Right. This could take a while.
Political correctness gone mad, eh? Here’s my attempt at making sense of it.

First up, we need to get clear about what PCGM actually means. If it’s just a longwinded way of saying that political correctness is a bad thing, then the “gone mad” suffix is superfluous. As to the claim that PC is a bad thing in itself – well, we’ll come back to that. Meanwhile, if we parse the phrase slightly differently, it amounts to the claim that political correctness taken too far is a bad thing. But, as claims go, that’s trivial. After all, noone could gainsay the claim that taking PC too far is a bad thing, because if we thought that this particular instance of PC was not a bad thing, we would not think that it had been taken too far or had gone mad; similarly, if we deny that this particular instance of PC had not been taken too far or gone mad, it would need some other reason to think that it was a bad thing – which takes us back to the claim that all PC is bad, and whether or not that is true. In other words, there are two questions we might want to ask: first, whether political correctness is a bad thing in itself; and second, if it is not, whether, and under what conditions, it becomes a bad thing.

So: at what is political correctness aimed? It strikes me that many people do mishandle the concept. Importantly, it’s hard to see how it can have anything directly to do with offensiveness – or, at least, there’s more to it than the claim that one oughtn’t to do that which someone might find offensive. There’s a few reasons for this. The first and most important of these is summed up in the commonplace that there’s no disputing about tastes. The correlate of that is that it’s possible for a person to find just about anything offensive, and there’s no way that you can legislate for that. Thus the mere fact that you find something I do offensive is not sufficient to demonstrate that I have done anything blameable – I might not have. Nor is it necessary to demonstrate it – I might have done something wrong that you do not find offensive, such as chanting a racist slogan if you happen to be a racist yourself.

The second consideration is that there is no right not to be offended. This follows from the first. It is possible for a person to be offended by pretty much anything; if there were a right not to be offended, though, this would have to serve as some kind of injunction on others doing pretty much anything. After all, if there’s a risk that action A might cause offence, I know that action A might cause offence, and I willingly do it anyway – my lack of intention to cause offence would be immaterial here – then that would seem to be blameable on my part. Put another way, if there is a right not to be offended, we ought to take pains not to do anything that is potentially offensive; but anything is potentially offensive; therefore we would have to have a very good reason indeed to do anything at all. But such a line of thinking is clearly absurd. Thus there’s no reason to adopt it. I’m not convinced that anyone has any extra-juridical rights to anything at all, as it happens – I have metaethical reasons for being suspicious of all rights-talk – but, even if there is such a thing as a “human” or “inherent” right, I’m pretty certain that not being offended ain’t one of them. Equally, noone has a right to their beliefs. Intellectual honesty requires that we admit that we are finite, fallible, and probably wrong in many or most things. Free debate, reasonably conducted, ought to leave true beliefs unscathed and rid you of false ones – which is something for which gratitude is in order.

It’s a bit of a jump from there to my third point, which is the claim that each of us has a duty to harden ourselves against being easily offended. This is a duty that we owe to ourselves, and a duty that we owe to others. I can’t help but to think that it’s a precept of minimal decency that, unless we have a reason to think to the contrary, we ought to assume the best of people – or, at the very least, assume that they are non-maleficent. With evidence, we might be able to move away from that supposition -–I don’t think that there’s any doubt that Himmler was a moral monster, for example: but the point is that we have evidence and an argument for that. We don’t just help ourselves to it. The same applies in all contexts. If someone has offended you, then you have a duty to yourself and to them to assume that they have made a mistake, are amenable to reason, are not being deliberately offensive, and so on. Your being offended is not enough to show that anyone was offending you, any more than you being deceived into thinking that the moon is larger when near the horizon counts as evidence that the moon is a confidence trickster.

Note that this is not all one way traffic. The quid pro quo of what has gone before is that each of us has a duty to take care. People do get upset; we ought to take account of that, even if the upset is, as far as we can see, non-rational. It will be impossible to avoid causing upset, but there are certain things – words or actions – that no reasonable person could deny are likely to cause offence. Reasonable people, for that reason, oughtn’t to do them.

The key here is taking care and being thoughtful about what we’re up to. There are certain phrases and certain modes of action that are freighted with a moral significance that, while wholly culturally contextual, is no less real for that. As far as I can see, political correctness – correctly understood – represents no more than the claim that we ought to take account of the fact that human interaction is a risky business, and that there are some modes of behaviour that we take for granted that we could, and ought, to change either for the sake of the general welfare or because the reasons for doing them do not hold or were never, on reflection, coherent. If that is what political correctness is, I have difficulty seeing the objection. PC, on this count, amounts to a demand for intellectual rigor. Do people really want to circumscribe that?

(Correlatively, the vocal PC brigade actually turns out not to be PC at all, because it’s often guilty of very sloppy thinking indeed.)

What about freedom of expression, though? What right has another person to tell me what I can and can’t say – even if that’s racist, sexist, or whatever? The key here is, again, reason. There are certain things that one might have a reason to say that are capable of causing offence. But, based on the claims I made earlier, this is simply tough titties. Still, there is a limit. Take, for example, the stereotypically racist slogan “Pakis go home”. Now, this could represent a boiled-down version of the wider claim “I believe that there is a compelling socio-economic case for encouraging those from the Subcontinent and their families to return there, and I am prepared to make my case.” This, I think, is something we ought to allow. I expect the argument to fail, and to fail quickly. But it might not. He believes me to be wrong; I him. That’s fair enough. Allowing debate would demonstrate to at least one participant that his starting-point was untenable. That, as I mentioned above, is something for which the corrected person ought to be grateful: he has been cleansed of an error. Moreover, the offence was incidental to the point being made: the intention was not to offend.

But the limit is that, in its own right, “Pakis go home” is fairly obviously meant to offend. More to the point, it offensiveness for offensiveness’ sake, therefore gratuitous. There is no reason to be offensive in this manner except that it causes offence – but, as justifications go, this looks circular, and therefore no justification at all. In effect – I’m curtailing the argument here – the speaker has no reason for what he says beyond the nature of what he says; and this amounts to no reason at all. But forbidding people from acting for no reason is hardly a curtailment of their freedom. So the problem is illusory. (I grant that this argument has holes – it’s a much condensed version of an idea I’ve been brewing for a while, but which is by no means wholly thought-through.)

Just thinking out loud – that’s all. Maybe I’ll write a paper on this – ’s got me thinking.


Length? You made it this far?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 20:45, 11 replies)

Hmmm
Nicely done...
(Home Bargains was last seen wanking like a safari park chimp:, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 20:51, closed)

Hmmmmm
enjoyed the first half a paragraph and the length joke.
( The Awful Puppy Bakery is still bored, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 20:57, closed)

i have to say, i didn't read anything beyond 'first up'
stewart lee sums up the argument more succinctly and also funnily on a clip of a radio programme on youtube
just search for 'stewart lee politically correct'
( mictoboy shitting in your cunt since, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 21:14, closed)

My brain is throbbing a little...
But that message is very interesting, once you get your head round it!
( Mike Fishcake teamfishcake.co.uk - better than your mum's face, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 21:20, closed)

Christ on a stick!
I glazed over after the first paragraph!

Mind you its getting late .. so probably the fault of my rapidly deteriorating sobriety rather than your Pensmithing.

Mind you ... 9 paragraphs on a Friday night !

'Kin ell!!

How about the "readers digest" condensed version for the "alcoholically challengend"
( RadG Drinking Mojitos in the sun, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 21:25, closed)

hey...
"Do people really want to circumscribe that?"
Are you being anti-semitic, lawyer boy? Eh? Eh!
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 22:19, closed)

Did you write an essay plan?

(Christopsy, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 22:40, closed)

Mmm, a rich bourgignon of reasoned argument, with piquant morsels of meaty insight
Top work.
(jizzools, Fri 23 Nov 2007, 23:21, closed)

good work
but hastily finished.

If it was an exam answer I'd suspect you were beginning to realise you were running out of time.

Well done though. Better than the few sentences of poor anecdotes I managed. :)
( sanityclause is waiting until, Sat 24 Nov 2007, 0:39, closed)

@crackhouse...
You calling me a lawyer? It's only my self-regarding duty not to be offended by that that prevents me being offended...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 26 Nov 2007, 10:37, closed)

in terms of offence
Well now, I get called a Computer Scientist cos I work in a Computing Dept. Okay, you go with Bioethicist if you must, but that just makes you sound like you read the Guardian... :)
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Wed 28 Nov 2007, 19:17, closed)