Although he does not intend to count as politically incorrect, the author has decided to reflect a little upon political corectness. Somehow he cannot avoid the impression it marks the difference between good intentions and bad practice. To begin with, PC indicates an intellectual respectively a historiographic crisis. The former applies to its home country, the USA, the latter to its typically German version.
The original motivation is not that erroneous. After all, as the history of mentality has taught concerned democrats, barbarity always starts from language use - especially if it is officially organized. Human beings apparently have less difficulty in planning the efficient extermination of rats and parasites than of their peers. And how getting gradually used to that kind of vocabulary turns out in terms of individual psychology can be learned from Klemperer's LTI. From that point of view it is not that far-fetched to call in a democratic self-control of language use in public.
But needless to say, there is a catch to it; it concerns the connection of morality and democracy. This is because control meant to avoid totalitarian traits of democracy necessarily appeals to ethical principles. And similarly necessarily these principles will stiffen to moral rigidity. And this involves it is not the language use itself, but the user who will become the object of moral estimation. And who wants to be that? Especially in a democratic system which allows even non-voters to practice Freedom of Speech and Opinion. The old problem: Who decides what is tolerable as party conventions are not held accordingly to the same rules as, say, 1936? Who dares call me a scoundrel for calling someone else a scoundrel?
Those liberal activists who fought for civil rights in the 1960s with their almost touching predilection for social politics have sowed what the subsequent generation has reaped with noticeably less intellectual capacity: being pedantic out of conviction. In a short time they off-handly found more and more social minorities, put them under ideological quarantaine and produced a catalogue of alternative terms which were meant to replace the common labels which had become suspicious to carry fascist or racist or chauvinist implications. Whoever called a black human being that way instead of Afro-American might have said just as easily negro or even nigger, for he was bound to be a member of the White Brotherhood of Imbecile Hood Bearers aka Ku-Klux-Klan. As especially this exmaple illustrates, PC is blessed with typically modern dynamics, rapidly overtaking itself by replacing constantly incriminated terms until the replacements are incriminated. In this respect it reminds us of the chaotic Exchange rate - albeit it is not enough avarice but the assiduous will to be good. The wrath at times self-complacently striving to eliminate what is incorrect, lets us speculate it is about compensation; just because mankind is unfair and will remain so, PC keeps so doggedly at the verbal form that it distracts from the ideal object to put fairness into force. And, as usual, the system will strike back. When we look at the other side, we cannot avoid the somewhat heretical impression women, aliens or diabled persons can be better oppressed than broads, wops or cripples. For in the first case the reasons seem to be purely factual. After all, referring to them in a political correct way somehow gives us a free ticket. And as unfairness necessarily continues to exist, PC can only increase its hectic language regulation.
It is just that kind of hectic, along with an astonishing naiveté, which provokes resistance. One need not be against the protected groups when using a recently politically incorrect term. To some people it is a reward in itself to watch the self attested correct ones foam. Therefore PC has had since the mid-1990s some negative implications - exactly at the time it was adapted in Germany. Small wonder, since the illhumoured way in which the incorrect ones nearly were told to wash their mouths did not chime at all with the ironized WWW generation of fun. And this is because fun implies juggling with the way lines are drawn. And this is particularly amusing when the lines are drawn especially rigidly - for instance when PC reaches all the way to the bottom of the barrel and tries to prohibit speakers from entering the negative side of the line, thus creating language taboos. As a consequence, the last few years boomed with more or less calculated albeit rarely intelligent taboo-breaking. Regardless of what to think of the heroic fighters against PC - they have managed to denigrate it. But they could not abolish it.
This is because the principle of paradox teaches us that what cannot be abolished can be at best constantly abolished. Opposition pairs are on an unmanageable, since inobservable level in an exchange relation of possibility which can only be put into an order if it is a concrete fact. This means what is politically correct is often what is politically incorrect and in turn it is a question of concrete, but in the end arbitrary decision which is which. To put it in a less complicated, but no less complex way: Today political incorrectness is politically correct. Woe be to anybody who is caught making semantic contortions to assist a potentially incriminated group. Then he or she has broken a taboo him- or herself which was created to break the taboo he or she has created before. This sanction is labelled a would-be good human. And as good (whatever that means - advantageous? profitable?) it might be to be a good human being, as bad it is to count as a wouldbe good human being. (For one can only count as something one could never call oneself.) Quite a similar thing is the case with incriminable groups' strategy to take possession of the pejorative label to alleviate its effects. The resulting white line of contempt simply will have to be refilled - and will be, as can be seen from the increasing alternative labels for homosexuality, since the term gay is not even sufficient anymore to banish one's own subconscious doubts to belong to that group, too. The principle of PC, in sum, remains intact - it is its verbal parametres which are subjected to fashion. And in order to avoid the necessity to realize that, they call themselves enlightenment and even believe that.
The original motivation is not that erroneous. After all, as the history of mentality has taught concerned democrats, barbarity always starts from language use - especially if it is officially organized. Human beings apparently have less difficulty in planning the efficient extermination of rats and parasites than of their peers. And how getting gradually used to that kind of vocabulary turns out in terms of individual psychology can be learned from Klemperer's LTI. From that point of view it is not that far-fetched to call in a democratic self-control of language use in public.
But needless to say, there is a catch to it; it concerns the connection of morality and democracy. This is because control meant to avoid totalitarian traits of democracy necessarily appeals to ethical principles. And similarly necessarily these principles will stiffen to moral rigidity. And this involves it is not the language use itself, but the user who will become the object of moral estimation. And who wants to be that? Especially in a democratic system which allows even non-voters to practice Freedom of Speech and Opinion. The old problem: Who decides what is tolerable as party conventions are not held accordingly to the same rules as, say, 1936? Who dares call me a scoundrel for calling someone else a scoundrel?
Those liberal activists who fought for civil rights in the 1960s with their almost touching predilection for social politics have sowed what the subsequent generation has reaped with noticeably less intellectual capacity: being pedantic out of conviction. In a short time they off-handly found more and more social minorities, put them under ideological quarantaine and produced a catalogue of alternative terms which were meant to replace the common labels which had become suspicious to carry fascist or racist or chauvinist implications. Whoever called a black human being that way instead of Afro-American might have said just as easily negro or even nigger, for he was bound to be a member of the White Brotherhood of Imbecile Hood Bearers aka Ku-Klux-Klan. As especially this exmaple illustrates, PC is blessed with typically modern dynamics, rapidly overtaking itself by replacing constantly incriminated terms until the replacements are incriminated. In this respect it reminds us of the chaotic Exchange rate - albeit it is not enough avarice but the assiduous will to be good. The wrath at times self-complacently striving to eliminate what is incorrect, lets us speculate it is about compensation; just because mankind is unfair and will remain so, PC keeps so doggedly at the verbal form that it distracts from the ideal object to put fairness into force. And, as usual, the system will strike back. When we look at the other side, we cannot avoid the somewhat heretical impression women, aliens or diabled persons can be better oppressed than broads, wops or cripples. For in the first case the reasons seem to be purely factual. After all, referring to them in a political correct way somehow gives us a free ticket. And as unfairness necessarily continues to exist, PC can only increase its hectic language regulation.
It is just that kind of hectic, along with an astonishing naiveté, which provokes resistance. One need not be against the protected groups when using a recently politically incorrect term. To some people it is a reward in itself to watch the self attested correct ones foam. Therefore PC has had since the mid-1990s some negative implications - exactly at the time it was adapted in Germany. Small wonder, since the illhumoured way in which the incorrect ones nearly were told to wash their mouths did not chime at all with the ironized WWW generation of fun. And this is because fun implies juggling with the way lines are drawn. And this is particularly amusing when the lines are drawn especially rigidly - for instance when PC reaches all the way to the bottom of the barrel and tries to prohibit speakers from entering the negative side of the line, thus creating language taboos. As a consequence, the last few years boomed with more or less calculated albeit rarely intelligent taboo-breaking. Regardless of what to think of the heroic fighters against PC - they have managed to denigrate it. But they could not abolish it.
This is because the principle of paradox teaches us that what cannot be abolished can be at best constantly abolished. Opposition pairs are on an unmanageable, since inobservable level in an exchange relation of possibility which can only be put into an order if it is a concrete fact. This means what is politically correct is often what is politically incorrect and in turn it is a question of concrete, but in the end arbitrary decision which is which. To put it in a less complicated, but no less complex way: Today political incorrectness is politically correct. Woe be to anybody who is caught making semantic contortions to assist a potentially incriminated group. Then he or she has broken a taboo him- or herself which was created to break the taboo he or she has created before. This sanction is labelled a would-be good human. And as good (whatever that means - advantageous? profitable?) it might be to be a good human being, as bad it is to count as a wouldbe good human being. (For one can only count as something one could never call oneself.) Quite a similar thing is the case with incriminable groups' strategy to take possession of the pejorative label to alleviate its effects. The resulting white line of contempt simply will have to be refilled - and will be, as can be seen from the increasing alternative labels for homosexuality, since the term gay is not even sufficient anymore to banish one's own subconscious doubts to belong to that group, too. The principle of PC, in sum, remains intact - it is its verbal parametres which are subjected to fashion. And in order to avoid the necessity to realize that, they call themselves enlightenment and even believe that.
No comments:
Post a Comment