Dialogue: Time to cast off the bonds of PC

If I could have one wish granted for this the first year of the 21st century, it would be that we New Zealanders, individually and collectively, cast off the shackles of dehumanising political correctness and once again be free to be ourselves.

The damage this philosophy has inflicted on us as individuals and as a society is incalculable. It has done its damnedest to rob us of our uniqueness as human beings while it tries to reduce us all to an amorphous mass of uncertain, anxious, obedient wimps.

Only those of us who are impervious to the circumlocutions and dissimulations of the purveyors of PC dogma are any longer prepared to call a spade a spade and, if appropriate, a bloody shovel.

The circumscribing of our language by the PC brigade has robbed most of us of the ability to express our real thoughts and feelings, and the result is a nation in which too many people are so choked up with frustration, anger and resentment that they're about ready to explode - and sometimes do, with hideous results for themselves and/or others.

Instead of telling those who would determine for us how we think, feel and speak to stick their worthless opinions and dishonest double-talk up their collective backsides, we smile sickly smiles, bite our tongues - and every time we do it our self-disgust intensifies.

Because what the PC protagonists have never understood is that we are all unique - from our DNA to our fingerprints to our eye shade and shape to the timbre of our voices - and that before we are anything else, we men and women are living souls.

Nor do they seem to understand that we are each moulded individually into what we are by birth, by breeding, by culture, by learning, by experience (both good and bad) and that such is the nature of mankind that some of us make a better fist of living than others and some are more successful than others and some luckier.

Some people are born white, others yellow, brown, red or black - and every shade in between. Some are born to riches, others to poverty; some are highly intelligent, others just plain dumb; some are physically strong, others weak; some are mentally agile, others slow-witted. Some are born, or become through ill-fortune, mentally handicapped or physically crippled; others never suffer a day's major illness in their lives.

Some people never stop talking, others are mute; some have 20/20 vision, others are blind. Some could hear a pin drop at 50 paces, others are deaf. Some people are fat, others thin; some are tall, others short; some are what we define as handsome, comely or beautiful, others, as my mother used to say, "were behind the door when the looks were given out."

Some of us are hard-working, thrifty and prudent, others slothful, prodigal and careless. Some see life as challenge, others as a guerrilla war through which to punish "them" and bleed them dry. Most of us are born and stay sane, others go stark raving mad.

Some of us are honest and law-abiding, others dishonest and criminal; some are polite and peaceful, others violent and abusive; some are generous and outgoing, others mean and self-centred.

And, above all, roughly half of us are male and the other half female, each gender absolutely unique unto itself with its own inimitable physical, mental and spiritual characteristics, few if any of which are interchangeable.

But what the mind-benders of political correctness try to tell us is that all men and women (and even children) are not just equal but the same. Well, for a start all humans have never been equal and never will be - except in the sight of God, whose view of things certainly isn't taken into account any more.

And the proposition that, for instance, people who are male or female, black or white, sighted or blind, good or bad are all the same is not just preposterous, it is positively evil because it is dehumanising.

The specious psychology of political correctness sets up uncomfortable internal conflicts in many of those whose minds are bent by it. For while the mind is nodding in agreement with this plausible philosophy, the heart is screaming out that there is something about it that just doesn't add up.

And what doesn't add up is that deep down inside where we really live, we know that what we're hearing and are supposed to believe is utter crap and the guilt that is put upon some of us, or the false expectations engendered in others of us, leave us angry, frustrated, bewildered and, ultimately, disappointed both in ourselves and in others.

So why don't we tell these poor, misguided PC freaks to shove it, and revel once again in just being ourselves - real people - faults, flaws and all?

* garth_george@herald.co.nz