We are developing an over-the-top political correctness in the world which we all know deep down is not natural. It has a certain stench about it. The stench of political correctness infects our mind, producing individuals who have disconnected from their intrinsic nature and beauty. These individuals we all know too well. They are the over-the-top social justice warriors and righteous people in general, who brandish their own personal agendas on the world. They will lynch anybody’s character for the slightest error in their eyes with zero forgiveness. This ignorant PC attitude has given rise to cancel culture online, which is undoubtably the dumbest way to behave. How you can apparently cancel someone is absurd and also impossible (unless these immature people actually want people to die). That our hate is so fervent that we would want to cancel someone (whatever that means) is an example of what a world would look like with no forgiveness or empathy (not to mention intelligence) for our brothers and sisters of the world. A stinky culture plagued by political correctness is under the misguided belief that there is a specific way that everybody should live their life and an artificial language (political correctness) of maintaining this way of life.
This is the attitude of the Alt-Left extreme liberals and their woke ideology is considered the “right” way of life. This has gotten to the point that it has become a religion and if you’re not on board then you’re in their crosshairs. If we are not politically correct then “they” will savage you. To counter such a savage attack, it is in our best interest to be vegan, use gender neutral pronouns, believe in equality of outcome, ride a bicycle or drive a Tesla, and learn to hunt in packs as they do (again, my sarcasm is noted). I’m not saying that any of those views are wrong because they are all subjective opinions and viewpoints. But what is wrong is to impose your own personal beliefs and agendas on anyone else as if your view of the world is the truth. Our bible-thumping habits obviously die hard. If we don’t fall in line with this politically correct attitude then we will be condemned, humiliated, and ostracized. This is the world a tasteless culture produces. This is a politically correct hell. And hell is when we divorce from our intrinsic nature and instead employ a robotic behavior.
But this doesn’t mean the political right are right. Both political ideologies have their own flaws and extreme attitudes. Both are built on their own subjective beliefs and opinions which is the actual heart of the problem (a whole other conversation about the illusion of identity which has no place in this book). There is no one person with a universal temperament of being either liberal or conservative. We are truly a mix of both, and until we reach that level of maturity, we cannot have the adult conversation we need to have to understand each other deeply. Personally, politics gives me a headache and I’m astonished at how many people are interested in it. There is a lot more to life than to listen to a bunch of people wield their subjective opinions. I am neither left nor right. Call me ambidextrous, or better yet, call me human.
Trying to be politically correct all the time is robotic, leading to a very mechanically geared analytical state of mind. This creates lifeless people who are more concerned about making a mistake than actually living naturally. This robotic politically correct mentality is hindering real social progress because we are developing a terrible tendency of individually policing one another with a woke version of censorship. This misinformed attitude blocks the free flow of ideas that invariably help us evolve as a species.
My wife has been affected by this in the workplace. She feels alone in her work at times because what she is interested in conflicts with her employees. For example, she once thought about discussing the negative impact of social media with her colleagues, but she knew she would be shut down and ostracized because her colleagues defend their smartphones as if they are their children. It is an evolutionary strategy to stay quiet on certain sensitive topics so that one doesn’t incur any harm. I sympathize with my wife because I too have engaged in such discussions only to be laughed out of the room by a bunch of people hypnotized by their phones.
As I mentioned, the big problem is that when many of us, especially those of you who are intelligent, remain silent because the politically correct crowd are monitoring your thoughts with their own ideology, then this will handicap true social progress until this whole childish game is over. We essentially become a prisoner to other so-called “progressive” crowds’ misguided beliefs. This is a form of censorship we are individually imposing on other people, which wouldn’t look out of place in Communist China.
An extreme example of this is how the woke liberal leftist media negatively portrays Hindus in India, keep in mind the majority of people in India are Hindu. Hinduphobia is not new. Throughout history Hindus have had to deal with invasion after invasion, but they have always persisted and actually absorbed other cultures into the fabric of Indian culture, and this is a credit to their inclusive Hindu spiritual beliefs. But this inclusive Hindu nature is not highlighted by foreign news media. Usually the Western temperament is to sympathize with those who have been on the wrong end of injustice, but that is not the case for Hindus. Leftist media, especially, condemn Hindus and judge them according to their own beliefs which are foreign to Hindu thought. This leftist attitude is classically known as “intellectual imperialism.” As if it wasn’t enough that Hindus had to deal with physical imperialism, now they have to deal with the intellectual imperialists. When does it end?
It is a real dangerous game when one culture judges another based on their own beliefs and agenda. The danger is evident and obvious in the intellectual imperialism waged against Hindus. I won’t get into the fine details of the left’s problem with Hinduism, or why the left believe Hindus are rightwingers, which is really stupid and a view based on Western political ideologies. But the crux of the problem is that Hindus in India are finally standing up for their identity and place in the world. This attitude conflicts with the leftist media because Hindu beliefs, politics, and customs are a lot different to what is deemed politically correct/moral in the West. Ashish Dhar, the co-founder of Pragyata and Upword Foundation and the Director of Operations at The Indic Collective Trust, explains in his work that it is hard to have an opinion on the Hindu tradition and the general diversity of Indian civilization if you have no real “skin in the game.”
Foreign media have no real skin in the game in regards to the plight of Hindus over the centuries, which sadly has resulted in some Hindus feeling ashamed of their tradition. Imagine the uproar if Hindus were vocal and had opinions about the political situation in the US? But people in general in India wouldn’t do that because they have no real skin in the game and they are more worried about their day-to-day life. If we have no skin in the game then we should mind our own business. But this conflicts with politically correct ideologies because they are built on being a stickybeak [busybody]. Being a stickybeak only leads to conflict. But this politically correct mentality is being embraced around the world and is enhanced through social media.
Actually, social media trains people subtly to police other people, even strangers. This has happened through the invention of the comment section on social media platforms. What seemed like an innocent application has turned into a tool where random people can police your thoughts. We experience this mainly through strangers, people we’ve never met, which is not natural. Being exposed to a stranger’s opinion of your thoughts, beliefs, etc., is the same as foreign media having an ill-informed opinion on the Hindu way of life. So, before you troll someone online or police a person you don’t know, think about how those actions will subtly reinforce an unnatural politically correct attitude and mentality within your mind. Social media is contributing to that (more on social media later in later chapters).
Ask yourself this, would you pull up a stranger in the street and tell them they are wrong and their beliefs stupid? Of course, all healthy and sane people would not do that because that is not how society works. Being nice and having common courtesy for others is a crucial part of our success as a species.
The way we behave offline should be how we behave online. If you alter your behavior online then you are likely developing a subtle psychopathy and are not a consistent individual. We already have police, so we don’t need to police each other, especially our thoughts. It is unnatural for us to speak to people offline negatively so we need to behave like that online. Being politically correct is a subtle form of intellectual imperialism we impose on each other and we didn’t evolve to monitor each other’s thoughts based on our own subjective worldview.
Political correctness is completely unnatural. Political correctness is under the guise that perfection is attainable (or what they assume is perfection). This is bullshit! Perfection is a mirage. We all fuck-up every now and then, it’s cool, no big deal, it’s what makes us human and keeps us grounded. Fucking up is how we learn and grow; it couldn’t be otherwise.
We are not computers. We can’t just crop and delete life to suit our idealistic goals or those of others who try and hold us hostage to their beliefs. Life runs counter to your idealistic politically correct goals. We will never eradicate mistakes and failures from our life, even though social justice warriors and righteous people are anxiously trying.
We grow and transform from failures; this is how the natural world evolves. No matter how lofty your aims are, we can’t uproot that natural growth constitution. Politically correct people fear this because it completely disarms their ideology and reveals to them that they are not ultimately in control of their lives. They themselves are the ones in conflict with the world because they have bought into the idea of right and wrong, which are human ideals that have nothing to do with nature. Don’t get me wrong, there is a code of ethics that binds society, but there is no absolute “right” that all should adjust to. Even if there was, which culture is it part of? Which culture is right? Which political ideology is right?
This is where social justice warriors and righteous people look stupid because they base their idealism on a Western liberal view and so they don’t even consider traditional cultures in other countries. This is hypocrisy. This is the same as self-interested tyrannical governments going around bombing small nations under the guise of peace. They both have the same attitude; they are both fearful that there are people and other nations who have a different psychology and beliefs. Their way of dealing with this is by brute force, condemnation, humiliation, and ostracization. Both the righteousness of social justice warriors and self-interested tyrannical governments are unnatural, and sadly produce a stale world full of political correctness.
We lose our humanity when we act in this manner. Life isn’t mechanical or biased to our view; instead it is natural and when we don’t realize this then we begin to stink. In Zen Buddhism this is called “to stink of Zen.” This means we have a stench about us when we are too pious, basically too gooey and cringeworthy. In Zen they believe that having this politically correct attitude just reveals that you are truly at odds with your own humanity.
We stagnate like motionless water when there is no life moving through it. Naturally we should accept our own humanity and what it means to sustain a human life. But we are out of sync with our own humanity when we think mechanically about life.
Political correctness and an analytical culture are not natural to anyone, they are the result of specific training of one function of the mind that we are completely unaware of. This specific training happens the day we walk into school. Now this is not a beat up on education, but instead it is about the pitfalls of only focusing on education minus playfulness that extends into our adult life.
Book excerpt from Spiritual Freedom in the Digital Age by Jason Gregory © 2022 O Books.
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