Ki K'ang was consulting him about the direction of public affairs. Confucius answered him, "A director should be himself correct. If you, sir, as a leader show correctness, who will dare not to be correct?"
Analects of Confucius
It’s an old form of social control, the idea of correct behaviour, correct language, correct appearance. Very much top down as Confucius made plain to Ki K’ang, and it seems to have remained this way for a long time. Trickle down correctness we could call it.
“Next stop Euston!” The worlds of pleasure and of business meet on that platform to await the great train with its two engines. The spacious pavement is crowded with the correctness of travelling suits and suit-cases; it is alive with the spurious calm of those who are about to travel and to whom travelling is an everyday trifle.
Arnold Bennett - Whom God Hath Joined (1906)
Yet in a world of mass communication, suppose the whole notion of correctness were to be seized by political reformers and progressives. Suppose they were to correct our ideals of correct behaviour in all its multifarious aspects - from political to academic to arguments about football. How would we correct spurious ideas of correctness?
No sagacious man will long retain his sagacity, if he live exclusively among reformers and progressive people, without periodically returning into the settled system of things, to correct himself by a new observation from that old standpoint.
Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Blithedale Romance (1851)
There is no obvious way back to the settled system of things because that was merely whatever worked socially and politically at the time. In our time, many old but pragmatic ideals do not have to work as they did in the past. Not until corrected by the impersonal workings of reality, by which time, reformers and progressive people have moved on.
Those reformers and progressive people are busy laying their incompetent hands on what were fairly pragmatic ideals of correctness. We have seen it for decades. Workable, practical ideals are nudged to one side by doctrinal experiments from the fevered minds of academics, political fanatics, useful idiots and power-hungry calculators.
Correctness is often experienced as a sense of what is handed down from above, whatever ‘above’ might be, but that too can be manipulated. Celebrities ought not count as ‘above’ but they do. Even Prince Harry, even Greta, even... but the list is too long.
Our older sense of correctness was always shallow and potentially vulnerable with nothing deeper to get hold of apart from a feeling that it was 'the right thing to do' and generally seemed to work. Yet even the sense that it worked may be labelled as politically incorrect and many people don’t want to know why – it goes no deeper. That’s the vulnerability of it.
It’s an old form of social control, the idea of correct behaviour, correct language, correct appearance. Very much top down as Confucius made plain to Ki K’ang, and it seems to have remained this way for a long time. Trickle down correctness we could call it.
“Next stop Euston!” The worlds of pleasure and of business meet on that platform to await the great train with its two engines. The spacious pavement is crowded with the correctness of travelling suits and suit-cases; it is alive with the spurious calm of those who are about to travel and to whom travelling is an everyday trifle.
Arnold Bennett - Whom God Hath Joined (1906)
Yet in a world of mass communication, suppose the whole notion of correctness were to be seized by political reformers and progressives. Suppose they were to correct our ideals of correct behaviour in all its multifarious aspects - from political to academic to arguments about football. How would we correct spurious ideas of correctness?
No sagacious man will long retain his sagacity, if he live exclusively among reformers and progressive people, without periodically returning into the settled system of things, to correct himself by a new observation from that old standpoint.
Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Blithedale Romance (1851)
There is no obvious way back to the settled system of things because that was merely whatever worked socially and politically at the time. In our time, many old but pragmatic ideals do not have to work as they did in the past. Not until corrected by the impersonal workings of reality, by which time, reformers and progressive people have moved on.
Those reformers and progressive people are busy laying their incompetent hands on what were fairly pragmatic ideals of correctness. We have seen it for decades. Workable, practical ideals are nudged to one side by doctrinal experiments from the fevered minds of academics, political fanatics, useful idiots and power-hungry calculators.
Correctness is often experienced as a sense of what is handed down from above, whatever ‘above’ might be, but that too can be manipulated. Celebrities ought not count as ‘above’ but they do. Even Prince Harry, even Greta, even... but the list is too long.
Our older sense of correctness was always shallow and potentially vulnerable with nothing deeper to get hold of apart from a feeling that it was 'the right thing to do' and generally seemed to work. Yet even the sense that it worked may be labelled as politically incorrect and many people don’t want to know why – it goes no deeper. That’s the vulnerability of it.
3 comments:
The rot set in when children were allowed to put sugar on porridge.
I think what has happened is that we are now waking up to the fact that we are being "got at"; that there is an attempt to peddle particular ideas of "correctness" from on high.
Where these ideas come from is a real mystery. There is clearly no concerted attempt to work these ideas out so that they are useful for an elite. As Covid shows, they are not that clever. But still, people didn't spontaneously decide to adopt new systems of correctness. Somebody sold middle-class women the idea that they were destroying the planet, and had better stop. Somebody told young people that trannies were an important minority. And someone sold the idea to young men that it was good to look like David Beckham. All utterly extraordinary.
dearieme - in my experience, the best way to consume porridge oats is to roll herring in them before frying.
Sam - yes, where the ideas come from is a mystery. They appear to pop up from obscure academics and pundits who ought to remain obscure but don't. As if dim but well-connected people pick up the drama of radical ideas and that carries them forward in a world addicted to the dramatic. In that respect, gender politics may eventually be useful, because people must generally realise how absurd and damaging it all is.
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