This is the fourth in a series of five articles by Stella Morabito this week on the way that political correctness is bullying conservative women into silence and how they can reclaim their rights to free expression.
If you fear engaging with others because of the threat of offending politically correct views, try thinking of one-on-one personal relationships as the source of all power. That’s because relationships truly are the source of all knowledge. And, most importantly, they are the source of love in this world. We have a mission to give of ourselves and to spread that communication and love. Self-censorship is too often the act of cutting ourselves off from others – and the world.
Let’s never forget that human beings must feel connection and love from others in order to flourish and to survive. Our personal relationships are opportunities to cultivate these ideals. Whether neighbour, classmate, co-worker or grocery store clerk, there are always prospects in daily life in which we can cultivate well-being and happiness in others.
But we should also remember that ideas do have consequences. Profoundly so, as those ideas are communicated. The human mind processes what is real, what is true, and what is beauty – or what is not real, true, or beautiful – primarily through its interactions with other human minds. This interaction happens more often today through digital media. And, of course we need to engage on social media. But at the same time, let’s remember that what people crave most is one-on-one connection. And it’s also important to note that most people process their information based how they feel about who is talking rather than based on what is being said.
“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” That quote has been attributed to US President Theodore Roosevelt and others. It’s very true and critical we keep this in mind. The late US Secretary of Housing Jack Kemp applied this principle to his efforts to build partnerships and businesses in “enterprise zones” with urban blight. Unfortunately, much of Kemp’s work seemed to go by the wayside, probably in part because forging such relationships and goodwill is always a threat to the old ways of corruption and cronyism that so much tyranny is built upon.
The Effects of Isolation
Let’s consider the effects of solitary confinement. Prisoners have described it as the ultimate punishment – the ultimate hell – because it separates a person from all of humanity. This utter separation from life has horrendous effects on the mind because we are made for connection with others. People in solitary can go insane and hallucinate as their brains try to adjust for the disorientation and lack of connection.
At present, the sense of alienation and isolation in our society – and our wariness to express what we believe for fear of losing our relationships – is beginning to feel like a mild form of mass solitary confinement. As people become more atomised, more dependent on technology for social connection, they are more easily manipulated by totalitarian-style power elites. When their demoralisation is thorough, they are ripe for Stockholm Syndrome and cultish mind rape as happened in the case of Patty Hearst after being kidnapped by terrorists in 1974.
It’s urgent that we break the cycle of isolation by de-cocooning ourselves and engaging more with others.
The Effects of Friendship
Engagement simply means learning to be a friend to people in your daily life, including those who might be hostile to your views. I don’t believe most of them really believe that stuff anyway, though they’ve learned through our broken culture how to feel threatened and resented, and PC culture also pats them on the back for blasting conservatives. Many have bought into the stereotypes and caricatures fed to them in their HAM (Hollywood, Academia, Media) diet. These are false assumptions just waiting to be burst by your good cheer and understanding.
So many people today are just starving for true friendship. They crave being understood and accepted by other human beings. This is why so many broken souls tend to gravitate towards cults and gangs. It’s what keeps the battered wife in her self-destructive cycle. Even those who have totally succumbed to an automated PC mindset, have an intense hunger deep down to have their dignity confirmed by others. If you can confirm the human dignity of someone, you have forged a bond, however tenuous. It’s a bond that can be built upon. It’s fertile soil for the growth of trust. And with trust, you can speak more frankly rather than silencing yourself and dancing around topics.
Two articles I recently read and commend to others are “Conserving Friendship in a Consumer Age,” by Matthew Maule and “Freedom and Friendship” by James Poulos. Here’s a fantastic excerpt from Maule’s essay in which he quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America (1840):
“Associations both depend up and cultivate an outward focus of goodwill, humility, and compassion. Tocqueville warns that selfishness leads only to despotism: ‘Despotism, which in its nature is fearful, sees the most certain guarantee of its own duration in the isolation of men, and it ordinarily puts all its care into isolating them. There is no vice of the human heart that agrees with it as much as selfishness: a despot readily pardons the governed for not loving him, providing that they do not love each other.’”
Indeed, human friendship is the enemy of tyranny. And political correctness is the despot’s tool for separating us. So our clear and imperative mission is to dismantle PC by de-cocooning ourselves and reaching out to others.
