I awakened this morning to find a new Pat Condell video waiting for me in my Facebook news-feed. For me, personally, this is always an excellent way to begin the day as I greatly enjoy his videos; they are intelligently articulated and contain a wonderful mix of humour and relevancy while covering the more “uncomfortable issues” that most people would feel better simply ignoring for the sake of “political correctness”.
Today's video was on the subject of “political correctness” itself. It seems Pat has recently been accused of being “unhelpful” for speaking bluntly. Referring to the savagery that goes on in Iran, and other countries which are heavily populated by radical Muslims, as “savagery”, and the people endorsing and committing these atrocities as “savages”, apparently greatly offends people.
It's a common complaint now, you’re likely to hear at least one example every day, someone repeating these standard battle-cries of the “P.C. Crowd”:
“He's so mean”.
“That's not nice”.
“I'm offended”.
“You could get through to more people if you just softened your approach”.
Or the default fallback of: “That's not politically correct”.
When did we, as a society, become so hung up on the idea of niceness? How did we get to the point where we will reject the message based on the delivery? Why is it that we would prefer a pretty, feel-good lie, over a hard truth?
Niceness now carries more weight than honesty. Let's stop for a moment and take a look at a few descriptions of “nice speech” that it would appear a great majority of us have forgotten in recent years:
”Silver-tongued”: Able to speak in a way that makes people do or believe what you want them to do or believe. Marked by a convincing and eloquent expression. Example- “A silver-tongued politician” -Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
“Snake-oil”: Speech or writing intended to charm and deceive .
“Beguiling”: Misleading by means of pleasant or alluring methods.
“Wiles”: Devious or cunning stratagems employed in manipulating or persuading someone to do what one wants.
“Wheedle”:To employ endearments or flattery to persuade someone to do something or to give one something.
“Cajole”: To persuade someone to do something by sustained coaxing or flattery.
“Butter up”: To flatter with the intention of getting something.
“Sweet talk”: To insincerely praise someone in order to persuade them to do something.
Have we had enough yet? I would like you to take a minute and study each of those definitions very carefully. Does being “nice” in order to accomplish your goal really sound like a GOOD idea? Does it strike you as an HONEST and/or SINCERE approach? Now, I would like you to stop and try to recall previous situations where you may have heard these words or phrases used, and think about WHO they were being applied to. A few common examples that everyone should be immediately familiar with are: Politicians, lawyers, used car salesmen, telemarketers, con artists, television evangelists. If I asked you to describe the character of any of the above list, would the adjectives that you choose be positive ones? Would any of the attributes that come to mind be ones that YOU would personally aspire to possess?
After watching Pat Condell this morning I was reminded of another video, a personal favourite of mine, George Carlin's take on “Soft Speech/Political Correctness." No one wants to hear the so-called “hard truths” anymore. We want to be let down gently, we want a nicer picture painted for us, a prettier face put on these otherwise “icky” realities that we are forced to deal with on a day-to-day basis. We WANT to be lied to. We want this SO badly, in fact, that when faced with the ACTUAL truth, most of us suffer from such intense cognitive dissonance that our brains physically recoil in horror and we conjure up some imaginary defence to counter it. Typically something along the lines of “I'm OFFENDED!”, or a variation thereof.
The thing about the truth is, it doesn't need any helping hands. Truth is supported by reality, backed up by evidence and cold, hard facts. It doesn't need to be toned down, it doesn't need to be made “nicer”. The only thing that you need to sugar-coat in order to convince the average person to swallow it, is fraud.
The other thing that triggered the motivation to compose this piece, was the reaction to something that I wrote the other day. It wasn't a masterpiece of literary achievement, I'm certainly not expecting a Pulitzer to arrive on my doorstep, but it was something that I both felt strongly about, and thought had a relevant point. To say that said-article was not well-received would be a gross understatement. And not for any of the reasons that you might think! It had nothing to do with the content, the tone of the writing, or my ability to express the concepts covered. In fact, at least one person openly admitted that they had not even read the article before commenting on it. My writing was immediately dismissed for one simple reason. I dared to mention, and draw comparisons to, someone else who believes firmly in honest, straight-forward communication.
The person in question is constantly accused of “not niceness”, and is commonly labelled as being simply “arrogant”, or “egotistical”. This reaction, while wholly inaccurate, is at least fairly understandable. Living in a society where we have come to rely on and expect this duplicitous “niceness”, this “feel-good, sugar-coating” to our daily interactions, it can be shocking at first to encounter such refreshing, blatant honesty. Someone who is not afraid to openly call bullshit when presented with erroneous information. Someone who both knows exactly WHO and WHAT they are, and has the utmost confidence in their knowledge and abilities. Such a thing is so rare these days that the only way that the average mind can interpret it is as “ego”, and “arrogance”. We don't WANT to be told that we are wrong. We want to be coddled, we want to be soothed. We want a pat on the head and a gold star for participation. This is just one small part of the larger “dumbing-down” initiative that is taking place. “Adequate is the new excellent” (quote from Tara Duncan) no longer applies, we're aiming for “mediocre” now with “defective” not far behind.
With only minimal research, it's not hard to see that the current global state of things is pretty grim. Corrupt political bodies, in almost EVERY country on Earth, are generally screwing the people in every imaginable way. The reason that things have gotten to this point is largely due to our desire to keep swallowing these “pretty lies”. The government is a mess? Well THIS electoral candidate promises to change ALL of that, just as SOON as you vote him or her into power. Oh, gee, it looks like they lied! Oh well, that's okay, you obviously just made a poor choice this time. That's not YOUR fault, right? I mean, all YOU did was trust that what you were hearing was the truth. I'm SURE you will choose more wisely next time, and oh look, another election is coming soon! And on and on it goes in an endless, repetitive cycle.
We form our opinions of people based on their words and their actions, we trust the things that they say and accord them certain privileges because of it. But when their words turn out to be false, do we hold them accountable? No. Do we stop and examine the situation, consider how and why we were fooled, and learn from our mistakes? No! We greedily open our mouths and wait for the next honey-coated lie to be fed to us. We don't want to admit that we've been fooled, we don't want to stop and consider that MAYBE the problem lies with US for being so credulous in the first place.
Being wrong doesn't feel very good,it's all so much “nicer” to be able to shuffle the blame onto someone else. But if any of us EVER want change to actually occur, the first big step is realizing and admitting WHAT the problem is. Complacency and acceptance changes nothing. Being “nice”, in “peace and harmony”, changes nothing. How effective was the peaceful, hippie-protest movement in affecting ANY sort of change during the Vietnam War? Looking down over Yonge-Dundas Square here in Toronto, you can watch some sort of organized protest take place MULTIPLE times a week, EVERY week. Exactly what do you think you are accomplishing by holding up traffic and peacefully marching through the streets? Do you think that the people in charge are saying “Shit, they've got banners and bullhorns, and are being peacefully escorted down the street by armed police thugs, with their pre-approved “protest permits” in their pockets. We've got a real problem on our hands here, things are getting crazy, we better make some changes, and fast!”? If you honestly believe that, you should just go kill yourself now. Your death, in protest, would have a MUCH larger impact than what you are currently doing ever will.
The only way things will ever change is if EVERYONE starts waking up. Start THINKING! Start asking questions! Use that brain in your head, begin applying logic and reason to your everyday life. Employ Critical Thinking in ALL things. Learn how truly offensive the concept of “I'm offended” really is. Words have no more weight and meaning that what WE choose to give them. To claim that something is “offensive”, that an idea, image, or words can “harm you” by “hurting your feelings” is just plain dumb. If someone is actively seeking to “hurt” you through their speech, giving them the reaction that they desire means THEY win. The only thing in this life that you truly have power over is yourself. You can choose how to react to things, you can choose how you think about things. No one can MAKE you feel something. The concept of “Free speech is good, but you shouldn't say THESE things” is ludicrous! “Free” means COMPLETELY free, without restriction. The idea that “you can only say certain things if your skin is a certain colour, and saying them otherwise makes you a racist” IS racist in itself! I'm not going to dive any further into the “race issue”, since after the mapping of our genome, we now SHOULD all be aware that “race” is just something that we made up. There IS only one race... THE HUMAN RACE.
Wow, this turned out much longer than I expected. I guess the whole thing has just been stewing in my brain for the past year, building with each new occurrence of idiocy that I encounter, until it finally reached a tipping point. (Thank you, to Pat Condell, for inadvertently triggering this outpouring. It's been therapeutic to get it all out.) In closing, FUCK nice. Haven't we all had enough of the lies, even the “little white ones”? How about, as a short-term experiment if you like, we all try switching to a steady diet of cold, hard reality for a month. See if you can put your rose-coloured glasses back on after that