Gravitahn
Steven Pinker is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language and cognition and has authored ten books, including:
The Language Instinct
How the Mind Works
The Blank Slate
The Stuff of Thought
The Better Angels of Our Nature
and most recently, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.
Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eo3ZC1Sc2w
Source
I have to be very careful commenting on this in case I'm accused of hate speech and jailed.
Political correctness may be the bastard son/daughter of a group that doesn't read it's own theories of history and change, expects a universal change without flaw within a single generation. OR they may be vigilant against historical backsliding and social regression predicted in economical models that precede antithetical, generational attitudinal changes. I think they may have looked at movements like say, emancipation and the civil war, and concluded that despite 10s of thousands of men giving their lives for the emancipation of black slaves, a change in the constitution and reconstruction, little changed as a whole. Preliminary drilling down revealed, to some theorists, that language was the carrier of the virus of discrimination that cultivated and kept alive old beliefs and didn't give them a chance to die despite all the legal efforts to the contrary. And this became the only available culprit as nothing else was showing itself and as specialists, leaders in the fight, they were being seriously pressed for answers. While not entirely wrong, it may have been the only one that travelled well, could be bundled electronically and in print very easily and distributed en mass by ivory tower types feeling that anything more complex could not be understood by the great unwashed. What may have ostensibly been an initial, innocent public civility campaign silently enjoining unwitting public partners may have been picked up as a uber-morphed, foundational goal by an unwitting, unthinking communications runaway phenomenon. I looked and couldn't find anything on MLK thinking language had any deterministic power over anything and he never seemed to focus on it. (He also brought the proper focus onto class and poverty in general, the deplorable condition of poor whites in the south.) Though convincing a reasonably focussed will that language was the ultimate determinant might genuinely dismantle that reasonably focused will to it's own detriment. You'd think anyone looking for genuine progress might be significantly more effective in de-emphasizing language and emphasizing other more material issues along the lines of "sticks and stones". Why would anyone genuinely interested in progress do this? I am personally still unsure of what role common language plays when it is sliced this thin. In sociology, we did study meta-languages common to class membership, signifiers in language that communicated status and authority, and submission to authority and that this was a primary contributor to "social reproduction" as the language habits and meta-meanings would be learned and passed down generationally ad infinitum. Contrary to what JP might say or think, authority was generally defined as "earned" or "legitimate" in a given closed societal system and mostly a product of consensus. However, it was kind of the great evil in some circles that was "meta" communicated as the root of all things bad and that should be destroyed in any form before Utopia (rapture) could descend. (ie. there was no legitimate authority under democratic capitalism, which may have been more true at the writing of the manifesto but no progress was ever conceded by the orthodoxes in universities). Anyway, definitely a cluster hump of Utopians who by their nature would not entertain any competing logic for love or money. So I think if the same gonads are behind the PC phenom, then I would definitely take a second look.
Pinker nails it as always!
Pinker is proof that real liberals are still out there, contrary to what conservatives who have started using "liberalism" as a pejorative. You hear or read "liberalism is a mental disorder" a lot but do not confuse those who adhere to liberty with these various types of authoritarian idiots roaming around.
Now facebook and "Data"…believe he can create a massive "Safe-space" for genderless / trans community.
This guy is an academic crook trying to use political correctness for fooling other academic egotists like him. Two to tango.
Racism at levels assumed to be 1000 times what it actually is.
How many Pollocks does it take to change a light bulb ? A: Racist !
"I'm offended!" Good STFU, sit down and cry about it. You have a legitimate grievance? Lets hear that! "I'm offended!" is the emotional grenade tossed out when the person saying it has no honest grievance or no compelling argument.
I beg to differ. The political correctness may have its roots in genuinely useful movements but the main reason for their existence – in my view – is that people feel a need to create an identity for themselves.
Although no society is perfect, life has never been better or safer in human history. People want to have a cause, to see themselves as strong, just and noble warriors against something they cannot define. Enter political correctness.
The thought is that if “I” stand up for (potential) victims, I must be a good person and “you” – the offender consequently a bad person. In other words I make you a villain so I can use you as a stepping stone for my staged self-sanctification.
It's due to the Pendulum Effect. All ideas have momentum, they swing one way, but eventually go too far. The backlash of a movement going too far is what moves the pendulum back the other way.
The problem is that the movement was never legitimate. Still isn't. You should have learned this lesson in kindergarten. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me. If words do hurt you, then that is an indication of your own problems. Simple. This is a stupid video.
By the way… You know why there is no such thing as Polish pharmacist? Because they can't figure out how to get the bottles in the typewriters.
1 in 7 million kids will end up with a stranger doing serious harm to them. Over protecting over a boogie man just makes children frightened by ALL strangers and sometimes to a degree that harms them greatly.
Kids are harmed by step dads and people the family knows well.
I fully agree with Pinker that the protection of children from risks has gone too far in the united States and Canada. Luckily, here in Central Europe we are doing this at a more reasonable level. As for political correctness, Pinker does not give an example in this video of how it went too far. I follow the North-American discussion on political correctness rather closely, and most of it seems to be a debate between people who want the society's standards on what is decent behavior with respect to people from discriminated sectors of society to move into the direction of more decency on the one hand and people who fight this move towards more decency by calling it "political correctness gone mad" on the other hand. Apart from parts of the debate about cultural appropriation (e.g. cancelled yoga classes), I have rarely encountered a situation where I really thought that this drive towards more respect for people outside the cultural and societal mainstream has gone too far. But I am willing to reconsider my position if concrete examples of this are convincingly presented to me.
Decadent phase.
Gillette
Gillette
"They might get abducted by sex perverts." -Steven Pinker
"All movements go too far" – Bertrand Russell
Though it can feel discouraging, I think the phenomenon of movements going too far is ultimately a healthy and necessary step in finding that "middle way" between two extremes; maybe something like the old Hegelian Thesis>Antithesis>Synthesis. To take child rearing as an example, kids had to be treated far worse than they should be, so that we could learn to treat them much delicately than they are, so that we could learn what kids REALLY are (somewhere in-between) and knowing the reality of the situation treat them in a way that actually promotes goodness and health. The same is true with political correctness, etc.
Political correct police never know where to stop. Changing what doesn't need fixing.
'Too far'…it's psychotic women who want to control what people think and say.
That's it.
Oh dear. How twee. Once adults could joke about taboos…that is where the laughs are. It is bathos. If you do not entertain the dark, the hidden side of ourselves it is pushed under; so, we have this sterile cannard called PC. Wholesome and banal and far away from our natural habits. Not healthy. Sinister. Infantilization of the commonsensicle individual. K Marx and the wooden spoon, children.
He kinda looks like Bilbo Baggins
All phases and movements are decadent. Only self-philosophy endures because it's constantly improving and changing.
"In search of ever smaller grievances"… yep, that's what it is.