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The Pursuit of Knowledge
P Is for Poison
As in political correctness, pornography, and plastic, the three great public poisons of our time.
People poison themselves through consuming stuff that harms them. They also poison the world, by spreading venomous thought, venomous entertainment, and venomous waste. It is a strange feature of our societies that governments increasingly seek to control the first kind of poison, which threatens only the individual, while largely ignoring the second kind, which threatens us all. The reason for this lies in a deep disorder within democracies—namely the fear of moralizing, which leads legislators to order us about for the good of each of us, but never for the good of all.
We go a little way to understanding the matter if we consider the three great public poisons of our time, what they are doing to us, and why we find it so difficult to take action against them: political correctness, pornography, and plastic. The first poisons thought, the second poisons love, and the third poisons the world. Between them they put in question whether human life as we know it will survive, and whether it ought to survive, given what it will look like when the poisons have done their work.
Political correctness means soft censorship—censorship with penalties soft enough to be spread across us all. When people burned each other at the stake for uttering forbidden thoughts, they were also careful to draw a precise distinction between the forbidden and the permitted, so as to confine the danger. When the only penalty for uttering forbidden thoughts is to lose your job as a journalist, or your promotion in the academy, then the task of defining the forbidden area becomes less urgent. Moreover, for that very reason, the poison spreads rapidly through society, so that there is no longer any easy way to avoid it. When “homophobia” or “Islamophobia” are mere name-calling, without clear legal consequences for the victim, they can be used indiscriminately to ruin the career of whosoever might have stumbled, by whatever accident of fate, into the target area. When words become deeds, and thoughts are judged purely by their expression, and not by the arguments advanced in their favor, then there is no clear way of debating the issues of the day, however vital they might be. A universal caution invades the intellectual life; people mince their words, sacrifice style and grace for the clumsy armor of “inclusive” syntax, avoid all the areas where orthodoxies have taken root—sex, race, gender, religion, patriotism—and beat around bushes in which nothing hides.
It is thanks to political correctness that the academy has been overwhelmed by pseudo-scholarship. It is thanks to political correctness that the British government has adopted gay marriage as its policy, even though it never proposed this to the electorate. It is thanks to political correctness that a hospital worker can, in Britain, leave a patient unattended in order to say salat, but not perform his or her hospital duties while wearing a cross. In a hundred little ways our traditional forms of life are being censored out of existence. Every now and then there is a show trial conducted in order to remind the people of this, as when Larry Summers was driven from his position at Harvard for having dared to suggest that the brains of women are differently organized from the brains of men.
The poison of pornography has something in common with the poison of political correctness, namely that it is not noticed as a poison by those who promote it. The astonishing thing, indeed, is that American opinion formers have to be persuaded of the damage that pornography is inflicting. They have to be confronted with the overwhelming body of research, well known to the psychological community and in any case no more than common sense, which shows that porn is addictive, destructive of sexual confidence, undermining of sexual relations, and promoting of an entirely abusive and objectified view of women in particular and human beings in general. Not only is porn driving all romance and hesitation from the expression of sexual desire; it is reconfiguring that desire, so that it is no longer a free gift between persons but a form of enslavement.
It is right to see porn as a poison, because its effects cannot be confined. The addiction is only the smallest part of it. Far worse is the destruction inflicted on the emotional life and on the capacity to love. A difficult discipline, on which the future of society depends, and to which previous generations devoted all that was best in their nature, is being placed beyond the reach of young people. And as a result their emotional lives are increasingly disordered. (If you don’t believe this, then you must read the definitive account in James Stoner and Donna Hughes, The Social Costs of Pornography, Princeton, Witherspoon Institute, 2010.)
IS IT STEPPING FROM the sublime to the ridiculous to extend my argument to plastic? Some would say so. But just look at what plastic is doing to us. Go into any supermarket or drug store today, and you will see products almost entirely wrapped in non-biodegradable cellophane or polythene, which composes some 15 percent of the weight of the goods that leave the store. Most of this will be conveyed to a landfill. But not all of it. Even if only 0.01 percent escapes into the environment, to be blown by the wind, washed into rivers, buried in undergrowth, and eventually conveyed to the ocean, the effect over a matter of a few years is devastating—to wildlife, to the oceans, to the look of the landscape, and to the beauty of human habitations. You can see what I mean if you look from a railway train at those unvisited plots alongside the track. Bottles and wrappings from the passing traffic, few and far between compared with the trash that is collected from each train, have nevertheless accumulated to such an extent that for many miles, and especially through the towns, it is all but impossible to look from the window without a feeling of alarm and disgust. But that sight is a premonition of what the whole world may soon be like. We are told that a platform of plastic waste the size of Texas now swirls in the Pacific Ocean, and all across the world polythene bags drift in the trees, snag in the rivers, and end in the stomachs of animals and birds.
Why mention this in the same breath as the other two P’s? Because it tells us how to look for a remedy. Non-degradable plastic wrappings are unnecessary. They could be forbidden tomorrow and we would survive. Thanks to the agitation over climate change, environmentalists expend their energies on problems that cannot easily be solved, instead of on this one, which can. Forbid these wrappings in one country and the solution will spread to all other countries that are connected to it by trade. To forbid this poison would not be oppressive: it would not be forbidding us from taking pleasures that are meaningful to us, or from leading lives that we really want. Of course, I am not in favor of governments bossing us about. But forbidding this particular poison is not stopping a reasonable pleasure; it is merely compelling us—you, me, and the storeowner—to internalize our costs, and not to pass them on to future people.
HAVING PRODUCED a legal antidote to one of the poisons, why not extend the solution further? It was until recently regarded as wholly within the bounds of legitimate law to forbid the production and propagation of pornography. This changed only because wily lawyers were able to hoodwink judges into protecting pornography as “free speech” under the First Amendment. But it is neither free nor speech: it is a form of visual slavery, in which those who watch are enslaved by the sight of others similarly enslaved. Why not forbid it? What exactly would be lost?
But then what about political correctness? The contrast with the other two poisons reminds us that nothing is harder to overcome than the poisoning of thought. Where is the antidote, when the mental space in which it could grow has been invaded and sterilized? I have wracked my brains about this for quite some time, and come up with the following suggestion: we cannot forbid political correctness, since that would be simply reproducing the disease. But we can ridicule it. We can, by a collaborative effort, go on using language as we should, go on making remarks and expressing thoughts ruled offensive by the censors, and go on showing contempt for their censorious ways.
It seems to me that this is the only available antidote. It will work only if we look out for the people to ridicule and make effect arguments against them, and look out equally for the victims and offer them our support. I don’t see this happening to any great extent in America, and it is not happening at all in Europe. But surely it is worth a try? And maybe the way to begin is to fight those other two poisons that I mentioned. By doing so, we might persuade the world that we are serious about the most dangerous poison of all, the poison that prevents us from thinking.
About the Author
Roger Scruton is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His latest book, How to Think Seriously About the Planet: The Case for an Environmental Conservatism, has just been published by Oxford University Press.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (34) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 6.25.12 @ 6:46AM
This article curves back in on itself, showing exactly why the whole argument is futile, when the author insists that HIS personal political correctness (his fear and loathing of plastic) be given the same status as PC violence against the person, in the form of pornography and language. The real problem is the lack of reason, manners and agreed-upon standards summed up in the bumper sticker "If it feels good, do it."
The main reason for the amount of plastic enclosing everything we buy is that if things are left loose in bins, people steal them. It's not easy to stop people from stealing even when the packages are huge and so difficult to open that they could be shot into space; anyone who works in Wal-Mart will tell you that she finds numerous empty packages lying around in the music and toy departments particularly, where people have simply ripped them apart and absconded with the contents. I myself witnessed a child around 6 years old tearing open Hot Wheels packages and shoving the cars in his pockets, and his mother landed on ME with both feet for speaking to him.
aware| 6.25.12 @ 4:17PM
I know, first he cites 2 grievous examples of the State forcing destructive pathologies on helpless society, then he stands on his head advocating banning the 3rd by, who else, the State.
It is the mistaken belief that "government", in whatever form(including ours), can be a force for "good". With "good" being in the eye of the beholder, you end up creating an unstoppable monster used by those whose idea of good is, well, not good. Like claiming naked girls is "free speech".
John786| 6.25.12 @ 6:47AM
Lots to agree with here. Pornography is ultimately destructive. What to do with it in a free society? Difficult one. I've generally been in agreement with the environmental movement untill it became a religious movement divorced from real solutions e.g nuclear power. You are wrong on Islamophobia. Islamophobia embeds itself in every pore of American society. It's the surest way to get air time and money. Saying anything positive about Muslims / Islam will destroy you. These days there is no article in the spectator that does not have a tinge of islamophobia. Can you please provide evidence that patient welfare has ever been compromised by 'salat' ( 5 daily Muslim prayers). It is the custom of the Mischevious / racists/ extremists to use outlier examples in order to pander to the lowest common denominator. Islam is the final revelation of what humanity regards as being timeless truths.
Fast and Curious| 6.25.12 @ 2:47PM
We as a society have not even come close to being truthful about islamic societies. Do most women in this country (and feminist groups) realize that women are enslaved in Saudi Arabia and many pother parts of the world? ...maybe they know the facts and don't care to comment.
TrueBlue | 6.26.12 @ 11:37AM
Please provide evidence to me how the wearing of a cross has ever compromised patient care, yet it's not allowed in many facilities, while salat is. All or none.
D. Singh| 6.25.12 @ 7:02AM
Sir
My!
The peals of moral thunder in this article deafen my ears. Mr Scruton has scaled the ethical heights that the thought of Solzhenitsyn commands.
I am doubtful as to whether or not Mr Scruton’s ‘antidote’ will be a successful remedy:
‘We can, by a collaborative effort, go on using language as we should, go on making remarks and expressing thoughts ruled offensive by the censors, and go on showing contempt for their censorious ways.’
Men in the West are fearful of the consequences.
Mr Scruton observes:
‘Where is the antidote, when the mental space in which it could grow has been invaded and sterilized?’
Given that nature abhors a vacuum; what then has the ideology of PC replaced?
It has replaced Judaeo-Christian intellectual capital: values that our forefathers passed onto us by thought, word and deed:
It seems to me that what we are witnessing in the rise of PC is a new religion; but if it be a new religion – then pray what sacrifices from the individual will it demand?
The first one must be conscience. It will be unable to triumph decisively unless it is able to sear, with a hot iron, the conscience of each man.
MissouriDave| 6.25.12 @ 9:30AM
'T is easy to flout ideas, but the problem is easily solved with morality. A good Judeau-Christian approach to living would lead society to realization of "morality" . A Morality that turns the other cheek and expresses an ethics wherein homosexuality is an abomination(sick and sinful, but no worse than my lust in porn), abortion is murder, and Man is steward of environment. Outlaw porn and give us morality where we would know better than to buy and support porn's production. What did Mr Robinson say the future is??? haha Thanks Emmit and Merry Christmas
C. S. P. Schofield| 6.25.12 @ 8:08AM
Give the State a category of communication that it may censor, and it will suddenly discover that a great deal that it finds offensive fits that category. In light of this I ask;
You say that pornography is demeaning to women; this exempts it from the protection of the First Amendment, how exactly?
Truncheon| 6.25.12 @ 8:28AM
He did *not* say that porn is exempt from 1st amendment protection due to being offensive. Only you have said that. Nice straw man.
He simply pointed out that there was a time nobody was silly enough to claim that animalistic forms of gutter entertainment such as porn qualified as speech at all, let alone protected speech.
Here's a free clue. If you stop looking at porn, your brain will heal to the point you cease making this egregious intellectual errors.
Seek| 6.25.12 @ 12:23PM
Your point, formally speaking, isn't advocacy of censorship, but it certainly serves as a rationalization for it. By claiming pornography somehow doesn't qualify as speech at all, it's only a short jump from that to outlawing it, since there's no free-speech issue in the first place.
As for me, I have subscribed to Playboy for a long time. My brain is in fine working order, a lot better, in fact, than the screwed-up people who profess to despise "porn" yet read it on the sly (I've known many such two-faces). And yes, I'm a conservative. Why, by the way, shouldn't consumers of "porn" be included in Grover Norquist's Leave Us Alone Coalition?
Slacker| 6.25.12 @ 1:03PM
I get your point but, Playboy isn’t porn. Can’t be porn w/o genitals.
Occam's Tool| 6.25.12 @ 2:21PM
Hey, I have a friend who was a Playmate of The Decade (1970s, name of Cindy Wood, and yes, my wife has met her). She is very much a lady.
Seek| 6.25.12 @ 6:09PM
I remember her!! That was circa 1972-73. I was just a teen, but, hey, I was discovering my inner heterosexuality. I recall she was a very classy woman.
C. S. P. Schofield| 6.25.12 @ 3:16PM
He may have SAID that "nobody was silly enough to claim that animalistic forms of gutter entertainment ... qualified as speech" but I was hoping there was nobody here stupid enough to fall for that.
The history of porn censorship in the United States is interesting; one of the categories of 'porn' that the censorship landed on hardest was factually correct birth control and disease prevention literature.
So, porn disgusts you, does it? I ask again; this exempts it from First Amendment protection just how, exactly?
The State has proven, time and time again, that it cannot be trusted with the power to censor ANYTHING.
MissouriDave| 6.25.12 @ 9:33AM
The state outlaws murder ! Thanks Emmit and Merry Christmas
aware| 6.25.12 @ 7:25PM
Make that "private" murder. Organized murder on the other hand.....the most jealously guarded of all State monopolies.
FelixKrull| 6.25.12 @ 9:04AM
Outstanding column. I disagree with the pornography bit. I don't doubt that it's as poisonous as the author claims, but free speech must remain (or rather become) sacrosanct, it is the cornerstone of all other freedoms.
The argument about it being 'visual slavery' is just a metaphor and could easily be extended to cover all forms of modern entertainment and would lead to exactly the kind of velvet totaliarianism Scruton so incisively warns about, where no-one can be entirely sure of whether he's a delinquent or not.
MissouriDave| 6.25.12 @ 9:36AM
Love that name! Thanks Emmit and Merry Christmas
P S Did you ever finish that con???haha
Albert Constantine Jr.| 6.25.12 @ 9:13AM
I remain unpersuaded that that there is a link between political correctness, porn and plastic. I would recommend that Mr. Scruton premier future articles like this one with someone who is a little less sycophantic, and a little more critical.
C. Vernon Crisler | 6.25.12 @ 10:41AM
The real problem with pornography is that it's a great time waster. You can whack your wanker for hours upon hours, and then also in the spaces between those hours, and your productivity suffers the consequences. Still, the solution of censorship seems worse than the disease.
Also with respect to plastic (or light bulbs): giving government that much power is worse than the disease. Freedom should always be given the benefit in doubtful cases.
aware| 6.25.12 @ 7:26PM
Always.
TLP| 6.25.12 @ 11:09AM
What about Pusillanimous, Puke, Politicians, Passing themselves off as People of the People, while they Piss away People's Pay, on Pathetic Plans like Paying The People Pertaking in Procedures Pertaining to Practitioners at Planned Parenthood?
Plans, Put in Place by Pieces of Pig Poop, like that POS PIG PUMPER, on Pennsylvania Ave.?
I gotta Pee.
Albert Constantine Jr.| 6.25.12 @ 1:04PM
Pontification positively portraying predictable possible pitfalls.
Occam's Tool| 6.25.12 @ 2:22PM
I've got a major problem with political correctness. About the others: focus on preventing Gay Marriage first, Britboy.
Petronius| 6.25.12 @ 12:49PM
Roger is skirting Roob theory about Prohibition. Those three little words that drive such Polity: " I don't like it." Remember Donna Shelala announcing her intention to "change the culture" by "changing everything We don't like?" I know what I want to prohibit, Predation, Perversion, and Parasitism. Get rid of these and this country will be a decent Place to Live again.
Here trolls.
Tom Kyba| 6.25.12 @ 1:20PM
While I respect Mr. Scruton, this article can be summarized with 3 words: blah, blah, blah.
PolishKnight| 6.25.12 @ 3:05PM
A bit of revealing irony: The notion that porn is bad because it degrades women is classical political correctness derived from chivalrous patronage which elevates women to innocent, helpless, entitled victims.
I chuckled at this line: "it is reconfiguring that desire, so that it is no longer a free gift between persons but a form of enslavement." Sounds a lot like free love, doesn't it? Except anyone whose honest will chuckle at the notion of "free" love especially in the context of so-called traditional dating.
Another chuckle is the line "overwhelming body of research" supporting the authors' conclusions which are uncited. The Meese report on "Reefer madness?" In the meantime, man hating feminism and the scourge of society: unwed motherhood is a product of chivalrous entitlement and puritanism.
namfos| 6.25.12 @ 3:48PM
I like Roger Scruton's writing (and POV) and I'd especially like to read his latest book, but I believe he's as ill-informed as the leftist enviros about one of his Ps, plastic, for the simple reason that h'e succumbed to "the most dangerous poison of all, the poison that prevents us from thinking."
C. S. P. Schofield| 6.25.12 @ 4:32PM
Another thought about 'porn'; feelthy pictures have always existed, regardless of official censorship. They predate photography by a couple of millenia. Go back to official censorship of porn and the major effect will be to remove all legal protections from the young women who model for it.
cicero| 6.25.12 @ 4:37PM
This is the second article I have read that talks about a platform the size of Texas somewhere in the Pacific consisting of floating plastic. So far, no one has confirmed this allegation, or indicated just where, exactly, it is. Seems to me that, if it were actually there, and we knew where "where" was, it would be the start of a whole new recycling industry. Just put salvage ships out there, and bring all of that plastic back here, where it could be recycled into new, reusable plastic.
As far as the problem of political correctness, all those of us who are sane have to do is stop indulging in the silliness of it all. I can understand not wanting to openly insult the innocent, but some of the not so innocent befoulers of our culture need to be insulted. Besides, truth should always be an absolute defense to any charge of being politically incorrect.
As for pornagraphy, if it was such a curturally sacrosanct, uplifting (smirk intended) form of entertainment, we should be proud to see our daughters honored as stars of such endeavors. Give me a break! Freedom of speech was meant to protect polically generated speech. Only the jackasses on our Supreme Court could have fashioned an argument to protect pornography. But then again, these same boobs gave us abortion on demand, and the right to privacy in the time of facebook.
C. S. P. Schofield| 6.25.12 @ 7:02PM
I will point out, again, that it is one thing to wish to censor the vile swill that the internet is afloat with and another to give the State the power to do so. The State will inevitably go after political targets and pursue actual porn only when actually forced to by circumstances.
Cobalt| 6.25.12 @ 8:03PM
Polítical correctness is cultural Marxism.
D. Singh| 6.26.12 @ 4:55AM
Sir
Those basing their arguments on the ‘absolute’ free speech protection must believe that those who drafted the First Amendment were amoral – and the meanings contained within the constitution change over time.
If that be so then what difference is there between them and those who today describe the constitution as a ‘living document’ – a teaching adored by tyrants?
sharms| 6.27.12 @ 6:20AM
Plastic is used for thousands of medical devices, it is used for the sanitary packaging and preservation of food. If plastic is not used for the uses your disfavor (bags, cups, disposable utiensils) which then makes it economical to produce, plants will not tool up to make a few thousand pounds for the medical and food packaging industry. Your standard of living will go down the commode, millions of people will die due to infection (no disposable plastic available for surgery, metal requires sterilization), medical costs will SKYROCKET, millions will starve. You dont understand that plastic makes the life you have possible. Touch one think in your life that isnt improved, cheaper, available, etc due to plastic. you cant.