The “Political Correctness” phrase is the perfect example of good intention ending in disaster. The whirling cascade of bad jokes, inspired by the politically correct approaches (see George Carlin and his hate for PC) show in a crystal clear precision the difficulty of being lucid in a world bathing in confusion. The derogatory way in which political correctness is understood makes me sad.
Some people, specifically the smart and cultivated people, claim that PC flattens the creative differences between humans and trims off the subjective specificity of history, society or morals. I do not agree with this idea. Only the morally incompetent are “flattened” by an educated attempt of discerning with coherence between abuse and adjective. The funniest part, these days, is a lamenting I came across claiming that the “western PC speech” destroys traditional religious (orthodox in this case) national values, but criminally “forgetting” that the lay man’s interpretation of the religious values birthed the deepest form of incorrect, inhumane and illogical discourse, based mostly on superstition — e.g. we don’t vote on equal marriage because we fear God, or we don’t create a legal framework for sex work because we’re not a country of sinful lustful pagans … you know the drill.
Other people claim that behind Political Correctness you’ll find hidden a true doctrine of ideological control. I don’t agree with this either, despite my unshaken belief in global conspiracy. Where is the connection between a straightforward attempt to rationally manage delicate themes, themes loaded with emotions, with ideology? Is it, I wonder, in the domain of ideology to avoid talking about a woman’s looks during her hiring interview for a job at a scientific laboratory? I wouldn’t think so. Are the modern feminists politically correct in their deeply ideological speech? I wouldn’t think so, not even if someone could prove it otherwise.
To be magical there must be three ways to attack PC. The third weapon: a long series of historic blunders achieved masterfully by those who got PC the wrong way and have reduced what was to be a complex effort of social defining to a damned chain of stupid euphemisms — such as “police person”, “fire person” and so on. These are the true force that drives PC down from its moral high ground, those who linguistically perfect humanity in the name of a concept that has very, very little to do with the world’s dictionaries. These people have a lot of power because “the many” are always “the simple” and that’s about all they know about PC: unisex bathrooms.
For those of you who are still willing to give PC another shot, knowing that it is a great platform for good, detached reasoning, you must know that Political Correctness is less about politics and more about correctness. The main work of PC is to find that way in which human pluralism, this intrinsic quality of our emotional and intellectual complexity, gets to be described in an acceptable and pacifist way. This endeavor helps people to respect one another in a simpler but more profound manner, meaning somehow beyond the relentless stereotypes of the older generations so scared of the new, stereotypes such as women should go in the kitchen while men are working, faggots are lesser men, the nerds and dorks are ugly, the HIV positive must be an addict too and so on! Can you see how even using exactly the most politically incorrect expressions you cannot hide the underlying discrimination problem?
Your capacity to think outside of your immediate universe, the power to identify with others who are nothing like you, is, in a way, a basic compound inside the essence of your spiritual evolution, isn’t it?
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