Now that it actually IS 2012, maybe it's time for me to actually say some things here again. Especially if the world is about to end ;-)
One thing on my mind during this season of US elections and Arab Spring denouement: how to detect and deflate the Brain Police. I'm not trying to describe some plot or shadowy organization. It's more like people who are sucked into reproducing atmospheres of "ought."
What I mean by the Brain Police is that, in every culture at every time there are things you are not supposed to think or say, like telling Franco Harris that I was a Cowboys fan. (You are not supposed to think or say this in Pittsburgh.) My comment here is not about particular "conservative" or "progressive" versions of this. It's about deflating the Brain Police phenomenon itself.
So how do you detect the Brain Police infection, and what is the antibiotic?
First, detection is very easy. Think of a movement/idea/behavior that you dare not publicly oppose. (Yes, please stop for a minute and think about it.)
You just detected the Brain Police of your time and place. These things shift. Odds are the answer is very different if you look 10/20/30 years ago or from now, or if you move from Berkeley to Charleston.
Second, what is the antibiotic? I had a really good laugh the first time I heard the phrase "politically correct." (In the context I had no idea whether it was liberal or reactionary.) My response was probably healthy for everyone present. However, Brain Police, like Satan, usually detest being laughed at. Which is why it's nearly the best thing to do. The whole phenomenon rests on an imperious assumption of the enduring self-importance of whatever "cause" is being espoused or defended. It is almost always simultaneously grim and absurd.
So here is my antibiotic approach:
1) Be lighthearted: exercise and promote a sense of humor about life in general. Especially be amused at the absurd.
2) Exercise and promote humility. This is especially toxic to the totalitarian instincts of Brain Police thinking.
3) Keep asking yourself and others "Do we really need Brain Police?" Better yet, ask "Does God need Brain Police?"
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Hear hear to being lighthearted! I think the entire world would improve drastically if we all took ourselves a little less seriously.
ReplyDeleteI have often wondered, however, whether this phenomenon is the result of the "brain police" folks (as you call them) believing very strongly in the power of ideas to control behavior and social patterns, or if it is the result of people living in an isolated social circle, where everyone they associate with holds their views and contrary viewpoints seem crazy, evil, and alien. If the former, I confess I sympathize - if we accept the underlying presupposition that ideas control behavior, relationships, and society, then it seems understandable why some people would want to police everyone's ideas - if ideas rule, then ideas must also suppress potential competition. If it's the latter, however, I find that frightening - because Americans are increasingly socially isolated, self-radicalized, able to filter all their news and information through sources that already share their opinions - so the problem will just get worse.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, although I find liberal "political correctness" infuriating - it is simply a euphemism for censorship - conservatives have their own variation on it. Try mentioning, for example, in a social group of mainstream evangelicals that you approve of something - anything - that the Westboro Baptist protesters said, wrote, or did, and you will have a very intense episode of social grooming, or collective values-training. Or try questioning why self-sufficiency or independence are conservative "values" (that is, virtues) rather than interdependence, reciprocity, and charity - and watch the reaction from the same people who moments before had decried the heavy-handedness of the politically-correct crowd. Can we agree to be lighthearted about evangelicals' strident repudiation of backwards, bigoted fundamentalists? This gets complicated. :-)