From ‘Political Correctness’ to ‘Cancel Culture’
a good thing gone bad
To my mind, political correctness was a good, if flawed, thing. I see it as an attempt to enforce mutual respect in our public discourse. Its major flaw was that it existed as a self-contained ethical imposition. It had no explicit ties to any existing cultural norm. Such a norm would also have provided it with constraints. To me, the absence of those constraints has led to cancel culture, which I do not think is a good thing.
I came to the conclusion long ago that for Liberal society to have a future it must accept mutual respect as the ethic of justice. An ethic of justice provides a guide for governance: for the members of a society (citizens of a nation) to self-govern themselves and for the structure and functioning of the political process and the economy. As the ethic of justice, mutual respect refers to respect of a basic kind: taking one another into account, considering one’s potential effects on others as we go through life co-existing with one another in society while taking actions to get what we want (personally and politically). [There is respect that ‘must be earned’, but this is the respect that every human being is due merely by virtue of being a fellow human.]
It surprises most people to realize that Liberal society actually has no ethic of justice. Liberty and equality are taken to be the ‘twin pillars of justice for society’, but neither is an ethic, a rule to govern human conduct. Liberty in itself is the opposite of governing conduct and equality is in itself not a rule of any kind.
Equality does imply a requirement of mutual respect, but political correctness was a kind of spasmodic jump towards that ethic. For a genealogy, all it had was a kind of vague link to equality.
Critics of political correctness have attacked it as some people imposing on society an arbitrary demand for a hyper-sensitivity to others. Its critics have deemed it ridiculous for seeking to elevate ‘hurting people’s feelings’ with mere words to the level of doing actual harm to people. That has made it easy for them to caricature it.
The critics of political correctness do agree, though, that doing actual harm to others is morally wrong. If it can be shown that the behavior political correctness sought to curb is something its critics must accept as a moral wrong, then political correctness (but not cancel culture) will be redeemed — and the case for mutual respect as the ethic of justice strengthened.
Everyone agrees that harming others is a moral wrong. Often, harming others is itself an adjunct of some other act that is itself immoral: physical violence, stealing, defrauding, etc. As a separate category of behavior, harming others can seem rather nebulous.
It is easy to know when material harm has been done. Such harm means damage to person or property or finances. Such harm does require an act to have been committed, but that act doesn’t have to be physical. Words can be used to cause material harm.
People can also be harmed psychologically. That harm can be very real, but it cannot be seen (though it can produce effects that can be material for the person involved and can be observed by others). Psychological harm can also be caused by both physical acts and words.
That brings us to “hurt,” as in hurting people’s feelings. What is the difference between hurt and harm? I would say all harm includes hurt, but all hurt does not include harm.
One example of hurt that does not (necessarily) include harm is in fact hurting people’s feelings. Here, I think, we can only talk of matters of degree. It is possible for a person’s feelings to be hurt to an extent that psychological harm can result, though that does presumably take a lot of hurting — like a sustained campaign of bullying, for instance.
It is also possible, though, to use words that hurt feelings as a form of intimidation. Intimidation is a clear-cut moral wrong.
Political correctness has been an attempt to ban from our public discourse using words to intimidate fellow citizens. That is an indisputable moral good. It suggests the greater good that mutual respect as the ethic of justice can bring to society.
Some people say that they should be the judge of whether their words might really cause hurt feelings or intimidation. That is incorrect. Only the person on the receiving end of the words can be the judge of such things.
We must realize that government is not the only possible curb on liberty. Co-existence in society with maximum liberty for all requires that all of us take it upon ourselves to govern ourselves in our actions that involve other people. We must take it upon ourselves as individuals to promote liberty by giving other people as much ‘space’ as we possibly can.
That space is more abstract than material. More than anything, it means allowing people to be themselves and express themselves as freely as possible. The more we respect one another in that way (within the bounds of justice), the more liberty all of us will enjoy.
For any person to claim that one is being ‘disrespected’ because something another person is or expresses is inconsistent with one’s personal morality is to take Liberal society down a dark path, one in which constricting liberty is the goal. Someone acting in some way that only involves another person because it is contrary to that person’s personal beliefs about morality is not an attack on that person or that person’s beliefs. It is simply difference — harmless difference.
Using words in our public discourse that have the potential to intimidate people because of who they are or what they are expressing is, however, the opposite of maximizing liberty for all. It is a really unjust act.
That brings up the issue of tolerating intolerance. After all, the promotion of intolerance is only people expressing themselves.
Intolerance, however, is the opposite of justice. It is an attack on liberty. Allowing people to attack liberty under the shield of the tolerance that liberty requires is like inviting the Trojans to come in and build their horse inside the walls of the city: rather than build a horse they will destroy and plunder.
That brings us to ‘cancel culture’, as it is called. The goal of cancel culture is to punish anyone who has ever done (including saying) anything that can be said to have violated the requirement that we respect other people.
I see it as growing out of political correctness, but it is to that as “The Terror” was to the French Revolution — though not (to this point ) physically violent. Still, its intent is to do material harm to people.
Cancel culture is a form of excess. It is the conversion of a social good — encouraging mutual respect — to a weapon of destruction. To this point it is being used as a weapon against people who have violated the tenet of respect for others. People are being severely punished for a single mistake that is clearly not the norm of their conduct, that is clearly contrary to who and what they are as a person when the whole of their lives is taken into account.
That is bad enough. History teaches us, however, that worse is sure to come. Excess, once it has been unleashed, is a vicious animal with a voracious appetite. We know from history that those who weaponize excess will inevitably turn that weapon against anyone who would oppose excess itself.