(This
entry opens a series which ponders on the lack of genuine freedom of spirit
within the American freedom-talking society, which is increasingly finding itself
under a despicable censorship, disguised under the intellectually offensive
term “political correctness.”)
The
colossal damage done to the thinking capacity of the American society from
having been inoculated, by its manipulative psychiatrists, with the poisonous
germ of political correctness, is the resulting complete and permanent
misunderstanding of the nature of philosophical inquiry, whose foremost virtue
is precisely that Nietzsche-like fearlessness of the independent thinker, which,
alas, this society so tragically lacks today. The truth is that if any kind of
socially-imposed “political correctness” is ever to be applied to human
discourse and communication, it must always be kept away from the vicinity of
the philosophical deliberation, and limit itself entirely to the sphere of
social etiquette and general matters of style, rather than substance. No
questions of any significant philosophical or social substance should ever be
branded as politically incorrect. It is only the answers, whether rude,
or hateful, or such, which may be occasionally disallowed in civil society,
along with all other explicit instances of anti-social behavior. Unfortunately,
we are often too eager to ban a question, as we anticipate, sometimes even with
little provocation, a particularly rude answer to it, by offhandedly filling in
the blanks, in this case, by answering the question ourselves in our own mind
in the ugliest possible way, with some arrogant and insensible guesswork, like
some poor people talking on the phone and having a bad reception, who try to
figure out for themselves whatever the other party is saying. Such a device can
work in some shallow small talk, when the subject matter is extremely
unimportant, and likewise is everything that both parties are going to say to
each other, concerning their subject. But as we know, banning silly small talk
should be an unimaginably horrible infringement on human rights, as well as an
utterly ridiculous one, too, as such talk has always been the essential fodder
of social communication. However, in all matters of philosophical and social
importance, the following two rules must be observed at all times.---
One, we must never commit the crime of disqualifying any
question from being asked, on the grounds of its political incorrectness.
There are of course good and bad questions. The good ones double-click legitimate
files of inquiry; the bad ones act like some computer viruses, messing up our
ability to think and understand anything. But our determination of which
questions are good, and which are bad, must always be made on the basis of
solid mental evaluation, and, as a matter of principle, even the ostensibly bad
questions must not be preemptively disallowed from being asked, but only from
being hastily answered, before an appropriate evaluation of them has been made.
The
other rule demands the absence of
presumptions, of any attempts to shortcut the process by guesswork. Are we
trying here to suppress our worst fears about the answer? For a few hundred
bucks, any psychiatrist should advise us not to pent up our fears of the answer
inside our psyche, individual or collective, creating a monster known as “the
rage within,” but to bring the question into the open, trying to debate it
privately, in the former case, or publicly, in the latter case, so that the
worst possible answer can be mollified by the vast diversity of alternative
answers, and, thus improved, restored to some measure of sanity, to the benefit
of all parties concerned.
The
question of diagnosing this peculiar mental illness, one of whose symptoms is
this sick obsession with political correctness at the expense of free speech,
makes one wonder whether, for instance, this pathology is characteristic of
this country only, or it may in some form be also present in Europe, with her
own huge immigration problems, and such. This particular form of disease,
however, is not to be ever confused with various forms of normal censorship.
And, lastly, in psychological terms, which of the two familiar complexes does
political correctness reveal: that of superiority, or that of inferiority, or
maybe a combination of both? Indeed, the only reason for a constant
reaffirmation of one’s superiority must be the existence of an underlying
feeling of inferiority.
Translating
this discussion, to apply to nations, Soviet society had many speech taboos,
carrying within its psyche a deep historical fear of foreign aggression. But no
one ever claimed, except for perfunctory propaganda reasons, that it was a free
society. Furthermore, very few would experience an actual discomfort from being
unfree: the majority happily traded any potential benefits of freedom for the
security and protection afforded to them by the State, and every free Russian
spirit was rejoicing at the fact that their free spirit was so much alive in
them, generously nurtured and tempered by the adversity itself!
American
society, on the other hand, prides itself in its inalienable freedoms, whereas
it is riddled, as if with bullets, with insecurities and phobias of every
imaginable kind. Whatever it wants to call free society it may well have,
to its infinite satisfaction, but it seems to subsist at the expense and to the
detriment of America’s free spirit. Politically correct thought is not
free thought, and without free thought the spirit cannot be free.
This
sounds like an awfully grotesque, crooked and unkind paradox, but it is much
preferable to have a free spirit in an unfree society than a free society
housing the spirit of a slave.
Unless
a third option becomes available: free spirit in a free society. But is such a
thing even possible? Yes, it is, and certainly in America!… But what a
priceless rarity!
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