Appeasement

Amid the politically correct clamour and the harangues which have become an inescapable feature of modern life there is a distinct sense of something else lurking below the rhetoric. Something furtive, creepy and far less worthy than the superficial vanities of virtue-signalling might suggest. To my mind that lurking something is appeasement. The essence of political correctness feels strangely primitive, like a supplication offered to unseen forces, like the prayers of a godless age.

Okay – so who is being appeased?

People are being appeased. People who in some visceral way seem to be more powerful than we are. Or there are more of them. Or they are smarter. Or they are more ruthless than we are. Or more fanatical, more driven, more threatening. Or they work harder. Or our ancestors harmed their ancestors in the remote past and they may be out for revenge. Or they are richer than we are. Or better connected. Or they could dismiss us for being useless. Or they could point the finger at us for simply being what we are.

If so then which is it?

It’s all of them. At the core of political correctness lies a chicken-hearted anxiety that others may not look kindly on our comforts, even our lives, our worthless cringing lives. We are not our ancestors, we are not as they were. Even worse – we have chosen to forget what they were because we can’t possibly emulate their robust outlook and so cannot achieve what they achieved. Or even hang on to it in the longer term.