With resultant “Internet shaming…”
Along with burning of an author’s books…
One illustration here:
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/what-cancel-culture-why-150-writers-and-academics-including-jk-rowling-signed-letter-condemning-intolerant-climate-free-speech-2907717
This blog arose after reading the New York Times this morning about a French intellectual publication that was going out of business…
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/opinion/french-intellectual-life-america.html
Perhaps a central quote from the article:
I really cannot get to the deeper nature of what this publication represented over the years. However, I got the broader gestalt with the final words of the article:
“There are still lessons Americans can learn from France, provided we approach it with the right questions in mind. A good one to start with might be whether the American academy of recent decades — with the culture it carries and the political behaviors it fosters — has been, in the wider world, a force for intellectual freedom or for its opposite.”
Perhaps on another view on the spectrum of free speech…
In a NYT article “The Rotting of the Republican Mind” David Brookes wrote :
“Rauch pointed out that every society has an epistemic regime, a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what’s real. In democratic, nontheocratic societies, this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge.
This ecosystem, Rauch wrote, operates as a funnel. It allows a wide volume of ideas to get floated, but only a narrow group of ideas survive collective scrutiny. “We let alt-truth talk,” Rauch said, “but we don’t let it write textbooks, receive tenure, bypass peer review, set the research agenda, dominate the front pages, give expert testimony or dictate the flow of public dollars.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/republican-disinformation.html
But, who is to judge what is Truth?
Being a Heretic, my hackles rise up when I hear about “Political Correctness.”
First of all, I believe in respect for everyone, even those I do not believe respect me or my beliefs.
In The Friends of Voltaire, Hall wrote the phrase: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evelyn_Beatrice_Hall
On the other hand, I do not believe we should allow the widespread dissemination of speech that calls for harming others…
This has become a problem in our current society with the unprecedented role of social media, which often allows the widespread dissemination of almost anything anyone wishes to say…
So how do we deal with overwhelming political correctness that suppresses the generation and discussion of a wide variety of ideas and, yet, “doing no harm…”
There is an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review regarding the problems of political correctness and how to address certain difficulties in cross-cultural interactions in the workplace:
https://hbr.org/2006/09/rethinking-political-correctness
• Pause to short-circuit the emotion and reflect.
• Connect with others in ways that affirm the importance of relationships.
• Question yourself to help identify your blind spots and discover what makes you defensive.
• Get genuine support that doesn’t necessarily validate your point of view but, rather, helps you gain a broader perspective.
• Shift your mind-set from “You need to change” to “What can I change?”
Sounds like mindful practice to me!
There are interesting 10 suggestions regarding this cancel culture here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/08/ten-rules-preserve-common-sense-debate-about-free-speech/?_gl=1*1woxgg7*_ga*WmwxRDY4WEtzeUxyemMzLU5YbFpiOFBvUXZfVDdHbk5zN0pVV3NnSVNSVXJ1OGctMzBIX0QyZTdWaFQ2RzRoZA
This one is interesting and relevant:
9. It is easy to say that “there are more important things to fight about” than cancel culture or suppression of speech. But the latter is a precondition to a democratic, free society that can successfully govern itself and address those problems. We can and must defend free speech at the same time we are calling out police brutality, threats to public health and systemic racism.
Perhaps some answers arise from considering an Integral perspective…
Interesting thoughts here:
https://www.paragonhouse.com/wp/ideas/a-needed-reset-for-liberal-culture/
“Wilber sees as one of the main failings of the green meme the idea that “the lack of green values (egalitarian, group freedom, gender equality, human care, and sensitivity) is due to a presence of oppression. Lack of green = presence of oppression.” However, “the major problem with that view taken by itself is that it completely overlooks the central role of growth, development, and evolution” (p. 39).”
“To the politically correct greens that idea of development and growth for anybody is totally anathema because we have to accept everyone as they are, not that they are as they are because of the stage of development they have attained. Thus, “although the green will not allow the existence of any ‘higher’ or ‘better’ views, it still deeply feels that its own views are definitely ‘higher’ and ‘better’” (p. 43). This makes it an ethnocentric view, incapable of the inclusiveness it espouses.”
Sometimes referred to as the “Mean Green Meme.”
As always, I write to clarify my own thoughts and feelings…
Whenever I write, I like to think that these words and quotes are seed plantings…
Your own ideas are much more important than my own…
Dialogue on!
Namaste
