Is politically correct (PC) a form of lying?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by wellwisher, Jan 20, 2012.

  1. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Nonsense.

    Really? Someone who files a paternity suit is called a sexist? Never heard that. Do you have an example?

    Are you kidding? Look at all the attacks against atheists here. Any atheist who claims that Christians are blind followers of a religion is attacked for being intolerant.

    Again, you are living in a fantasy world. There were months worth of attacks against a single mosque that recently opened in Manhattan. Only the willfully blind could have missed that.

    In your own post you refer to men and women, Christians and Muslims etc instead of people. You pigeonhole people into group abstractions instead of treating them as individuals.

    How have you been punished? (Not in your imagination, in reality.)

    It is unfortunate that you see people as "your black friends" instead of just "your friends." Perhaps someday we will outgrow that kind of thinking.
     
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  3. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    I said it that way to make sure you were aware I had many close friends who were black. Had I left that word out out (like I had been), I would have been PC pigeon holed. Before I pointed this out, I was predictably stereotyped. It was true in the mind but not in reality, like PC. The stereo type was probably a convincing lie.

    America used to be a melting pot, when I was young. The value of this was the best ingredients, from each cultural niche, were added to the pot so the children had the best of all ingredients to eat.

    As an example of how this works, for the best interests of all; all cultures cook and have ethnic foods. But of all these, there are a handful with the widest appeal, due to how good that food is. The most popular are Italian, Chinese, Mexican, French, etc., because these have the most common appeal. These are some of the main food ingredients in the cultural melting pot, which all share. There is an objectivity to this since this is fully based on choice and not a government mandate.

    PC and liberalism tries to go in the opposite direction of the melting pot. In the misguided attempt to celebrate the diversity within the voting base (throw them a bone in their pen), they dissociate the melting pot, and the best of the best, back to ethnic diversity and secondary food.

    The special nature of each ethnic food is now subjective, and not full population objective. There is an emotional attachment, but the brain is not engaged of this to be objective. I suppose you make a person feel that chicken tongues is the best food, but this subjectivity will create problems when they attempt to become part of the bigger herd, since it reflects lack of objectivity. If you attempt to point this out, out of concern for their future, you are a bigot. The PC and liberal crowd will try to create a mandate and force fit this into the pot.

    I am concern for the blacks, but it is connected to liberating them from the irrational PC and liberal plantations. Right after Martin Luther King, the blacks were heading in the right direction. Character is an attribute of the individual. This makes it possible for free choice with less potential herd (skin color) regression.

    The problem PC and liberalism face is if blacks eat of the melting pot they will also leave the PC planation. The growth of government programs goes down. They get kickbacks from a union stream which expands as government expands. The tax payer gets to pay for them again. To prevent this they need to keep the focus in the past and not the future.

    I was born and raised in Massachusetts, which is one of the most liberal PC states, maybe only behind California. I know the game because I was part of the game for many years. But once I learned to think on my own, I saw the damage this approach creates. The heart is in the right place, which helps recruiting, but the brain is disengaged. This is why there will be plenty of emotional appeal, which is the nature of PC, but no logic that can stand up to the data that is generated.
     
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  5. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    wellwisher

    No, it was never that, though it has long been a goal, only the blind could claim it has ever been so. That is the goal of PC.

    That is a lie. Whether through intent or ignorance it is the opposite of true. Supporting equality and fairness is the way to move our society toward the goal of equality(which is what PC is all about). Yours is a truly Orwellian logic(if logic can be used to describe this drivel at all).

    Grumpy

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  7. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I agree very strongly.

    As immigrants assimilated they joined the American people and become Americans. If we are going to be a single people, we need to have something in common with each other that's stronger than differences that drive us apart. America has always been more about shared ideals than it's been about common ancestry.

    But conversely, what 'American' means has always been kind of a continual work-in-progress, changing as the melting-pot culture incorporates the best of what immigrants bring to it from around the world.

    Unfortunately, like you I sense that's starting to change. The cooling of the traditional American melting pot and its replacement by the new ideal of multiculturalism is a prescription for disaster in my opinion.

    I'm not entirely sure that the United States will even exist in 2100. If it does, it might be a nation in name only, a collection of distinct cultural enclaves with little sense of shared identity or common purpose. Some of these will doubtless display more loyalty to whatever foreign lands and cultures their populations originally came from than to this one. I'm not convinced that a unified federal democracy can continue to function in those kind of conditions.
     
  8. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    Yazata

    Tell that to the real Native Americans who were slaughtered, moved off their lands and treated as savages throughout the history of our "Free and equal society", tell that to the blacks of the South even up to the present and they will laugh in your face, tell the Chinese that built the railroads in the 1800s and they would treat you as a brain damaged fool, tell that to the Irish in New York in the 1880s and be prepared to be pummeled, tell it to the Japanese in the 40s if you could get close enough to the wire holding them in their internment camps(while Germans in America were not treated likewise), tell it to the peaceful Muslims in New York(and Tennessee)who only wanted a place to worship freely as it says in our Constitution.

    The US has always been and will always be a collection of different cultures and identities, all we can try to do is insure our mutual society and government will treat all of them equally(IE multiculturalism). It seems the only people who have this delusion are white men congratulating themselves on how equal they all are. We do have shared ideals, but they have NEVER been the reality that exists in America outside the insular world of white men of approved European extraction(and those that can fake it or "pass" as one). Thus the need for PC to force white men to confront their own bigotry and prejudices, as they would not do so from within their delusion.

    Grumpy

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  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Your identification of PC with your bigoted notion of "liberalism" is false. The most common forms of PC regulation of vocabulary operating now is the prevention of referring to bigots and racists and misogynists and similar thugs by the common vernacular terms for such people and their behavior. As flagrant example, I refer you to the enforced courtesy of referring to Fox News anchors and pundits as "conservative".
     
  10. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    This science forum is sort of a loose analogy for multiculturalism. There are the mainstream ideas and all the minority opinions. I am one of the minorities, since I try to be unique. According to liberals, the government needs to come in and make it more equal for me.

    What would be the easiest path for me to gain full site acceptance? A staff mandate that says everyone has to celebrate my diversity, while giving me a money? Or I should try to blend better into the main stream of thinking? The third option is, I can chose to remain distinct, but I need to be willing to accept the cause and effect of human nature; accept the fact that my separation with the main stream will continue to rub people the wrong way.

    I have been writing on different forums since 2005. I took a lot of abuse in many sites, with this site not so bad. I won't assimilate, but retain my intellectual diversity, because I wish to retain my own (cultural) idea identity.

    Where is the government to force everyone to accept me? Do the liberals and PC group want my boohoo stories of abuse? I am totally aware I am going against the grain and this will create friction, but where is the equality?

    I understand the cause and effect of retaining my cultural diversity. I am sure I have taken as much crap as any modern minority, because I am a minority of one and people are not sure about me. But I also know that I am the one creating this problem for myself by not assimilating or finding a middle ground.

    I often wonder where is PC, and why don't they make up a nice word for me, that everyone is forced to use or else? How about a government program contingent on me remaining a minority of one? I will celebrate my diversity. I could also use a week devoted to me, that we can call well-wisher week. If I got that, do you think it would piss some people off?
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2012
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The most common examples of enforced courtesy and PC vocabulary in the US public discourse are the nice words we are more or less constrained to use for your bigotries, offensive presumptions, and inability to learn from the facts and realities brought to your attention.

    We call them "conservative", even. That's like calling piracy "entrepreneurship".

    You are not alone, and like the many others of your faction you are not confusing or hard to figure out - people are not all that unsure about you.
     
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Uh, no, most people have friends of many races.

    If you really think that saying "I have friends" would get you "PC pigeon holed" then you have some issues with paranoia.

    Not even close. Go to Manhattan, one of those hotbeds of evil liberalism. You'll see Asian-Mexican places. You'll see margaritas being sold in 200 year old bars. You'll see places selling quesadillas, shepherd's pies and grits. The mixing pot is alive and well.

    In the real world no one will force you to each chicken's tongues or anything else you don't want to eat.
     
  13. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    15,058
    I think you'll like the work of Herbert Marcuse.


    From Repressive Tolerance:

    THIS essay examines the idea of tolerance in our advanced industrial society. The conclusion reached is that the realization of the objective of tolerance would call for intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed. In other words, today tolerance appears again as what it was in its origins, at the beginning of the modern period--a partisan goal, a subversive liberating notion and practice. Conversely, what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression.
     
  14. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    No, one just gets ostracized for not eating what the mainstream dictates.
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Aside from individuals avoiding or disparaging individuals they know, individuals dealing with individuals, do you have any examples of this?

    Anything in the US, where we are discussing "PC", on a level that would be relevant to a discussion of "PC" vocabulary constraints?

    I can't think of a single one. In Muslim countries pork eaters are ostracized and persecuted, in some Hindu regions likewise; that is not "liberal PC" but the more usual "conservative intolerance", and it prevents not honesty in speech but behavior that "conservatives" find offensive (honesty in speech they prevent also, but that aspect of "PC" is denied by wellwisher and others here).

    The topic here was the supposed existence of such "liberal" constraints on speech as prevent honesty in the US.

    Not if he understands it. Marcuse is not talking about an imaginary or hypothetical constraining of the language of the ruling class and its political base by a vague and undefinable "liberal elite".

    In this, for example:- - - - - "In other words, today tolerance appears again as what it was in its origins, at the beginning of the modern period--a partisan goal, a subversive liberating notion and practice. Conversely, what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression." - - - -

    Marcuse is talking about the "inauthentic" (his term) nature of tolerance for rightwing authoritarian speech. He is observing that when we tolerate institutions like Fox News, speech like Sarah Palin's and Rush Limbaugh's and Sean Hannity's and so forth (in his day George Wallace and Father Coughlin and the KKK), we are allowing damage to actual tolerance and enabling rightwing oppression.

    Marcuse is arguing in favor of strengthening the kinds of restrictions wellwisher objects to, on the grounds of authenticity supporting greater freedom.
     
    Last edited: Feb 27, 2012
  16. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Hmm. What does the "mainstream" dictate you eat?
     
  17. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    6,152
    What form of bigoted lying is that, to couch this:

    As an attack on:

    :shrug:

    Lying on a thread about lying is worse than disingenuous. Every tenet that protects the Old School white supremacy ideal and dresses it up with euphemism and an appeal to higher authority is just lie upon lie, a mammoth plantation house of cards, built on styrofoam, where you dream of black servants serving you mint julep on silver trays, while they tend to all of your chores.

    So get over it. You can kick and scream all you want, but no one cares. If you don't want to ride with civil rights, you can go to the back of the bus. The only difference is (and it's a huge one): no one is forcing you. You sit there by choice, guarding the ruined temples of white supremacy.

    That's not liberals forcing you. That's just the law.
     
  18. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    15,058
    AI -

    What are you, black, white, some other race?
     
  19. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    15,058
    Meat, ordinary commercial food.



    Then there's the idea that if a person refuses to drink or eat anything containing alcohol, it must be that they are a former alcoholic or had an alcoholic parent or significant other person.
    As if the refusal to consume alcohol would be automatically indicative of pathology.
     
  20. wynn ˙ Valued Senior Member

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    15,058
    The OP doesn't say anything about limiting the discussion to the US. PC exists in other countries as well, although in somewhat different forms.


    Refusal to eat meat while hospitalized can get you into trouble, in some European countries. You could be classified as an irresponsible patient and the insurance would not cover the treatment.

    Racial and religious mobbing at schools and at work is real. And while there are laws against it, even if the victim wins the lawsuit, the fact that they sued their employer goes on their record and they are not likely to find another job anytime soon, at least not in the same industry.
    Laws against bullying and mobbing do not actually protect the victims.


    And I think Marcuse was correct in his assessment.


    I didn't get the impression so far that is the case, though.


    I think that PC (as we know it today, which is basically rightwing propaganda trying to look liberal) is conveying an internally inconsistent stance that is just not viable in reality - namely, that people are different, but should nevertheless be treated as equals. And because the stance is not viable in reality, proponents of PC invariably become passive-aggressive or straighforwardly aggressive, whether they are officially from the leftwing or rightwing.

    The differences between people are real. Trying to artificially celebrate them is not going to make them less real or less significant.
     
    Last edited: Feb 28, 2012
  21. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Hmm. We usually don't eat meat. We've never been ostracized for it. Who has criticized you for not eating meat?

    ?? I work with several people who don't drink alcohol due to their religious beliefs, and a great many who do not drink during the day (i.e. at lunch.) No one in our workplace ostracizes them.

    It is no more indicative of a pathology than someone who drinks alcohol. Or who has sex, or who eats meat, or makes any of the many decisions on how to live one's life. They of course can be _part_ of a pathology, as in your example of the alcoholic who no longer drinks, or in the obese meat eater. But the decision alone does not indicate pathology.
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    That doesn't sound political, it doesn't sound liberal, and it is on an individual scale.

    That what is the case? Marcuse referring to tolerance of rightwing authoritarian speech as "inauthentic"? His thesis that such tolerance endangers actual freedom? That his assessment of bad faith and hazards in the tolerating of rightwing authoritarian speech is accurate?

    I very much doubt that wellwisher would accept your characterization of the source of PC constraints.

    So persuade him. And the rest of us. We need some argument to show us that the stuff Rush LImbaugh sneers at as "PC" is rightwing propaganda.
     
  23. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    It's tilted pretty far to the cultural left, that's for sure.

    I think that in practice, "multiculturalists" can be just as hostile towards dissenting minorities as anyone else. And just as quick to try to enforce intellectual and behavioral conformity.

    You're going to be waiting a long time if you expect them to do that.

    Here's the thing: Here in the United States, "liberals" and "conservatives", "left" and "right", "blue" and "red", Democrats and Republicans, are simply names for two broad coalitions, each with a tremendous amount of internal differences and diversity within them.

    (The words "liberal" and "conservative" can have rather different meanings outside the United States. But similar social forces are typically at work in those places, even if the players sometimes receive different names.)

    In the American context, I think of the "liberals"/Democrats as the outsider's coalition, while the "conservatives"/Republicans are the insider's coalition. (That's kind of my thesis statement.)

    It's important to understand right off that the words 'outsider' and 'insider' have very little to do with real wealth or power. In fact, probably a majority of real power in America, in government, in education and in the media, is wielded by liberals, Democrats, outsiders.

    What I'm talking about is psychological identification and ultimately, social alienation.

    The conservatives tend to identify with the United States, with its history and its traditions. They see the nation as a larger community, a distinct people of which they are a part. That's a major part of their self-identification and their self-image. They see themselves as belonging to and as representatives of the American people and as continuing and protecting those traditions. That's why conservatives often tend towards nationalism and why patriotic holidays are the quintessential conservative celebrations.

    The liberals tend to be alienated from the nation, its history and its traditions, which they often perceive as being oppressive and evil. They will insist that they love the United States, but if you inquire, it appears that what they really love is an ideal of what they think America can ultimately be in the future... after the Revolution. America as it exists right now is fatally flawed and something fit only for constant social criticism.

    This is why adolescents and young twenty-somethings flock to the political left. Racial and religious minorities, employees as opposed to bosses, feminists, immigrants, self-styled intellectuals... different in so many ways, what they all share in common are feelings of not exactly fitting in, of being outsiders. And a sense of resentment towards the poorly defined "them" that they feel estranged from.

    This is where multiculturalism comes from. Multiculturalism is all about NOT assimilating into whatever is perceived as being the mainstream, into the nation's history and traditions. It's about preserving communities aloof, as nuclei of critical and transgressive change. That's why the multiculturalists hate the melting-pot ideal with such a violent flaming passion.

    Your problem is that some Sciforums participants have identified you as a defender of religion. Certainly as someone who isn't angry and alienated from it as they are. Religion is widely imagined as a central pillar of the system.

    Like it or not, that means that you play the role and represent "the Man" in some people's eyes, so there are people who are going to rail reflexively against you, knee-jerk fashion. And despite the fact that you're close to being a minority of one on this board with unique ideas that are all your own, you will never qualify for multicultural consideration and your difference will never be "celebrated".
     

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