An Open Letter to Radha Burnier, John Algeo, and the Members of the Theosophical Society worldwide
It is certainly all the rage these days to complain about Political Correctness, and a lot of attention is being put towards discovering its excesses. It is alleged, by various public voices, that the PC movement is intent upon destroying First Amendment freedoms, and turning America into a godless, radical feminist nation of dirt worshippers (A Right Wing name for environmentalists). Others simply marginalize the movement as little more than the emotional rantings of whining women, nasty minorities, and tree-huggers.
As someone who accepts, on philosophical and ethical grounds, the premises behind a lot that is labelled Political Correctness, and further, finds the foundations of those premises to be fully in harmony with the First and Second Objects of the Theosophical Society, it seems perhaps appropriate to attempt to articulate some of those foundations - in the hopes of helping the leaders understand that when, for instance, a growing number of voices insist on changing words like brotherhood in the First Object, it is not simply a negative reaction to something, but the assertion of a positive philosophical position.
While the press focuses on the most surface manifestations of PC and seems delighted when it finds yet another anecdote about its excessiveness, beneath the surface lies something that is part of a much larger and fundamental restructuring of the relationships between genders, and between races.
To begin, however, its probably necessary to strip away the surface layer: There is no such thing as a PC movement. The terms Politically Correct and PC movement were created a few years ago by a couple of extreme right-wing think tanks, and were created specifically as a political tactic - one that has been quite successful. Most of those who are charged with being part of the PC movement do not themselves claim membership in something called a PC movement ... they are assigned membership by the opponents of their various causes. They may call themselves feminists, or environmentalists, or proponents of racial equity, but the many people grouped under the PC label often have virtually nothing in common with one another, either in terms of the fields they work in or even in the intellectual basis of their work.
In the early 1980s a movement began among politically conservative intellectuals in the rarefied circles of abstract political theory. The social fabric of the nation, indeed, the western world, was seen to be unravelling. Racial tensions and violence were again increasing (after a lull in the 70s) economic insecurity was rising in the population, and the structure of the nuclear family was eroding. Their analysis of the causes of this concluded that the serious problems were arising because a set of values that they believed were the core foundation values of the western world were coming under fire, and that hence the roots of social harmony were being destroyed.
For instance, it was not just that the divorce rate was climbing rapidly that disturbed them, but the much deeper fact that the social paradigm that kept marriages together in the past was disappearing - not just that people were getting divorced, but that there was no longer any social stigma attached to divorce; not just that people were living and sleeping together out of wedlock, but that there were no longer any social sanctions - no one even bothered to hide behaviour that in the 1950s would have caused the participants to become virtual social outcasts were it not carefully concealed.
These thinkers began defining and attempting to reaffirm what were called traditional values - in essence the values that were present in the 1950s, just prior to the revolutionary 60s - and included Judeo-Christian social and cultural values, and a form of free-market capitalist economic values. This group of values was called traditional and mainstream, and once defined, began to then be used as a standard by which to judge what was radical or extreme.
The more defined these became, the more these people (and now others throughout conservative political, academic, and Christian circles) began noticing that these values were no longer being unquestioningly accepted as the good. For a time, most of the arguments were constrained to the intelligentsia in academic circles. Huge arguments about the Canon of western literature and philosophy were being waged on campuses (and still, for that matter, are). The reactivity of revolutionaries in the 60s, who mostly just argued against the existing paradigm, had become politically very sophisticated, and had begun to become as adept at the use of the political system as the proponents of traditional values had been.
Reactions began, mostly in the humanities departments - professors of Political Science, Economics, English, Philosophy, History, and other Liberal Studies fields were coming under intense fire, by people making the case that all that was being read and discussed was the writings, and values, of Dead White Males. These faculties (over 90% of whom were Living White Males) naturally became very defensive, as their entire careers were built upon understanding an agreed-upon canon of writing. It was not just that their authors were being criticized (indeed, teaching the nature of the arguments between the authors of the canon was a chief part of the curriculum), but rather that people were starting to reject even the context within which the arguments took place as too narrow, oblivious or dismissive of the insights of large numbers of races and religions, and simply lacking resonance with the experience of a lot of women.
Feminists were asserting the right to judge and analyze literature by standards completely outside of academic traditions - and literature professors were not happy about having their pet authors simply dismissed as sexist.
Multiculturalists were beginning to seriously question both philosophy and politics that they considered to be little other than means of enforcing a certain set of norms, norms that made sense to those of northern European ancestry (as they came from European traditions) but were not necessarily in tune with people from anywhere else in the world.
Environmentalists were beginning to seriously question the very premises of capitalist, free market economics, the very notion that the natural world was simply a place where one gets raw materials for human civilization, and disposes of its waste.
In short, once a set of traditional values was defined ... it could not help but seem as though these values were under attack, often somewhat successful attack, from every different direction. But this was very difficult to fight politically, because the enemy was extremely decentralized ... the attacks weren't coming from a single source and weren't composed of large events, but came from countless sources, and were composed of thousands of small battles at the personal level. It is here that political operatives formulated the category called Politically Correct and defined the enemy as the PC movement. This then meant that it became possible to take an environmentalist advocating for environmental education in Oregon grade schools, a multiculturalist arguing for an African Studies program in a Chicago university, and a feminist charging her boss with sexual harassment at work in New York, and a PETA activist protesting the clubbing of baby seals (four people who themselves have nothing to do with one another, and certainly would not say they are in a movement together) and group them all under one heading. Millions of separate and completely unrelated actions by widely varying individuals and groups across the country can now be bundled within a single metaphor - so suddenly the enemy is well defined, appears to be enormous and threatening, and can be battled.
It is important, for anyone who complains about the PC movement to understand this. The PC movement is not an organized, deliberate and planned campaign. The category of PC, and the anti-PC movement is. In the U.S.A., Rush Limbaugh's Executive Producer is the most powerful behind-the-scenes power broker in Republican circles. When Dan Quayle began to become terribly embarrassing to George Bush, two of the intellectual giants of the conservative think-tank world were literally assigned to him, both to make sure he didn't say anything stupid, as well as to articulate a family values philosophy through his mouth.
(As someone who has run small political projects himself, I am in awe of the tactics of those who created the anti-PC movement ... I don't agree with them, but I must admire brilliant political work ... they created a category out of thin air, managed to get it introduced into the popular vocabulary, focused the public's attention on its excesses and so demonized it that people now feel it to be a badge of honour to be Politically Incorrect.)
But what does all this have to do with Theosophy? Well, it probably is worth pointing out that our founders would almost certainly be called Politically Correct. This may seem a bit counterintuitive at first, as the most successful aspect of the anti-PC strategy has been to, at the emotional level, link the term PC with the feeling of restricting freedom ... and since the founders spoke their minds freely - often really freely, it would seem natural to think of them as being politically incorrect. (More about this linkage later).
But we must look at exactly how they lived and what they believed in. Annie Besant, feminist and animal rights activist, if she did the exact same things today as she did when she lived, would be precisely what many now label a radical feminazi. HPB? Horrors! She left her husband. Never had kids. Lived with men. Travelled the world, and managed to upset traditional value systems not just at a single university, but in several nations. And she not only criticized Christianity in terms that even today would be considered extremely scathing, but actively advocated the introduction of Buddhist thought - that is, HPB, were she alive today, would not only be defined by conservative thinkers as the very height of Politically Correct but would be accused of being excessive about it. A major plank of the Right wing platform would probably be Kick HPB out of the country. She certainly wasn't a family valueskind of person, and had access to a range of knowledge that would cause entire think tanks to run screaming for their lives. In fact she is to this day called one of the chief tools of Satan by Christian fundamentalists, and is blamed for being one of the principle causes of a whole host of Politically Correct evils.
While this is worth mentioning, however, its not the chief argument I want to make. The grounds for asserting that the Theosophical Society should not only not resist adjusting itself to some of the premises behind what has been labelled PC, but should actively welcome the chance to do so, is based in the First and Second Objects - which are not only fully in harmony with some of those premises, but might almost be considered to be one of their earliest articulations.
I'd like to focus on one of the root premises behind some of what is labelled PC - one that receives a good deal of derision, and is also a subject of current debate in Theosophical circles: language matters.
One side of the argument seeks to alter especially the gender implications it sees present in universalizing pronouns (i.e., individually, we are men and women, but collectively we are menbelonging to the race of mankind. Our association seeks to form the nucleus of a brotherhoodand we are all FTS ... Fellows, Theosophical Society).
On the other side are those that either hold that even the Objects should not
be touched (a slightly odd argument, as they were altered several times in the
early days ... as the TS developed and the Objects became more refined) and
those that just do not see what the big deal is - some even claiming people who
are superficial enough to be caught up and overly affected by something as minor
as the gender in pronouns probably aren't even suited for the depth of the
philosophy.
While people have protested these attitudes, I'm not sure if a full case for gender inclusive language has yet been made in Theosophical circles. I shall try to do that here.
The philosophical argument comes chiefly from feminist and multiculturalist writers, and arises out of a couple of decades of study of the connection between language and culture.
Basically, these people, in the sixties, began feeling as though a lot of their experience that was either undervalued or completely ignored in the past was not only worthy of attention, but needed to be articulated publicly. Their view of the traditional values was that these values did produce social harmony, but that harmony was dependent upon people accepting their place in a particular hierarchy of power - and it was asserted that the top of this hierarchy was white males, and northern European male values. The social harmony that these values produced was only present so long as women and minorities accepted, without complaint, access to power and opportunities of a far more limited nature than that afforded white men.
They would answer, for instance - the conservative's argument - that the nuclear family was falling apart, and that the social stigma surrounding divorce should be re-introduced, by saying that many of those marriages survived because the woman subjugated a lot of her interests to the man, and had very few opportunities for anything like a career or profession (other than approved womanly professions ... secretary, teacher, nurse, maid ...). The nuclear family is far harder to hold together if both man and woman are equally in pursuit of careers, if the woman is not dependent for economic survival on the man (a fact that kept a lot of bad marriages together) and even further, the woman has, because of new birth control devices, far greater control over reproduction. While radical feminist thinkers are asserting that the family itself in any form requires the submission of the woman, and is simply not necessary even for the raising of children (and it is this that is most often quoted by the press as feminist and extreme) ... most feminist scholars stop far short of that - making the argument that while the family does appear to be in trouble right now, it is because we are in a naturally uncomfortable, but necessary, period of re-adjustment; that what is needed is not a return to a model that had failed to work (if it was as good as some claim it was, it wouldn't have fallen apart in the first place) but rather, the far more difficult work of understanding entirely new models of what marriage is, models in which the cement is based not upon male dominance, but upon the assumption that both may have equally strong and valid career goals, that both will share housework, child raising, etc., etc.
The larger point is that these feminist and minority thinkers (and a number of white men who were persuaded by the strength of the arguments) seemed to notice (somewhat suddenly, in the opinion of some) that the status quo was fine so long as they played their assigned parts, but that if they began expecting the same power, privileges and opportunities afforded white males, they ran into severe obstacles ... in fact the whole system of traditional values was rigged against them. This at first led to the revolutions of the 60s ... and as culture altered, at least some women and minorities began gaining some access to power and privileges.
After a time, however, a deeper sort of criticism began. Women were beginning to make it in the corporate world, but felt they had to sacrifice their femininity to do so (the differences between men and women are way deeper than just plumbing) - had to accept a very foreign, cut-throat set of values. African Americans began achieving some success, but discovered they needed to almost deny their culture - become white - to succeed. And both women and minorities had to simply accept a continual, subtle (and not so subtle) stream of jokes, demeaning comments, and often outright harassment. What began to be called into question was not just unequal distribution of power among race and gender, but the value systems within which power existed; what began to be desired was not just access to power, but an alteration of the power structure itself.
It was at this point that the really serious questioning of the roots of the power structure began in earnest ... people began seeking to understand not just the manifestations of power, but its foundations. And it was then that, from a number of different directions, in a number of different fields, thinkers began converging towards a very similar conclusion: that a culture, value system and power structure that had for hundreds, even thousands of years, been almost entirely controlled by white men had naturally been integrated into the very roots of its continually evolving language, and that the act of learning that language, of learning to see the world through the concepts of that language, was the foundation level of that power structure, and the most pervasive means of continuing to acculturate children into those value systems. It is extremely subtle, and happens at an almost entirely unconscious level. And because of the subtlety, it is, perhaps, easy for some to say "What's the big deal? Why trouble about the word brotherhood .. you know it really means women too."
To use a computer metaphor, at the surface level of society there are a large number of types of social interaction - fields of study and work, politics, religion, personal relationships, etc., etc. These might be seen as software programs that individuals are taught young, and learn how to use both individually and in groups. Language, however, is the DOS - the operating system. Its the first thing loaded on the computers. One is rarely aware of it directly, but it is the foundation upon which all other programs run, and deeply affects which programs can be run as well as the design of those programs (just try to run a Macintosh program on an old Microsoft computer if you don't think language matters!)
There is much more at stake here, then, in arguments about words, than simply the words themselves. What feminists, multiculturalists, the differently abled (to quote another term laughed at by the anti-PC movement) and others are doing is attempting to re-program DOS.
The most powerful argument against the PC movement is that it attempts to impose restrictions on the freedom of expression. The whole foundation of those who advocate changes in language, however, is that they are trying to open language - that language already has imposed powerful restrictions, not only on the speech, but in subtle ways on the whole range of opportunities, experiences, and even society's evaluation of the worth of countless generations of women and minorities. The people that created the anti-PC movement linked the notion of restriction with that of PC very deliberately ... but examine, for a moment:
Here is a Theosophical Lodge meeting, a few people begin complaining loudly about the words brotherhood and man (as a pronoun). They begin insisting that these words be changed. The response is that they should ignore the words and focus on the meaning - in fact they may be seen as lacking depth if they make too big a deal out of it. If they persist, they may, then, be charged with attempting to impose restrictions on the freedom of expression of others in the room, of trying to impose their values on others. The argument ends and they lose (as, in fact, they have - despite a lot of people advocating these changes, our Three Objects have not altered). Is this a victory for freedom of speech in which someone who would impose restrictions has been stopped? They would say no, it is an affirmation of the status quo imposition of restrictions.
I can understand how to someone who does not see why language matters that much, the whole debate seems like a huge pain. A couple of months ago a techie at my university came and upgraded the network software in the office in which I work. There was a pile of grumbling all day. People were being continually interrupted in normal functions they had come to not think twice about. The network's link to the university mainframe - and all our databases - kept getting broken and re-started. Even worse, after the guy left, for the next few weeks we had to re-learn a lot of stuff. Our programs had to be set up differently, we had to learn different ways to get our computers to talk to one another across the office. A couple of old programs simply would no longer run at all. The main problem was that we had to suddenly pay attention to what we had taken for granted. It took, however, only a couple of weeks before we began to get used to the new system, and suddenly, lo and behold, people began to like it. We began to discover all sorts of possibilities that we didn't have with the previous system. We noticed our programs ran smoother, quicker, with far fewer glitches and interruptions. Then even deeper changes started - instead of just learning different keystrokes to do the same things we had always done, we began to notice that we could change several standard operating procedures themselves ... that a couple of what had always been rather large and time-consuming tasks could be accomplished almost without effort once we began thinking in terms of the possibilities of the new system. And a number of functions students had desired, but we were prevented from giving them because we simply didn't have the technical tools suddenly became possible to deliver.
In other words, we didn't understand how restrictive the previous system was until after we had gone through the discomfort of learning the new one, began to tap some of its possibilities, understand that most of our programs ran better and some new programs became possible, and realized we were not only providing the same services far more efficiently, but were able to provide several entirely new services as the result of the change.
I must also say that personally, the experience was identical to that of learning to use gender neutral language. It was over a decade ago now, but I certainly resisted a bit at first. A good friend, however, persuaded me of the justice of the effort, and I found that once the intent to do it is there its not that big a deal. It took me a month of conscious effort, and after a couple of months the new program loaded itself back into the sub-conscious. It becomes second nature with very little trouble.
And the fear of jumping on the PC bandwagon is, I think, misplaced. That fear is part of a deliberately orchestrated campaign by people who fully understand what alterations in language mean, take them very seriously, and are intent upon holding on to a power structure in which they are privileged. So we hear all sorts of stories about, for instance, how feministand gay studies and Afro-centric programs are taking over our colleges, and are treated to horror stories of unqualified Hispanics who get promoted over qualified white men, and troubling accounts of women charging men unjustly with sexual harassment simply because they were thwarted in romance. But this ignores scale, and ignores the abuses of the current value systems. After over a decade of feminists, gay-rights activists, and minorities allegedly taking over our college campuses, well over 3/4 of the tenured faculty in the nation are still white men. Despite that terrible affirmative action, over 99% of the upper echelons of the Fortune 500 corporations are still white men. And for every man unjustly charged with sexual harassment, a thousand women are still beaten in their own homes, and frightened to even enter a legal system that values women so little that being caught with a bag of marijuana gets you a longer prison sentence than rape does.
I would ask, then, those who resist altering the language of our Objects (to start with) especially those in leadership positions, to put aside the defensiveness, and the thought that the Objects should not be changed on such insignificant and superficial grounds (it does take a bit of contemplation to understand why language is so important) and consider:
Part of the intent of the First and Second Objects was, and still is, a truly revolutionary idea. They speak of a genuinely universal outlook ... and are as clear and succinct an articulation of inclusiveness as I've seen. To form the intended nucleus and to study comparative religion and philosophy means, in essence, that we all, to some degree, must lift ourselves above our particular cultures, genders, religions and philosophies, and, in essence, create within ourselves a wholly new DOS ... one that does not privilege one perspective at the expense of others, one that can run an enormously wide range of programs. Looking at today's world, with its many fundamentalisms, nationalisms, and the thousands of different barriers drawn between us and them - our First Object is every bit as stunning, as revolutionary today as it was a century ago. A century ago, there was virtually no research into the link between language and culture, and the little there was was entirely pursued by white men (very few women and almost no minorities even had access to university levels of intellectual training - let alone the time and opportunity to pursue extended research). Brotherhood, and man had connotations of inclusiveness that they no longer posses. In fact, to growing numbers of people these words now signify the opposite of what they did a century ago. And so, because the meaning society finds in words has changed, I'd like to suggest that changing the wording of our Objects not only does not change the intent, but that the change in language is necessary to maintain the original intent.
Because meaning has changed, the wording of our Objects now contradicts their meaning. How can we form something without regard to gender and call it a brotherhood?
Because the perspectives of the First and Second Objects encourage altering our points of view, of acknowledging that races, religions, creeds, and both genders have value, would not the adjustment of the language be a powerful expression of that acknowledgement? As a white male, I cannot fully understand the precise subjective nature of the freedom, the encouragement, the empowerment, that the women and members of other races in my life tell me they feel when someone takes the trouble to speak with inclusive language. But because I love them, deeply value their very different perspectives, and they tell me that it matters - how can I not, as a demonstration of that love and value, name them as they wish to be named? If a Native American friend tells me that, to him, there's a big difference between being called an Indian - a name assigned as part of a mistake by a European explorer - and a Native American- affirming membership in a race of people whose inhabitation of his homeland predates Europeans - not only do I not feel my freedom of speech restricted, but I gladly, because I am a Theosophist who accepts the First Object as good, welcome the opportunity to express it in practice.
If growing numbers of strong and educated women tell the TS that not only does the language of the Objects now carry connotations of exclusivity and elitism, but that in not changing them we appear to be taking a side in an ongoing social and political debate ... it is not necessary for all of us to fully understand the subjective difference within them that a change in language would make ... not necessary for us to fully understand what the big deal is ....
Our First Object contains a revolutionary idea - the intent to form an association of people, not on the premises of a particular nation, religion, creed, gender or race, but on those of our mutual existence as spiritual entities pursuing spiritual growth on planet earth - and at the deepest levels of the TS our intent should continually be to find ways to express that inclusiveness more fully, to open our arms wider, to demonstrate our perspective to the world.
We should not have to be dragged kicking and screaming into making our
language gender inclusive, but should instead see it as an opportunity to more
fully express the intent of our foundation Objects - should do so not with
begrudging reluctance, but with pride, and as a statement of the very best of
what we are.
APPENDIX
When this booklet first appeared as an article on the Internet Theosophy
List, there was naturally some discussion of the topic. The following letter is
outstanding in at least two ways. Firstly it shows that women in the U.S.A. were
making their voices heard some time before the period covered by John Crocker.
Secondly, it is outstanding because the writer is clearly more than a little
older than those who are struggling to obtain justice and fairness in the use of
language today. The argument, sometimes heard, that "the older woman" sees no
reason for change is magnificently given the lie by Liesel Deutsch. - Alan Bain,
March 1996:
"Dear John,
"1.) As a member of New Jersey College for Women, class of 1943, I have to tell you that protesting didn't start on the 1960ies. We did it too. Just to give you a few examples:
"We were the first generation to wear jeans. In those days, women wore dresses & skirts. Slacks, jeans, especially for women were unheard of. We went to the Army-Navy store, bought a pair of men's jeans, & then safety-pinned them up around the waist so they would stay up. Incidentally, it was a crime to ever wash them.
"New Jersey College for Women, now Douglass, is the women's college of Rutgers. We had a student government run by us young women, & a student court run by us young women, pretty near everything was run by women, except the kitchen, which was run by Mr. Lasagna. We had many women profs ... this, in the days when every important leader, except Frances Perkins and Eleanor Roosevelt, was male. Probably, the women profs were paid less. I never had occasion to ask them about that.
"We had one history prof, Emily Hickman, who was a whiz. I made sure that I took at least an elective class with her. I had her for one semester on modern Russia. I was scared of her, but she was so good that I still remember a lot of what she taught us.
"Well, in the late 30ies, just before I got to NJC, the administration fired Emily Hickman for her radical tendencies. The students protested loud & long, demonstrated & etc. until they finally rehired Emily Hickman. The happy ending of this story is that, at the end of WWII, she was invited to San Francisco to help fashion the United Nations' Charter. Douglass today has a building named Hickman Hall.
"2.) When you start talking about that the Rush Limbaugh crowd pictures the politically correct crowd as ogres, I'd like to refer you to my favorite article on the components of prejudice, called The Enemy Within by Bob Moyer, in Psychology Today, 1-85, V. 19 #1. The lead pictures are of Reagan & Brejnev. Both have long passed into history, as has the cold war, which this article talks about, but the mechanism described is still with us: denial, dehumanization, projection, wrong images, theories of behavior, assumptions, irrationality, contradictions .. I skipped a couple, but I think you get the idea. If you're not too familiar with the subject of prejudice, here's a brief piece to fill you in on the subject. - Liesel Deutsch. Member, Theosophy International."