoned debate/dialog and de-tribalizing - which people seem to be quite deliberately running away from,

On topic:
So, how would you persuade people to engage in reasoned debate and de-tribalization?

Via confrontation and personal attacks? (maybe assertions that only moral or mental defectives engage in tribalism).

techstepgenr8tion wrote:

2) some kind of economic restructuring, like UBI, that would both greatly reduce the pressure at the bottom and allow capitalism to operate in the general sense the way it needs to in the background.

What methods would you use to convince the people at the top to pay for a UBI?

Those methods better be persuasive because that seems like a pretty tough ask...

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23 Jun 2017, 12:34 am

Here's the actual transcript from the video (with emphasis added by me), if anyone cares...

Quote:

Political Correctness vs. Politeness

Political Correctness is, in many ways, an extraordinary and admirable achievement of our age. It involves an acute sensitivity to the suffering of minority groups traditionally overlooked by the dominant forces in society – and a commitment to teasing out examples of adversity in the large but also the small moments of daily life. Its aim is to spread empathy, justice and fairness.

For a movement with such admirable aims, it is surprising how many people it appears to have upset.

-->The reason may lie not so much with its noble underlying ambitions as with the manner of their execution.<--

When we receive lessons in political correctness, some of the following may occur:

– We’ll be invited to see ourselves as rather nastier than we had ever imagined we might be and much more closely involved in oppressing others. We can – at points – feel unbearably guilty.

– A generous path to redemption won’t necessarily be on offer: the oppression to which we discover we are party is so large and widespread, it appears it won’t be in any one person’s remit to solve it. We’ll just need to keep feeling guilty.

– We realise that the target of our re-education isn’t just our manners and what we outwardly say or do. It is also our thoughts. Our guilt spreads to a new area: the very recesses of our minds.

– We learn that we are, comparatively, extremely privileged. What’s tricky is that we may not feel ourselves to be so, though this is precisely – we are informed – the leading symptom of our inbuilt advantages. We are so privileged as to be unaware of our privilege. But inside us, it may seem as if we were being taxed on a legacy we had never actually received; as if four generations back, we’d had a wealthy great-aunt we’d never met and from whom we’d never received any money, but on whose estate we now learnt we were expected to pay an enormous tax bill.

We seem to be faced with an unfortunate choice. Either we embrace the goals of kindness as defined by political correctness, but face a high degree of non-redemptive guilt and humiliation along the way. Or, in a bid to regain our peace of mind, we give up on all attempts to be sensitive and generous under the terms proffered, and feel ourselves implicitly pushed into the camp of the boorish, the insensitive and the crude – to which we don’t actually want to belong, but to which there seem few alternatives.

There is, however, an important way out of this dichotomy, a philosophy of social concern and interaction that flies under a deceptively simple and traditional name: politeness.

Politeness shares some of the major objectives of political correctness: it too wants a world of sensitivity, kindness and grace. It too seeks to avoid causing suffering to strangers. But it has some decisive – and very helpful – differences.

– Politeness is universal, not selective

Political correctness zeroes in on the distress of particular groups in society; it is selective in its emphasis on where respect needs to be directed. The ambition of politeness, however is more expansive: it commands that one should be deeply courteous to everyone, whatever creed, colour and background they might be. No one is left out and therefore no one can feel embittered.

– Politeness focuses on Action rather than Thought

Politeness recognises we will naturally and inevitably sometimes have mean or dark thoughts about other social groups. The philosophy of politeness doesn’t panic, because it accepts that our brains are in many ways primitive. It doesn’t believe that such thoughts can ever be entirely removed. Instead, the effort is concentrated in the one area where it matters above all: how people actually behave towards one another day to day. This is where politeness directs all its attention – and gets strict. Our manners must be beyond reproach; our thoughts can be left to themselves.

– Politeness is apolitical

Political correctness is highly tied to politics, and specifically, to a left-leaning agenda. The big risk is that if one disagrees with the politics, one might then ignore the overall command for sensitivity and kindness. This is where Politeness has an enormous advantage, for it is prior to and larger than politics. It starts in childhood, in the way we treat our little sister, the bus driver or our awkward uncle. Politeness teaches us tenderness to the vulnerabilities of others irrespective of what’s happening in the economy and without reference to a particular interpretation of history. Politeness doesn’t belong to any one political group; it’s simply a basic requirement of being human.

– Politeness is gently taught

The polite person is polite in a crucial area: the business of teaching politeness to others. They never make anyone feel guilty for not already being polite. They take it for granted that no one ever starts off that way. They see rudeness as a consequence of not having been sufficiently helped or of being in pain, not a sign of evil. They make the attractions of courtesy appealing through their own gentle behaviour.

– Politeness is an aspiration – not a legal requirement

Political correctness can seem as if it is laying down principles we have to follow. Politeness suggests it is giving us aspirations it would be beautiful if we managed to follow. The difference is key. When you have to do something, you no longer feel any pride or virtue in doing so. But if an action is voluntary, we come away with a glowing sense of our own decency in having chosen the right path. It is the difference between charity and taxation: the former feels noble and kindly, the latter, an oppressive chore we’d love to wriggle out of.

It is a tragedy of the age that some of the goals of politeness have been undermined by the more forbidding aspects of political correctness. We need to rediscover politeness as a route back to building more civil, less mean-spirited societies and to giving proper expression to what is always a fundamental force in us: the desire to be kind and respectful to others.

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