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It is pleasant to be able to "announce" that the political correctness book is now in production, under the title of Thought Prison.
It will be a very slim volume - but, of course, one full of concentrated wisdom...
I don't suppose Thought Prison will ever get anywhere near the shelves of your friendly local bookstore, but those few who want to possess a copy will find it at the usual internet marketing sites, and Kindle.
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Generic thanks are made in the acknowledgment section to the commenters here who helped develop the ideas and phrasings.
The final text is better, in my view, than the original blog entries - and there is a semblance of organization and structure - but there isn't really anything new or different for regular readers.
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Certain commenters will be dismayed to learn that I have expunged all specific examples from the text (I think) - and explained in a sentence why this is necessary, and a consequence of PC itself.
Any commenter who disagrees with this policy should reflect on why they are commenting under a pseudonym.
There are no references at all.
To be example-free and without references will limit the audience, but may perhaps also limit distractions and misunderstandings? - time will tell.
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To be abstract, unreferenced and and example-free also raises the books intended-status from pop-sociology to pop-philosophy - which I find preferable.
It aligns it with such aphoristic (and very short) philosophical classics as Pascal's Pensees, Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, Wittgenstein's Tractatus...
Thought Prison is very much in their mould
(...stifled snigger...).
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At any rate, specific, appropriate, real world examples of political correctness would constitute a signed suicide note; so they were never going to happen.
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So, what next?
Watch this space...
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12 comments:
Maybe some of my thought tempests have stirred the calm waters of contemplation that went into that book.
The brains are the second most complex known structure (God is the most complex), so there are be plenty of material connected to thoughts and prisons, and perhaps to Thought Prison II.
May I suggest that you use, if you are not using already, book-on-demand publisher, at least later. This would eliminate the empty hands of out of print -orders. Book-on-demand prints even one book on demand forever, so it is never out print, truly long tail selling in conjunction with worldwide internet.
What material then? E.g. how the PC governed thoughts are structured. Some of it is chaotic, but there must also be order. In punishments postmodern regime favors publishing sentences in many forms from tv series to newspapers to tv news to documents to school lessons about present society. As a result of long exposure a fairly accurate catalogue of sentences develops in people's minds, and if a man meditates a crime, it is likely that immediately a corresponding sentence flashes in his mind too. If man is in prison, he eventually mostly lives one day at a time, but if man thinks about prison sentence, all it's negative consequences become concentrated to a one point, strenghtening the inhibitory effect of the thought. Because the exact contents of prison life are often uncertain, and rumours and claims about e.g. unusual punishments circulate, this further reinforces the psychological effect. This is part of the reason why the present regime conceals and can conceal the actual punishments from public view, e.g chain gangs working in public and public executions. This is one of the many ways power has become hidden in the background, out of the controversy, largely out of the political and de facto out of the influence of the people, at the same time allowing power to always wear a happy smiley mask in public. It must be remembered that public tortures and executions were volatile events, and many mutinities, riots and disturbances started from them. They showed the naked power of the elites, the sovereign and their troops against one man at a time and taught the normalcy of using violence to the people. They also often showed that power is more brutal and violent than the criminal punished, because the punishment was not meant to represent equality with the crime and criminal, but the superior destructive power of the sovereign destroying the body of the criminal, thus the counterweight of punishment abundantly restoring the previous state of peace and compensating plentifully the damage done to the sovereign's law (every crime was a personal assault against the sovereign and his law).
@a Finn
Under the agreement with my publishers I can (and will) publish the book in a text form online & open-access one year after the hard copy appears.
You are right that most of us on the Internet are not willing to make the sacrifices that bravery (posting with my real name) requires. Since chiding us won't work, what will?
You mean "Brave Sir Robin" is not your real name? Golly. What can this mean?
But bravery has little to do with the phenomenon, really. Common sense dictates avoiding becoming a target, unless one consciously chooses to be.
I don't call myself "the crow" to hide my real name, but because it describes me far better than my real name, which apparently is the most common name in the English language. If I used my own name, nobody would ever know which one was me, anyway :)
@BSR - I have defended pseudonymous bloggers in print:
http://medicalhypotheses.blogspot.com/2008/08/figureheads-ghost-writers-and-quant.html
Pseudonymous bloggers who do immensely valuble work include Deogolwulf, Inductivist/ Ron Guhname, Mencius Moldbug, La Griffe de Lion, and Audacious Epigone.
On the other hand there are real name bloggers Steve Sailer, Laurence Auster and Dennis Mangan who are at least equally valuable.
So I don't chide pseudonyms!
But on the other hand neither will I be chided *by* pseudonyms for being cautious when blogging under my own identity!
I intend to purchase a copy. It's just a shame it doesn't appear on the first page of a Google search and maybe this could be looked into.
I confess. My real name is
Dr E A I Mee.
@DoP - in production, but not published!
Thanks for seeing this through. I think it's incredibly valuable.
Regarding examples, I understand why you would remove anecdotes from your own life. But I think it would make your ideas more effective to illustrate them from publicized examples; the blog Political Correctness Watch, among many others, provides lots of material. I've occasionally mused over the idea of doing this myself--matching your ideas to actual events, both to illustrate your ideas to others and to decide for myself how much I believe each of your ideas. Sadly, I don't have the time.
Thanks Jonathan, for your kind words.
But do you *really* not understand? Surely the fact that you are "Jonathan: profile not available" means that you *do* understand *exactly* why I cannot be explicit, and must leave the reader to fill-in examples from his own experience?
I'm sorry, but I guess I don't fully understand. If I ever undertake the project I described, I will link it from my public, non-anonymous web page. I just won't include any personal experiences.
@Jonathan - You said:
"But I think it would make your ideas more effective to illustrate them from publicized examples; the blog Political Correctness Watch, among many others, provides lots of material."
I'm trying to explain why this was not possible, and why it would not *really* be more 'effective' to do so (in my opinion) since examples would deflect the philosophical discussion into into socio-political-wrangling.
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