Growing up was very confusing. It was a time in my life when I didn't know who I was, didn't really care about the stuff I was being taught in school, and anybody older than me seemed to always have the answers to what it means to live the right way.
I specifically remember the confusion of not knowing how to handle certain situations, social situations.
While it was never explicitly stated, there was a certain atmosphere that me and my friends at school seemed to slowly absorb, and though I could never quite pin it down, from time to time it would dawn on me that somehow we were being conditioned in ways that were not explicitly mentioned in the school curriculum nor anywhere else in society in a concrete manner. We just seemed to know somehow that certain attitudes were acceptable and others were not.
Many of these lessons where related to social conduct, how to behave properly in regards to other people, and what the proper accepted response should be that society deems valid. When you are a kid you just try to figure out the "right way", long before you figure out that grown-ups don't have the slightest idea nor any good reasons for their behavioral default positions at all. You're just asked to accept them.
Politically correct ≠ actually correct
The older I got the more I recognized these specific situations and how my intuitive reaction differed from the societal norm. For the most part I realized that I had not been equipped fairly at all, but instead in some weird biased way that didn't seem to come naturally. Nor did it seem to help the situation much.
It wasn't until many years later that I would stumble upon the term political correctness, which seemed to sum up this whole psychological complex of confusion perfectly.
A specific, taught pattern of behavior is expected of you, no matter what you might think about the situation, and no matter what you deem necessary when confronted with that special circumstance.
It was around that time in my later school years that I came to love the show South Park, which I had simply passed by all those years before my time in the US.
The value of the show hit me out of nowhere one day, when I saw an episode that dealt with a topic that I had long had issues with and needed answers for, which were not provided by my so-called "high quality education" in the upper tier of the German school system.
All I had been equipped with was the politically correct way of handling it, which never seemed right to me from the beginning.
Alright tell me already, what situation?
The episode that turned me into an instant South Park fan dealt with a kid at school who is handicapped, sitting in a wheelchair. His name is Timmy.
In case you are not familiar with the episode:
Timmy happens to pass by a band's practice garage by accident and is spontaneously asked to join the band, in the hopes of reaching fame and glory through his vocal skills on the mic. Timmy happens to love it, and the band becomes a smashing success over night at which point the whole essential debate starts unfolding.
Very soon, the public seems to be splitting into two camps. The first camp thoroughly enjoys Timmy being the lead singer and 'doing his thing' despite his inability to utter any word other than his own name, whereas the second camp has this sort of knee-jerk reaction to Timmy's performance, labeling anyone enjoying the show as a 'bigot'.
These 'well-meaning' people of the second camp misconstrue Timmy's fans as "ridiculing the poor kid", and leave the concert venue appaled at their fellow men for 'being so cruel'. You could say they are taking the moral highground, condemning the other group out of their own misunderstanding and their own indoctrination into a certain worldview which they do not recognize as such.
Political correctness at its best.
The essential lesson?
When I first saw the scene I was celebrating. I had experienced similar situations in my own life and was reminded of scenes at school where certain students with a handicap would automatically be exempt from the regular rules that all of the students had to go by. Now, sometimes this may be valid, for example when we are talking about physical education class where a wheelchair-bound kid would simply not be able to run. Fair enough.
But in most other situations where this happened I felt there was this misplaced and artificial atmosphere of singling out the handicapped kid for no good reason at all. A drive to shield him from experiences in which there would be no good reason to preemptively disqualify him due to his handicap.
Instead it seemed more like an overly graphic gesture to "protect" the kid when it is not at all clear that the kid needs or wants that sort of protection.
This type of authoritative behavior has recently been coined "virtue signaling", and I find the term is spot on. Here is someone ordering us in an aggressive way how to behave because THEY have it right and all of us don't. And all of it because they "care so much" about the well-being of the kid in question...
Or so they claim.
And while it was never explicitly stated I felt that the people who were reminding everyone else to make special exceptions for that handicapped kid somehow enjoyed being that Messiah-like person, reminding everyone else that they are 'inconsiderate bastards', and that they should "take more care" or "have more consideration for this poor kid" when the kid's bad experiences didn't seem to come so much from his handicap, but from the special treatment of the well-meaning and righteous people making decisions for him, effectively robbing him of this small opportunity to feel like a normal kid for once.
A virtue-signaling person in this instance is someone who regurgitates conditioned and socially-incepted behavior patterns for "the good of the kid" who may just want to participate by his own volition.
How South Park nailed it
When I saw this episode unfold I was totally stunned. I saw all the parallels to my own conditioning. Not only was this topic never explicitly discussed in my school the way I felt it should have been discussed... Insead it was more often implied in a very subtle and passive way to treat handicapped people like stupid and incapable children. Quite possibly the last thing these people want.
The episode manages to hit the nail on the head, and if you're not familiar with the episode stop reading and watch it right now.
I would love to link you to the full episode but since I'm outside of the US I can only point you to the root website. You can watch full episodes on there for free, just find Season 4 Episode 3 under "full episodes": http://southpark.cc.com
20 minutes of real socially open-minded education.
In my job I often had to talk to wheelchair-bound customers who were interested in a solar wheelchair we were selling, and more often than not I have found that these people are perfectly ok with being treated like everyone else, instead of everybody reminding them in an overly pretentious fashion how incapable they must be...
When Kyle is confronted with the people who call him irresponsible for enjoying Timmy's live performance – misconstruing it as ridicule – he retaliates in such a glorious way that I will never forget it, and it has shaped my perspective on this issue greatly.
Not because I heard it the first time, but because finally I had found someone else telling me that singling out handicapped people where there is no good reason is the most horrible thing we can do to them.
If you want an even more extreme example of this same topic do watch "Conjoined Fetus Lady", Season 2 Episode 5, in which the whole town makes a hilariously grotesk exception out of a lady who just wants to be treated fairly.
A real eye-opener, and the perfect episode to show to people in your life who think that it is up to them personally to teach others about things they cannot possibly begin to understand.
Again, find the full episode at Season 2 Episode 5: http://southpark.cc.com
"The road to hell..."
We all mean well, but these two episodes taught me early in my life that meaning well for others is often the opposite of treating others well.
In terms of group interaction and social behavior, I can say I have learnt more from South Park than in my 13 years of school, and that to me is one of the most telling signs about the social structures we all take for granted. What a disgrace.
Curriculum is always written by people with a vested interest in having the next generation taught a certain way during their maleable years, and having experienced this example among many others, these people's motives seem absolutely sinister to say the least.
Political correctness is not an answer to any issues we face as humans. If anything it's a whole new complex of problems that can make an obvious solution almost impossible to see due to the sheer amount of artificial ideology getting in the way.
And when we don't see an ideology for what it is, we mistake it for our own moral compass, and mistreat others when we are actually trying to help them.
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