Media Lens Gets It Right -- Again
Read it.!
Racism, Sexism, Classism – The Necessary Incoherence Of ‘Mainstream’ Ethical Debate.
The point of this article is simply that
mainstream ethical debate is in no sense “ethical” but simply an opportunity
for the punditocracy to exercise their skills in hypocrisy and virtue signaling--and, of course, propagandize.
The article deals with this tendency, not as recent “trend” but as something built into the social system that our dubious “civilization” has conferred upon us, citinghistorical examples from the 19th Century on.
The human ego does not view others as equal; it places itself and its loved ones at the centre of the universe – ‘I’ matter more, ‘my’ happiness and the happiness of those ‘I’ love come first. The happiness of everyone else is very much a peripheral concern. The ego latches on to almost any excuse to reinforce this prejudice – viewing itself as ‘special’, ‘higher’, and others as ‘ordinary’, ‘lower’ – on the basis of almost any superficial differences, many of them even more trivial and transient than racial and gender differences. (See here for further discussion on the striving to be ‘special’.)
This tendency is massively promoted by our culture from the earliest age and manifests in numerous forms other than racism and sexism. We are taught to compete with our peers, to rise to the ‘upper stream’, to come first in exams, to be ‘top of the class’, to go to the ‘best’ schools, the ‘best’ colleges, to get the ‘best’ jobs. We are taught to define ourselves as more or less ‘bright’, ‘academic’, ‘gifted’ (selected for receipt of an actual ‘God-given talent’!).
The insights
in this article are similar to those in a soon-to-be published and extensively
documented book Ageing Young: You’re
Never Too Old To Rock ‘N Roll, (Macfarlane & Whitney, 2020) which
argues that this ubiquitous, hierarchical “I-ness” which Media Lens refers to is something that appeared rather recently,
an aberration that afflicts all “civilizations" since the invention of
agriculture 7000 years ago, and inevitably brings them down in a few centuries
since it is contrary to human nature – what we evolved to be 35,000 years ago, simple immediate return hunter-gatherers for whom
I=We. Macfarlane and Whitney argue that empathy and altruism are hard-wire in the human brain. Climate change in the Neolithic led to adaptations, such as social hierarchy ('class"), the subjugation of women (sexism), and fear of the "other" (racism, speciesism), which are unnatural for us and ultimately self-destructive.
As the Media Lens writers say, it is in our own best interests to be tolerant of all others, including animals:
The fact that a loving, inclusive heart is the basis of individual and social happiness, and a hate-filled, prejudiced heart is the basis of individual and social unhappiness, is the most powerful rationale for dropping racism, sexism, classism and speciesism. It is a response rooted in the warm truth of being and lived experience, not in bloodless ideas of ‘moral obligation’ and ‘political correctness’, not in the violent suppression of free speech.
It is not our ‘duty’ or ‘moral obligation’ to be respectful and tolerant of people and animals different from us; it is in our own best interests to care for them.
Enlightened self-interest, not banning and censorship, has always been the most effective antidote to prejudice. In fact, anger, punishment, blame and guilt-making may lead us away from the truth that we are not being ‘selfish’ by denigrating others, we are harming ourselves.
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