Hurt Feelings And Free Speech
FIRE's Greg Lukianoff makes some great points in this interview by Brendan O'Neill on Spiked.com:
'I always like to put the Buddhist argument for freedom of speech', says Lukianoff. 'Buddhists believe life is pain and they have a point. You do someone a tremendous disservice if you teach them that pain in life is a distortion of life. Because as soon as you start seeing hurtful things as being aberrations rather than part of normal human existence, then you start to see robust debate and disagreement as a distortion of the human experience rather than a part of the human experience. When you have students graduating from college believing that it is really, really bad if they have their feelings hurt, you are crippling them, you are preventing them from being able to deal with everyday life and debate.'In short, you're creating shrinking violets rather than thinking individuals, a generation of young adults going out into the world with their offensiveness antennae permanently switched on - more likely to say 'You can't say that' than 'Why do you say that? Let's have a debate...'. Lukianoff says we have to move away from the idea that 'words are like bullets', that speech is a form of physical assault, and recognise that being argued with, even vociferously, is not the same as being beaten up. However, he says, 'maybe words should wound. What's so bad about that? The fact that words can hurt feelings, the fact that they carry emotional charges, is all the more reason for protecting them from censorship. Because the whole point of free speech is to have deep, meaningful, robust debates. We have to have deadly serious discussions about deadly serious things - and we can't do that if everyone is listening out for potentially offensive words rather than thinking about and responding to the ideas being expressed.'
FIRE is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, an organization I support, and which I hope you will, too, at very least, by getting the word out. They defend everybody's free speech rights on campus -- Christian, atheist, wiccan, whatever.
Funny you should mention it... Last night I saw a really, really clear example of this on Metafilter. There is a class of coddled American –probably Caucasian, but who knows– who thinks that real truths will always be comforting, flattering and easily-grasped for all people... And who will INSIST that this others speak accordingly, without recognizing the irony.
The topic was an infidelity: A higher number of woman than men seemed to think the unfaithful woman should confess a single indiscretion. I suggested that feminine ideas about love contributed to this disproportion, and people went infantile/apeshit: Literally, "That's not OK."
Adults. College graduates. We see this in here sometimes too, but this is not a website of such willfully diverse topics.
Listen, you can take this to the bank: One reason way to know you're dealing with something real is that it hurts your feelings. Or as a favorite aphorism puts it, "You know you're near the honey when it starts to sting."
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 28, 2010 6:08 AM
Want another example, bright eyes? Well, here it comes....
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 28, 2010 6:10 AM
Sorry for bad edits, it's really early here. I just woke up.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 28, 2010 6:19 AM
Job 5:7 - "Yet man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward." (American King James version Bible)
Conan the Grammarian at November 28, 2010 11:28 AM
I certainly agree that robust discussion and disagreement should be possible without hurt feelings, and, if they are not, someone is being overly sensitive. That does not mean that discussion should not be polite. If the only way to win an argument is to call someone a name, you have a weak argument.
kishke at November 28, 2010 12:42 PM
> That does not mean that discussion
> should not be polite.
But that's the point, isn't it? You're presenting yourself as a thoughtful gentleman. But I think most people who fuss about being polite are just control freaks... Politeness comes naturally to those who deserve it. Meanwhile, it's ruthlessly leveraged by the naive, the cowardly and the manipulative.
Gotta say, though, Metafilter gave me my money back this afternoon. They may be pussies, but they're not criminal.
Crid [cridcomment at gmail] at November 28, 2010 1:56 PM
"You know you're near the honey when it starts to sting."
THAT I like. Well said!
Robert at November 28, 2010 2:10 PM
You're presenting yourself as a thoughtful gentleman. But I think most people who fuss about being polite are just control freaks...
I don't think I'm a control freak. And I used to argue a lot in real life (I find myself becoming more mellow and less interested in the drama as I get older). My experience has been that insults and rudeness derail productive arguments; once it gets personal, reason goes out the window.
kishke at November 28, 2010 4:15 PM
But there is a difference in saying their idea is moronic than calling the person a moron. Sure it might hurt but it's not attacking them as a person. I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself cleary or not, but there is cleary a difference between the two. I'm all for free speech and hate censorship no matter how awful the thing being said is. It falls along the lines of "I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend your right to say it" quote that I've probably butchered here.
BunnyGirl at November 28, 2010 4:44 PM
> My experience has been that insults
> and rudeness derail productive arguments
And it's been mine that a lot of very polite people have no idea how rude they are, and don't actually want to be told.
Because it hurts their feelings.
Crid [cridcomment at gmail] at November 28, 2010 4:52 PM
But there is a difference in saying their idea is moronic than calling the person a moron. Sure it might hurt but it's not attacking them as a person.
Yeah, definitely. But if I can I'd rather use a less inflammatory term; for example, I'd say forcefully that their thinking is totally wrong or off-base. It costs me nothing not to insult their intelligence (even if they have none), and it gets me a hearing where otherwise they might just tune me out.
And it's been mine that a lot of very polite people have no idea how rude they are,
In what way do you mean?
kishke at November 28, 2010 5:11 PM
As described in the earlier comments in this stack... (And remember, you never know precisely what mix of naive, cowardly and manipulative you're dealing with, but it's almost always a blend.) If this is still unclear, speak up.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 28, 2010 6:07 PM
I think we're talking about different things. You're talking about people being hurt and angry at the argument itself, at your contrary position, at your having stated it too strongly. This I have no patience with. I have more than once been accused of rudeness and worse for arguing too forcefully, too passionately, and I don't appreciate it. What I'm talking about is getting so passionate that it becomes personal and insulting and the positions harden, so you get nowhere, or you alienate people. I find that politeness works then to establish a bit of distance between the arguments and the personalities, so the whole thing becomes more constructive.
[I also believe that politeness in general is a good thing, and makes the world a more pleasant place to be. That perhaps colors my thinking re. argument.]
kishke at November 28, 2010 6:25 PM
> What I'm talking about is
You keep trying to refine your meaning, as if by habit. There's no need to struggle... Not on my behalf. I hear you.
If you want to spend your rhetorical life in the service of people who demand that truths be comforting, flattering and easily-grasped, I'm totally cool with that.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at November 28, 2010 7:01 PM
When it comes to politeness vs. not, think about the O'Reilly on the View thing recently. Whoopi Goldberg got so mad she said a bad word and walked out. Barbara Walters kept her cool and got O'Reilly to say he meant Muslim extremists, not all Muslims.
Who won in that debate? Well, I think the lady who kept her cool made her point much better than the lady who didn't.
KrisL at November 28, 2010 7:26 PM
If you want to spend your rhetorical life in the service of people who demand that truths be comforting, flattering and easily-grasped
Well, I don't always want to, but sometimes that just what's available ...
kishke at November 28, 2010 8:12 PM
But who am I to judge the fulfillment you could find with such an audience?
Crid [cridcomment at gmail] at November 29, 2010 7:25 AM
"But there is a difference in saying their idea is moronic than calling the person a moron. Sure it might hurt but it's not attacking them as a person. I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself cleary or not, but there is cleary a difference between the two."
Ah, meta-arguing, one of the human race's favorite pastimes. Seriously -- I get what you mean. However, it's complicated by the inescapable fact that some people are in fact morons. For instance, it's pointless to try to reason with someone who is a Cluster B personality; they have no use for reason if it stands in the way of getting what they want, and they regard people who disagree with them as sub-human. The only thing you can do with such people is shove them the hell out of the way when they cause problems, and ignore them otherwise.
I pointed out in a thread here some time ago that when discussing the likes of, say, Julian Assange, I use the term "leftist" instead of "liberal". There's a reason for that. I may disagree with liberals, but I respect them as people and I don't doubt that they have their hearts in the right place. We want the same things for our families and our countries; we just disagree on the means to get there. That we can work out. Leftists, on the other hand, are morons. They do not want the same things that we want; the things that they do want are not good, and they will cause trouble if they are not restrained. Debating with them is pointless.
Cousin Dave at November 29, 2010 6:00 PM
Insisting on courtesy isn't even the politest way of ignoring someone.
(Ok, that's a wrap! Thanks for coming tonight!)
Crid [cridcomment at gmail] at November 30, 2010 2:21 PM
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