How I Escaped Political Correctness And You Can Too

I was politically correct for decades. Then one day I caught myself lying about a simple fact to make it sound more politically correct. It happened while I was lecturing to 150 students. I froze- pained by the truth of my conformity. Enough! I decided to take back my brain instead of pretending that a lie serves the greater good. It cost me, but the benefits outweighed the costs. Here is the story of how I came to question my political correctness, and how I learned to feel good and be good without it. You can too!

What do I mean by Political Correctness?

I do not mean the hot-button dramas that fill the headlines. They are just tribal solidarity rituals.
Political correctness is the idea that a "bad system" is the cause of all problems, so all will be well once we "change the system."

Political correctness trains you to focus on suffering- yours and others. It exhorts you to relieve suffering by fighting the system. This mindset originated with the express intent to replace the capitalist system with a socialist system, but controversial terms were dropped to broadened its appeal so now it just targets "the system."

Political correctness aims to transfer resources from designated bad guys to designated good guys. Good and bad are defined by opinion leaders who people tend to follow in order to be included among the good guys themselves. The gatekeepers of political correctness have tremendous power to reward friends and punish enemies. The self-interest behind political correctness is not acknowledged. Instead, the greater good is always invoked when political correctness giveth or taketh away.

You can be a good guy if you submit to the demands of political correctness.
Good guys are never responsible for what happens to them. The system is always to blame. Bad guys, by contrast, are responsible 100% of the time. Whenever you suffer, you know the bad guys are the cause, so you end up hating them intensely.

Political correctness trains you to believe that the bad guys get things easily, and you are unfairly deprived. Your only option, you are told, is to join with other victims to fight the bad system. If you question the assertions of political correctness, you lose your status as a "good guy." You must conform to the blame template to avoid losing your protected status.

Sometimes you are labelled a bad guy no matter what you do. Now you must open your pocket and submit to rebuke in order to sustain your inclusion in the good-guy alliance.

If you don't submit, you are ridiculed. No one wants to be the target of such public shaming. It's enough to motivate most people to conform.

If you don't, shunning is the next step. You are cut off from the resources controlled by political correctness. Much more than money is at stake. Social support, social status, and-let's be honest-sex, are controlled by the gatekeepers of political correctness.

Over time, you submit so automatically that you don't realize you're doing it. You build an internal self-monitoring mechanism to avoid the risk. You censor your thoughts as well as your words because an incorrect thought might get blurted out accidentally. Your self-monitoring is so effective that you even hate yourself when you notice truths that conflict with PC commandments.

Yet inconvenient facts keep popping up. What do you do? Do you ignore the reality reaching your senses? Or do you risk ostracism?

The gatekeepers of PC say the greater good is served by spinning facts to fit the agenda, so bad guys can't use them to reinforce stereotypes. You are applauded as a person of virtue and intelligence when you spin facts to make the enemies of PC look bad and the friends look good.

You don't notice yourself doing this after a while. Everyone else does it so it feels normal. The media lead the way, so the safely pre-spun story is in your mind before you have time to think about it. You effortlessly substitute the PC agenda for your authentic perceptions.