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{"id":2192,"date":"2018-06-29T00:16:55","date_gmt":"2018-06-29T04:16:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/suspendedinherjar\/?p=2192"},"modified":"2018-06-29T00:19:42","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T04:19:42","slug":"2192","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/suspendedinherjar\/2018\/06\/2192\/","title":{"rendered":"So You Didn’t Like Political Correctness (Or: What Would Nietzsche Say?)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a>
\nLet me clarify that there are two distinct ways of understanding \u201cpolitical correctness.\u201d One is the expectation that one\u2019s statements will be in line with the accepted politics of your milieu. Different circles have different accepted politics. In some circles, it might be politically correct to to refer to trans persons by their preferred pronouns. In other circles, it is politically correct \u2013 that is, satisfies the expectations of the dominant hegemony \u2013 to make a point of not doing so. A person at a conservative university who preens himself on not caving to the demands of political correctness is, in fact, being as politically correct as possible, under this \u00a0understanding. Such a person is doing what he knows will earn him applause. He\u2019s taking no risks. This form of political correctness has to do with codes, and tribes. I guess the honorability of this corresponds with the moral decency of the respective tribe. <\/span><\/p>\n

But the other understanding of political correctness is simply of standards that allow us to co-exist politically. Civility, politeness, tolerance, manners, respect: all of these get lumped into the perhaps unfortunate moniker \u201cpolitical correctness.\u201d Like the term or not, the idea is that we get along more smoothly, and more justly, as a political unit, when we treat one another according to the golden rule. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the 90s it was fashionable, among right-wingers, to mock political correctness by emphasizing what we then perceived as extremes. Renaming garbage men \u2013 or women \u2013 \u00a0as waste disposal management persons, ha ha ha. <\/span><\/p>\n

But we forgot, in our rather puerile laughter, that garbage collectors are also persons of inestimable worth and dignity. Collecting garbage isn\u2019t something we should mock: it\u2019s needed work, real work, that provides a clear benefit for society. So, even if there\u2019s something a bit pretentious and forced about \u201cwaste disposal management person\u201d the idea behind it is that it\u2019s better to emphasize the value of a person, and of their work, than to emphasize their vulnerabilities..<\/span><\/p>\n

A blessed relief, really, after the bullying 80s.<\/p>\n

Proponents of political correctness recently have simply been emphasizing that in a pluralistic society we need to practice basic courtesy, and that this often means taking the time to find out about one another: about our culture, religion, sexuality, and background. It\u2019s rooted in the same concept of courtesy as was present in Newman\u2019s definition of a gentleman. One wishes never, deliberately, to cause harm.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s ironic that the people who spent several decades trashing political correctness are now demanding civility towards themselves alone. If Milo calls for reporters to be shot, it\u2019s just a joke, but if Sarah Huckabee Sanders is quietly asked to leave a restaurant it\u2019s an assault on human dignity. Trump can mock a disabled reporter, but heaven help us if we mock Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the classic, and rather boring, illogic of the bully \u2013 the one who can dish it out, but can\u2019t take it. It\u2019s rooted not in strength, but in weakness. The morally strong and courageous person shrugs off insults, but tries to avoid harming others, and rises always to the defense of the marginalized. This was what Nietzsche, for all his perception, didn\u2019t get about the Christian charitable ethos: that it arises not from weakness and fear, but from moral fortitude \u00a0\u2013 as Max Scheler eloquently argued in his work, <\/span>Ressentiment.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Ressentiment<\/em>, as explored by Nietzsche and further clarified by Scheler, goes beyond mere resentment or revenge. There\u2019s a crude honesty about resentment, and a courage in revenge. Ressentiment<\/em> has to do with a deep spiritual rancor against goodness itself, a rancor which blossoms and blooms in the false flowers of a topsy-turvy and nihilistic value system. <\/span><\/p>\n

Those who feel threatened by the existence of moral or aesthetic value systems themselves retaliate by turning against them. But they don\u2019t say \u201chey, I\u2019m sick of this morality stuff; I\u2019m going to be a hedonist.\u201d There would be a certain swashbuckling glamour in that. <\/span><\/p>\n

But instead, they invent an alternative value system. Ugliness becomes beauty. Pain becomes joy. Hurting others becomes virtuous. The dishonesty at the heart of ressentiment goes deeper than lying, too:\u00a0 people overcome by ressentiment<\/em> actually believe their own fabrications.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One instance of ressentiment <\/em>I see today is when white persons respond not with generous magnanimity, but with spiritual rancor, to the cries for justice from black communities. Here is a value system in which we white people no longer get to be enthroned in the center \u2013 in which we need to take a step back, even admit our wrong. Lacking the guts to do this, we respond by attacking the whole structure of justice itself, and upending it, so that the oppressor class itself becomes \u2013 in the ressentiment-laden mind \u2013 the victim.<\/p>\n

Nietzsche mistakenly identified ressentimen<\/em>t as a trait exclusively of the victim class lashing back, failing to see how feeble those who occupy positions of power can often be: what we now might term \u201caffluenza.\u201d He also mistakenly identified ressentiment<\/em> in the Christian emphasis on the cross, thanks partially to the tendency of Christians to cast our own theology in unfortunately sado-masochistic terms. In correcting Mietzsche\u2019s error, Scheler may have run a bit too far in the opposite direction, especially in his lumping in Christian values with \u201cknightly\u201d values. But Nietzsche did the field of ethics an inestimable service by identifying the phenomenon of ressentiment<\/em> as a source for false and nihilistic value-systems, and Scheler did our theology a service by recalling us from nihilism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Nietzsche is misread by many thinkers, even thinkers I esteem. They misunderstand his emphasis on power as a lust for political power, when in reality it\u2019s more spiritual or aesthetic power, vitality, life-force, that he reveres. <\/span><\/p>\n

Nietzsche receovered from his Wagnerian phase, and went on to prefer Bizet\u2019s Carmen<\/em>, incidentally.\u00a0 He scorned political force, loathed boorishness, and mocked nationalism \u2013\u00a0 especially the proto-Nazism of his fellow Germans. Those who think Trump is exercising anything like a Nietzschean will to power haven\u2019t read closely enough. Obsession with power over others \u2013 bullying power \u2013 is the last resort of the weakling. The magnanimous one, the artist, the dancer \u2013 she doesn\u2019t need to force others or inflict pain. <\/span><\/p>\n

If he were alive today, I think Nietzsche would see the most pristine instance of ressentiment in the case of the Trumpian upending of values \u2013 and in the fundamental moral spinelessness of those who defend this. All the while claiming the privilege to bully, abuse, and attack, but crying victim whenever anyone serves them back a dose of what they\u2019ve been giving.\u00a0 Those who thought they didn\u2019t like political correctness, until they got a taste of their own poison.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

image credit:\u00a0https:\/\/am.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/%E1%88%B5%E1%8B%95%E1%88%8D:Nietzsche.jpg<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"