THE UNJUST MEDICINE?

Image via Flickr by NRKbeta.

“Hey, guys, we’re not asking for much,” American congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said amidst a gathering of reporters, “we’re just asking for equity in laughter.”

Progressive US politicians have apparently observed that progressive comedy does not receive as many laughs per punchline as woke-free comedy, and so they are proposing a bill to require that audiences laugh more equitably at all shapes and guises of humour.

“Silence… in laughter… is violence,” Ocasio-Cortez noted with strong intonation.

The ACLU joined in supporting the bill. “It’s time,” the human rights organization said in a public statement, “that all comedians, regardless of race, sex, or ability to amuse, receive the same level of laughs as the privileged non-progressive comedians.”

Ocasio-Cortez explained further: “Both Saturday Night Live and New Yorker comics have long shown us that the best comedy has nothing to do with laughter. Comedy’s about touching our hearts and our minds, not our funny bones.”

Dove Soap has joined the cause with an advertising campaign, titled “RealHumor,” to celebrate comedians who “haven’t received their fair share of chuckles because they don’t meet traditional comedy standards.” Celebrity spokesperson and trailblazing low-laughter-provoking late-night talk show host, Seth Myers, explained:

“It’s not okay to choose your comedy by how much it makes you laugh! It’s time we realized that all jokes are funny in their own way—especially real humour that doesn’t conform to the comedy/laughter paradigm.”

But one reporter asked: “If laughter isn’t relevant to whether someone is funny, why then is it so important to have equity in laughter?”

“It depends on the context,” Ocasio-Cortez explained. “But what I can tell you is that all people, especially those of us who are progressive and experiencing humourlessness, have the same right to giggling audiences as those who are born with a silver tongue in their mouth.”

The congresswoman was then asked if she would still support the bill even if it meant compelling people to laugh at progressive jokes that they personally found to be offensive.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not waver. “Yes, of course,” she said. “Think about it, guys: it’s literally impossible for a progressive person to make offensive jokes. Offensive humour equals power plus laughter. We have neither power behind our jokes, nor, as we’ve already stated, does anyone laugh at our jokes—which is exactly the problem.”

SIMULCAST ON SETHSTACKS

ACADEMIC FIEFDOM: Overcite vs. Oversight

The SethBlogs annual list of The Top 100 Under 100 Who Dislike Cancel Culture has come out, and I am pleased to announce that I, my very Seth, have qualified once again. I believe that cancel culture is unethical (because it uses intimidation to promote social conformity), cruel (because it dehumanizes those who don’t follow its codes), and unhelpful (because it divides us more than it yields the social improvements it claims to seek). While I’m not opposed to consequences for behaviours, my position is that punishments should stay in their jurisdiction. For instance, if you are alleged to have taken part in a crime, it is up to the legal system to take a crack at you as opposed to pre-trial panels of laymen announcing that you are to be relieved of your occupation.

Meanwhile, I have also landed on the SethBlogs Top 64 Reaching 6’4” or More Who Criticize Wokeness. I leave you to my official SethBlogs definition of wokeness for detailed reasons why, but, in short, I contend that political correctness is dogmatic (dismissing criticism as bigotry), duplicitous (employing sliding-scale standards of evidence), and punitive (utilizing a cancel culture division to deal with dissenters). To my mind, even if wokeness were correct in its one-dimensional assessments of our culture, the means by which it pursues those ends are dangerous to a free society.

One of my areas of particular anti-woke ranting is what I perceive to be woke studies within academia. (I listened to the woke PR firm, CBC Radio, for ten years, and in each of the many times that they invited a woke academic to the microphone, obvious holes in the supposed scholar’s reasoning were gaping despite the cuddly interviewer following CBC policy to never ask a “progressive” a challenging question. Examples available upon request.)

So, given my moral philosophy combo pack of anti-wokeness-in-academia and anti-cancel-culture in general, you can imagine my heartstrings being tugged in both directions when I discovered that Florida has cancelled certain woke academic programs. For instance, the New College of Florida has expelled its gender studies program.

To sort through the Sethical implications of such a restriction, let us first take a long walk on the general anti-woke side. I note there that a suspension of academic work does not necessarily fall into my definition of cancel culture if the program is being taken out by a legitimate academic authority because of clear and present anti-academic work product.

To that end, let us consider tools we might utilize to assess whether a gender studies program might be non-academic.

Popular-with-heterodox-academics journalist Jonathan Rauch suggests (in a discussion with social psychologist Dr. Jonathan Haidt) that we have an implied academic constitution:

“The constitution of knowledge… says that there are two things that [you’ve] got to do if you want to make knowledge. The first is: epistemically, I call it the fallible-ist rule which is anyone could be wrong, so no one gets to shut everybody else up and say we’ve reached the right answer—‘everyone go home.’ Second is the empirical rule, which says the way you make… objective knowledge is not by yourself in a room or not because you’ve had a divine revelation. You’re going to have to check with other people and do it in a very specific way… you’re going to have to go through a very disciplined process through institutions with other trained people… a lot of protocols, a lot of learning in order to establish that what you’re saying is actually true.”

Sounds reasonable. More specifically, I would say that if, within a scholar’s academic work product, they make mathematically illiterate statistical inferences, freely apply double standards, ignore alleged logical inconsistencies suggested by critics, and generally eschew the scientific method, and/or teach their students that their ideological opinions are truths (and they punish students for questioning those alleged facts), then they are failing to be academic in those cases.

I’m not saying that we should consider individual instances of not-so-academic work or teaching as an indication that a professor is a failed academic. (Even the biggest brains among us make intellectual errors sometimes. In fact, I’m told that academia works via a series of corrections zig-zagging back and forth, with a general trajectory of greater understanding of the material.) But if a thinker is clearly captured by non-academic reasoning in their work then I’m not sure how they can still be considered academic. The problem increases if particular fields of study are dominated by such pseudo-scholars. (In that case, the chance that the general direction of the discipline is towards better understanding is greatly reduced since the protective mechanism of criticism is not in place to encourage the discovery of errors.)

Whatever the measurement of academic standards, I believe we must demand that academia keeps its eyes on the goal of producing information and ideas that oscillate toward more accurate results. So certain disciplines that have announced alternate “ways of knowing” without, as far as I can detect, sending the new processes through rigorous skepticism would surely fail any reasonable test of academic work that we might imagine. (If such knowledge diversifiers had simply claimed to have discovered alternative “ways of thinking” that were worthy of exploration, I’d be happy to join the voyage myself. But, as it is, these parallel knowledge claims are running around their fields unopposed.)

This all may sound like mere speculation about gender-and-other-identity studies—Why don’t you write a DEI-stopian novel instead, SethBlogs?! (Not to worry, I did. And it’ll be coming soon!) But if you like my speculation, let us bolster it with some reader-sourced anecdotal evidence.

If you have spent any time in or near academia in the last few decades, you may have noticed that some professors—and, in turn, some disciplines—are more dogmatic about their arguments than others. For instance, while I was acquiring my philosophy degree, I met a sociology final exam that featured a multiple-choice question regarding the correct opinion of a certain sociological case. I don’t recall the exact question, but I can report it was not asking a familiarity-with-the-material question such as, According to X-ideology, what would be the most likely view on Y situation? No, it was literally claiming that there was an objectively correct moral interpretation of a scenario that could be checked via a multiple-choice question.

In contrast, in all of my philosophy classes, opinions were never facts. Instead, we were tested on our knowledge of previous arguments, our logical consistency in critiquing them, and our abilities to rationally construct our own case for anything we wished. On my favourite occasion, I wrote an ethical critique of Affirmative Action, and the professor poured red-inked criticism all over it, and yet he also gave me the highest mark I’d ever received on an essay.

And, yes, all of that’s anecdotal evidence. But anecdotal evidence isn’t intrinsically irrational. It depends on what it is intended to do. It should not be used in academia to prove a generality, but it can be used to persuade that a generality is worth considering (and perhaps even investigating). In this case, I would like to draw upon your experience and suggest that you too have been where I have been. I’ll bet your continued reading of this essay that you have encountered a demagogue ideologue of an instructor. And I’ll bet you’ve also met the opposite: the smile-provoking scholar who is not only open to contrary opinions but seems to invite them.

Now, if your memory does include such case studies, then I’ll thank you to stick around and take in my additional prediction that you have likely also noticed instances of my second, more vital claim that certain academic disciplines are waterlogged with unscientific scholars—and thus peer-review pressure to support all of their preferred ideological conclusions. And, if we’re right about that, those departments’ entire relationship with the truth-finding mission of academia seems to be in danger of sinking.

Consider again gender studies (née women’s studies).

[Gender is a fascinating topic worthy of many questions and hypotheses, but I think it’s simpler—and less dangerous—to aim this critique at gender studies’ most long-standing faith-based ideology, feminism.]

How many in gender studies’ feminist leadership have ever considered legitimate counterarguments and possible counterfactuals to their presumed conclusion that, say, we in the West live in an anti-female patriarchy? How many feminist professors have asked, for instance, If Western Society is built by men for the benefit of men—as is a popular feminist claim—why do men keep sending their favoured selves face first into wars as well as the most dangerous occupations? And how many women’s studies professors have raised their eyebrows at the corollary claim from public feminists such as Margaret Atwood and Hilary Clinton that women are actually the primary victims of war?

Furthermore, if you’ve ever taken a women’s/gender studies class or any other identity-honouring course, have you ever noticed a tendency in them to apply reasoning differently when it comes to the group they’re allegedly studying versus less welcome populations? For instance, when investigating, let’s say, negative stereotypes that women (in contrast with men) might encounter, do feminist academics design their survey questions to illicit a check mark from female respondents while not offering questions that might produce similar victimhood-confirming results from male respondents?

(If you’re still not sure, please refer yourself to any of the “privilege” tests available in academia-inspired DEI workshops. Do you think the questions cover an even-handed collection of positive and negative experiences associated with a variety of demographics? Or are they blatantly calibrated to match up with the sort of presumed experiences that will put specific groups in the hated “privileged” positions? It’s like creating a Dog vs. Cat Friendliness Test and asking the critters to step forward if they recall wagging their tails when they greet their humans and yet not asking the creatures to move forward if they purr upon receiving a neck rub—or whatever the vile felines like. I’ve even seen some privilege assessment tools that literally ask people to step forward towards the privilege guillotine if they match a particular identity marker, and then when those groups are found to be standing farther forward than others, the facilitators note they now have additional proof that those demographics are privileged! In our imagined pet friendliness appraisal, this would be akin to simply asking the dogs to step forward if they are dogs, and then saying, “Wow, dogs really are the friendliest! This isn’t something you cats should feel bad about—it’s just something you should be aware of so you can do something about it.” It may be the most baffling example of circular reasoning that I have ever witnessed.)

Along with your and my individual anecdotal experiences, evidence that pseudo-scientific work might be proliferating in academia can be found (as I’ve mentioned before) in the Grievance Studies Affair wherein three scholars—Dr. Peter Boghossian (from Philosophy), Dr. James Lindsay (from Mathematics), and Helen Pluckrose (from Early Modern Studies)—successfully pranked academic journals. First, the trio invented ridiculous conclusions that flattered woke-leaning descriptions of the world, and then our clandestine triad reverse-engineered ways to “justify” their wild claims. In other words, they produced deliberately bogus academic work to see if woke-seeming academic journals would evict them from consideration. Seven such papers—including a re-write of Mein Kampf in feminist language—were accepted, and more seemed to be on the path for the same, but the project was spotted by a nosey journalist first.

And then, from the other woke flank, peer-reviewed papers (such as by political scientist Dr. Bruce Gilley or psychologist and behavioural geneticist Dr. Mike Bailey) have been withdrawn and retracted respectively not because errors were found in their facts or reasoning but because woke individuals protested the PhDs’ controversial arguments.

Social Psychologist Dr. Cory Clark argues (in a discussion with social critic Chris Williamson) that changing priorities within new cohorts of academics has likely resulted in a larger percentage of researchers who view protecting people from unpalatable scientific findings as more important than truth itself.

“Some of the most prominent journals in all of science…” she says, “have put out a series of editorials over these past few years saying that they would not publish—and potentially would retract—science that has likely potential to, I think the phrasing was, undermine the dignity of human social groups.”

I can understand such an inclination to prefer one’s research to have a positive effect on society than for it to add new hurtful data to our collection. I too would rather be a net contributor to happiness than truthfulness. Yet, if scholars are no longer on a treasure hunt for truth, how can we be confident that they’re on the most-likely-to-find-goodness path? Indeed, if a rigorous checking of the evidence is not guiding our scholars (and, instead, they are censoring legitimate hypotheses and conclusions), then what intellectual legitimacy does academia maintain in its efforts to help us sort through our public policy questions?

Moreover, as Clark points out, how do we know that the presumed short-term positive benefits of suffocating uncomfortable results are a net positive for our well-being? Let’s say a study seems to demonstrate that a certain charity’s work doesn’t help those it claims to uplift. Such a determination might have an immediate negative consequence that, say, fewer people will donate to charities in general. Yet learning about the flaws of that one organization may also push public policy advisors to seek out beneficial new ways of helping people, which, in turn, may be a net profit for non-profits.

I submit that pursuing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is not only worthwhile for its own sake, but it should also be the prime motivating value of academia for the sake of assisting non-academia in selecting the most effective policies to pursue our ethical hopes.

Therefore, I think a case can be made for regulating professional academic standards in the same way that we do other professions.

Indeed, in most occupations, there is a range of practices that fall within and without what is considered to be professional practice. For instance, an on-duty lawyer can take on any side of any issue that they prefer. However, if the lawyer builds their case by suborning perjury or intentionally acting outside the best interests of their client, they may be disbarred for not following their professional oath. (This is not cancel culture, which occurs when a portion of a culture attempts to oust someone from a profession or other role due to actions outside of their work.)

And yet a major trouble with the notion of regulating academic work is that academic standards have an additional consideration beyond just producing quality material. As I understand it, we also include in our reasons for protecting professors the notion of academic freedom so that we can ensure that these leading minds are allowed to go wherever their insights take them without fear of social or financial de-incentivization.

[I define academic freedom as an unfettered right of scholars to pursue any topic, hypothesis, and/or argument that they wish. This includes the options to write about their findings, to be criticized for their assumptions, methodology, and logic, and even to be proven wrong, and perhaps, along the way, to present their arguments to their students to test them some more.]

Technically, I do see a theoretical pathway to regulating academic standards without annihilating academic freedom. Perhaps an academic department builds its arguments on the presumed correctness of controversial premises and the practice of rigor-free methods to then prove new claims that their professors will then describe to their students as “something we know.” I would contend that such work—and the sermony teaching it provokes—is not academic: it is an anti-intellectual faith haven that does not adhere to best academic practices. Therefore, regulating such anti-intellectual work is not necessarily the same as infringing upon academic freedom to pursue—and comment freely on—whatever line of inquiry interests individual scholars.

Nevertheless, telling academics they’re on the wrong side of academic methodology and best teaching practice is still dangerous because the line we cut to itemize what counts as academic work and teaching practice must be laser-sharp. Otherwise, we risk our own ideological bias sneaking into the oversight and taking out our enemies for points of view instead of points of order.

Al Capone was convicted for tax evasion instead of his more infamous activities because law enforcement had trouble proving he was responsible for deadly violence in Chicago. I don’t object to that: prosecuting Capone for lesser crimes that could be demonstrated in court was a clever strategy that had a clear ethical upside. However, I worry that the power of academic oversight could be used in a similar manner. I can imagine a case where the academic regulators dislike the political perspective (or irrelevant-to-work behaviours) of a scholar, so they help themselves to a few inadvertent and petty technical violations of academic-work policy so that they can legitimately cancel the problematic thinker.

Such an unintended means of taking people out is a risk with all oversight, but again academic freedom is, I suspect, a particularly vital component of academia, where our membership includes a wide variety of special, potentially earth-saving brains, many of whom run on various levels of genius, eccentricity, and curmudgeonliness.

Have you ever known the joy of meeting an eccentric, genius, curmudgeon professor? While such a scholar can frustrate one’s sense of fair contemplation, if a student can let go of the gruff delivery and learn to understand half of what the tough prof is saying, they’ll learn lessons of thinking, argumentation, and even style that they get to keep permanently on their own talent belt.

If we do attempt to evict the bath water in which clearly non-academic professors are swimming, do we risk losing our eccentric, genius curmudgeons in the process?

As you can see by the length of my argument defending the notion of defunding non-academic disciplines, my heart says the risk is worth the reward. Nevertheless, I fear that my long frustration with woke academia may be causing me to underestimate the unintended consequences of regulating faith-based thinkers out.

To be safe—in lieu of going straight to professor or department exile—I wonder if it would be reasonable to offer academic probation with various options for helping the unscholarly academics to reset their courses.

Perhaps, as in other professions, some professional-to-professional mentoring might be undertaken. If that sounds too punitive to the professorial ego, maybe professors proven to be utilizing the unscientific method in their academic work could be given the option to take part in an Adversarial Collaboration Project (as co-authored by Dr. Clark at the University of Pennsylvania) which gathers academics who disagree with each other to see if they can find some results in common. Finally going paper to paper with their critics might help the previously unmoored thinkers to see the value of looking in advance for vacancies in their own arguments.

In conclusion, I am technically ambivalent about the solution to the conundrum of non-academic proselytizing in higher education. But I hope that Western academia recognizes soon that they have a complicated problem that requires their big brains to balance academic rigor, academic freedom, academic eccentricity, academic oversight, and oversight protocols to keep the regulators, themselves, from wielding the same ideological bullying that they would be intended to eliminate.

If they can do that, they may just qualify for the SethBlogs Top 10 Over 10 Wonders of the World.

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AN ANTI-WOKE DEFINITION OF WOKENESS

Before we begin, I want to admit that I’m on the anti-woke end of the spectrum. Nevertheless, I hope my definition of wokeness is still useful to those living to the woke of me. After all, unless you are Ibram X. Kendi or Robin DiAngelo, there will always be someone more woke than you. So if you find yourself yearning to critique the argument of a person who out-wokes you, I humbly submit this breakdown for your consideration in preparing for your endeavour.

I also hope this analysis is a useful reference point for those who would like to debate woke policies but are sometimes blocked from entering the discussion if they don’t have an exhaustive definition handy. In my view, such definitional demands on potential discussants are tools of avoiding genuine deliberation. Wokeness is like humour: despite being all around us, it is difficult to identify in words; yet I think we all know it when we feel it. Nevertheless, I offer you my hard-thought but surely imperfect definition of woke behaviour as an opening bid that might assist you in gaining access to those restrictive conversations.

PART I: DIVIDING WOKENESS

Among those who discuss the moral code of wokeness, I notice that we have a surplus of definitions. So, with arrogance in my heart, compassionate anti-woke bias in my soul, and clarity as my goal, I will now attempt to define what I think most of us intuitively mean by “wokeness” (or “political correctness” when it was run under previous management).

Those of us who criticize wokeness and those who abide by it seem to be speaking of two nearly distinct philosophies. According to the woke themselves, wokeness is alertness to injustice. (Wokeness sounds noble when they put it like that.) Yet, according to critics of wokeness, it is something like justice advocacy that determines who is eligible for its services via identity markers that are generally associated with historical maltreatment; moreover, it insists that all claims of injustice by—or on behalf of—those woke-protected individuals are undeniable; therefore, anyone who doesn’t agree to its descriptions and/or corresponding prescriptions must be punished socially, occupationally, and, where feasible, legally.

Sometimes both of these pro-and-anti-woke descriptions could be true at the same time: a woke person could have a fair point about a particular injustice and yet still be puritanical in how they make it. So, by criticizing woke assumptions, tactics, and recommendations, we anti-woke babblers are frequently presumed to be opposed to every stated goal of wokeness, including the most honourable ones, such as declawing racism. But, if I may speak for the majority of anti-woke thinkers, we tend to favour the enlightened values that woke activists claim in their titles but don’t, in our view, exemplify in their actions and arguments.

For that matter, it’s not just the anti-woke who are skeptical of woke tendencies. In my experience (and perhaps yours?), even defenders of wokeness admit that there is a point where they too see the woke elite “going too far.” (See political comedian/commentator Bill Maher who often irritates both sides of these debates because he cheers on certain woke talking points in one monologue only to mock woke gospel in another.) For instance, whereas a woke-inclined person may defend most ethnicity-related woke justice claims, they might be skeptical of the woke commandment to censure so-called “cultural appropriation.” Instead, such generally-woke-aligned-but-skeptical-of-particular-cases thinkers might assess the notion of certain cultures owning certain types of expression as extreme and contrary to their own value of cultures being free to influence and be influenced by each other.

So, if I’m right that even the woke-sympathizing among us view the influential moral disposition as sometimes overreaching, then we can conclude that almost all of us perceive wokeness as not identical to the simple call for justice, equality, and the humanitarian way. Wokeness includes bonus material beyond its gleaming self-description. By analogy, in my country, the party in current power is called the “Liberal” party. Yet I think the Liberal leader has some authoritarian (i.e. anti-liberal) habits. (For instance, in 2022, he said that approaching protestors possessed “unacceptable opinions.”) Nevertheless, despite my anti-Liberal-leader critique, I am fond of liberal values. When I criticize the capital-L Liberal Prime Minister, that does not mean I am opposed to small-l liberal ideals such as free speech and equal marriage access. Instead, I am a critic of particular policies and rhetoric that my Liberal government uses in the world, which I believe ethically contradict their title principles.

So I am pro-liberal and anti-Liberal at the same time. Similarly, by its own definition of itself, I am technically pro-woke: after all, I too am opposed to injustice. And yet I simultaneously disagree with nearly all of the arguments and tactics expressed by woke representatives.

So, when discussing wokeness, are we referring to the official definition of the thing or the way in which the concept is actually used? I believe that the public debate around wokeness is almost universally pointed at its actions and policies in contrast with its headline principle. For that reason, I will now attempt to define wokeness as I see it behaving as opposed to how its PR department portrays it.

PART II: DEFINING WOKENESS

Wokeness, I submit, is led by a maxim that identity groups can and should be sorted into permanent victims vs. permanent villains. Woke philosophy presumes, that is, that particular historical injustices have prominent and unyielding tentacles in every modern-day institution and social interaction. (See the woke’s use of bulk “privilege” diagnoses wherein all members of certain demographics are described as advantaged regardless of their particular encounters in the world.) And that irresistible notion inhibits the woke’s ability and/or willingness to consider instances where their analysis might go wrong.

If you’re a human reading this then you have likely at some point taken part in motivated reasoning and/or confirmation bias to guide you to a favourite conclusion. Such preference-guided thinking is not easy to avoid even among those with ironclad integrity. For that reason, the scientific method includes double-blind protocols to help the most logical of researchers avoid jumping for the unearned inferences that their brains want for them. The trouble that I see with woke moral reasoning is that it incentivizes us to disregard our own sleights of mind and instead to lean in to our prized assumptions. (See “The Grievance Studies Affair” by Boghossian, Lindsay, and Pluckrose in which they seem to have demonstrated anti-scientific woke bias within academia. To do so, they invented outrageous conclusions and then justified them utilizing woke language but no scientific evidence; the trio of authors subsequently had seven purposely “broken” papers accepted in academic journals. While the intentionally unscientific work couldn’t be supported with scrutiny, it aligned with the already-established inclinations of those publications, and it was rewarded.)

I have no doubt that certain woke premises and even conclusions sometimes have merit, but the woke method of justifying their arguments greatly reduces woke thinkers’ chances of spotting their own errors along the way. Unlike the scientific method which facilitates spotting leaps of logic, I contend that woke philosophy rewards faith-based groupthink, using three leading means to motivate us to defer to its pessimistic conclusions.

(1) Woke representatives insist that their descriptions and prescriptions represent unimpeachable virtue that only bad people would question. Given that wokeness has appointed itself the official spokes-value against many of the worst injustices of history, those of us who prefer to be good people (and/or seen as good people) are compelled to join a cause that claims to be on the opposite side of those moral catastrophes. (See how the woke refer to their openly discriminatory advocacy as “anti-racism.” Who, in their modern right mind, doesn’t want to be anti-racist?)

(2) Now under cover of their dogmatic insistence that they are the most virtuous among us, the woke announce revolutionary moral conclusions, seasoned with phrases that on first taste make them seem as though they are doing nothing more than protecting the demographic victims of history from further abuse. However, hidden beneath the woke’s flowering of sweet-smelling phrases, there lies in the soil not-so-fragrant machinations that are required to maintain the beauty above. (See the common woke incantation “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” which looks bright and cheerful on its surface, but which—through its equity call for demographic matching in the roles it targets—directly implies and leads to policies of “positive discrimination” against “over-represented” identity groups.)

Perhaps those unspoken components can be justified, but woke policy is to deny the existence of—and distract us from observing—any possible ethical quandaries and victims that come along with their effervescent platitudes. Consider Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2015 justification for using a sex-based quota to choose his cabinet ministers. (From 50 female and 134 male MPs, Trudeau promoted 15 of each to the top positions.) When asked why he did so, Trudeau explained “because it’s 2015,” suggesting that his discriminatory policy was, by definition, evolved to match the modern year in which we were living and that questioning his magnanimity would be akin to discriminating against women. Predictably, none of the reporters present dipped their toe into Trudeau’s linguistic trap, and he received no good-faith questions about whether there could possibly be an ethical downside to the government choosing its leaders—and excluding certain candidates—on the basis of sex.

And (3) once the woke’s policies land in our consciousness, they do not simply disagree with critics: they accuse them of being loathsome and irredeemable sinners who are unworthy of public participation. (See Canadian NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, who in 2020 put forth a bill to diagnose the RCMP as systemically racist. Only one of 338 MPs—across all parties—voted against Singh’s dogmatic conclusion, and, for the holdout’s skepticism, Singh accused him of racism too.) Such reflexive demonization surely then scares away other would-be critics who might have had some legitimate counterarguments.

All totalled, here is my one-sentence definition of present-day political correctness:

Wokeness is a virtue pyramid scheme that collects adherents, as well as casualties, via dogma, intellectual trickery, and intimidation.

My critique of wokeness as a doctrinaire and scary fraud is not meant to suggest that all woke-leaning people are evil and that woke moral conclusions are always wrong: I don’t doubt that there are well-intentioned woke-aligned individuals and that the woke have some worthwhile insights. My criticism is that wokeness is to moral philosophy what astrology is to science. Your horoscope may sometimes correctly point out something true about you that you might not have otherwise noticed, but, since the horoscope writer is using an unscientific method, we ought to be extra careful of using it to guide us in our daily decision-making.

So I would not count the late 20th and early 21st-century activism in the West that called for equal marriage rights for same-sex couples as woke. After all, those gay rights campaigners didn’t cheat in their arguments—perhaps because they didn’t need to: the discrimination they described was present and accounted for in the laws of most Western countries, so they were easily able to use good faith and reasonable arguments to arrive at their pleas for equality. Similarly, almost every modern moral thinker agrees that Martin Luther King was a hero of history who fought to undo clear American violations of equality and human dignity. Yet, the fact that the woke may agree with many of MLK’s conclusions doesn’t make King woke, just as a meteorologist who occasionally predicts the same weather as an astrologist is not necessarily using an astrological method to reach those results.

PART III: EXEMPLIFYING WOKENESS

In the hopes of validating in your mind the above three-part definition of wokeness as dogmatic, dishonest, and punitive, I will now attempt to show how wokeness consistently exemplifies that critique.

(1) Wokeness is Dogmatic:

This one’s the easiest to justify since it’s right there in the name. Being “woke”—i.e. morally awake—includes a metaphor for objectivity. Those who are awake are seeing what is truly there (in contrast with those of us in the dream state who are seeing a fanciful view of life). Such a claim of infallible access to truth is an essential component of woke rhetoric: any alleged injustice is always closed to disagreement. The woke are not merely making arguments about society: they are—according to their language and actions—truth holders. They are “educating” the rest of us as they replace subjective terms such as opinionperspective, and belief with objective reframes such as “My truth,” “Lived experience,” and “Different ways of knowing.” And, whereas the Western legal system is theoretically grounded on the notion of innocent until proven guilty, woke feminists have argued that we should “believe victims” independent of investigation.

The woke also insist that they possess infallible access to the minds of presumed perpetrators. Recall the infamous 2018 Philadelphia Starbucks case wherein two not-quite-yet customers tell us they were waiting for a business meeting at a table in the coffee shop without having purchased a beverage. According to even the woke-leaning New York Times version of the story, the might-eventually-be consumers were asked to purchase something or depart. Our soon-to-be famous fellows declined both options, and the manager subsequently called the police, apparently to have the unpatrons removed. The police then also asked the beverage-free table-dwellers to exit and were told No again, so they arrested the visitors on suspicion of trespassing. The story subsequently morphed into an internationally-discussed incident of presumed racism against the customer impersonators. Starbucks accepted the condemnation and shut down 8000 stores for a day to give their employees woke-approved “Implicit Bias” training. No evidence was supplied for assuming that the manager was motivated by racism other than the races of the alleged victims. In this and countless even more punitive examples, the woke successfully claim the talent of mind-reading among their powers of infallible perception.

(2) Wokeness is Dishonest

(A) Via Double Standards:

Whereas the scientific method of inquiry might see woke sociological claims as hypotheses that must be tested, woke philosophy notes that all contentions have already been proven by the “lived experiences” of the complainants. The woke need only point out cases where woke-protected individuals or groups fare worse in a situation to claim proof of present-day discrimination. As woke prophet Ibram X. Kendi puts it, “Racism… is a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas.” Cancelling out the circular parts of Kendi’s definition, we are left with Racism is racial inequity, which is to say that any time two demographics have disparate results, we have proof of bigotry.

I disagree with Kendi’s oversimplified notion, but if divergent outcomes proved ongoing systemic discrimination, then woke scholars would have to admit many counterwoke examples where non-woke-guarded populations fare worse than woke-protected groups. For instance, men are more often victims of violence, suicide, murder, homelessness, and gay-bashing than women, but that is not the sort of inequity that woke thinkers are looking for.

(B) Via Word Games:

Wokeness uses several definition games to protect its arguments. For instance, one means by which woke philosophers avoid accusations of double standards is by defining themselves as morally infallible.

Consider feminism: when criticized for some of their women-first analyses, many leading feminists will note, “No, no, look at the dictionary: we are simply advocates for the equality of both women and men,” suggesting that, by their definition of themselves, they cannot be accused of favouring female people over male people (despite the contrary indication in their title). How feminists were able to achieve such a counterintuitive result in the dictionary, I do not know. But they are right: most dictionaries have given feminism that very feminist-guarding definition. Yet, in action and advocacy, almost all public feminists (save for the occasional Christina Hoff Sommers or Camille Paglia) seem to call for a double standard of care when considering the rights, protections, and dignity of female as opposed to male people.

On the one side of its advocacy, feminism claims that any alleged “microaggressions” against women are evidence of an anti-female society. For instance, feminists successfully cancelled medical researcher and noble laureate, Dr. Tim Hunt, because of his alleged misogyny after he uttered a joke (during a speech in which he was cheering on women in science) that women are more likely to cry in the workplace than men. Feminists are free to take offence to such attempted comedy and even to diagnose its sentiment as sexist if they choose, but why then—on the other side of their advocacy—do they promote much more severe insults of men, such as “toxic masculinity,” “mansplaining,” “manterrupting,” “the male gaze,” “the male ego,” “male violence against women,” “Teach men not to rape,” and so on?

Once again there is a clear distinction between the idealized egalitarian philosophy that feminism tells us about in its dating profile vs. the female-people-only advocacy that it shows up with on its actual dates. Referring to feminism as advocacy for equal treatment only to protect one sex from eyebrow-raising jokes while sending dehumanizing insults to the other is a form of ideological catfishing.

Similarly, woke advocates will sometimes announce that they have changed the definition of certain bigotries to exclude themselves. “Woke-protected race X,” they’ll say, “cannot be racist because racism equals power plus prejudice.” Power plus prejudice is certainly a useful concept worthy of its own term, yet its repurposing (dare I say colonizing?) of the word racism stops us from pointing at a specific and formidable villain of human history (the belief that a particular race is superior to and/or more deserving than another). This is not just a linguistic muddying of our words. By limiting racism to only certain genres of racial bigotry, the woke shield themselves from criticism when they cheerfully unleash pejorative terms such as “whiteness,” “white fragility,” and “white saviorism.” Under the original definition of racism, we could call such demonizing racialized language what it is, pure and uncut racism.

Ironically, of course, if racism were just prejudice plus power, then surely the woke would be identifiable as the most racist of all; what, after all, could be more powerful than defining yourself as infallible and then getting away with it?

Next, the woke manipulate our language by conjoining situations that are non-violent with words of violence. (See “microaggression,” “silence is violence,” and the call for “safe spaces [from ideas].”) Such blending of violent and non-violent concepts surely then creeps into our minds and creates an illusion that the woke are combatting a greater threat than may actually be out there. [The term “Concept Creep” was first expressed in 2016 by Psychology professor, Nick Haslam.]

(C) Via the Problematization Treadmill:

In King’s I Have a Dream speech, he was considering an idyllic, racism-free society. If achieved, it would mean that his goals had been reached such that, in theory, he could retire from that aspect of his activism. At present, however, it is not in the social or financial interest of woke activists to promote or acknowledge improvements for victim identity groups. Indeed, according to their own testimony, woke educators can never actually succeed in their woke work. Expensive diversity trainers, such as sociologist and White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo, famously tell their congregations that the bigotry of white people (including from DiAngelo, herself) is not something they can turn off. The professional woke person’s job then is to educate the alleged perpetrators of the bigotry and, just as importantly, to undermine the notion that such training could ever fully reverse the socially-implanted prejudice of the problematic students.

Notice also that woke changes to our language are running a perpetual updating process that can never quite reach its destination. Once woke corrections to the language are accepted by the majority, those interventions themselves become “problematic” and are discarded in favour of new sets of phrases that will eventually succumb to charges of being “harmful” as well. [As early as 1994, linguist Stephen Pinker spotted the pattern of eternally adjusting acceptable language and referred to the phenomenon as “the euphemism treadmill.”] While in theory, woke linguists claim they are attempting to remove hurtful word choices from our common phrasing, their actual duty is to maintain their critique of society as hostile to particular victim identity groups. Therefore, if the majority uses woke words, those terms can no longer be considered woke and so must be re-critiqued.

(D) Via KafkaTraps:

Perhaps the current champion of woke manipulation games is their use of Kafkatraps in their rhetoric. For instance, the charismatic woke-scholar DiAngelo provides her troublingly white followers two options: they may agree to her critique that they are incurably racist, or—if they attempt to defend themselves—she accuses them of suffering from “white fragility.” The double-edged concept has caught on so well with DiAngelo’s self-accusing crowd that it is now available in feminist speak, allowing men to choose between a diagnosis of misogyny or male fragility.

In other lectures, the woke will give non-woke-protected individuals two options for how they would like to be demonized. If a “straight white male” would like to support a woke cause, they may still be accused of “white saviorism” and/or “mansplaining,” but, if they decline to take part, they will be told they are participating in “white male apathy” and that their “silence is violence.”

If a non-woke-protected person attempts to promote another culture’s designated pastimes, they will be told they are “culturally appropriating.” If, however, such a person does not take part in a variety of cultural products and instead succeeds in advancing their own assigned cultural works, they will be accused of being narrow-mindedly obsessed with their dominant and problematic culture. (See “centering whiteness.”)

The number of woke Kafka traps are too numerous to list here, but I think they can be summed up by the Tina-Fey-led television show Mr. Mayor in which Holly Hunter’s political advisor character attempts to undermine Ted Danson’s mayor character. After asking him if he had had the decency to put up a black square on his Facebook profile during the leading BLM protests, she remarks, “Either way, how dare you?”

(E) Via Gaslighting:

Perhaps the most startling aspect of woke trickery is its denial that it’s up to what it’s up to. Consider the woke’s frequent use of the infamous Motte and Bailey trick where they do something controversial (the Bailey) and then, when questioned about it by critics, they hold out their innocent palms and claim that they are merely trying to support something to which almost no one would object (the Motte). For hypothetical instance, it seems to some of us skeptics that there are many “diversity trainers” as well as university professors and high school teachers who “educate” workers and/or students utilizing far-woke interpretations of history and society (the Bailey), but then, when those educators are criticized for, say, over-racializing and essentializing their supposed learners via privilege tests, the demagogue pedagogues gasp and claim that all they want to do is teach society undisputed facts of, say, American history (the Motte), such as the existence of slavery and Jim Crow laws. If I may speak for the anti-woke, we wholeheartedly support discussions of the cruelties of history, but we have many times witnessed the woke instructors in these matters utilizing their personal ideological interpretations of sociology to guide them. [The Motte-and-Bailey as a metaphor for certain ideological warfare was first utilized by philosopher Nicholas Shackel.]

As always, in some cases, the woke may have a worthy moral point that they are defending, but it’s difficult to have a debate about, say, Critical-Race-Theory-inspired pedagogy in schools when its practitioners are only willing to discuss a heroic interpretation of what they’re doing.

(3) Wokeness is Punitive

Wokeness is so sure of itself that it calls for those who have ever been a critic, a friend of a critic, or a non-follower of maximum wokeness to be punished via shame, de-platforming, cancellation of professional relationships, speech restrictions, job insecurity, and reduced access to due process.

In keeping with its gaslighting policy above, woke advocates will often deny that they have a cancellation branch, pointing out, for instance, that eight-hundred-millionaire author JK Rowling (who is a critic of certain trans-advocacy) still has a job. But either unintentionally or (I suspect) intentionally, the woke are confused about what cancel culture means. The term does not suggest that every cancellation attempt will be successful; instead, it refers to a minority but influential group of people who attempt to punish—via de-platforming and job emancipation—those who have non-woke opinions, behaviours, and/or artistic productions. When Rowling offers an officially problematic argument, the woke call for boycotts of her artistic work. The fact that Rowling’s career has not yet fallen is irrelevant to the question of whether a culture of cancellation tried (and continues to try) to take her out. In turn, such hostile advocacy surely scares away many woke-skeptical offerings from writers who don’t have the protection of a globally-successful franchise on their resume.

Despite the dispute, I won’t try to prove the existence of cancel culture to you here. I believe the examples are too numerous and far-reaching to deny in good faith. (If you prefer to have a case study handy, please refer to the example I provided earlier of Dr. Tim Hunt, the medical research superstar who was fired from all of his positions for uttering wronghumour.)

To my ear, the unstated theory behind woke enforcement is that the person caught in the act of being unwoke has not merely made a philosophical error: they are illustrating an intrinsic failing of their humanity, which cannot be redeemed. Therefore, they must be excommunicated from polite society so that their impure thoughts cannot spread to others.

So not only is cancel culture a hostile project which attempts to destroy fellow humans for saying the wrong words, it is, I believe, contrary to the alleged goals of ideological wokeness. If the woke are truly afraid of anti-woke zealots becoming radicalized, the last strategy they ought to employ is marginalizing such people to the scratchy outskirts where they will disproportionately encounter other supposedly evil-minded people. If the woke want to persuade their fellow citizens to join their allegedly anti-racist cause, they ought to promote us mingling with each other, which, as Mark Twain notes, is “fatal to prejudice.”

PART IV: CONCLUDING WOKENESS

Once again, I must insist that not all people who align themselves with woke causes are woke in action. Perhaps you sincerely believe in many woke claims. Maybe you’re right; maybe you’re wrong, but if you make your case with humility (i.e. you don’t claim moral infallibility), intellectual integrity (i.e. when two of your positions seem to contradict themselves, you reasonably attempt to reconcile the apparent discrepancy), and humanity (i.e. you don’t aim to destroy anyone who disagrees with you), then I would describe you as a good faith moral reasoner who happens to share some conclusions with woke thinkers. However, if you are dogmatic, intellectually devious, and/or punitive in your defence of a woke position, then I submit that you are being a woke bully, at least in that moment.

As already indicated, uncritical thinking is not exclusive to the woke. Other groups—including the anti-woke—can take on any of the above-listed patterns. However, what makes the woke so scary, in my opinion, is that even though it is only a minority of people who advocate its teachings, a super majority of us are afraid of its power to punish us. Consider woke’s forename, political correctness. As the description suggests, it is not necessarily providing morally correct insights, but instead politically useful offerings (i.e. maxims that we’d best assent to if we want to politically flourish), regardless of our moral objections to them.

I think it is imperative (when safe to do so) to point out occasions where woke advocates are being dogmatic, intellectually dishonest, and hostile. If, for instance, they racially profile someone as racist, we should ask them if they can see into the mind of the accused. If they respond by noting they are using their “lived experience” to infer bigotry, we should ask them exactly how that standard of assessment is different from bigotry itself. If they point out they cannot be bigoted, because bigotry equals prejudice plus power, we should ask them if there is any greater power than the option to be prejudiced without being criticized for it.

SIMULCAST ON SETHSTACKS

SETHBLOGS vs. SETHSTACKS

First, an apology that SethBlogs has been on an announced hiatus; you might be tempted to blame the new 9-month-old living at Seth Castle; fair enough, but you should also be aware that we have also been competing with a rival blogging outfit for the affections of our top writer. In fact, Seth has recently agreed to simultaneously write for SubStack under the ridiculously Seth-aggrandizing name, SethStacks.

The good news is Seth has consented to share many of his new writings with both SethBlogs and SethStacks, so if you are content where you are, please don’t feel any obligation to join SethStacks. However, there will be there some bonus material that is not here and vice versa, so if you would like access to the full Seth Canon, then we will forgive you if you choose to also subscribe to SethStacks.

The purpose of SethStacks is to build a larger audience for Seth’s next book, which will be a cheerful satire of modern wokeness. If you do go to Substack to visit our leader, you will find a frequently promoted option to upgrade your free subscription to a paid one (for “bonus perks”). However, earning money on subscriptions is not the current goal of SethStacks—especially from friends. So, if you are a long-time subscriber to SethBlogs (or a long-time subscriber to Seth-in-person), and you would like a complimentary SethStacks “paid” subscription, then send Seth an email at seth.mcdonough.author@gmail.com, and he’ll set you up.

But, if you’re content with the free version of SethStacks, then all you need to do to betray Sethblogs is to click here to subscribe.

A BORING BOOK WITHOUT BORDERS

When I was a kid planning my future as George Lucas’s writerly intern on his next Star Wars trilogy, my mom read to my siblings and me Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, and my dad read to me Charles DickensGreat Expectations. While neither author persuaded me away from my Lucensian intentions, I did learn from those great comedians of character that not every hero must fly in a Millennium Falcon to entertain me, and not every villain is required to drive a star destroyer to earn my scorn.

Sadly, Mr. Lucas eventually retired from the possibility of being my mentor after he sold his company to the Disney Empire, so I was forced to deputize my appreciation for Austen’s and Dickens’ less explosive stories and write my own such tale.

Today, I am verklempt to announce that my romantic comedy of manners, A Boring Book, is now out in the world and ready to mingle with readers. While my near-hero, John Smith, is not an exciting, witty, or adventurous fellow, he does possess a heart that is three sizes too big as he often notices the pains of the more interesting people who surround him, and so he seeks to help them even though he lacks the confidence to carry out his schemes.

The book is intended to be funny as I, John’s ghostwriter, use my training as the author of How to Cure Yourself of Narcissism to point out the behavioural blunders of John’s co-characters. John, embarrassingly, doesn’t always agree with my mocking of his not-quite friends and family, but the bickering between us should entertain, especially since I win most of the debates.

Unfortunately, John’s kindness gets the last chuckle. To anyone who is motivated by this message to purchase a copy of A Boring Book between now and the end of 2022, please send me a note (to seth.mcdonough.author@gmail.com) with a picture or screenshot proving your purchase, and I will donate the Seth-bound royalties from your acquisition to Doctors Without Borders (John’s favourite charity).

I would have donated the results to the Disney Without Star Wars fund, but sadly I’m not the protagonist of this particular promotion.

HMS PINAFEMINISM

I was excit-a-nxious going into Vancouver Opera’s 2022 edition of HMS Pinafore, a comic opera furnished by our 19th-century musical wits, W.S. Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan.

They were an elite comedy thesaurus
As shown in their redundant rhyming chorus!

I, myself, am an operatic lightweight (I still can’t tell the difference between a Verdi and Puccini tuney)—

He finds opera to be so confusing
That he worries his brain is contusing

—but, with curiosity as my guide, I have attended Vancouver Opera’s repertoire since 2003.

One day, though, my opera mentor, Tom Durrie, introduced me to composer Arthur Sullivan and wordsmith W.S. Gilbert who coalesced in the late 19th century to create comic operas that were so ear-grabbing in their tunes and witty in their rhymes that even a musically-confused fellow like me could follow along.

He no longer had to curse
At every obfuscating verse

So I was filled up with delighted anticipation this season as Vancouver Opera announced that they were returning for only the second time in my loyal following to Gilbert & Sullivan with the tune-bursting HMS Pinafore.

He was looking forward to the tunes
That would leave his toe-tappers in ruins

But then I watched a promotional interview on VO’s website, in which their HMS Director, Brenna Corner, and their HMS Conductor, Rosemary Thomson, foreshadowed my upcoming dismay. They explained that they had, let’s say, adjusted HMS Pinafore for our modern sensibilities and understanding.

He felt his back filled with encrustments
As they talked of making playful adjustments 

Explained Director Corner:

“This version is a traditional HMS Pinafore… It’s like the same gem, but just seen through a slightly different angle… So, like, the colours that sparkle through it are slightly different than maybe what we’re used to.”

All the gems will be traditional
With a few sparkles that are additional

Added Conductor Thomson:

“Even, you know, years ago, decades ago, people would change the words a little bit to suit their time place. And so we’ve done that as well. But the music, itself, is still going to be what people have come to know and love about HMS Pinafore.”

Their changes are so suitable
They’ll feel so very dutiful

Good, yes, I thought: the signature sound and humour of Gilbert & Sullivan is a distinct entity that should be present in every production calling itself a descendant of G&S. But, sure, go ahead and play with the particulars so that we’re getting the same genius but with a new look that’s more accessible to our modern understanding.

He says he’s an amenable fellow
To their moulding of operatic Jell-O

Nevertheless, I noticed that, as the leaders of this production were explaining their updates, they sounded a wee bit defensive.

He’s a lot apprehensive
That they seem a jot defensive

Said Conductor Thomson:

“They [the team] added some different text here and there. I actually wrote a bit of extra recitative [musical dialogue] to fit that text in, and we’ve added a couple of verses into some of the songs, which is actually quite traditional.”

They’ll be making a few changes
That are well within normal ranges!

Added Director Corner:

“The thing is with HMS Pinafore and a lot of Gilbert & Sullivan has a history of being played with, of being adapted, of being altered, and being jeujed a little, right? And that’s really what we’ve done with this piece. We’ve just sort of jeujed it in a slightly bigger way.”

Nothing here’s a trigger
They’re just jeujing a little bigger       

Understood: we opera-goers have a reputation for being a traditional lot, so the VO creatives were understandably nervous about our reaction to their alterations. So they were letting us know that, while they’d tinkered with the specifics, the key music and humour—that has kept audiences dancing and laughing in their seats since 1878—would be present and applauded for.

He doesn’t think some tinkering
Will cause the Pinafore to sinkering

Next, our VO creative powers reassured us that the leading G&S target for their rhyming wit was still going to be pompous, unmeritorious leaders, such as Sir Joseph Porter, who famously describes his conformist route to becoming “…the ruler of the Queen’s navy.” In his own Gilbert-written words:

I grew so rich that I was sent
By pocket borough into Parliament
I always voted for my party’s call
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all
I thought so little, they rewarded me
By making me the ruler of the Queen’s navee

Explained Thomson:

“The whole genesis of their writing was poking fun at institutions and at the things that were supposed to be reverent and making them irreverent. And I think that that applies today. I think we can take a historical story that pokes fun at the—at leadership, you know, at the brass for being the sake of the brass and apply it to today’s world. So, in that way, it stays very relevant.”

They were making funny insinuations
Against leaders of their administrations

Perfect! Yes, the specifics of our leaders may have changed (indeed, the Queen of the “Queen’s navy,” as I understand it, inherited her title; whereas most present-day political brass—save for the occasional Bush or Trudeau Jr.—do not receive their jobs as hand-me-downs). But the nature of political vapidity, obsequiousness, and self-love from many leaders in many professions remains intact.

He thinks that bossly obsequiosity
Is not just a bygone curiosity

Indeed, I love reading pre-G&S-comedian Jane Austen because I see that the leading fopperies of her day are still in practice in ours, and so I feel an instant kinship with the great author every time I see her pointing out the same poor behaviours in her time that Ellen Degeneres and Jerry Seinfeld have noticed in ours.

He’s very glad Austen’s humour has held
In the works of Ellen D. and Jerry Seinfeld

So, sure, I’m delighted to hear some modern creators update the jokes to fit our own flawed bosses. But, then, the other baton dropped as our creative curators explained that they would be moderating G&S’s original japes for offensiveness. Said Director Corner:

“I mean the stuff that Gilbert & Sullivan were originally doing was really pushing the boundaries in their time period. They were definitely making some jokes that were a little, maybe only kind of acceptable in their time period. And so we want to make sure that we stay relevant with the piece that was created to be relevant… But I would say that the thing that’s interesting about HMS Pinafore is to sort of realize is that the stuff that we poked fun at hundred years ago is different than what, you know, the specifics of that. What used to be acceptable comedy then and what is acceptable comedy now are two different things.”

Their show will not be a receptacle
For jokes that are unacceptable

Hmm, I sympathize with editing an old-timey work for jokes that we won’t enjoy today, or even jokes that might offend the audience without being essential to the drama. However, I was struck by the notion of “acceptable comedy.” While some jokes may not work for a modern audience, is it the province of an artistic company to define which jokes are allowed? Is that Vancouver Opera’s role? To not only not use certain jokes, but to pronounce them unfit? Would VO also like to ban some books that they find unacceptable from the library?

He’s whining about an unlikely trip
On the friendly HMS Censorship

Corner’s cozy enunciating of the phrase “unacceptable jokes” reminded me of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s critique of the trucker convoy coming to Ottawa as possessing “unacceptable views.” While he was under no obligation to agree with the health mandate protestors heading his way, do we want our political leaders to be telling us which opinions are to be accepted for consideration and which are not?

He insults, with temerity,
Our PM’s defence of prosperity

I was thus nervous going into VO’s HMS Pinafore, not because they were going to be teasing our modern instantiation of unearned power, but instead because I suspected that they would reverse the joke and actually cheer on the sort of powerholders whom they had deemed correct. After all, is there anything more powerful than controlling language and defining what is acceptable to say?

He arrogantly glowers
Over the minor use of PC powers

Well, pardon the self-aggrandizement, but my cynical suspicions were confirmed at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre on the opening night of Vancouver Opera’s HMS Pinafore as those who enjoy being morally hectored were treated to an overwrought feminist re-wording of the HMS text.

Now he’s added to his list
That he’s a double misogynist

Among other aggressive alterations, every female character was suddenly a beacon of modern feminist preferences. The lead lady love interest, Josephine, for instance, insisted throughout that, while she liked—and maybe even loved—the romantic male lead, she was equally interested in science and literature, particularly the works of female writers. (Strangely, the male protagonist, Ralph Rackstraw, was not given any such upgrades to his similarly one-dimensional and love-soaked personality.) Admittedly, HMS Pinafore is a silly story loaded with silly characters, but earnestly imposing feminist virtue onto half of those silly personalities contravenes the flamboyant comedy of Gilbert & Sullivan.

He, so very disdainfully,
Rails against ladies living gainfully

While I’m a critic of feminism, myself (because I perceive it to be a generally un-egalitarian movement, despite its insistence that its chief goal is equality), I do think that it’s a perfectly legitimate artistic endeavour to reimagine any work of art through an alternate perspective. However, please recall—

Here he has the gall
To ask us to recall

—that Corner & Thomson promised us that they would be loyal to the theme joke of the original HMS Pinafore, that of satirizing the tendency of those in power to be vapid and unworthy of their station. The leading distinction here, they said, was that, in this case, they would replace mocking the royal navy bureaucracy with teasing the pompous brass of our time.

They promised to be exemplary
In mocking every bossy contemporary

But such “irreverence” towards today’s “reverent” never arrived on stage. Instead, the production interrupted our story several times to show reverence to one of the most reverent of all Canadian clubs, feminism. Love or deride it, does anyone really think that feminism is not part of the brass in Canada in 2022?

Here, he makes a wild anti-feminist claim
Which shows that he is ugly and worthy of blame

Again, while I am a critic of feminism, I am not arguing here that the movement is flawed; instead, my present contention is simply that feminism is a powerful and influential Western institution that should count as brass for Corner & Thomson’s satirical consideration.

He blusters absurdity in the shower-full
As he suggests feminism could be powerful               

For just a few examples, consider that, seven years ago, Justin Trudeau was elected as a “feminist” Prime Minister of Canada (his boast, not mine), and he promptly appointed 50% female Cabinet Ministers (from his 27%-female party), stating as his reason for the “positive” discrimination that it was “2015.” Since then, despite the fact that Indigenous men are far more likely to be murdered than Indigenous women, Canada has spent more than fifty million dollars on a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Inquiry, but there has been no formal discussion of including Indigenous men in that consideration. And now, even though the Covid pandemic seems to have killed more men than women, Canada’s publically-funded (feminist) broadcaster, CBC Radio, frequently informs us that women have been the most negatively affected.*

*Maybe one can make a nuanced case for such a claim, but—after listening to the station for ten years—I can assure you that, if women were dying at a higher rate than men from a disease, CBC Radio would follow feminist policy and diagnose any attempt to consider such nuance to be misogyny.

Instead of recognizing women’s humanity
He blathers out his toxic male vanity

But, again, even if I’m right that feminism is the world’s leading purveyor of double standards, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ve gotten every argument wrong. However, the fact that feminism can maintain such inconsistency without fear of being called out is an indication of the movement’s powerful influence. Every mainstream comedy talk show host, major bank, and hockey broadcaster is elbowing each other out of the way to brag that they care the most about women.

He whines about those who are a proxy
For our beloved orthodoxy

So, while a feminist reworking of HMS Pinafore could, in theory, be interesting, celebrating feminism as an infallible truth-sayer (as this production does) is surely inconsistent with Corner & Thomson’s promise to tease our modern-day bosses.

Instead of honouring the truth of our story
He obsesses over notes, promissory

HMS Pinafore is a tale of sailors who must ply their trade under the authority of the ruler of the Queen’s Navy, who sings about his resume:

Of Legal Knowledge I acquired such a grip
That they took me into the partnership
And that junior partnership, I ween
Was the only ship that I ever had seen
But that kind of ship so suited me
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen’s Navee!

It seems to me that Gilbert & Sullivan were attempting, in part, to satirize class differentials and how those who get to make the decisions don’t always know what they’re doing as much as those toiling beneath them.

He’s sounding very jealous
Of the Queen’s royal fellas

I wonder, then, if VO might have considered teasing Canada’s current stammering leader of the Queen’s navy, Captain Justin Trudeau. Like him or dislike him, it’s hard to deny that he’s a bit of a linguistic bumbler whose nepotistic qualification for the job could be reminiscent of Porter’s undistinguished route to his leadership.

And now he’s cruelly grumbling
About our leader’s adorable bumbling

But, instead of teasing such a poignant analog for Joseph Porter, VO’s HMS Pinafore randomly threw in a few lines mocking the Canadian trucker convoy as a sinister threat. Again, whether one likes or dislikes the arguments and behaviours of those working class protestors, surely—if they have a Pinafore analog—it is with HMS’s working class sailors, amongst whom we find our romantic male lead, Ralph Rackstraw.

 So now he suggests our favourite Rackstraw
Would have fought the noble mandate law!

I would neither expect nor want Vancouver Opera to take a pro-trucker-convoy view on that dispute. But rearranging the comedy to target the working class instead of the upper class, just to signal contempt for the truckers, is artistically incoherent.

He’s part of a terrible conspiracy
Against ever-so-mild incoherency

Again, recall that Corner & Thomson prognosticated “…a traditional HMS Pinafore… It’s like the same gem, but just seen through a slightly different angle…”

Once again, he has the gall
To ask us to recall

Mocking the working class as treacherous is more than just a new angle on G&S’s traditional satirizing of the upper class, it is a rejiggering of Pinafore to be punching in a different direction than the authors clearly intended.

He thinks that he can read the minds
Of those who wrote our timely lines

Indeed, I wonder if it has occurred to Vancouver Opera that the opera-going tend to be middle and upper class, and, therefore, we tend to be members of the collective that had an easier time during the pandemic than those who couldn’t work from Zoom. That doesn’t mean that it was VO’s role to follow the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s criticism of the Canadian government’s aggressive response to the truckers. But maybe Vancouver Opera could at least take from Gilbert & Sullivan a smidge of first-class humility that those who are rulers of the Queen (Elizabeth Theatre)’s opera house might be the Joseph Porters in these discussions.

And now he accuses our noble distorters
Of being modern-day Joseph Porters

But, most of all, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, I was offended by this production as a comedy fan. If the feminist reworking of HMS Pinafore were done with artistic and comedic panache, I might have still been annoyed, but at least I could appreciate their effort to deftly blend ideas. But, as it was, our creative leaders were so crass in their plan to force a conventional modern moral reading onto the whimsical comic opera that I felt like the HMS show was constantly being interrupted for bland public service announcements. Far from subversively teasing the reverent, as promised, they were perversely observing the values of the reverent.

And now he uses our own words of wonder
To cast our beautiful work asunder

Perhaps Corner & Thomson are the ones who “…are always answering [their] party’s call and never thinking for [themselves] at all.”

THE UNACCEPTABILITY OF UNACCEPTABILITY

SETHITOR’S NOTE: I recognize that this post is untimely given Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and the trucker-led obstructions discussed in this post have moved along. Nevertheless, I present it here because I have been slowly accumulating my response to the media response to the trucker protests, and I would like to house it here for future reference.

In a perfect world of protest analysis, the media over-lookers who guide our responses would attempt to give us material to help us contemplate answers to the following crucial moral questions:

(1) Do the protestors have a point?

(2) Are the protestors’ actions a reasonable and fair means of making that point? And

(3) At what point, if any, is it appropriate for our government and police to intervene?

These are not easy questions, and so the media (on both the right and the left) tend to avoid them, and instead, they choose to answer this question:

(4) Are the protestors the sort of people with whom we’d like to be associated?

Recall the American Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests of 2020. The predominantly progressive-stream media in my neighbouring country of Canada were—as far as I could observe on a daily basis—desperate to demonstrate their racially-conscious bona fides and so—in lieu of asking whether the protestors had a point—they assumed the righteousness of the political objectors. They assumed, as the protestors claimed, that individual occasions of police violence towards Black individuals in a country of 330 million people were not only, by definition, racially motivated, but also proof of widespread systemic racism perpetrated by police across that country, and then across its continent, and then across the Western world.

Not once in my daily listening did I hear Canadian progressive flagbearer, CBC Radio, consider the work of the Harvard economist Dr. Roland G. Fryer, whose analysis of ten American cities suggested that, while Black and Hispanic suspects were more likely to be handled aggressively during police confrontations than White suspects, Caucasian persons of interest were either equally or very slightly more likely to be shot. (This single study does not disprove BLM’s contentions, but perhaps it indicates that these issues aren’t as simple CBC Radio’s reporting implied.)

Nor did CBC Radio stoop to interview any legitimate critics of BLM, such as The War on Cops author Heather Mac Donald, who contended persuasively that BLM-2020’s call to #DefundThePolice might successfully provoke a reduction in law enforcement efforts (especially in predominantly Black neighbourhoods), which in turn might cost lives (especially Black lives). Perhaps Mac Donald was wrong in her further assessment that most citizens in poor Black neighbourhoods actually want more police to protect them, but ignoring Mac Donald’s daunting-to-refute argument demonstrated to this observer that Canadian progressive media cared much more stringently about signalling their affiliation with BLM than actually looking into the matter of protecting vulnerable Black lives.

Now let us look at how the truckers protest objecting to various Canadian government health mandates has been viewed by our predominantly progressive Canadian media. The ethical questions these protestors are proposing, like those of BLM, are heavy ones that ought to be checked by our journalists and pundits for reasonableness.

I, myself, have been agnostic about all government policies since the beginning of the pandemic. This is not a boast: taking the middle position on any political dispute is often the easy way out of putting one’s ideals on the line. But, as a non-expert on the most significant matters at play (from epidemiology to vaccine technology to economics to social crises resulting from isolation), it has always seemed to me that no matter what decisions the government made, they were in a precarious ethical position. If they were right that their health mandates would save lives, then not invoking them might have been a moral blight; yet simultaneously, by enforcing various restrictions, they limited freedom, suffocated the economy, and increased social isolation which critics suggest costs lives, too. So, embarrassingly, I have long raised my arms in uncertainty about the government’s actions because these questions seem too complex and elusive for a non-expert like me to have confident answers.

However, what is clear to me is that the majority of Canadian media decided early on that—in lieu of exercising their crucial role as eternal questioners of all government policies—they preferred to signal that they were evolved, scientifically-minded folk who were willing to defer to the government’s public health experts. They did not ask our political leaders tough questions about contrary scientific experts and evidence (merrily adopting the phrase “follow the science” as if the actions and evolutions of a novel virus were clearly “settled”). They did not ask the political leaders if there were any limitations on their moral right to restrict their citizens’ behaviours. Most crucially, they did not ask whether the damage to the economy and social flourishing was perhaps being neglected for the sake of safety that their measures weren’t guaranteed to protect.

While it may be the case that all Canadian governments perfectly balanced all needy considerations at all times, I submit that political leaders are less likely to pursue such an equilibrium if it is not asked of them.

So now we’ve had a trucker convoy that travelled through Canada, landed in various Canadian cities, and then blocked and/or disrupted vital pathways for commerce. Once again, I don’t know if the truckers were morally right or wrong in their arguments and conduct, but I do know that I was glad to see someone publically making the case that Canadian rights to freedom of movement should be considered, too.

So I would have loved to have heard the Canadian media asking that vital question, Do the protestors have a point?

But our Prime Minister told the media not to. Instead, Justin Trudeau spotted the approaching criticism, and announced that the truckers were “fringe,” “racist,” “misogynistic,” and possessing “unacceptable views.” Not only was Trudeau unwilling to consider the arguments of his citizen critics, but he also demonized them with accusations that required no evidence and then dismissed their critical point of view with that one terrifying word, “Unacceptable.”

Mr. Trudeau, you are the Prime Minister of all Canadians. Some of these citizens may not be the sorts you would take home to meet your mother, but to dismiss them as fringe is to divide your constituents into two classes: those worthy of civil dialogue and those not. Sir, are you not the party of human rights, delivering us the charter of rights and freedoms? And do those protections not apply to everyone? In 2015, Canadian citizen Omar Khadr (who had been convicted of “murder in violation of the laws of war” when he threw a grenade at American soldiers in Afghanistan) was paid ten million dollars by your government because Canada hadn’t sufficiently defended his human rights during his detention in Guantanamo Bay. While I emotionally disagreed with your decision to settle with Khadr at the time, I could respect your judgment to take into account the human rights of even violent criminals.

In contrast, Mr. Trudeau, your dismissal of disruptive but peaceful truckers as “fringe” is a shocking abdication of your responsibility to look out for all of us, regardless of whether you like us or not. Assertively explain your position to them and Canadians? Great. Tell them why you’re confident in your policies? Sounds good. But to suggest certain dissenters are not part of the mainstream, and therefore unworthy of consideration, is an anti-enlightenment position, which ought to have provoked a convoy of critical editorials from our mainstream punditry. They might have asked, for instance:

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the truckers, is it appropriate for the leader of a liberal democracy to determine which citizens’ opinions are allowed and which are not?

Instead, in my observation, most in the Canadian media dutifully followed Trudeau’s instructions to demonize the protestors, and offered various versions of, “We’re seeing swastika flags and Confederate flags at these protests.”

Now, first of all, reporting from independent media indicates that the flying of the swastika flag may have been misconstrued. According to the now exiled former host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup and currently trucker-sympathizing pundit, Rex Murphy, the Nazi symbol was an accusation that Trudeau’s government was behaving like a fascistic tyrant. This may be a vicious and indecent comparison, but note that it’s the same criticism that Mr. Trudeau was levelling at the protestors.

But even if the swastika flag does turn out to have been an endorsement of genocidal fascists, that does not disprove the argument of an entire protest. Dear media, have you ever been to a protest about anything anywhere? There will always be wild, irrelevant contentions presented by a few in every bunch of protestors. Even at a rally of Geologists for Earth, you’ll probably find at least one flat-earther. Consider how some BLM-2020 protestors were violent and a few of them were even murderous. Surely those heinous actions do not make BLM’s argument, itself, intrinsically “unacceptable.” So, if there were one or two evil symbols included in the truckers’ diverse display, that unfortunate inclusion does not disprove the message of the group, who as far as I can tell, disavow racism as wholeheartedly as their prime minister does. (In fact, according to independent reporting, they chased away the confederate flag-waver.)

Rupa Subramanya of the conservative-leaning National Post said in an interview:

“I spent three weeks at the protests every day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes late into the night speaking to everyone I possibly could, and I didn’t encounter a single racist, white supremacist, or even a misogynist. These were some of the warmest and friendliest people I’ve ever met in my life in Canada in the… more than two decades that I’ve lived here. So it was quite unusual that my perspective as a person of colour who went into the protests was so different from what the mainstream coverage of it was and… that there seemed to be this total disconnect between what was being said about them and what I personally experienced.”

That description neither proves that the protesters were all nice people nor that their cause was right, but maybe it—along with many other such testimonials from independent broadcasters—might be worth considering before sheep-ily accepting Mr. Trudeau’s assessment of who’s worthy of consideration.

But accusing the truckers of being bigots was our Prime Minister’s best option to avoid acknowledging their complaints. Recall that in 2020, Trudeau defended the right of farmer protestors in India to march on their government, stating:

“Let me remind you, Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest. We believe in the importance of dialogue and that’s why we’ve reached out through multiple means directly to the Indian authorities to highlight our concerns.”

Love or despise the convoy, it seems clear to me (from the fact that the trucker-criticizing media hasn’t, in my viewing, produced any evidence to the contrary) that they were a peaceful lot. Annoying to Ottawa citizens? Sure. Loud and disruptive? Yes. But violent? It doesn’t seem so.

It was much easier for Justin Trudeau to go against his own advice to the Indian government by creating a media-backed character profile of the truckers as a white supremacist underclass so devoid of good Canadian values that they didn’t deserve the protection of Canadian values.

Explained Trudeau:

“I have attended protests and rallies in the past, when I agreed with the goals, when I supported the people expressing their concerns and their issues. Black Lives Matter is an excellent example of that. But I have chosen not to go anywhere near protests that have expressed hateful rhetoric, violence towards fellow citizens, and disrespect not just for science but of the frontline health workers and, quite frankly, the 90 percent of truckers who have been doing the right thing to keep Canadians safe to put food on our tables.”

Mr. Trudeau, Black Lives Matter was the required view of any public person at the time you supported it. Standing beside such an unquestioned movement does not show great conviction. Instead, it is like a judge who’s accused of being too harsh in their sentencing, saying, “Nuh uh. Look how easy I was on my popular friends when they were accused of crimes.”

Yeah, I don’t think you’re making the point you think you’re making, Mr. Prime Minister. The measure of a leader is not how well they treat protestors with whom they ideologically align, but how fairly they respond to those with whom they disagree.

Even if one is convinced that the truckers are loaded with Nazi-sympathizers and cheerers-on of slavery, I reiterate that our best bet as a liberal society is to zoom our public focus on whether their actual argument has any merit, and whether their actions are lawful. But, by taking part in the demonization of protestors’ characters, our media facilitated Trudeau’s extreme means of resolving the conflict.

Deputy Prime Minister/Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland led Canada’s way down the path paved by our media, explaining that Canada was now criminalizing financial support for the protestors with adjustments to Canada’s financial laws—adjustments that she said she intended to make “permanent.”

“The illegal blockades,” she said, “have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms and some payment service providers they use are not fully captured under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act.”

Wow. Again, I understand that the truckers were disruptive and causing pain to the Canadian economy. But so, too, were the government mandates which provoked the protest. Perhaps the latter has more merit than the former, but surely a liberal society wants its citizens to have the option of expressing their disapproval of government policy peacefully. Maybe there’s a point at which the government should take serious action to intervene on disruptive behaviours, but treating peaceful protestors (and their financial backers) like organized criminals and terrorists is not a de-escalation strategy designed to move protestors along; it’s a punishment and a warning against civil unrest in future.

Then our Mr. Trudeau—backed by the supposed workers-party leader, Jagmeet Singhactivated Canada’s most powerful tool, the Emergencies Act, to take on the protestors. (This high level of response has only been used three times before, during each world war, and in response to the October Crisis in 1970, which had featured bombs, kidnappings, and murder.)

Along with allowing the police more stringent powers to remove the irritating convoyers, the high-level powers enabled the government to direct financial institutions to review their relationships with anyone involved in the protest and report them to the RCMP.

“As of today, a bank or financial service will be able to immediately freeze or suspend an account without a court order,” explained Freeland. “We are today serving notice: if your truck is being used in these illegal blockades, your accounts will be frozen.”

Wait a minute. Even if you think the trucker protest was full of jerks who shouldn’t have been allowed to set up shop in Ottawa, do we really want a precedent created where the government can financially neuter public dissenters? Dear progressive-leaning thinkers, would you be comfortable with a future conservative government not only breaking up peaceful left-wing protests but also financially wounding anyone even tangentially involved?

The Ottawa police chief, Steve Bell, put the point more starkly:

“If you were involved in this protest, we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges, absolutely. This investigation will go on for months to come.”

So it isn’t sufficient to defeat the protestors: we must punish them until they learn to never publicly disagree with their government again. Count me in if the protestors were violent or even if they damaged property, but again I’ve heard no such accusation. Instead, because the protestors were not in ideological agreement with our leaders, their disruptive actions were unworthy of a proportional response.

As it is, Trudeau’s hierarchy of values appears to be this:

(1) Citizens have the right to protest for racial justice (regardless of whether protestors contravene health mandates in doing so).

(2) The government has the right to impose health mandates (regardless of whether health mandates disrupt the economy).

(3) Government has the right to protect the economy by invoking the Emergencies Act (regardless of whether such actions impede the rights of protestors).

Now, to their credit, Canada’s progressive-leaning media seemed, from my channel-flipping survey, to be more interested in the vital question of how much power the Canadian government should exercise to break up peaceful obstructions. For instance, CTV News included an interview with a leading lawyer with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, who argued that the threshold for invoking emergency powers had not been achieved and, therefore, its use here was a setting a dangerous precedent. (And, to my surprise, the CTV interviewer didn’t even accuse the lawyer of being a hate-monger.) But, while such inquiries into civil rights are welcome, their effectiveness was muted, I suspect, by the media’s previous parroting of Trudeau’s demonizing of those truckers’ initial right to complain.

Somehow, the progressive media seems to have been so hypnotized by Trudeau’s soft-spoken and noble-sounding delivery that they have trouble seeing the antidemocratic tendencies within his words.

When first elected, Trudeau “progressively” chose his cabinet on the basis of qualifications such as race and sex, and when asked why, he simply told us that the date was 2015, and that was an end to it. If our media had followed their professional obligation and asked him some tough ethical questions about his discriminatory principles, it wouldn’t have been so easy for him to run wild with them. And, when Mr. Trudeau referred to his own citizens as possessing “unacceptable views,” if a reporter or two had asked the government how they defined which anti-government criticisms were acceptable, maybe Trudeau would have had no choice but to stop answering irrelevant questions such as whether protestors were the sort with whom he wanted to associate, and instead considered, “Do they have a point?

HOW TO CELEBRATE MYSELF FOR NARCISSISM IV: HIDDEN AT THE NEW WEST PUBLIC LIBRARY

SethBlogs’ lead writer, Seth McDonough, wrote a book, and he can’t stop talking about it.

HOW TO CELEBRATE MYSELF FOR NARCISSISM COLLECTION:

I: QUOTES ABOUT GREATNESS, COMPILED BY SETHBLOGS
II: INTERVIEWS BY RIVAL-WRITER, ERIK D’SOUZA
III: INTERVIEW BY TIME-TRAVELLER, TODD VAN ALLEN
IV: HIDDEN AT THE NEW WEST PUBLIC LIBRARY (you are here)


As my fans know, I hate to brag. Therefore, I would like to thank The New Westminster Public Library for showing me off for me! My book, How to Cure Yourself of Narcissism, is now available for rent in that lovely library! This is a dream I didn’t know I had until it came true.

So yesterday with an ego in need of refuelling, I travelled to the new home of my tome to see how it was doing, and maybe take a selfie with it. When I arrived at the book collective, I immediately went to the “Librarians’ Favourites,” section, but strangely there it wasn’t! So I checked the public-facing computer and was delighted again that the digital station confirmed that HCYN lived somewhere in this large book forest. But where? I had never felt the need to learn our librarians’ unnecessarily confusing Dewey decimal system for sorting books. So I settled into my own superior approach, which is to note the general categories they assigned my book, which the computer told me were “Self-Care,” and “Health.” Sadly, my own diagnosis would have placed the book in “Humour,” but in defence of the library’s mischaracterization, they didn’t seem to possess a non-fiction humour place for books to hang out, so I travelled first to “Health,” to see if HCYN had settled in with those fine folks. When I arrived on that well-nourished scene in the back corner of the reading depot, I discovered, among the many books, two teenaged girls seated on the floor with one of the stacks I wanted to investigate as their backrest while they chatted about the latest innovations in high school gossip. None of the unblocked shelves housed my work, so I quietly peered around the yacking girls hoping they might take this as an invitation to make a little room for me to see what was behind them, but sadly my silent plea was either unnoticed or unpersuasive.

I know, I know: assertiveness advisors tell us to politely speak up and request the simple accommodation we are seeking, but somehow I felt squeamish about demanding room to look for a book so that I could take a selfie with it before putting it right back where it was; upon seeing the narcissism-curing claims of my book cover, my seated nemeses would surely then have suggested that I needed the book most of all.

So I travelled to the “Self-Care” section to see if it would provide an unobstructed view of my hopes and dreams. Sure enough; there were no babbling conferences blocking my access, so in I went and… found no indication that my book had ever been in the area.

So, if the book has indeed already reached the shelves of the New West Public library, it is likely behind those two shelf-ish girls. But, as I left the library, without a selfie in hand-held device, I realized that all was right in the world of narcissism. My ego-flattering pursuit had been disrupted by the ego-absorbed work of two library dwellers, which in turn proved that How to Cure Yourself of Narcissism has a rightful reason to be in our libraries.

Or, if you don’t feel like arguing with teenaged babblers, it’s also available for order online at most fine retailers!

 

SOCRATES VS. THE INFALLIBILITY OF IDENTITY

In the SethFM broadcast promoted in my previous post, WHO DARE YOU?, I criticized Cancel Culture apologist, Dr. Hannah McGregor, for following the identity politics’ trend of using race and gender as a sorting mechanism for who should be speaking and who should be silent. For instance, the professor criticized the writers of the famous/infamous Harper’s letter (which criticized Cancel Culture) for, not possessing the appropriate demographics to be making such criticisms.

As the Seth of SethFM pointed out: if identity is the determining factor for moral accuracy of argument, then how are we to comprehend the fact that many people from every identity designation seem to exist on every side of nearly every argument?

Therefore, I suggested that, in lieu of utilizing the content of a philosopher’s identity as the basis for measuring the strength of their contentions, we instead inspect their actual arguments. To my delight and simultaneous embarrassment for accidental plagiarism, I have since heard a thinker of slightly greater talents than my own making a similar case. His name is Socrates, and his argument as well as my celebration of it is now available on SethFM for your consideration.

 

WHO DARE YOU?

Have I told you lately how much I detest Cancel Culture?

The mission of the Problematic People Wing of Cancel Culture is to remove bad people from roles in society for which they are perceived by the good people at Cancel Culture Central (CCC) to be morally unfit. This may sound sweet to you in theory, but the devil is in the practice.

Last year, I was excited as I learned that Harper’s Magazine had put forth a letter criticizing the alleged (by critics like me) censoriousness of our current cultural predicament. My merriment quickly dwindled, though, as I realized that, as ever, the most common response from CCC was to avoid discussing the principles under consideration (such as freedom of expression, freedom of association, cultural appropriation theory, the separation of art from the artist, and so on), and instead to focus on irrelevant matters such as who was making the argument.

For illustration of such an ad who-minem critique of the Harper’s letter, I’d like to look at an interview presented on the radio program, On the Coast (a Vancouver-based discussion show living on the airwaves of my ideological nemesis, and CCC council member, CBC Radio). In this case, the host Gloria Macarenko surprised my rolling eyes as she went off brand and asked a Cancel Culture apologist, Professor Hannah McGregor, some reasonable questions about whether the Harper’s letter writers might have a point. But, not to worry, the spinning academic quickly renewed my faith in my lack of faith in mainstream media discussions of these matters. While she didn’t directly call for restrictions on free speech, she did come precariously close. For instance, she said:

 “…maybe it’s a good moment for a lot of people who are saying, you know, ‘Oh, we need more free speech,’ to say, ‘Who’s free speech? Is it yours right now? Is that the speech that’s needed? Maybe somebody else’s speech would be better, and maybe our job right is to do a little more listening.’ ”

So, in protest, I asked my namesake and colleague at SethFM to retroactively add himself into the conversation so as to counter Dr. McGregor’s scary arguments. Feel free to like or dislike, but please don’t cancel.