Yes of course I accept all of that — one can hardly have missed that in the last five or so years, since completely unreasonable positions have been raised to the status of dogma by educated liberals in the sorts of workplaces that you and I work in. One can and should remind the world that it shouldn’t be that way: shunning and shaming should be reserved for extreme opinions.
I’ve already told you that I accept that. But odious cuts both ways: people like me find people who would shun and shame someone for holding a differing view odious, and we wouldn't want to work with them. Or hire them. I would never have shunned and/or shamed them had they not started it, but I am capable of retaliation.
In fact, this conversation has inspired me. I interview for SWE positions. It's time to stand up against these people. I will argue against hiring anyone whom I suspect would engage in shunning/shaming someone for failing to fall into line with progressive dogma; I'll find excuses for making the argument on technical grounds.
Good point. I shouldn't make this into a left vs. right issue. It is absolutely a human issue (and I would argue that it's especially cultural in this sense).
That said, I do think that the reasoning behind these shamings does come back quite often to progressive thought. That's not to say that regular liberals or conservatives deliberately didn't engage. I'm sure that many of them did. And it's also not to say that liberal or conservative thought would somehow be inherently better just by way of the fact that it doesn't participate in shamings. However, from my view, the rationale behind the engagements seems to overlap a lot with progressivism. The reason I point that out is because I want to highlight how dangerous it is for any philosophy to assert that it is so right - so just - that those who disagree with it are bigots whom need to be silenced. Progressive thought does this. So that's why I call it out.
But indeed, I do agree that this is also a general mob mentality issue. We should just be weary of philosophies (or political movements) that are unwilling to listen to, engage, compromise, and respectfully disagree with their opposition.
So if your co-worker believes that, for example, black people and gays are subhuman and expresses that view you think that's ok and we should all just put up with it?
Do you have a problem with a world where those who oppose homosexual activity, corporations and racists are socially shunned and economically excluded?
Yes.
I haven't reached epistemic closure. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/books/28conserv.html?_r=1 if you are unfamiliar.) I believe we may be incorrect about a variety of things we currently believe - we have not yet reached the pinnacle of human knowledge.
In order to discover places where we currently are wrong, we need to be tolerant of people expressing dissenting points of view. For this purpose, preventing a (possibly correct) dissenting view from being expressed via social ostracism is just as harmful as preventing it via force of arms.
Rejecting progressivism or meliorism of course doesn't place someone outside that window of acceptability by itself. It depends on what a person is clinging onto.
And I think it's still fair for a person to claim tolerance of a wide range of viewpoints while rejecting positions that are bigoted or deemed unacceptable.
For someone who rejects meliorism, what moment in human history is the correct frame for evaluating the world? Many social or religious conservatives positions today often overlook that certain perspectives they hold now were unacceptable a century ago. The use of contraceptives being one example.
You can take the dialectic and synthesize an encompassing model. No authority need be accepted. No particular model need be wholly accepted.
I can agree, for example, that certain forms of expression can make some people uncomfortable and exclude them from participation, yet not agree with the proposed dictate that all professional groups must now shun anyone who has ever defended such forms of expression. However, if the context of tolerance is expanded beyond such a narrow formulation, then my conclusion is that those forms of expression should also be defended and we should refrain from punishing the actors retroactively. (Even as we ask people to refrain from them in certain contexts.)
You can expand such a discussion into emotional, psychological, and historical realms, as well as those of personal experience. It's always possible to expand the context of a discussion, since it's impossible for a person to understand every context at once.
I did this once with my ex-girlfriend's right-wing Christian mom. She was willing to listen to the plight of a previous ex-girlfriend's family and it changed her outlook. I've also seen it happen with a homophobic woman from rural Oklahoma who became best friends with a gay activist man.
It doesn't mean you have to agree on everything, but there is an exercise of self-awareness around the ease with which one human can "dehumanize" another in their own mind. Civil society is generally better served by civic discourse and less well served by shunning and actions usually shown to "the enemy." In fact, the root of social injustice is generally the propensity of people to do this in their minds. ("othering")
While mostly true, I think there is a social contract of modern democracies to let people have their opinion, even if it is bigoted and wrong. Don't you think consequences have increased significantly?
Associating an employer with the opinion of employees if prejudice itself for example. Not wanting to drive that point of course. Should I be more offensive with my indictments?
I have to agree. I think the current baseline of not publicly expressing bigotry and being respectful of others' feelings is a pretty good one.
On the other hand, bigotry is conditioned and spreads from person to person. Some people grow up with it and change later in life.
If you are at any point caught expressing it publicly, you can be tarred and feathered for life and never be able to find a job again, even if you change your views.
None of this really disagrees with anything I've actually asserted. I'm saying "just accept the viewpoint discrimination or leave" is really not an attitude that would be embraced by many. But hey, if you're willing to grant the possible reality of widespread viewpoint discrimination then I'm impressed.
All of what you've said could apply to every controversial position to ever exist. These include racial equality, women's rights, homosexuality, democracy, wearing shoes inside the house, etc. It is both patronizing and factually incorrect to claim that speaking one's mind is to be equated with lack of awareness and pointless conflict. Who are you or anyone else to determine what's pointless? Conflict can arise from any reason at all even the most irrational.
It isn't anyone's obligation to be the broker or bearer of a false dogma for society's sake. There's no reason to reconsider a view until proof to the contrary is presented by the claimant.
Any social stigma based on such a premise is only a reflection of its insular beliefs - nay, delusions - held onto without examination or scrutiny. Shaming is the only the weapon left to people whose view of themselves and the world around them depends on the sanctity of an ideological house of cards. Reasonable people don't need hokum like shaming to defeat an argument. It's only necessary for the unreasonable. A society dependent on shaming is itself lacking in awareness. It can't hope to understand world beyond itself. Equating beliefs that please merely general society and with beliefs that fit into the world is a false premise. The world is a much bigger and unconventional place than most will accept.
I think this "intolerance of intolerance" is becoming terrifying.
I personally find "people who hate people with a different skin colour" and "people who hate women" to be repulsive. I'd prefer not to work with those people, if possible. But I accept that in a free society, I might have to. I have no special right to be protected from opinions I don't like, and nor should I.
Nobody should be excluded from employment because of an opinion. And in a free society, it should never be illegal to state an opinion.
We are crossing the line into thought crime here, and it's frightening to see powerful people like Ellen Pao being ok with that.
I don’t agree that all criticism of misogynistic divorce laws, violence against “immodest” women, and application of the death penalty for homosexuality or apostasy is driven by “deeply-rooted white supremacy.”
I would fire anyone who held such a belief, as I would not trust them around female, gay, or ex-Muslim co-workers.
Also I don't know if shunning people is the best approach, especially if you're talking about things like anti-vaxxers or climate change. There really needs to be intelligent discussion and education on these issues, they only really get solved if people agree. Shunning someone can only bully them into submission it doesn't change minds. Shunning only adds to the tribalism that's dividing the left and the right, it really doesn't help.
I've made my professional career out of rejecting false dichotomies and I've made sure to be surrounded by like-minded people, they'd had to remove everyone I guess, including the community. I understand where you're coming from and all I can say at this point is that I also write comments like yours elsewhere.
You do realize you’re disrespecting an entire class of people right? Or let me guess, it’s acceptable because you don’t agree with their beliefs right?
Of course. A better way of saying what I intended is this:
We cannot control the statistical distribution of opinions within the population and hence cannot control whether we will be shunned or shamed. However, that does not mean that we throw up our hands and define "repulsive" to be whatever gets us shunned by the majority: neither truth nor morality is completely relative.
The two propositions I gave differ markedly in the degree to which they should be controversial to a kind rational mind:
(1) That ceteris paribus two humans who differ only in their ethnicity should be accorded the same rights, a kind rational mind will always agree with.
(2) That a man who decided recently to try to become a woman is not a woman in exactly the same sense as a standard biological woman is something that most kind rational minds will agree with, but some still perhaps might not.
I'm sure you're not suggesting that either of those propositions is repulsive in any absolute sense. What I am saying is that in order to maintain standards in society, rather than letting those standards drift with cultural fashions and whims, all those who write and speak with the aim of maintaining a healthy culture should state clearly that proposition (2) is not repulsive or deserving of shame.
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