Hedges - the Last Word on Cancel Culture

Having a mass of people able to "cancel" someone in power can seem like a fantastic form of fluid democracy when it shuts down something harmful in a harmless manner, like people reserving space at a Trump rally they have no intention of attending. But it can be dangerous that a mass of people can shut down something merely controversial, like a YouTuber losing their followers after associating with someone with problematic opinions. But most often, it's completely ineffective "boutique activism" because it targets the wrong people.

Chris Hedges, writing for Scheerpost now, explains that cancel culture "is not a threat to the ruling class." In fact, the ruling class is using it to their own advantage. That's their superpower:

A Bit about Cancel Culture and Academic Freedom

I've written before about how I support free speech but don't support giving platforms to "White Nationalists" or neo-Nazis or any other racist group who could use the venue to garner more followers. My concern is with audience members who might be easily led or looking for a place to direct their saved up anger. I believe we must act together to ensure that racist or bigoted values don't get amplified. People aren't barred from speaking and sharing their views otherwise, but I'm fine if they are denied a stage, particularly in a public arena. It's not just that I don't like their views, but that I fear that their views, if accepted by a greater number of people, could normalize harmful actions and threaten the safety and security of my friends and neighbours.

But Peter Singer??  [ETA a recent interview about it at RNZ]

Here's a bit of background on this ethics philosopher. He is, if it's possible, the direct opposite of a neo-Nazi. He's all about decreasing suffering worldwide! He advocates for vegetarianism and goes so far as to suggest that, to live a truly ethical life, we should take any extra money just sitting in our bank accounts and donate it to charity to alleviate global poverty. He's ever concerned with us living the best life we can have in the most ethical way possible. But one of his many arguments around alleviating suffering, from a chapter in a book he wrote back in 1979, Practical Ethics, is about the right of parents to euthanize severely disabled infants. Disability activist groups want this view shut down.

The Greatest Propaganda Machine in History

Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G. and Borat, among others) won an award from the Anti-Defamation League. Here's his 25 minute acceptance speech. It's in writing, abridged a bit, below the video if you'd rather skim than watch. (Emphasis is mine.)



"Today, around the world, demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories, once confined to the fringe, are going mainstream. It's as if the age of reason, the era of evidential argument is ending and now knowledge is increasing delegitimized, and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging . . .  What do these dangerous trends have in common? . . . All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history. . . .

On J.S. Mill and Free Speech

More on "Just say 'no' to hate speech."

Maverick Philosopher wrote about free speech today, and I'd love to comment there, but there seems to be no means. So I'll bring it here. He's reading Mill and questions two things:

First, he's baffled by Mill's suggestion that we can never actually know any opinion. His example to the contrary is the opinion of Holocaust deniers despite much evidence of the actual existence of the Holocaust. But I'm afraid he's making the same mistake most people make (apparently, particularly us old schoolers) according to this recent study.

The Holocaust is a fact, so denying it is a falsehood. It's a factual mistake, not a false opinion. We can know false facts, clearly, since all we have to do is verify them, but determining a false opinion isn't as clear. For example, consider the opinion, abortion is immoral.  It really can't be known if that's a false opinion. It's just unknowable. We might all come to agreement that it should be legal and that it's the lesser of two evils, but we can't know that it's moral.

That being said, we're also getting pretty comfortable allowing people to spout false facts (aka lies) all over the place.

Secondly, he's amazed at Mill's insistence that we should allow free debate about opinions that are spectacularly disagreeable.

Mill takes that Evelyn Beatrice Hall position of, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It's not unlike the idea that being kind to horrible people is the mark of the truly moral because anyone can be kind to wonderful people. It's really easy to defend free speech when we agree with it.

Whether or not we should stifle disagreeable opinions is an interesting question that I can go on about for ages. Consider this opinion: Muslims/Mexicans/Whathaveyou are going to destroy America. I write from a no-platform stance because of exactly this kind of claim. I fear it will lead to violence, and I strongly agree with Maverick that these kinds of opinions shouldn't be permitted on a public stage.

Why would Mill disagree? I think Mill grew up cloistered by intensely intelligent people who debated heartily but reasonably. If I were only surrounded by the brightest minds, I would be happy to debate any notion raised. However, I think if Mill were alive in these days of social media inanity, he would quickly change his view.

Censorship Quiz

I've been reading Bob Altermeyer's book on authoritarianism written in 2006. Here's a censorship quiz (p 84) that perhaps can help people recognize that few of us actually want every to have total freedom to say whatever we want wherever we choose. There might be a few places that could use some limits. To some, any limit at all is tantamount to totalitarianism, but I belief what matters is what we choose to limit, when, where, and why.

1. Should a university professor be allowed to teach an anthropology course in which he argues that men are naturally superior to women, so women should resign themselves to inferior roles in our society?
2. Should a book be assigned in a Grade 12 English course that presents homosexual relationships in a positive light?
3. Should books be allowed to be sold that attack “being patriotic” and “being religious”?
4. Should a racist speaker be allowed to give a public talk preaching his views?
5. Should someone be allowed to teach a Grade 10 sex education course who strongly believes that all premarital sex is a sin?
6. Should commercials for “telephone sex” be allowed to be shown after 11 PM on television? [What about in the middle of the day?]
7. Should a professor who has argued in the past that black people are less intelligent than white people be given a research grant to continue studies of this issue?
8. Should a book be allowed to be published that argues the Holocaust never occurred, but was made up by Jews to create sympathy for their cause?
9. Should sexually explicit material that describes intercourse through words and medical diagrams be used in sex education classes in Grade 10?
10. Should a university professor be allowed to teach a philosophy course in which he tries to convince his students there is no God?
11. Should an openly white supremacist movie such as “The Birth of a Nation” (which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan) be shown in a Grade 12 social studies class?
12. Should “Pro-Choice” counselors and abortion clinics be allowed to advertise their services in public health clinics if “Pro-Life” counselors can?

His analysis of high right-wing authoritarians compared to low RWAs:

"I hope you’ll agree that half of the situations would particularly alarm liberals, and the other half would raise the hackles on right-wingers. Would low RWAs want to censor the things they thought dangerous as much as high RWAs would in their areas of concern? It turned out to be “no contest,” because in both studies authoritarian followers wanted to impose more censorship in all of these cases--save the one involving the sex education teacher who strongly believed all premarital sex was a sin. How can this be? It happened because the lows seldom wanted to censor anyone. They apparently believe in freedom of speech, even when they detest the speech. Some low RWAs may insist on political correctness, but the great majority seemingly do not. Authoritarians on the other hand, spring-loaded for hostility, seem all wound up to clamp right down on lots and lots of people. So when authoritarians reproach other people who call for censorship, the reproach may be justified. But a lot of windows probably got broken in the authoritarians’ own houses when they flung that stone."

The Trouble with Relativism

From a comment on a social media post advocating that we stop protesting people with Trump hats:

"The trouble with refusing to serve someone because you abhor their views, is that tomorrow someone else will do the same thing to you."

Here was my response:

That's like saying we have to tolerate everything in order to support tolerance. We don't. As Popper said, "We should claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant." It's not that one principle has to govern all actions, but that we have to look at the use of the principle and decide from there. Someone with a Nazi armband can be ousted from a restaurant by the owner because they clearly and openly advocate harm to a group of people, which we can all agree is heinous and wrong. But someone with a rainbow shirt isn't advocating harm to anyone; they just want to be allowed to exist. So refusing them service should cause an outrage. 

This is an increasing problem with relativist views. I see it in my students often who really want everyone to be right all the time. "He's not wrong; he just has a different idea." But there can be right and wrong ideas. In fact, there HAS to be. We have to all agree that holding a view that harming other people based on their group affiliation is just plain wrong. People who hold that immoral view have to be TOLD they're wrong over and over by everyone they meet.

Or else. If that view gains traction, which it is, then we KNOW the path our society could take. It's up to us, right now, to stop it in its tracks.


ETA in brief:

Her: Allowing the state to dictate what we're allowed to do or not allowed to do is advocating totalitarianism.

Me: That's a slippery slope. Canadians have lived with hate crime laws on the books for decades without becoming totalitarian in nature. We are able to stop discrimination without lumping in non-discriminatory actions. It is possible to create a clear line.

For the Popper quote, see Notes to Chapter 7, in The Open Society and Its Enemies, or page 544 of this PDF.

Right to Free Speech, not to an Audience

In Brian W. Van Norten's article in today's New York Times, "The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience" he carefully argues the stance that I've attempted to argue over the years: We can offer people free speech, but that's different than offering them a venue and audience. He starts with some questionable arguments from a few famous names, and closely examines the argument that society benefits from hearing all sides:

"Even if Coulter and Peterson are wrong, won’t we have a deeper understanding of why racism and sexism are mistaken if we have to think for ourselves about their claims? And “who’s to say” that there isn’t some small fragment of truth in what they say? If this specious line of thought seems at all plausible to you, it is because of the influence of “On Liberty,” published in 1859 by the English philosopher John Stuart Mill. . . . The problem, though, is that humans are not rational in the way Mill assumes. I wish it were self-evident to everyone that we should not discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, but the current vice president of the United States does not agree. I wish everyone knew that it is irrational to deny the evidence that there was a mass shooting in Sandy Hook, but a syndicated radio talk show host can make a career out of arguing for the contrary. . . . 

I suggest that we could take a big step forward by distinguishing free speech from just access. Access to the general public, granted by institutions like television networks, newspapers, magazines, and university lectures, is a finite resource. Justice requires that, like any finite good, institutional access should be apportioned based on merit and on what benefits the community as a whole. There is clear line between censoring someone and refusing to provide them with institutional resources for disseminating their ideas. . . . For these prestigious institutions to deny Murray an audience would be for them to exercise their fiduciary responsibility as the gatekeepers of rational discourse. We have actually seen a good illustration of what I mean by “just access” in ABC’s courageous decision to cancel “Roseanne,” its highest-rated show. Starring on a television show is a privilege, not a right. . . . 

What just access means in terms of positive policy is that institutions that are the gatekeepers to the public have a fiduciary responsibility to award access based on the merit of ideas and thinkers. To award space in a campus lecture hall to someone like Peterson who says that feminists “have an unconscious wish for brutal male domination,” or to give time on a television news show to someone like Coulter who asserts that in an ideal world all Americans would convert to Christianity, or to interview a D-list actor like Jenny McCarthy about her view that actual scientists are wrong about the public health benefits of vaccines is not to display admirable intellectual open-mindedness. It is to take a positive stand that these views are within the realm of defensible rational discourse, and that these people are worth taking seriously as thinkers. Neither is true: These views are specious, and those who espouse them are, at best, ignorant, at worst, sophists. The invincibly ignorant and the intellectual huckster have every right to express their opinions, but their right to free speech is not the right to an audience."

Exactly!

Many of the commenters on the article have a unifying concern: "Who will be the judge of what's right?" And they then conclude, like Mill, that we simply have to have a forum for everyone or else the government will get its hand in the mix, and it'll be hell for everyone. But that's not the only option. Van Norten makes it clear that TV producers are able to fire overt racists from their shows, and, similarly, universities have a right to refuse a venue to guest speakers who promote bigoted views. It's a matter of 'my house, my rules.' If you don't want to go to a university that refuses to give space for 'white nationalists' like Faith Goldy, then you're free to choose to go elsewhere. I'm hoping enough universities take that position that it becomes difficult for racists and homophobes and flat-earthers and climate deniers to find an institute that shares their views so openly.

ETA: Olly at Philosophy Tube does a good job of explaining this too:

On Limits to Free Speech: Hate Crime Laws and Defamation Suits

Watching the excellent series The Handmaid's Tale, at first I questioned the glaring lack of racism in the show. It's supposed to be happening just a few years in the future, and somehow racism has completely disappeared. Homosexuality is outlawed, but they're totally cool with mixed race relationships. But, on further thought, obviously they're okay with it. The crisis they're facing in Gilead is infertility. The realization reminded me of Reagan's line,

“I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”

We can give up our prejudices on a dime when there's a bigger threat looming over us. Prejudices are arbitrary and developed for their usefulness, for instance, to control groups of people, or to help the masses to blindly accept any suffering experienced by the group of choice, whatever group we've decided don't quite count today. Because it's all so slippery, and we're often so easily led, we must have stoppers in place, barriers to prevent the development of practices that harm a random group of people. We must have limits to speech.

Our Charter gives us freedom of opinion and expression. However, since society won't be improved and our freedom better secured by allowing people to publicly incite hatred against a group of people who are identified race, religion, gender identity or expression, age, ability, etc., we rightfully have laws, an Act, and a Code preventing that very specific type of speech that incites hatred against people. We also have limits to our speech when it comes to harming individuals, and laws (right next to the hate crime laws) and a Code for that too. But beyond that, legally, anything goes. You can still openly criticize people for identifying as left wing or an SJW or any other position that's become an insult recently. Our legislation indicates that we recognize the power of words.

It's curious to me when people who believe we should have zero limits on free speech will happily use legislation that limits free speech when it works in their favour. To be consistent, if they're against free speech boundaries when it comes to hate speech, then they should oppose defamation laws as well. If the argument is that we should be free to say anything, no matter how harmful it is to a person or group of people, and then people who oppose us are free to counter our claims openly, then that obliterates both hate crime and defamation laws.

Or this:

Of course I'm talking about recent lawsuits filed against WLU. Despite that Shepard, a T.A.,  surreptitiously taped a conversation and publicized it herself, she claims the conversation made her unemployable (for $3.6 mill), and Professor Peterson's lawsuit (for $1.5 mill) claims that Laurier staff,

"intended, in making these statements, that the comments could be available, potentially widely discussed, and would damage Peterson’s reputation … now and in the future"

The Globe and Mail reports that,

"Several experts in defamation law, however, said the university could argue that any comments made in the meeting are protected by “qualified privilege.” “The law wants to give people the ability to speak freely without fear of a libel lawsuit in certain situations,” Toronto defamation lawyer Gil Zvulony said. Disciplinary meetings could be one such situation if the people in the meeting are fulfilling their duty, according to defamation and media lawyer Peter Jacobsen."

So I imagine this will end soon, but not without further infamy for the parties involved and further black marks on Laurier's reputation. I have an acquaintance whose son will be going in the fall, and she commented that they won't let the kids say anything there. I remarked that they're just trying to prevent people crossing the line into hate speech, and she lamented that we're all gotten too carried away. I have no idea how to bridge the divide between our views.

It doesn't help that there are people who have gotten carried away:



Peterson clearly has a sense of humour, and the use of airhorns and chanting during a discussion is absolutely obnoxious. The bit starting at 4:40 has been circulating, with many claims that it's out of context, so I included the entire clip. There are people stopping others from being heard, and security should be on them to cut it out. Absolutely. Chanting while people are speaking isn't part of hate crime legislation.

But, as Peterson asks, who does define hate speech? How do we decide that someone is inciting hatred? In Canada's actually use of the legislation, it's typical extreme speech that includes a threat to bodily safety: in one case a man incited hatred and issued threats to a Muslim group, another had a message that "could lead to an altercation," and one was a matter of violent speech, and this article clarifies that it's speech made to,

"intimidate, harm or terrify not only a person, but an entire group of people to which the victim belongs. It applies when the victims are targeted for who they are, not because of anything they have done, and can involve intimidation, harassment, physical force or threat of physical force against a person, a group or a property. . . . to call for, support, encourage or argue for the killing of members of a group."

So calling someone 'him' instead of 'them' won't get you arrested. And using an analogy that compares someone to Hitler also won't be enough for a conviction.

I've written previously about the importance of limits to free speech when it incites hatred, and I've also written that where protecting free speech is most imperative: we must be allowed to question figures of authority and present dissenting views. Gilead is a great example of the what the reverse of that would look like: where hate speech is rampantly promoted and questioning authority figures is punishable by death. And it's horrific.

ETA: Now it's coming out that Peterson appeared as an expert witness in a court case, but the judge dismissed his testimony for lacking any scientific rigour.

And Matthew Sears compared Peterson to Cleon:

Cleon, however, was not particularly big on free speech, at least not as it was practised by Aristophanes. The demagogue apparently took Aristophanes to court several times in an attempt to silence him, as historian Todd M. Compton recounts in detail. Aristophanes, however, only resolved to intensify the barbs he slung at his rival. In The Acharnians, produced in 425, Aristophanes lets loose:  

 “And Cleon. Him I know from —shall we say? —personal experience. Last year’s comedy provoked him. To say the least. He dragged me into the Senate House, sued me, and opened the sluicegates. Slander and lies gushed from his tongue in torrents, and down the arroyo of his mind there roared a flash flood of abuse. To purge me, he purged himself —and in the offal, filth and fetor of his verbal diarrhea, I nearly smothered, mortally immersed.”  

 Three years after The Acharnians, Aristophanes produced a comedy called Wasps, in which two competing characters are respectively named Philocleon and Bdelycleon. The former means “Love Cleon” while the latter means something like “Cleon Makes Me Puke.” So much for being deterred by lawsuits.

Sears saves the most important point for the end:

Who is going to talk about Peterson negatively now without worrying that they might be contacted by a lawyer and have their livelihood threatened? Peterson is by any measure a public figure, and is quite forceful —and even deliberately provocative — about getting his own views across. He should be fair game. I worry now that he’s not. In the end, Peterson just looks like a hypocrite, claiming to be free speech’s champion while stifling the free speech of others in very tangible ways. Like Cleon, this suit makes him look ridiculous. Perhaps someone should write a comedy about Peterson with a main character named “Peterson Makes Me Barf” or a new name in the spirit of Aristophanes, like, say, “Rottenlobsterpeteypants.”

ETA: The Beaverton

ETA: And then there's Laurie Penny's article:

The fact that this is being taken seriously, that it demands to be taken seriously, is frankly embarrassing to converts and critics alike; a symptom of an intellectual and political culture running on fumes. . . . watch a grown man who makes a living telling other people to toughen up rebound into spasms of outrage, threaten to sue you, threaten to punch you, and whip up his followers into such a storm of harassment that a great many critics are now nervous to push back on his ideas at all. And this is the great free-speech defender.

A Bit More on Free Speech

You're free to say the earth is flat and say it all day long on a wide variety of media platforms, and even write a book about it if you've got the time. You might not get much notice, but, if you persist, then some people will likely try to show you where you went wrong. Then, after enough time, because of the ability of the internet to help the fringe players find one another, you might generate a small following.

But, if someone decides you should be heard because that's what's free speech is all about, and invites you to give a lecture on your ideas, then I would hope there would be protesters that shut it down. I believe we need to hear out differing opinions, especially those we oppose, but I don't believe we need to help inaccurate information be disseminated any wider than already allowed by the internet. NASA doesn't have flat earth scientists on board in the name of inclusion and unbiased reporting because... that's just dumb.

And we definitely don't need to promote poorly studied claims that suggest we starve out the poor to keep them from reproducing since they're carriers of the employment-resistant personality gene.

On Peterson, Political Correctness, and Postmodernism

Peterson was on Bill Maher last night. They're both people that have some clever ideas, but also promote a few questionable notions in a way that's slick enough to just get a pass from some intelligent people instead of necessarily getting the scrutiny deserved. Here's an innocuous and pleasant exchange between mutual fans:




ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS:

In the video Maher defined political correctness as, "the elevation of sensitivity over truth," and lamented the "emotional hemophiliacs" who will bleed at the littlest thing, but instead of avoiding sharp objects, they make the world cover everything in bubble wrap. Peterson went one step further: "It's more like the elevation of moral posturing of sensitivity over truth." He explained a bit about resilience: "Security doesn't come from making the world safe, because that's not possible. You make people resilient by exposing people to things that make them uncomfortable . . . over-coddling leads to stupid and narcissistic people."

On Fascist Movements and Free Speech

Some people are upset because Ryerson cancelled a panel discussion featuring Faith Goldy, of Rebel Media, who openly expresses the belief that Muslims are a problem in our country. A Ryerson spokesperson said,

"After a thorough security review, the University has concluded that Ryerson is not equipped to provide the necessary level of public safety for the event to go forward. In light of recent events, Ryerson University is prioritizing campus safety."

I don't blame them. I wouldn't give her the platform to speak in the first place. I think free speech is important, but it's particularly important because we need the right to criticize people in positions of power and to question legislation. It's not important that everyone can say everything they think to as many people as possible. Her right to free speech isn't eroded since she's still free to talk on the internet and in her own media venues. [ETA - Even Rebel Media doesn't want her anymore.] She just wasn't given the right to speak at that one location.

I'm a fan of our anti-hate speech here in Canada. I don't believe in free speech at any cost when we see how many people can be influenced by a charismatic speaker with a warped agenda. Intelligent debate is the ideal, of course, but the reality is that some of these speakers can make the worst atrocities sound necessary. Get enough people worried about the economy, and it's too easy to pick a group of people to blame and then run them out of town - or worse. (I say way more about free speech here.)

Inconceivable! His Dinner with Chomsky

Wallace Shawn sat down for a chat with Noam Chomsky (video link here), and here's what they talked about - slightly abridged and loosely quoted (for clarification purposes) with links. It's a great recharge for activists!


Shawn - Many people are shocked to see the president is now a cruel, brutal, greedy type of a man, and this is now the face of America, but I'm not shocked because this has been the face of the United States for decades. What do you think is not new, and what do you think actually IS new?  [For more on this, check out Cenk Uygur's interview with John Cusack. It's pre-election, and the president he's criticizing at the beginning is Obama.]

Chomsky - My wife is from Brazil, and she predicted the Trump win before the primaries. From the outside, there's much that is not new. Recently the U.S. demanded that Cambodia pay back a debt incurred when the U.S. was destroying their country. There was secret bombing. It seems probably hundreds of thousands were killed. The Khmer Rouge was a small group, but ended up become a mass army of peasants starving and driven off the land by American bombing. The U.S. offered aid to get them to purchase American agricultural produce, and now they want payback. The American ambassador to Cambodia couldn't understand why Cambodians often make anti-American comments, but that's the America plenty of people see all over the world.

What is new, and dramatically new, is the U.S. withdrawal from the rest of the world on the issue of greatest significance for the prospect of human survival: climate change. The Washington Post had images of receding glaciers that will raise sea levels by many feet and pretty much drive tens of millions off land. A good part of organized life in coastal cities will be devastated. Every country in the world with the exception of the United States is committed to at least some actions on this issue. The US alone is not only refusing to participate, but is actually moving in a dedicated fashion in the opposite direction: trying to maximize the damage.

On Slippery Arguments and Equity at Google

You can read most of the infamous Google memo here, and for the record, I don't think opening up this discussion should be a fireable offence, but I'm just concerned with this one piece of the puzzle right now:

"the distribution of preferences and abilities of men and women differ in part due to biological causes and these differences may explain why we don't see equal representation of women in tech and leadership."

David Brooks calls this "championing scientific research."

But consider this analogy. Walk into an art gallery full of art by Picasso, Monet, Dali, Van Gogh...  It is the case that men and women have some inherent differences on average; that claim has some validity. There are certainly more differences among the groups that between them, but there's still a difference however slight. BUT it doesn't follow that that's why we don't see equal representation in an art gallery. It's clearly not the case that women inherently, evolutionarily, don't prefer the arts and don't have any artistic talent. We can see that so clearly and easily because we are well aware that over the past centuries few women were allowed near a book much less a paintbrush.

We're far enough away from that museum scenario to really shake our head at the blatant injustices that produced such disparate results. However, as a society, we're apparently not quite able to step back and recognize the profound level of inequity that has created current gender distribution in the world of high tech.

On Gender Pronouns and Peterson's Case

This is a difficult thing for me to figure out, and I'm not sure I'm quite firm on anything yet, but I've been completely fascinated by the discussions around Jordan Peterson, the University of Toronto prof who refuses to use individually-determined gender pronouns, so I'll try to narrow down what I actually think based on some of his YouTube videos, his interview with Joe Rogan, and various articles. I wrote before about some points I disagree with, but here I'll also look at where his argument has some merit. He's got some solid ideas in the mix.

First of all, the fact that I'm wary of discussing this at all, means that Peterson is on to something. He might not be entirely right about what he's doing and how, but it's always a concern when people don't feel free to counter current views. Before I knew his name, this felt like an issue that wasn't allowed to be debated, and those are always the meatiest places to explore. Why can't we question it? What's going on there? I teach philosophy and social science courses, and I get into all sorts of discussions that push boundaries: is incest necessarily immoral, or why don't we all use performance-enhancing drugs, or what if we sterilize couples right after they have one child to decrease population? Yet people questioning their gender is untouchable as a debatable topic so far. It's to the point that teens who feel strongly that they're in the wrong body are allowed significant surgery even though women in their 30s can't get their tubes tied because they can't possibly know their own minds. That's really interesting to me.

On Social Control in Universities

Chris Hedges has concerns with Trump's impact on intellectuals:

Trump and his Christian fascist minions, sooner than most of us expect, will seek to shut down the small spaces left for free expression. Dissent will become difficult and sometimes dangerous. ... The Trump administration will hand our Christian jihadists a platform to champion a repugnant religious chauvinism that fuses the symbols and language of the Christian religion with American capitalism, imperialism and white  supremacy.

He spoke with historian Ellen Schrecker, author of several books on McCarthyism, who says this has been in the making for the past four decades since America has been "cannibalized for profit." They spoke mainly about the Powell memorandum launched in the 1970s and the current rise of watch lists targeting leftist academics for discrimination against conservatives or for criticizing capitalism, an act allegedly committed by Richard Wolff, a Marxist economist on the list. Left-leaning alternative media is also being targeted.

Schrecker refers to Martha Nussbaum's discussion of the importance of the humanities to give us a taste for the other through literature, history, and sociology. They think it makes you a better person and citizen when you put yourself in another's place mentally, but the pressure on people to focus on the self is very strong, even from parents who dissuade students from degrees in the humanities in order to focus on more lucrative professions.

Hedges ends with a plea for us to hold fast to

values of compassion, simplicity, love and justice....Tyrants have silenced voices of conscience in the past. They will do so again. We will endure by holding fast to our integrity, by building community and by spawning new institutions in the midst of the wreckage. We will sustain each other. Perhaps enough of us will endure to begin again.

This article is timely for me because I recently watched Jordan Peterson talk about the demise of universities, but from the completely opposing side. [He gave a 3-hour interview about many topics - some I agree with entirely, so I'll get to more of them another day.] A prof at U of T, he's been given written warnings after refusing to use alternative gender pronouns upon request. His refusal is in part to make an important point about freedom of speech. His concern, and here he runs parallel to Hedges, is that our speech is being micromanaged in a way that could be dangerous if allowed to continue. He's also concerned with the lack of a cultural history in the populous. And, like Hedges, he praises Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago for its compelling story of the inner workings of the Soviet Union. They're both concerned with the erosion of civil liberties, and Hedges takes from Solzhenitsyn's book that,

"unless these informants on the streets, in the prisons and manning our massive, government data-collection centers are disarmed we will never achieve liberty."

But that's where the similarities end. Peterson seems to take from Solzhenitsyn's book that horrors of the time were entirely due to Marxist ideas, which he further conflates with anything left-leaning, and deduces that therefore the problem with the universities is the leftists who are all Marxists, who are all unwittingly (or dimwittingly) promoting the horrors of the Gulags. The fact that Trudeau said anything nice about Castro makes him suspect in Peterson's eyes.

The atrocities of the Soviet Union might be pinned on Lenin's revolutionary actions, but Marx and Lenin had marked differences, primarily in their view of control over the people. Peterson sets up a straw man when he suggests that the Marxists all think it didn't work with Stalin because he was a monster, but it could work if they were in charge. And then he argues that we would all end up as brutal dictators given that much power. But he misses the point. Marx didn't want an authoritative body to be in charge; he wanted workers to be in charge of the factories: "to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class." His writings promote anarcho-syndicalism more than what we currently call communism.

Peterson thinks people like Marxism because it's compassionate, which is nice and all but doesn't work with a large group because we can't treat one another as kin once society gets too large. So it's misguided to have equality of outcome. All positive motivation renders the world unequal. He's on the conservative side of this meme below in terms of handouts, expecting the little guy to be motivated enough to negotiate the solution shown on the right. But, as far as he's concerned, if we just set it up like in the right image, then nobody will be motivated to do anything.

Here's a little history of this meme.

So, if I understand him, if we ensure that everyone has what they need, compassionately, then all progress will end. Here's Marx's response to that claim,

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us. According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.

Peterson's analysis implies an underlying premise that the poor don't work hard, which basically suggests that the rich and poor are divided entirely through their efforts. But it's clear to me that there are elements of luck and mass oppression and exploitation of others that lead some to become outrageously wealthy with relatively little effort. And there are many working a variety of jobs but just barely surviving. He's concerned with the lack of progress that would entail with equality of outcome, but then later gets all Taoist. But progress is largely antithetical to the Tao. Curious. He's a little hard to pin down.

Furthermore, Marx insisted that "Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations." He wanted to end the exploitation that enabled the few to become exceedingly wealthy off the backs of the many, not to end the profit that comes from innovation.

Peterson rails against the left, but left and right are a slippery dichotomy. In some regards, Marx is not that different, ironically, from John Locke who some call the father of capitalism. Marx wanted to stop the exploitation of the factory workers by the managers, and Locke wanted to stop the exploitation of the peasants by the aristocracy by allowing them to own the land they worked:

The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.

The father of communism and the father of capitalism and Adam Smith and Aristotle and many others, all implore us to compassionately reject exploitation of the masses and most of them want to ensure the people all have the basics to thrive. Here's Aristotle:

It is manifest therefore that a state is not merely the sharing of a common locality for the purpose of preventing mutual injury and exchanging goods. These are necessary preconditions of a state's existence, yet nevertheless, even if all these conditions are present, that does not therefore make a state, but a state is a partnership of families and of clans in living well, and its object is a full and independent life.

Back to universities. Peterson thinks the leftist ideology boxes people in. It controls and suppresses the marketplace of free ideas. He includes in this Woman Studies Departments which all dangerously foster revolution with a false anthropology that claims there used to be an egalitarian paradise before patriarchal oppression. For evidence he implores us to look at any Women Studies website, but his specific concerns seems to be that they promote class-guilt in their belief that we're responsible for the sins of our past and that they believe the oppressed deserve special compensation. [I'll dismantle that bit another day.] Because of the Marxism of the universities which is leading to the "slow creep toward social control," he thinks universities do more harm than good. We can educate ourselves online better now. Wisdom has moved outside the universities.

And then he spent many minutes applauding the reach of his own monetized videos and possibly being convinced by the interviewer to shift to a podcast model for an even wider audience, and it all started sounding a bit like an infomercial.

But then he took a decidedly left-wing view and argued for limits on the profits to be made by managers in a university. He notes the proportion of funds going to administration has massively increased and that administrators are essentially stealing the future earnings of the students who aren't allowed to declare bankruptcy on their student loans. Or, one might say, the proletariats of the system are creating indentured servitude. Interesting. He adds a capitalist twist to it with a concern that this burdens citizens at a time when they're most likely to take entrepreneurial risks. For a minute there, it almost seemed like he was forming a compassionate kinship regardless the size of our society.

He loves YouTube because it documents issues without interrogation. He calls it a revolution as overwhelming as the Gutenberg press and a re-birth of genuine journalism where people can seek out contrary viewpoints. I agree, except I'm not convinced it's entirely a good thing to promote as potentially the dominant form of education. Information needs some form of curation. There's a lot of crap out there. And if Marxist courses are the problem in universities, then people like him should stay put to offer an alternative viewpoint.

But I do agree with his concerns about social control, just like I agree with Hedges' concerns. I'm fascinated with the idea that both are concerned with social control, but both think it comes from opposing places: external right-wing think tanks and internal left-wing humanities departments, and targets opposing groups. I worry to what extent Peterson's crusade is muddling the truly frightening concerns from the other side? But maybe that's just my brainwashed leftist ideology talking.

Peterson says "university is a place to be confronted by horrible ideas. History is a bloodbath....Stay home to be safe." I agree absolutely. We must be able to express minority, dissenting views freely and openly, especially in educational facilities. I support him on that even though I'm exactly the kind of person he's blaming for it all - a crazy Marxist feminist egalitarian schooled in a leftist humanities department.

I'll get to those pronouns next time.  (ETA - here's my discussion on that)

ETA: Philosopher Richard Wolff takes on error Peterson makes when he discusses Marxism.

On Retaliation

Both Hedges and Reich are writing about Trump's frightening behaviour. It's not just the weird tweets, but the follow-up from him and from supporters.  Reich discusses Chuck Jones' experience: "I’m getting threats and everything else from some of his supporters.” And he talks about Trump's tweet proposing cancelling a fictitious Boeing order, which resulted in a nosedive for Boeing shares. And then he got to 18-year-old Lauren Batchelder who was brave enough to share some concerns about Trump:

"Almost immediately, Batchelder’s phone began receiving threatening messages. “I didn’t really know what anyone was going to do,” Batchelder told the Washington Post. “He was only going to tweet about it and that was it, but I didn’t really know what his supporters were going to do, and that to me was the scariest part.”

Hedges' recent column focuses on the media:

He will seek to domesticate the press and critics first through the awarding of special privileges, flattery, gifts and access. Those who cannot be bought off will be destroyed. His petulant, childish taunts, given authority by the machinery of the security and surveillance state, will be dangerous.

On Being Useful: a Necessary Shift in Radicalism

"Oh, what can we do in a case like that? Nothing to do but sit on your hat, or your toothbrush, or your grandmother, or anything else that's useless."

Those are the butchered words of a Burl Ives song I sang as a kid until my sister corrected me. The last word is actually helpless, not useless. But it made so much more sense to think of my elders as full of vim and vigour, but just spinning their wheels. They're not helpless, but they don't effect anything significantly either. You can't go to them to try to make a difference on anything significant. It probably got meshed in my head with my dad's gentle refrain beaten into my head, "Do try to be useful," whenever anything was happening around me, like groceries or housecleaning or dinner.

I have no memory of the song being about a whale. To my young mind, it was about the sad incompetence of the older generation, and it I was the first protest song I sang as I pictured the youth suffocating their elders in order to make shit happen. But then I became a useless elder and the cycle continues.

I've been thinking about my uselessness lately, and then I watched HyperNormalisation and listened to an interview with Adam Curtis, who said that radicals started giving up the fight in the 1970s. I felt a little vindicated as he lamented the movement towards self-absorbed obsessions with working out; I loathe exercise for its own sake. But that was quickly replaced with a bit of shame as he turned to the radicals that retreated into their art and writing as a quieter form of protest that's essentially useless. Okay, that hit a nerve. He argues that what we need is for people go to protest sites, whatever cause is near and dear, and don't tweet about it, but just participate. And participate until it's fixed. Don't just make an appearance, take a selfie, then congratulate yourself on the way back home, ummm, like I do with the marches I attend. (But doesn't making lengthy documentaries fit in with making art?)

And that reminded me of a great book I was fortunate to be forced to read in university: Sources of the Self, by Charles Taylor (listen to a shorter version here), a Canadian philosopher who happens to be in the news everywhere right now since winning the Berggruen Prize for advancing humanity. His sudden wave of publicity gives me great hope that we're on the verge of actually paying attention to his ideas. His extraordinary tome traces philosophy from the beginnings to now and suggests that we've gotten ourselves into a muddle because we've shifted from asking questions about human nature (philosophy) with an interest in furthering society, to thinking entirely about ourselves and the ordinary life (psychology, particularly of the self-help variety) with an interest in developing our personal potential. The way to end our malaise is to go back to the source to figure out what we're all about. It's a call to reject the notion that values are subjective. That's a tiny nutshell for several hundred pages, but I'll get to the rest of it another day.

We've shifted to soft relativist positions that don't really allow us to have ideals. Instead of getting into the nooks and crannies of right and wrong, thinking and figuring out which really is the best action for the greater good, we largely look for ways to justify doing what we want. And a general attitude that says "your way is just as valid as mine" encourages us all on our merry way, ignoring atrocities along the path. But many think the opposite slides down a slope towards totalitarianism. If I imply your reasoning is questionable and your choices immoral, then I'm telling you what to do. And what give me that right?? I'm labeled arrogant and the argument is dismissed. People need to be willing to discuss these things in a learned way until we get to some discovery of essential values.

And at the same time, I've been reading a book on Sartrean Ethics, which argues for the opposing idea, that values are completely subjective and we can all be useful if we choose values that we can live up to: "It is up to man himself to give meaning and use to his life...by choosing to value and seek goals that are attainable" (53). Sartre is exciting to read because he's not at all judgmental about people's lapses into bad faith, and his version of the virtuous life is so possible. It feels good to read him. But, as much as I like much of what he says, I believe it's part of the reason for this mess we're in.

If I have to choose a path, then I'm with Taylor on this one. There are some values that exist outside ourselves and that can't be ignored even if it's uncomfortable for us to face the reality of our selfishness and the errors of our ways up to this point. I also agree with Curtis that we have to change the way we express ourselves radically. A personal expression isn't going to do jack shit to change anything. We need to focus less on ourselves, on our art and music and writing and on our bodies, and actually take some risks and suffer a bit to promote real change for the future. We can't change the world from the comfort of the couch. These views take us into far more difficult terrain that's not rewarding in the ways we're used to. It means working for something that will benefit the next generation knowing we might never be remembered for our efforts as we get lost in a sea of protesters, but we can't continue to do so little if we want the next couple of generations to survive. Especially now that Trump is at the helm.

Taylor writes, "We want our lives to have meaning, or weight, or substance, or to grow towards some fullness.... But this means our whole lives. If necessary, we want the future to "redeem" the past, to make it part of a life story which has sense or purpose, to take it up in a meaningful unit" (50). Nietzsche uses these words, "To redeem the past and to transform every 'It was' into an 'I wanted it thus' - that alone do I call redemption" (TSZ-161). We get caught up in linear progressions. The present has to be better than the past, and it all has to add up to something that makes sense to us. When we're in a lull in our life, or hit a crappy part, it's disconcerting that it was all for naught. But if we want our lives to have real substance, then it will only happen if we add our voices to a collective call to action beyond our individual pursuits. The internet makes us feel connected, but it's just an illusion. We have to leave the house and come face-to-face with other human beings willing to go the distance with us.

It's not necessary to succeed, but we have to begin.

The Lives of Others

I have this poster on the wall of my classroom:

It's important to know. It's necessary to understand how things work. And then it's vital to act rightly in the face of the truth.

That's the message in The Lives of Others, a gripping film with one of the best final three words since Ironman. A Stasi officer in East Berlin, with eyes and ears on a playwright of dubious intent, decides to help the man just this one time. That sets off a foot-in-the-door type of psychological effect: Once we help a little, we tend to help a little more.

The director, von Donnersmarck, was only eleven and living in the relative safety of West Berlin in 1984, the Orwellian year when the film begins. Timothy Garton Ash (there be bold spoilers!) laments the details of the film: The Stasi weren't so well dressed. The students would have been in uniform. The entire thing looked too Western.... But that kind of truth is less important than the reality of the fear and desperation of the times - the general anxiety of day to day life when we can trust no one. It becomes all too clear the reality of the slippery slope we could face if we continue to allow C-51-type intrusions into our freedoms.

Within a fictional totalitarian regime, Alan Moore explained, "Artists use lies to tell the truth," and that line had a presence as I watched. This idea is crucial in the film when the artists' lives and livelihood are at stake as they embed statistics in poetic prose. But that very risk is what makes spreading the truth all the more important.

Garton Ash asks if high culture humanizes us, and he shares this bit of trivia:

"Maxim Gorky records Lenin saying that he can’t listen to Beethoven’s Appassionata because it makes him want to say sweet, silly things and pat the heads of little people, whereas in fact those little heads must be beaten, beaten mercilessly, to make the revolution. As a first-year film student, von Donnersmarck wondered “what if one could force a Lenin to hear the Appassionata,” and that was the original germ of his movie."

If anything can turn us from cruelty, it might be art. Films like this one precariously transport us to a place of heightened empathy as we live through the character's dilemma. We become a little more moral, a little more courageous in the process.

What affected me most in this film, however, was the plot driven by one man of power unable to completely have the woman he desired. People must pay the price for his loss. This is an issue no less disquieting in our pseudo-enlightened times thirty years hence where men scorned still prove menacing whether on a real life date or during on-line encounters. Women can expect sexually aggressive threats from total strangers for politely rejecting advice. Stealing away with a woman to force her hand in marriage has been illegal since the 12th century, but I fear tactics have merely gotten more subtle in their execution.

On Free Speech and Safe Spaces

Pathologizing disagreement is an intellectually dishonest way to cope with challenging arguments. It certainly doesn't support critical thinking. It also creates a culture wherein people are afraid to express dissenting opinions or question the party line....It's okay to disagree, but not to frame differences of opinion as abuse.

Meghan Murphy wrote those words in a column in today's Globe and Mail: "There's nothing 'safe' about silencing dissent," and I couldn't agree more.

I recently wrote at length about the need to limit speech in such a way as to allow for criticism of authority but stop mindlessly cruel rants that have become the norm on some social media sites. I want to end the perception that free speech entitles us to say any moronic or caustic comment that comes to mind like some racist fraternity chants we've been hearing about lately. Murphy's article gets at a different problem: people condemning words because they might make someone feel 'unsafe.'

It's imperative to protect the right to free speech when people question authority in order to limit the power of those in power, but it's also necessary to protect the right to free speech when people have dissenting opinions in order to protect ourselves against the natural pull of groupthink and mob mentality. Allowing dissension can also foster better, more nuanced defences as we're made aware of holes in our case that need to be filled more thoroughly.

I've seen the kind of issue Murphy raises - people denied a seat on a panel or a speaking engagement because of their perspective. I've even seen people who are backing a minority position claim that the people in the majority are bullying them, not because they're harassing them in any way or even know them, but because they have stronger arguments for their case - because they're winning. If arguing well enough to win a debate is considered bullying, then arguments will be won by whomever is more distraught at the end. If someone is so offended by contrary claims that they feel unsafe, then maybe that person shouldn't offer to sit on a panel to discuss the issue publicly. It's not much of a discussion if the panel is made of like-minded people unwilling to hear opposing points. I'd go so far as to suggest it's leaning towards propaganda.

We always have to consider that maybe our opponents are right even just in part. The unfortunate corollary of that could be that maybe we're wrong, but it's often the case that the issue isn't as black and white as we had thought. Sometimes dissension shows us the complexity of an issue that, without that consideration, seemed simply a case of good against bad. For triggering issues, that might mean having to re-think a position that we've neatly tucked away into a tiny box of a few core sentences.  Unpacking that could be painful, but refusing to see any other position leaves the whole argument untied and may create factions that could otherwise be bridged and misunderstandings that could otherwise be enlightened.

I know that rush of outrage that comes when someone questions a core belief.  Maybe they suggested something as heinous as, "Some women like to get raped." But instead of just shutting them down, I believe it's better to take the time and go the distance to dismantle the claim sufficiently in hopes, at the very least, that they won't try that argument with anyone again. If we just shut down weak arguments, then our opponents can claim we didn't listen to their side. As long as we're civil in our interactions, then we can have both a forum for debate and a safe space.

To commemorate Daniel Dennett's birthday, let's revisit his rules for civil dissension:

1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.  

2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement). 

3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.  

4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

I'd add some more obvious points that aren't as common knowledge as I'd hope:
1. Don't start talking louder and interrupting often to the point that your rival goes unheard.
2. Don't rant and run - blast out an opinion, then claim it necessary to make a hasty retreat.
3. Don't attack the person's intelligence or position in an effort to discount their argument (an ad hominem) including everything from more subtle eye rolling to attention demanding head banging (which I like to call "gestural ad hominems").

These three all boil down to the daycare admonishment: "Stop and listen."

Then follow the listening with a well-supported rebuttal focusing on undoing the opponent's supports and adding further supports to flush out your own position. Arguing well takes a bit of thought and energy, so it's not for the lazy or faint of heart, but it's necessary if we hope to learn anything from one another.    

ETA:  This article is an excellent discussion of the issue.

On the Hidden Sickness of the Heart

Scott Long wrote an excellent article separating the act of supporting free speech from the act of supporting the words and images created by Charlie Hebdo.  But I disagree with this one bit:

"Words don't kill..."

As I said in a comment there, too many young people have lost lives as a direct results of malicious words and images.  We can't ignore that reality.  In my lifetime, I've seen a change in the way we talk that developed through punishments for transgressions of the new rules.  We use gender-inclusive language in scholarly writing, and professionals and politicians can no longer easily get away with cavalierly making racist, sexist, or homophobic slurs.  We recognize that words seep into our subconscious in a way we can't prevent when they're out there at large, repeated and bombarding us at every turn.

The subtle restrictions in our language, I believe, have played a part in changing in our attitudes and behaviours.  They're not the complete answer, of course, but they do have a significant impact.  The recent events have provoked some prejudicial words and views floating around social media.  We would be wise to remember this recent reaction:

Or check out how the Swedish "love-bombed" a mosque.

Long's article hits on something explained by Catarina Dutilh at New APPS, that,

"...at its core, the Enlightenment is not a tolerant movement: its ideals may be described as corresponding to “the ambition of shaping individual and social development on the basis of better and more reliable knowledge than the tangled, confused, half-articulate but deeply rooted conceptual systems inherited from our ancestors." 

Long's words:

"To defend satire because it’s indiscriminate is to admit that it discriminates against the defenseless....[This is] the truth about satire. It’s an exercise in power. It claims superiority, it aspires to win, and hence it always looms over the weak, in judgment. If it attacks the powerful, that’s because there is appetite underneath its asperity: it wants what they have....They know that while [Voltaire's] contempt amuses when directed at the potent and impervious Pope, it turns dark and sour when defaming a weak and despised community. Satire can sometimes liberate us, but it is not immune from our prejudices or untainted by our hatreds. It shouldn’t douse our critical capacities; calling something “satire” doesn’t exempt it from judgment. The superiority the satirist claims over the helpless can be both smug and sinister."

The movement we've celebrated that has us in this self-righteous state of knowledge is not founded on world peace or compassion or kindness, but on escaping religious ideologies.  It's a noble path if it takes us from powers that prevent us from open critical thought, but the path leads to a cliff when it continues unabated once religious ideas are no longer a threat as a forced belief system.

It's absolutely true that religious texts have portions that provoke hatred and intolerance of others:

But, the New Atheists also have their intolerant passages that can inspire their followers:  There's Richard Dawkins' famous tweet comparing Islam with Nazism: "Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read Qur'an. You don't have to read Mein Kampf to have an opinion about nazism."  And Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens are no more accepting of differences.  We can find hatred within every faction of society.

At least religious texts also have portions insisting on the tolerance of all:

There's Hillel's famous description of the main message of Judaism:  "That which is hateful to yourself, do not do unto others. That is the heart of the Torah; all the rest is commentary. Now go and study!"  And there's the Christian rule:  "'Love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no commandment greater..." (Mark 12:31).

Similarly, the Qur'an instructs followers to,

"...show kindness to parents, and to kindred, and orphans, and the needy, and to the neighbor that is a kinsman and the neighbor that is a stranger, and the companion by your side, and the wayfarer, and those whom your right hands possess. Surely, Allah loves not the proud and the boastful" (4:37). 

Religion doesn't make us hate one another; that's a red herring.  We have the capacity to choose to follow some ideas over others in any doctrine.  I respect Chomsky's views, but I differ from him on the right to free speech.  We can be followers of Plato without condoning slavery.

Basic human nature may be the real villain here.  Zimbardo's famous experiment got to the heart of this reality, and Nietzsche recognized it almost a century earlier in this passage, 

“Somebody remarked: ‘I can tell by my own reaction to it that this book is harmful.’ But let him only wait and perhaps one day he will admit to himself that this same book has done him a great service by bringing out the hidden sickness of the heart and making it visible."

Knowing that it's possible to let this cruel part of ourselves flourish means we have to, individually and personally, work at keeping the sickness in ourselves in check.  And if we have any hope of surviving the next few decades intact, we also have to help one another make choices based on compassion and tolerance, loudly clarifying our intolerance of prejudices.  And, no, that's not a hypocrisy.  It's a necessity.   

ETA - Russell Brand made a similar point that we have to check our own selves to begin to affect change on a larger scale.