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Politically correct

A

ariegur

pfm Member
A guy on broadcasting spoke against the "politically correct" and I found his idea interesting. He compared the "politically correct" to advertisers who are trying to change the reality in people's mind by repeating time after time an idea. It makes people believe that the picture that the advertiser shows is the reality.

the "politically correct" gets the same goal by working in the opposite way. By not saying what we think may insult others, we hide or ignore facts in order to make the reality more beautiful than it really is. We are trying to create a reality that doesn't exist and this is a mistake that leads to many problems, because we can't hide or ignore facts for a long period, the truth will explode at the end.


Arye
 
The problem with the principle of political correctness is that it attempts to modify behaviour by modifying thought. That's considered acceptable by its adherents, because the thoughts and behaviour they are attempting to modify are, in the main, reprehensible.

The problem then is that the technique lends itself to much more malign maniplation, and if you've introduced the notion that such thought modification ideology is somehow acceptable, then it is harder to resist the same techniques put to more nefarious ends.
 
ariegur said:
A guy on broadcasting spoke against the "politically correct" and I found his idea interesting. He compared the "politically correct" to advertisers who are trying to change the reality in people's mind by repeating time after time an idea. It makes people believe that the picture that the advertiser shows is the reality.

the "politically correct" gets the same goal by working in the opposite way. By not saying what we think may insult others, we hide or ignore facts in order to make the reality more beautiful than it really is. We are trying to create a reality that doesn't exist and this is a mistake that leads to many problems, because we can't hide or ignore facts for a long period, the truth will explode at the end.


Arye
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Hmmm I wonder who it was who said:-

  • If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.
  • If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
  • If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.
  • If you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes truth.
  • If you repeat a lie many times, people are bound to start believing it.

Cheers,

DV
 
Political correctness seems to be part of the establishment. I'm not particularly against political correctness, but I don't really like the establishment. So political correctness get a wide berth from me too

That means people tend to think I am a right wing pleb when it comes up. But I am not. I can't stand hearing the phrase 'it's political correctness gone mad' from someone moaning that they can't get something done because of it. I will ignore political correctness and any of the rules that come with it if I disagree with it and it is getting in my way.

So I don't know how much it influences me. Not so much, probably.
 
‘Political correctness’ is a term coined by people or political entities who wish to normalise ugly bigoted behaviour of some kind. It really is that simple. Almost always used by the hard-right to justify racism, sexism, homophobia etc.
 
ariegur said:
I agree with this idea. I think that it happens to me that I have no guts to say what I really think and this may be wrong and leads to unexpected results.

Arye
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If by that you mean that you feel kind of "bullied" into not expressing what you really think on certain subjects then yes that can be a problem....
On the other hand it becomes a personally subjective area as to what subjects or areas it is or isn't ok to be non PC about! One person may think it ok to be racist for example whilst I'm sure 99% of us would find that grossly offensive... So where does the right to free speech end? It's an ethical mine field!
Personally I find robustly expressed views from those on the right of the Tory spectrum just as objectionable as racism but such views are still regarded as mainstream and are freely expressed in so called newspapers like the Daily Mail...
On the other hand (and to prove your point Arye, yes I'm having thoughts of "is it even wise to say this next bit?") I believe that feminism has largely achieved its goals here in the west and that it's being pushed too far now... anti male, wanting not just to be equal to men but superior etc... In the Guardian comment section I can literally call so called president Trump worse than shit no problem... but I had an official warning over unsuitable content for saying the same as above on feminism, and put no more strongly than I did here....
 
Tony L said:
‘Political correctness’ is a term coined by people or political entities who wish to normalise ugly bigoted behaviour of some kind. It really is that simple. Almost always used by the hard-right to justify racism, sexism, homophobia etc.
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Not sure I agree, but interested to follow this line through a bit further. I accept that the name 'politically correct' may be a coinage intended to discredit the school of thought that tries to modify behaviour by suppressing undesirable lines of thought, and thus the term is used by people who want to normalise bigotry, etc, but I'm not sure that means the actual mechanism the term 'political correctness' is aimed at, should be beyond criticism.

It is, in fact, a good example of what I'm getting at. We are 'encouraged' to think of the term 'politically correct' in a pejorative sense, which means we'll reject any ideas which are categorised as 'politically correct'. This is itself a good example of behaviour modification by thought modification, which is what the initial adherents of the concept were trying to do in terms of shifting people's automatic thought processes on, for example, disabled people or minority ethnic groups.
 
There's loads of stuff that is not right wing at all. And we need a new term because of that. It becomes more apparent when you are trying to get going runnning a business, knowing that you have to do stuff that a few years ago noone had to do. So your are disadvantaged as you need more capital than they did to be legal. For example, I wanted to build a box around my office in the warehouse that was strong enough to walk on to store stock. There's a load of bullshit building regs around that regarding health and safety. As the only 2 people in the warehouse are directors, we ignored them and built it ourselves with a joiner for about 1/5 the cost of the quote that inlcuded a legal staircase, banisters, double thick beams double skinned ceiling 20mm sheets blah blah blah. What the hell is wrong with ladders? Since when were they dangerous?

We will revisit it when and if we need to employ someone. Which of course becomes hard to justify when you have to sort that and then spend 5 grand on your shelving before they are allowed in.
 
richgilb said:
There's a load of bullshit building regs around that regarding health and safety. As the only 2 people in the warehouse are directors, we ignored them and built it ourselves with a joiner for about 1/5 the cost of the quote that had a legal staircase, banisters, double thick beams double skinned ceiling blah blah blah. What the hell is wrong with ladders? Since when were they dangerous?

We will revisit it when and if we need to employ someone. Which of course becomes hard to justify when you have to sort that and then spend 5 grand on your shelving before they are allowed in.
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Somebody my dad once worked for, successful businessman, own firm, yacht, Aston Martin, big house etc, once went up on the forks of a forklift truck to access high level storage. He did it because he was a director, so health and safety wasn't something he had to worry about, but couldn't instruct staff to do it. He fell, and landed on his head. As far as I know, 20 years on, he still requires 24/7 care.

On your head be it, literally.
 
I think the concept or perhaps the original aspiration of political correctness is/was to ensure that people as individuals as well as members of particular groups weren't oppressed or discriminated against in any way through language or behaviour, hence what was once considered acceptable language and/or behaviour, may now considered offensive, oppressive or somehow detrimental to a person and/or group, and so a politically correct alternative is preferred/required.
 
windhoek said:
I think the concept or perhaps the original aspiration of political correctness is/was to ensure that people as individuals as well as members of particular groups weren't oppressed or discriminated against in any way through language or behaviour, hence what was once considered acceptable language and/or behaviour, may now considered offensive, oppressive or somehow detrimental to a person and/or group, and so a politically correct alternative is preferred/required.
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Yes, I completely agree, and there is some language, and some behaviour that we, as a species, just need to move beyond and grow out of. The objective is laudable. The problem I perceive, is that it uses the same sort of techniques that Trump, Johnson et al use to suppress thought, and thereby control behaviour.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Somebody my dad once worked for, successful businessman, own firm, yacht, Aston Martin, big house etc, once went up on the forks of a forklift truck to access high level storage. He did it because he was a director, so health and safety wasn't something he had to worry about, but couldn't instruct staff to do it. He fell, and landed on his head. As far as I know, 20 years on, he still requires 24/7 care.

On your head be it, literally.
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Whatever.
 
For sure Steve, I'm sure much has been done in the name of political connectedness that's far from correct, but wholly political!
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
It is, in fact, a good example of what I'm getting at. We are 'encouraged' to think of the term 'politically correct' in a pejorative sense, which means we'll reject any ideas which are categorised as 'politically correct'. This is itself a good example of behaviour modification by thought modification, which is what the initial adherents of the concept were trying to do in terms of shifting people's automatic thought processes on, for example, disabled people or minority ethnic groups.
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One has to go a step further and look at who coined and uses the term. As far as I can tell in the UK it has entered the vocabulary entirely via the hard-right gutter tabloids (Mail, Sun, Express etc) along with hard-right parties (BNP, Britain First, EDL, UKIP etc) and is used to demean those who stand against the bigotry these entities whip-up and promote. The US equivalent being the Tea Party, Trump, Breitbart, Bill O’Reily, Glenn Beck etc. I’d be delighted to be described as ‘politically correct’ as to my mind it simply translates to ‘not an arsehole’. Same goes for ‘virtue signaling’ which is the far-right’s current phrase of choice to demean folk who stand up to far-right bigotry and hate-rhetoric.
 
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