Political Correct-ness

black

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TL;DR people rail against political correctness because they don't want to stop being assholes most of the time, MOST of the time.

depends on the context. when alt-righters, apolitical crusties, moshcore bros, and generally any right leaning or near-right-leaning/politically "selfish"(couldn't really think of a better word) person says "politically correct" they really mean "empathetic". they do not want to be forced to give a shit about marginalization that doesn't affect them personally. I can understand that there are folks who really go too far with policing others behavior, way too far, but the real idea behind political correctness is simple empathy for the plight of oppressed minorities whether it be race, gender identity, sexuality, etc.
 

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also, as a white person, reappropriating the n word is none of your business and there is no excuse for that.
 

Rob Nothing

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There is emotional intelligence and then there is political correctness which is essentially the religion of people with no emotional intelligence that wish they had but never can and so PC manifests in phases, like fad diets and candidacies and memes. And social media.
 

black

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There is emotional intelligence and then there is political correctness which is essentially the religion of people with no emotional intelligence that wish they had but never can and so PC manifests in phases, like fad diets and candidacies and memes. And social media.
would you mind explaining in detail how political correctness is associated with a lack emotional intelligence? while I do disagree this isn't an attack btw im genuinely interested in a further explanation.
 

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Rob Nothing

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would you mind explaining in detail how political correctness is associated with a lack emotional intelligence? while I do disagree this isn't an attack btw im genuinely interested in a further explanation.

A lot of my more oppinionated posts are written from a kinda take-it-or-leave-it perspective.. I don't expect you to see where I'm coming from automatically and neither am I going to disclaim myself every post with an essay or autobiography.

I'm glad identity politics has been brought up because that is basically on track with what I was thinking.. most people by my .... educated guess... do not know themselves well enough to formulate their own opinions autonomous of what their consuming minds find in the media. . . Political correctness is a force-fed phenomena, it doesn't spring, overall, from the reasoning mind.. it comes from a collective baser vanity. Resentiment, exactly.
 
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black

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A lot of my more oppinionated posts are written from a kinda take-it-or-leave-it perspective.. I don't expect you to see where I'm coming from automatically and neither am I going to disclaim myself every post with an essay or autobiography.

I'm glad identity politics has been brought up because that is basically on track with what I was thinking.. most people by my .... educated guess... do not know themselves well enough to formulate their own opinions autonomous of what their consuming minds find in the media. . . Political correctness is a force-fed phenomena, it doesn't spring, overall, from the reasoning mind.. it comes from a collective baser vanity. Resentiment, exactly.
okay so lets say you say the word faggot. and lets say for the sake of conversation (I didn't take the time to read your profile and see if your hetero or not) that youre straight. a gay person you know is offended, and beyond that has a moral objection to what you said being that its a word used to dehumanize a marginalized group for a very long time. do you think his objection is a vain act of political correction? by saying you were morally wrong for using the word faggot do you think he is simply trying to force you to adhere to a nebulous political agenda apart from himself, or that he is simply pointing out an instance of apathy towards the plight of homosexuals? or maybe you simply don't understand what its like to be a homosexual, so nobody should expect you to know the pain it causes, and therefore shouldn't hold you accountable?
 

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I'm really pretty surprised by some of the responses here. "Politically correct" is a fucking stupid term used to make not acting like an ignorant dickhead seem like the exclusive behavior of Clinton voting whole foods shoppers who only don't say "the N word" so Jesse Jackson won't tell their friends with coexist bumper stickers that they're secret racists, thus getting them evicted from their holistic wellness classes. Seriously, will it hurt your feelings to not vomit racial slurs from your dumb white mouths as much as it could potentially hurt somebody's feelings who's had those words used as tools to lessen the value of their lives or who suffer from the ongoing results of the cultural context out of which those words were born? It probably won't. But I've seen this line of thinking over and over. You Nietzsche-reading nihilists get your jimmies rustled beyond all good sense when you think people are telling you what you can and can't say. It's not about that. It's about harm reduction. If you're a decent fuckin' person, you shouldn't go around foaming slurs at the mouth, especially if you're not a member of the demographic that slur targets. It's not for you to decide that it is or isn't offensive. It's not for me to decide either. But I know there are a million better words available to me that don't carry ANY chance of ruining somebody's day or week to hear, so I use them instead. Is that so hard? If it really IS that hard for you and you just REALLY love to sound like a tween on XBOX live because it's fuckin America and you can say what you want and you're so afraid that you're "adding to the power of the word by not saying it" or whatever bullshit argument you're using as an excuse to be the coolest most offensive person in the room because "it's not my job to not hurt people's feelings" then--fine. Be my guest. But I hope you can hear the collective, audible, painful, unforgettable cringe of everyone in earshot when you're the white kid with dreads that just casually dropped the N word. Wait, nevermind. I know you have black friends, so it's cool.
 

Rob Nothing

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a gay person you know is offended, and beyond that has a moral objection to what you said being that its a word used to dehumanize a marginalized group for a very long time. do you think his objection is a vain act of political correction? by saying you were morally wrong for using the word faggot do you think he is simply trying to force you to adhere to a nebulous political agenda apart from himself, or that he is simply pointing out an instance of apathy towards the plight of homosexuals? or maybe you simply don't understand what its like to be a homosexual, so nobody should expect you to know the pain it causes, and therefore shouldn't hold you accountable?
Thank you sir for keeping this civil and non reactionary.. that's refreshing.
I understand your disagreement and you raise a good point; is it not immoral to be insensitive to the complexes and sensibilities of people you don't know, in as much as you are knowingly so.

It was not wise for me to associate in any way with Nietzsche here since, like Marx, there are certain irrevocable connotations and loose baggage associated with his work in the English speaking world. ie nazism and nihilism and fascist agendas or anarchal ones. I would retract that if I could. The more intellectual stuff pertaining to that era and that thinking is old and outmoded on too many levels to look at all credible referring to it.

Regrettably I am just not one of you commendable souls, you guys that are on a mission to save everyone. You have your style and your priorities, I have my own. We are not all the same species, to the contrary we are all aliens to one another, and because of that I am not going to go around worrying what complete strangers might think about me.. if I know you personally and I like you then that is when the consequences of my conduct and how I carry myself will be most relevant to me in my life.

I am not in the habit of using the F word or the S word in front of children, and neither am often inclined to use other crude terms in the presence of innocents.
 
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Beegod Santana

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I always put respecting a person above trying to make sure my vocabulary doesn't offend. I grew up around a lotta fucked people, as a result, every now and then something a little harsh slips out my mouth. Sure I should (and do) try to avoid it, but at the same time, I ain't gonna lose sleep over someone being offended by something they over heard me say outta context. Even when I encounter someone I know I disagree with on almost everything, I still do my damnedest to treat them with basic kindness and respect. I won't call a cop "pig" to his face for example, or a Trump supporter a "fucking retard" cause at the end of the day I'm not out to cause more conflict. Freaking out on people about minor slights in their vocabulary however, I would call that causing conflict.
 

iflewoverthecuckoosnest

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The rise of ultra-political correctness and language/joke policing has been kind of frustrating for me.

I am very, very much in favor of gay rights and racial equality. Racism, sexism, homophobia... They're all real. But when people want to control the jokes of comedians and inhibit open dialogue on college campuses, I just can't get behind it.

That's not to say that it's okay to be flagrantly racist, or to use threatening language. If you call your gay friend a "faggot" in a derogatory sense, expect him to get pissed and maybe not be your friend anymore. If you are a dick, expect to be treated like one.

I like what Rob said about social intelligence. Part of what can make discussions about PC such a headache is that it is heavily context dependent, which is also why making broad laws and policies based on what might "offend" people is not such a great idea.

Not only that, but some of these ultra PC people inadvertently minimize real instances of oppression and abuse. When you proclaim that men can rape you with their eyes and words (I understand that not all PC advocates think this, but some of the more extreme ones have made statements about men raping them without touching them), you undermine the trauma of REAL rape victims who really did face the alienation, terror, and pain of such an assault. You also undermine women who were raped by other women, and you undermine men who have been raped.

I just find this new obsession over language policing and censorship in the name of equality so disheartening. It seems like kind of a waste of time when there are real instances of oppression happening every damn day. That is not to say that people don't sometimes say openly racist or sexist things- but again, that is heavily dependent on context, something that political correctness does not tend to take into account.

For the record, I don't use racial or homophobic slurs. I think that there are more creative swear words that don't have such a loaded history. But that doesn't mean I'm going to join the angry mob next time a comedian tells an edgy joke.
 

Hillbilly Castro

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I'm really pretty surprised by some of the responses here. "Politically correct" is a fucking stupid term used to make not acting like an ignorant dickhead seem like the exclusive behavior of Clinton voting whole foods shoppers who only don't say "the N word" so Jesse Jackson won't tell their friends with coexist bumper stickers that they're secret racists, thus getting them evicted from their holistic wellness classes. Seriously, will it hurt your feelings to not vomit racial slurs from your dumb white mouths as much as it could potentially hurt somebody's feelings who's had those words used as tools to lessen the value of their lives or who suffer from the ongoing results of the cultural context out of which those words were born? It probably won't. But I've seen this line of thinking over and over. You Nietzsche-reading nihilists get your jimmies rustled beyond all good sense when you think people are telling you what you can and can't say. It's not about that. It's about harm reduction. If you're a decent fuckin' person, you shouldn't go around foaming slurs at the mouth, especially if you're not a member of the demographic that slur targets. It's not for you to decide that it is or isn't offensive. It's not for me to decide either. But I know there are a million better words available to me that don't carry ANY chance of ruining somebody's day or week to hear, so I use them instead. Is that so hard? If it really IS that hard for you and you just REALLY love to sound like a tween on XBOX live because it's fuckin America and you can say what you want and you're so afraid that you're "adding to the power of the word by not saying it" or whatever bullshit argument you're using as an excuse to be the coolest most offensive person in the room because "it's not my job to not hurt people's feelings" then--fine. Be my guest. But I hope you can hear the collective, audible, painful, unforgettable cringe of everyone in earshot when you're the white kid with dreads that just casually dropped the N word. Wait, nevermind. I know you have black friends, so it's cool.

The problem with this is that the essential structure of Christianity remains intact in any form of political idealism. You are guilty of Original Sin, do your penance, get jacked up on self-righteous belief, and you'll get to the Heaven of a Just world. I have a "dumb white mouth", and if only I police myself and feel all the right forms of guilt, working myself into a neurotic True Believer, racism will end. Nevermind that white supremacy consists of material realities that have essentially nothing to do with language or the behavior of the individual - unless the individual behaves as a guerilla soldier in a material struggle against racist systems and struggles. True, I agree there isn't much reason to use what are commonly understood to be "slurs"; but I take issue with the philosophical road you tread to reach that conclusion. I think the tools you use to get there are weak and, to be completely frank, absolutely misguided.

You post a knee-jerk reaction to Nietzschean ideas, but Nietzsche formulated the ideas he did from watching this exact sequence play out over and over since the Enlightenment. His concept of Slave Morality is essentially that in hierarchical societies, a master class exists, and enforces their superiority (however arbitrary) onto a class of slaves who are denied the means to effectively resist their oppression; What happens from here is resentiment, (wiki:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment) where an impotent group of the oppressed turn the hatred they have for their captors inwards, into a culture of mad revenge fantasies and self-hatred. Eventually, this culture takes on a life of its own, until it is divorced from its origins in master-slave society. Christianity epitomized this. The climax of the Christian revenge fantasy is found in the day that the meek shall inherit the earth, by "turning the other cheek" and doing penance for their sins; it is a fantasy that is utterly divorced from the bones of history, that has no tactical relevance or bearing on the processes of history. Slave morality, then, comprises a set of philosophical narcotics that make the self-hating follower of slave-revenge cults doped up enough to acquiesce with the world around them, and in fact, to ultimately serve the very master class they hated to begin with. It is a genius trick on the part of the empowered to circulate resistance back into itself, such that power goes untouched. Along the way, for the individual, this process means a life of guilt and inefficacy, where one's failure to alter the fundamental conditions of the world around them makes them more self-hating, and their self-hatred in turn even further reduces their efficacy in changing their world. This is pathetic and the path to an impoverished existence.

I am by no means engaging in some kind of "don't tell me what to say, mom, Nietzsche said you can't" rhetoric in applying these ideas here. I am an individualist, completely and totally. The closest thing I have to a philosophical certainty is that I exist - I desire, and I have unique qualities that differentiate me from all other living beings. Further, these qualities can be nourished into the higher stages of self-actualization - and when these higher planes of the self are reached, and higher selves commune with one another to form communities, this is anarchy. Thus, identity is antithetical to the project of anarchy. Racism is an atrocity, I agree - not out of a moral sense of "duty" but out of a personal and instinctual repulsion - but we must understand that for racism to happen, individuals must be racialized. They must be assigned a racial identity against their will, when they are individuals first and foremost. If I encounter an individual that would prefer me to speak a certain way, inasmuch as I find it egoistic to gain the person's respect, I will comply with their desire. If I don't find it egoistic, why would anyone expect me to comply? For "society"? For the "political ideal"? I am absolutely cynical about ideals and I hate society. I am concerned only with those individuals who are in pursuit of their highest selves, and who in so doing exit "society" and its moral strife completely, to wage open warfare against that society. Slave morality is absolutely antithetical to this project.

I do not expect you to agree, but I wanted to add nuance to my position so that it would not be misinterpreted. From some correspondences I have with other anarchists internationally, the positions I describe are much more common outside the US, in Argentina, Chile, Greece, Spain, and so on. The Conspiracy Cells of Fire, the Mexican ITS, and the international Federacion Anarquista International (FAI) are good examples and their writings can be found at nostate.325.net .

Lastly, consider the tactical benefit of slave morality to the Deep State, CIA, and other authoritarian organizations that aim to thwart cultures of resistance. These two articles do a good job at introducing this as a possibility without engaging with conspiracy thinking.

http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/th...ctual-labor-of-dismantling-the-cultural-left/ and http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-manual.html are great examples
 

syrinyx

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The problem with this is that the essential structure of Christianity remains intact in any form of political idealism. You are guilty of Original Sin, do your penance, get jacked up on self-righteous belief, and you'll get to the Heaven of a Just world. I have a "dumb white mouth", and if only I police myself and feel all the right forms of guilt, working myself into a neurotic True Believer, racism will end. Nevermind that white supremacy consists of material realities that have essentially nothing to do with language or the behavior of the individual - unless the individual behaves as a guerilla soldier in a material struggle against racist systems and struggles. True, I agree there isn't much reason to use what are commonly understood to be "slurs"; but I take issue with the philosophical road you tread to reach that conclusion. I think the tools you use to get there are weak and, to be completely frank, absolutely misguided.

You post a knee-jerk reaction to Nietzschean ideas, but Nietzsche formulated the ideas he did from watching this exact sequence play out over and over since the Enlightenment. His concept of Slave Morality is essentially that in hierarchical societies, a master class exists, and enforces their superiority (however arbitrary) onto a class of slaves who are denied the means to effectively resist their oppression; What happens from here is resentiment, (wiki:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ressentiment) where an impotent group of the oppressed turn the hatred they have for their captors inwards, into a culture of mad revenge fantasies and self-hatred. Eventually, this culture takes on a life of its own, until it is divorced from its origins in master-slave society. Christianity epitomized this. The climax of the Christian revenge fantasy is found in the day that the meek shall inherit the earth, by "turning the other cheek" and doing penance for their sins; it is a fantasy that is utterly divorced from the bones of history, that has no tactical relevance or bearing on the processes of history. Slave morality, then, comprises a set of philosophical narcotics that make the self-hating follower of slave-revenge cults doped up enough to acquiesce with the world around them, and in fact, to ultimately serve the very master class they hated to begin with. It is a genius trick on the part of the empowered to circulate resistance back into itself, such that power goes untouched. Along the way, for the individual, this process means a life of guilt and inefficacy, where one's failure to alter the fundamental conditions of the world around them makes them more self-hating, and their self-hatred in turn even further reduces their efficacy in changing their world. This is pathetic and the path to an impoverished existence.

I am by no means engaging in some kind of "don't tell me what to say, mom, Nietzsche said you can't" rhetoric in applying these ideas here. I am an individualist, completely and totally. The closest thing I have to a philosophical certainty is that I exist - I desire, and I have unique qualities that differentiate me from all other living beings. Further, these qualities can be nourished into the higher stages of self-actualization - and when these higher planes of the self are reached, and higher selves commune with one another to form communities, this is anarchy. Thus, identity is antithetical to the project of anarchy. Racism is an atrocity, I agree - not out of a moral sense of "duty" but out of a personal and instinctual repulsion - but we must understand that for racism to happen, individuals must be racialized. They must be assigned a racial identity against their will, when they are individuals first and foremost. If I encounter an individual that would prefer me to speak a certain way, inasmuch as I find it egoistic to gain the person's respect, I will comply with their desire. If I don't find it egoistic, why would anyone expect me to comply? For "society"? For the "political ideal"? I am absolutely cynical about ideals and I hate society. I am concerned only with those individuals who are in pursuit of their highest selves, and who in so doing exit "society" and its moral strife completely, to wage open warfare against that society. Slave morality is absolutely antithetical to this project.

I do not expect you to agree, but I wanted to add nuance to my position so that it would not be misinterpreted. From some correspondences I have with other anarchists internationally, the positions I describe are much more common outside the US, in Argentina, Chile, Greece, Spain, and so on. The Conspiracy Cells of Fire, the Mexican ITS, and the international Federacion Anarquista International (FAI) are good examples and their writings can be found at nostate.325.net .

Lastly, consider the tactical benefit of slave morality to the Deep State, CIA, and other authoritarian organizations that aim to thwart cultures of resistance. These two articles do a good job at introducing this as a possibility without engaging with conspiracy thinking.

http://thephilosophicalsalon.com/th...ctual-labor-of-dismantling-the-cultural-left/ and http://www.openculture.com/2015/12/simple-sabotage-field-manual.html are great examples
1) Didn't need you to explain the concept of slave morality or ressentiment to me. I wouldn't have bothered ridiculing the mention of Nietzsche if I were unfamiliar with his writings.
2) Didn't need you to explain that you're individualist and what that means. I sussed out that you're an individualist a few words into your first post. I have fundamental problems with individualism itself, but that's another issue--and I know you're not fond of ideals anyway. :)
3) Don't need a religious society to develop the idea that you shouldn't be a dick to people. In simplest possible terms: I try not to be a dick to people because it makes people sad. I have spent a lot of time sad. I feel empathy for others, so I'd rather not contribute to other people being sad if I can help it.
4) Don't need you to wrap your apathy in long-winded philosophy (if you can call Nietzsche's frequently self-contradicting aphorisms philosophy) for me to understand you don't care for political ideology or society.
5) Don't need political ideology or society to feel empathy for others.
6) Don't need to be spoken to like I'm some kind of pleb that needs to be spoonfed Nietzschean ideas by your obviously highly advanced brain because I simply haven't arrived at such logical conclusions as yours. (I hope that reads sarcastic in plain text.)
7) Don't need you to bold your assertions so that my simple brain can understand how very right and logical and important they are.
8) Don't need to use this thread to debate the merits of Nietzsche's writing, although it is highly tempting and I'll leave this 1900 criticism by Trotsky for those interested.
9) Don't need to derail the thread to prove you're the best-read person here. I bet you aced at least your first semester as a philosophy major EASILY.
10) Don't need to explain to me that if you DO see merit in Nietzsche's work that you don't give a shit for "political correctness".
11) Don't think I have much else to say to somebody that finds any value in an ideology railing against the idea of empathy.
12) Don't think you actually understand Nietzsche if you think his ideas are compatible with anarchism or insurrection in any capacity. You can click that green link to Trotsky's writing if you're about to attempt to argue that point.
 

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