Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest. He will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Today
Speaker 1: we have Bradley Campbell on the podcast. Doctor Campbell is
Speaker 1: a sociologist interested in moral conflict, clashes of right and wrong,
Speaker 1: and how they are handled. Most of his work examines genocide,
Speaker 1: which normally arises from large scale interethnic conflicts. Recently, he
Speaker 1: has also begun to examine the much smaller scale conflicts
Speaker 1: of modern college campuses. His latest book, co authored with
Speaker 1: Jason Manning, is called The Rise of Victimhood, Culture, Microaggression,
Speaker 1: Safe Space, and the New Culture Wars. Thanks for chatting
Speaker 1: with me today, Bradley. Thanks for having me. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we got lots of discuss and this is a topic
Speaker 1: that we haven't fully represented on the Psychology Podcast yet,
Speaker 1: so I'm really excited to be able to talk to
Speaker 1: you about some of these issues that are very front
Speaker 1: and center in the cultural wars today. Would you say
Speaker 1: they are more fund and center today than in past
Speaker 1: generations some of the things you write about, Yes, I'd
Speaker 1: say this is most of the stuff we're talking about
Speaker 1: is something that's fairly new or at least a new
Speaker 1: form of it. Okay, Well, let's start with your just briefly,
Speaker 1: your work on genocide, because you've studied the sociology of genocide.
Speaker 1: That's how you started off in your career. Is that right?
Speaker 1: That's right? Yeah, So me you could talk a little
Speaker 1: about I know that's a wide range of things you've studied,
Speaker 1: but maybe some of the essential points you've tried to make. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the genocide work ties into my work on conflict
Speaker 1: college campuses, and that it's both about moral conflict. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of the broader subject matter that I've studied
Speaker 1: in all my work. So moral conflict or clashes of
Speaker 1: right and wrong, which is something it's really broad in
Speaker 1: that we would think of a moral conflict as occurring
Speaker 1: anytime somebody has a grievance against someone else. So and
Speaker 1: this would just be so anytime in sociological terminology would
Speaker 1: be anytime somebody defines somebody's behavior as debiant. Right, So,
Speaker 1: anytime you have a grievance or see disapprove of someone's behavior,
Speaker 1: there's a conflict. And then the idea was, well, how
Speaker 1: do people handle conflicts? And so then that is there's
Speaker 1: a huge range of behavior there too, handling of conflict.
Speaker 1: This could be scowling at somebody on the bus who's
Speaker 1: talking on their cell phone too well. They could be
Speaker 1: avoiding somebody who's been annoying you lately, a friend, you know,
Speaker 1: not talking to them as much, not hanging out with
Speaker 1: them as much. It could be quitting a job where
Speaker 1: the supervisor is giving you a problems. It could be
Speaker 1: firing an employee, or it could be an act of violence.
Speaker 1: Like most violence, whether it's homicide, usually arising out of
Speaker 1: arguments or assaults, most of them come from conflict. Theyre
Speaker 1: a way of handling conflict, and that includes large scale
Speaker 1: violence like genocide. So I had drawn from the work
Speaker 1: of Donald Black who's a sociologist at the University of Virginia,
Speaker 1: and he has for a long time studied the handling
Speaker 1: of conflict, initially looking at law, whether people turn to
Speaker 1: law to handle their conflicts, like what do they call
Speaker 1: the police? Do they sue someone? And then what happens
Speaker 1: do the police make an arrest, is the person convicted
Speaker 1: of a crime, or does somebody win their lawsuit? So
Speaker 1: this was the kind of thing that a Black had
Speaker 1: looked at. He started looking at law and then expanded
Speaker 1: it to look at other ways of handling conflict. So
Speaker 1: I approached genocide initially from that perspective, thinking like and
Speaker 1: the idea was that one way of explaining handling of
Speaker 1: conflict is with the social structure. So the social characteristics
Speaker 1: and relationships are the people involved, are they high and
Speaker 1: low high or low in status, or are they relationally close,
Speaker 1: like are they friends or are they distant like they're strangers.
Speaker 1: So you know, for example, if you're assaulted by a stranger,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to call the police than if you're
Speaker 1: assaulted by a friend. Or if you're raped by a stranger,
Speaker 1: you're more likely to report it than if you're raped
Speaker 1: by a friend. So these kinds of relationships, whether people
Speaker 1: are relationally close, whether they're high or low in status
Speaker 1: compared to someone else, matter for how conflict gets handled.
Speaker 1: And so that was the approach that Donald black could use.
Speaker 1: And I initially applied that to genocide in my dissertation
Speaker 1: work and then my first book called The Geometry of Genocide,
Speaker 1: which is with University Virginia Press. And so they're looking
Speaker 1: at these large scale ethnic conflicts. So when people have
Speaker 1: grievances against an ethnic group, you know, do they handle
Speaker 1: them with genocide? And how much genocide do we see?
Speaker 1: So genocide there is just ethnically based mass killing. Ethnically
Speaker 1: based mass killing could occur on a small scale, So
Speaker 1: it could be you know, people mastering Indians in the
Speaker 1: California in the eighteen fifties, you know, so there would
Speaker 1: be a theft of ranchers cattle and then the ranchers
Speaker 1: would get together and go solder some Indians and it
Speaker 1: might be like to kill ten or twenty or thirty
Speaker 1: Indians in an expedition. But then that would be a
Speaker 1: that would be genocide. It's ethnically based mass killing, a
Speaker 1: low level genocide on up to something like the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: where you have this very systematic program of extermination resulting
Speaker 1: in the killing of six million Jews across Europe. Degrees
Speaker 1: of it, but I looked at it as ethnically based
Speaker 1: mass killing and trying to understand the things that were
Speaker 1: associated with that. So I think, you know, without you know,
Speaker 1: getting into every aspect of the argument I looked. I
Speaker 1: was looking at genocide as a result of a certain
Speaker 1: kind of social structure, So where social distances between groups
Speaker 1: are high, where there's a lot of inequality, it occurs
Speaker 1: at it's extreme, when they're very power full ethnic groups
Speaker 1: who have grievances against less powerful and distant ethnic groups.
Speaker 1: But this framework can explain a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: interesting things that we see in genocide. Why I wrote
Speaker 1: an article on contradictory behavior in genocide, for instance, so
Speaker 1: of other people had begun noting too that the idea
Speaker 1: of people simply as rescuers or killers and genocide didn't
Speaker 1: account for people who took on multiple roles. So there
Speaker 1: had been a lot of work like on rescuers during genocide.
Speaker 1: What makes people be altruistic? What leads them to sacrifice
Speaker 1: their lives for others to rescue if they're a member
Speaker 1: of the perpetrator group, saving the lives of members of
Speaker 1: the victim group. And there was a book called the
Speaker 1: Altruistic Personality, right, So a lot of me by Samuel
Speaker 1: Older and paral Olner. And this was a really psychological
Speaker 1: approach looking at how personality factors lead to these things.
Speaker 1: And it's not that these kinds of explanations are wrong,
Speaker 1: but they don't out for all the variation that you see.
Speaker 1: So people may people who are rescuers who rescue some
Speaker 1: members of the group may also act as killers. So
Speaker 1: you have this extremely different behavior. And rather than say like,
Speaker 1: well there's this group of killers who have this personality
Speaker 1: and this group of rescuers who have this sometimes they're
Speaker 1: doing it's the same people doing both. We saw that
Speaker 1: a lot in the Rewindan genocide, for instance, where you
Speaker 1: might have somebody like one man was hiding four tootsias
Speaker 1: in his home to the tootsies where the target group
Speaker 1: and the Ruandan genocide, and this was a Hutu man
Speaker 1: from the perpetrator group citing four toot seas in his home.
Speaker 1: And then another Tutsi man stopped his home task for
Speaker 1: directions and he promptly turned them over to the mobs
Speaker 1: of killers. So he's helped to kill this one man
Speaker 1: while helping rescue others. So you have these cases where
Speaker 1: people are acting both as perpetrators and rescuers. And you
Speaker 1: know usually it's that kind of pattern. They're hiding their friends,
Speaker 1: they're saving their people who are close to them, and
Speaker 1: targeting and participating in the killing of those who are
Speaker 1: more distant. You even see like high level perpetrators, like
Speaker 1: one of the architects of the Rwandan genocide, who had
Speaker 1: a Tutsi mother. Their want of genocide is a little
Speaker 1: peculiar because ethnicity passed through the mail line, so you
Speaker 1: could have a Tutsi mother and Hutu father and you'd
Speaker 1: be a Hutu. And so he's the Tutsis were targeted
Speaker 1: and he took The movie Hotel Rwanda was about Paul
Speaker 1: Recessabagina who saved a lot of Tutsis in a hotel.
Speaker 1: But this man, this perpetrator, took his mother to Paul
Speaker 1: rose has Sebagina and at this hotel where he's rescuing
Speaker 1: people and said, Paul, I give you my cockroach, which
Speaker 1: was their slur for Tutsis. You know, in bringing her here,
Speaker 1: he's orchestrating a genocide against Tutsis. So you see this
Speaker 1: kind of behavior and it fits that kind of pattern
Speaker 1: where where people are rescuing those who are close and
Speaker 1: killing those who are distant. So those are some of
Speaker 1: the things that I addressed with my initial work on genocide.
Speaker 1: In this kind of apply, of course to other forms
Speaker 1: of violence can to be looked at in the same
Speaker 1: way to totally. I thank you for going through that
Speaker 1: because it made it even after even after reading your book,
Speaker 1: it made it very clear to me this link between
Speaker 1: these two programs of yours. Now, this is exciting for
Speaker 1: me as a psychologist to talk to a sociologists because
Speaker 1: we don't talk to each other that often these different fields,
Speaker 1: and I think that's unfortunate. So this interesting interplay between
Speaker 1: personality and motivation and then environmental, large scale societal influences.
Speaker 1: You know, all these things are interacting in lots of ways.
Speaker 1: You know, even with the instances, the examples you told
Speaker 1: me of these individuals show these contradictions, you know, there
Speaker 1: probably still was some not a fully explainable, but some
Speaker 1: set of personality characteristics that helped increase the likelihood that
Speaker 1: they would even show those contradictions. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: the campus culture. And this is what you call, well,
Speaker 1: not that I shouldn't call it the campus culture. Coach
Speaker 1: called the victimhood culture, because not all campuses are one
Speaker 1: hundred percent victimhood culture, right, But you're saying this is
Speaker 1: a growing sort of culture on campuses. Can you first
Speaker 1: define what that culture is and then just how prevalent
Speaker 1: is this in this day and age? Okay, so what
Speaker 1: the culture is, first of all, in this extreme form
Speaker 1: on campuses, but not of course among everybody on campus.
Speaker 1: It's the far left activist and it's especially something that
Speaker 1: we've seen more of in recent years, like in the
Speaker 1: past ten years, even less than that, some of the
Speaker 1: idea is becoming more prevalent. So we talk about things
Speaker 1: like the idea of microaggression and trigger warnings and safe spaces,
Speaker 1: and this has all come to public attention in the
Speaker 1: past few years. And these are manifestations of what we're
Speaker 1: calling victimhood culture. And we call it that in contrast
Speaker 1: with two other kinds of moral cultures that we talk about,
Speaker 1: honor culture and dignity culture. And so those aren't our terms.
Speaker 1: Other sociologists in history have talked about honor cultures and
Speaker 1: contrasted them with dignity cultures that replaced them. But the
Speaker 1: idea would be that so just like you know, you
Speaker 1: might have manifestations of a victim of culture, you have
Speaker 1: particular manifestations of, say like an honor culture. One kind
Speaker 1: of one way of handling conflict in some honor cultures
Speaker 1: is the dual. And this is a particularly kind of
Speaker 1: it's an example that really kind of shows the logic
Speaker 1: of the culture. So you might have in the in
Speaker 1: the American South before the Civil War, or even in
Speaker 1: the in the North earlier on. So you might have
Speaker 1: a high statusman who has been offended by another high
Speaker 1: status man. He slurred his character somehow, and so the
Speaker 1: Alexander Hamilton, well, the Hamilton vir Duals is an example
Speaker 1: of that, right, that's and that was eighteen oh four,
Speaker 1: so that at that time they were these things were
Speaker 1: still happening in the North in the United States. So
Speaker 1: in that case, Burr thinks that Hamilton has been slurring
Speaker 1: his character repeatedly. He's probably right about that, and so
Speaker 1: he finallyallenges them to a duel. When he first, you know,
Speaker 1: asks him to disavowl statements that he's made in that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. When Hamilton won't, it ends up challenging
Speaker 1: him to a duel, and so they then go and
Speaker 1: fire pistols at each other. Hamilton ends up dead and
Speaker 1: so it's something that seems kind of bizarre to modern people.
Speaker 1: I think, like, how was that going to solve anything?
Speaker 1: So you've been offended by somebody, so let's go fire
Speaker 1: guns at each other, and then that I mean, burr
Speaker 1: could have died, nobody could have died. Does how does
Speaker 1: it address the problem. But in an honor culture, it's
Speaker 1: a very one's reputation in the eyes of others is important,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that's especially important is your
Speaker 1: reputation for bravery physical bravery. And so by subjecting yourself
Speaker 1: to demonstrate not only that you're willing to engage in violence,
Speaker 1: but that you're willing to risk death, you demonstrate that
Speaker 1: you belong in that kind of social status right that
Speaker 1: you have, that you have honor, physical bravery, and the
Speaker 1: other things that are associated with it. So this is
Speaker 1: kind of you know, not all honor cultures fight duels,
Speaker 1: but often other kinds of violence. So you might see
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds in Greece there were these knife
Speaker 1: fights where a man who had been slurred maybe another man.
Speaker 1: In one case, a man walks into a bar and
Speaker 1: tells another man that he's a fool and a braggart.
Speaker 1: The man responds, I'd rather be a fool and a
Speaker 1: braggart than the lord of a house full of magdalens
Speaker 1: or prostitutes. So then they draw their knives out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's fighting words, right. So then they draw their
Speaker 1: knives out and one man slashes the other's cheek, and
Speaker 1: it's over. And that's a type of duel as well. Right,
Speaker 1: it's kind of an on the spot act of violence
Speaker 1: agreed upon by both parties. But you have also feuding
Speaker 1: in tribal societies where plans might exchange killings back and forth,
Speaker 1: or even modern game war and honor cultures, the idea
Speaker 1: is that you don't let your self be insulted or
Speaker 1: taken advantage of that, you respond to violence with violence,
Speaker 1: or you protect your life and property. But you also
Speaker 1: might be required to respond to certain kinds of insults
Speaker 1: with violence if you're going to maintain your honor. So
Speaker 1: aggression and response to insult is not only acceptable, but
Speaker 1: it might be necessary to keep your social standing. In
Speaker 1: honor cultures, also, people end up so people end up
Speaker 1: being very touchy, sensitive to slight, so that they are
Speaker 1: quick to perceive insults. They don't want to look like
Speaker 1: a coward. Like they have no honor if they are
Speaker 1: letting things go that are serious insults, and then they
Speaker 1: might also be quick to insult others, like the two
Speaker 1: men in Greece going walking, one man walking in a
Speaker 1: bar and insulting the other. That also kind of demonstrates
Speaker 1: that you're not afraid. And so there are certain characteristics
Speaker 1: in even despite a lot of differences in honor cultures,
Speaker 1: but there is aggression and response to certain kind of insults,
Speaker 1: touchiness or high sensitivity to certain kinds of slight, willingness
Speaker 1: to insult other people in and you know, the idea
Speaker 1: is that you handle conflicts yourself, you don't go to
Speaker 1: the law or the third parties. And the culture that
Speaker 1: replaced honor has been called dignity culture by historic and sociologists.
Speaker 1: And the idea here is that instead of being based
Speaker 1: on a kind of status, which in honor cultures is
Speaker 1: honor or you know, physical bravery, the idea is that
Speaker 1: every human being has this inherent worth or dignity. So
Speaker 1: dignity is the idea everybody has value. And because you
Speaker 1: have this inherent worth as a human being, the idea
Speaker 1: is you don't need to care what others say about you,
Speaker 1: so you might indignity cultures. Parents might tell their children
Speaker 1: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will
Speaker 1: never hurt me. And the idea is it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what the words people say, just ignore them, right, So
Speaker 1: that as you shouldn't be sensitive to slight. Instead be
Speaker 1: thick skinned and don't respond with violence. If somebody is
Speaker 1: violent to you towards you, then you go to law,
Speaker 1: or you go to authorities, but you don't need to
Speaker 1: even handle that yourself. And so you have an opposite
Speaker 1: kind of moral approach along several kinds of dimensions and
Speaker 1: dignity cultures. Don't be sensitive to slight, go to third
Speaker 1: parties if there are serious offenses, Let minor things and
Speaker 1: merely verbal things go. So this is partly because I
Speaker 1: had and Jason Manning, my co author of the new book.
Speaker 1: Both of us had been studying moral conflict a lot
Speaker 1: in violence. The literarely on violence. There's a lot about
Speaker 1: honor and dignity, you know, because honor cultures tend to
Speaker 1: lead to a great deal of violence. What we started
Speaker 1: noticing on college campuses were these situations where students were
Speaker 1: highly sensitive to insult. And so this reminded us of
Speaker 1: honor cultures, you know, initially thinking well, that's not culture
Speaker 1: of dignity. But also they were portraying themselves as victims
Speaker 1: and advertising their weakness and their need for help. They
Speaker 1: were appeeling the third party. So there it was very
Speaker 1: differ different from an honor culture because the idea was,
Speaker 1: you know, in our culture, you want to you're strong
Speaker 1: and you can handle your conflicts. And in this kind
Speaker 1: of new culture that we were seeing emerging, people were
Speaker 1: saying that they were in need of protection. So we
Speaker 1: saw things we were interested in, the idea of microaggression,
Speaker 1: for instance, So this was a term I hadn't heard
Speaker 1: until twenty thirteen. It's been around a while, but almost
Speaker 1: nobody had heard of it before about then or even later.
Speaker 1: But I was paying attention to some stuff that was
Speaker 1: happening at Oberlin College, partly because I had had an
Speaker 1: interest in hate crime hoaxes for a long time. These
Speaker 1: situations where people might fake a hate crime. A lot
Speaker 1: of times it was on a campus, and there was
Speaker 1: usually then a big response to people were quick to
Speaker 1: believe it had happened, and I was and then kind
Speaker 1: of to forget that this was even a thing, that
Speaker 1: there was a hate that it could be hoaxes. The
Speaker 1: next time, what would happen. So this seems sociologically interesting
Speaker 1: to me. For a long time, so I was kind
Speaker 1: of following some stuff at Oberlin. There was some graffiti
Speaker 1: and with offensive things and stuff that looked like it
Speaker 1: might be a hoax. It did later turn off that
Speaker 1: these work. It's not really clear exactly what they were doing,
Speaker 1: but they were liberal students who were trying to get
Speaker 1: a rise out of people or something. But at the
Speaker 1: time there was a big uproar at Oberlin and during
Speaker 1: that time somebody spotted what they thought was a ku
Speaker 1: Klux klansman on campus, and it turned out to be
Speaker 1: a woman wrapped in a towel, I think, But I
Speaker 1: talking to Jason Manning, my co author, who ended up
Speaker 1: meeting my co author on this stuff, we were just
Speaker 1: kind of amazed. Like at Oberlin College, which is known
Speaker 1: as a pretty leftist environment, people thought that there was
Speaker 1: like a chapter of the ku Klux Klan or what
Speaker 1: and they shut down classes and stuff because of this,
Speaker 1: and it turned out not to be true. But during
Speaker 1: this time I was watching all this, we also then
Speaker 1: heard of what was called Oberlin microgre It was a
Speaker 1: website Oberlin Microaggressions, where people would post microaggressions that had
Speaker 1: happened to them. So the idea was that there were
Speaker 1: these microaggressions, little small offenses, verbal slights and things. They
Speaker 1: were called aggressions because they saw them as harmful to them,
Speaker 1: their micro because they're small. But the idea was that
Speaker 1: they add up over time and do damage to people.
Speaker 1: And so students were posting things there, like one student
Speaker 1: overheard a professor at the gym, I think, saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm glad my husband and I both have blue eyes,
Speaker 1: so our child will have blue eyes. And the student said,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw this as offensive and said I
Speaker 1: don't want casual racism in my professors or you know,
Speaker 1: and these were the kinds of complaints people were making,
Speaker 1: and so we were just fascinated by this, thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: what was exactly was going on here that in this
Speaker 1: environment that was not even you know, there was not
Speaker 1: a con conservative kind of environment. This was over in college.
Speaker 1: You would think this is more like an anti racist environment.
Speaker 1: But people first of all thought that there were serious
Speaker 1: acts of racism like klansmen walking around. Second that are
Speaker 1: a serious organized racism and then second that there were
Speaker 1: concerned about these minor offenses. Now it seems sociologically interesting
Speaker 1: to us because it seems very plausible that people are
Speaker 1: concerned more about minor offenses when they are last major ones. Right,
Speaker 1: So in the same environment where people are most concerned
Speaker 1: about racism and see it as bad, they're more likely
Speaker 1: to find smaller acts of racism, and they begin to
Speaker 1: interpret even tinier entire things as acts of racism. And
Speaker 1: so it began to be interested in this. But what
Speaker 1: we saw there is like you have people who are
Speaker 1: sensitive to slight to the extent that they're even pointing
Speaker 1: out and listing microaggressions. So that's like an honor culture.
Speaker 1: It's a different kind of slight, but high sensitively, but
Speaker 1: they're not handling with them with violence. They're complaining about
Speaker 1: them publicly, and as we see, like in a lot
Speaker 1: of other cases, appealing to university administrators to do something
Speaker 1: about it. And so it was combining elements of honor
Speaker 1: and dignity culture diverging from both, and we ended up
Speaker 1: calling it a culture of victimhood, So victimhood culture, and
Speaker 1: because victimhood becomes a kind of moral status in this culture,
Speaker 1: just like honor is a kind of moral status, and
Speaker 1: an honor culture, it's honor or physical bravery, reputation for
Speaker 1: physical bravery that's important. Being seen as a victim accords
Speaker 1: one kind of status. In these victim cultures, you get
Speaker 1: partisan chef people taking your side, and especially in among
Speaker 1: activist circles on college campuses, this being labeled a victim
Speaker 1: was giving status, and for this reason then the opposite
Speaker 1: of victimhood becomes stigmatized, just like cowardice is stigmatized and
Speaker 1: honor culture. Privilege is bad in a victimhood culture, and
Speaker 1: so you know, if you have privileged, then you at
Speaker 1: least need to acknowledge it. Being blind to your privilege
Speaker 1: is very bad. And also it makes sense then the
Speaker 1: victimhood becomes a status that some people will falsely claim
Speaker 1: victimhood as we see what we see in hate crime,
Speaker 1: foxes and other things like this, and they're quick to
Speaker 1: perceive it. We also see this not as even though
Speaker 1: this culture is that it's extreme on college campuses and
Speaker 1: in certain environments, and it's also something that in certain
Speaker 1: ways spreads elsewhere. So you see even you know, certain
Speaker 1: aspects of victimhood being adopted by the right by, even
Speaker 1: by people who oppose the culture. And you know something
Speaker 1: that some psychologists have called competitive victimhood, where in moral arguments,
Speaker 1: people come to us to arguments become who's who's the
Speaker 1: biggest victim? It's the biggest Well, you know that's really
Speaker 1: neat important that you identify this trend and try to
Speaker 1: understand this trend is important as well. If I stand
Speaker 1: back as far as possible and look at this as
Speaker 1: objectively as possible from many different perspectives, I think that
Speaker 1: we probably can. There's another book there that we can
Speaker 1: identify called the anti PC culture. You know, there's another
Speaker 1: culture that's cropping up on the far not even though
Speaker 1: I would just say I would not say the far,
Speaker 1: I would just say the right. You know that is
Speaker 1: very triggered by the victimhood culture. Now, can you tell
Speaker 1: me like what you think healthy activism looks like? Like,
Speaker 1: can we talk about distinguishing real there are real victims, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I know you're talking about a victim hood culture, but
Speaker 1: there are victims. You know, there are people who are rape,
Speaker 1: there are on campuses that does exist to some degree.
Speaker 1: There are people who are lots of things that would
Speaker 1: genuinely classify them as victims, and they wouldn't and they're
Speaker 1: not motivated by the higher status. They didn't ask for it.
Speaker 1: It's not like they asked for it, you know, like
Speaker 1: so that they could have higher status. How can we
Speaker 1: have a nuance view of this where we kind of
Speaker 1: separate various things. I mean, it gets really complex, isn't it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: one thing is that yeah, I mean there are always,
Speaker 1: you know, victims of various kinds. And the response is,
Speaker 1: first of all, kind of you know, the sociological question
Speaker 1: of when do people have different responses, and then sort
Speaker 1: of the moral like what should our responses be? It's
Speaker 1: kind of we're interested in first of all. It's like
Speaker 1: when we talk about even honor and the victimhood would
Speaker 1: be the same thing. It's a matter of degree, the
Speaker 1: extent to which it becomes a kind of status. So
Speaker 1: you know, at the extreme, you know, like what people
Speaker 1: call honor cultures is it isn't because in those cultures
Speaker 1: people value bravery and we don't. Right, It's not like
Speaker 1: in modern society we think, oh, yeah, it's really great
Speaker 1: to be a coward. That view might be more common
Speaker 1: than it is in an honor culture, but bravery is
Speaker 1: still a virtue in other cultures, and the cultures that
Speaker 1: people call honor cultures, brave has as a virtue has
Speaker 1: come to kind of overshadow other virtues. So for example,
Speaker 1: like it would be the worst thing that you could
Speaker 1: do to be considered a coward, so then you have
Speaker 1: to take these great measures to show that you're not,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and so kindness and other kinds
Speaker 1: of things might be compromised on as long at least
Speaker 1: least at least I show I have honor, right And
Speaker 1: it's the same like victimhood as a kind of status
Speaker 1: isn't something that is peculiar necessarily to victimhood cultures either.
Speaker 1: I mean we do see extremes like in honor culture.
Speaker 1: Certainly in some kinds of honor cultures. You know, victimhood
Speaker 1: may be stigmatized. Right, so even like a you know,
Speaker 1: a rape victim, you can see variations of this might
Speaker 1: might be looked down upon for having been a victim.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of more common for victims to be
Speaker 1: accorded at least a kind of status just in the
Speaker 1: sense that people want to help them out. Right, if
Speaker 1: you see somebody as a genuine victim, you want to
Speaker 1: take their side in a conflict against their oppressors, you know,
Speaker 1: so that itself is a kind of status. And again
Speaker 1: what we so we would call victim and culture is
Speaker 1: where that kind of status has kind of overshadowed others,
Speaker 1: where being a victim suddenly, you know, might mean then
Speaker 1: that you can't be criticized or or you know that
Speaker 1: or being considered a victim means that you know, you
Speaker 1: have different speech rights than others or whatever. Right, So
Speaker 1: are there victims there are in terms of how we
Speaker 1: might go about about it, I mean, I think, I mean,
Speaker 1: there have been certainly social movements in the past that
Speaker 1: we're concerned with oppression and victim and helping victims that
Speaker 1: weren't using the logic of what we're calling victimhood culture here.
Speaker 1: The civil rights movement in the United States was you know,
Speaker 1: drawn from dignity culture. I mean, the idea was that,
Speaker 1: certainly Martin Luther King and that kind of element of it,
Speaker 1: the idea was that we all have dignity here, and
Speaker 1: blacks are being treated as if they have dignity, right,
Speaker 1: So it was it wasn't appealing to sort of a
Speaker 1: new set of values. So much as saying that the
Speaker 1: values that are not being consistently applied, and so that meant,
Speaker 1: for example, you know, you know, so it took you
Speaker 1: know the form of trying to you know, not denigrate
Speaker 1: whites and trying to bring about more peace and reconciliation
Speaker 1: and peaceful protests. You know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: elements of that, but it was very much drawn from
Speaker 1: from dignity culture. And again, like it's not as if
Speaker 1: there's some pome moment in the past where this was
Speaker 1: dignity culture and this was good. We're talking and about
Speaker 1: moral ideals that are out there, right, and so there's
Speaker 1: just some extent realized but not completely. And there are
Speaker 1: lots of variations and honor cultures and dignity cultures. But
Speaker 1: what we see with some of the campus movements is
Speaker 1: people really appealing to a different set of value. And
Speaker 1: I think you're right too about the anti PC reaction
Speaker 1: on the right or you know, some some elements of
Speaker 1: the right. This is something we talk about a little
Speaker 1: in the book. You do you talk about conservative Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And we would have talked about it more probably, you know,
Speaker 1: if we were writing it like right now. We started
Speaker 1: this stuff earlier but I mean, so the first article
Speaker 1: was published in twenty fourteen, and I think like some
Speaker 1: of that reaction, as with Trump and the rise of
Speaker 1: the alt right or the prominence of the alt right anyway,
Speaker 1: is more more visible now at least, so there is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when we think of reactions to victimhood culture from
Speaker 1: you know, the right, but could be from other elements
Speaker 1: to there are there's. First of all, there is kind
Speaker 1: of the clash between dignity culture and victimhood culture that
Speaker 1: we talk about, so that's the main clash. But then
Speaker 1: there are reactions to victimhood culture that are also departing
Speaker 1: from dignity culture in their own ways. And there are
Speaker 1: two of those. Really. One is simply to embrace a
Speaker 1: kind of victimhood yourself. They can overlap too, but one
Speaker 1: is to embrace a kind of victimhood yourself, to say, no,
Speaker 1: we're the real victims here, and it's a kind of
Speaker 1: conservative victimhood. And then another is to reject to sort
Speaker 1: of just kind of to almost be offensive, embrace offensiveness.
Speaker 1: So if the PC crowd or the campus activists are
Speaker 1: sensitive about things and things you say, we'll just go
Speaker 1: ahead and say people talk about triggering the liberals and
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff, like deliberately, and I think that's
Speaker 1: something I mean, certainly, the alt right is not a
Speaker 1: movement that is drawn from dignity culture. It's another kind
Speaker 1: of react where you're seeing, you know, it's not about
Speaker 1: the dignity of all human beings, it's about you know,
Speaker 1: whites or men or something. And I think, like you know,
Speaker 1: you said, it's not just like the far right, but
Speaker 1: just kind of the right, and I think that's true
Speaker 1: to some extent. In the last election, you saw some
Speaker 1: of that reaction to PC culture. So you would have
Speaker 1: even during the Republican primaries, Donald Trump would say something
Speaker 1: offensive or somebody would bring up something offensive that he
Speaker 1: had said in the past, and his response would be, oh,
Speaker 1: there's too much political correctness out there, and it seemed
Speaker 1: to get a kind of traction where people would then
Speaker 1: sort of ignore the statement. And it's almost you'll sometimes
Speaker 1: see defenders of some of the campus victimhood culture. I
Speaker 1: tend to not use the term political correctness because it
Speaker 1: gets confusing about what it is, but you'll see people saying, well,
Speaker 1: a political correctness is just people being polite, right, And
Speaker 1: you know, we've seen on campus. It's not just that,
Speaker 1: but it's almost as if in this reaction, it's almost like, well,
Speaker 1: anything you say is offensive can now be called oh
Speaker 1: if you're just being too sensitive and politically correct if
Speaker 1: somebody argues with it. So you get this kind of
Speaker 1: an if. It's a kind of polarization on each side
Speaker 1: where you know it was previously bad to be offensive
Speaker 1: and also but also you know, considered you know, not
Speaker 1: considered too dignified to take offense constantly at very small
Speaker 1: things or unintentional things. And then you get on one
Speaker 1: side now obsession with unintentionally even unintentional slights harming people.
Speaker 1: Speech some kinds of speech is violets. And then on
Speaker 1: the other side, at least some elements of it, you
Speaker 1: get this idea, well, we can say whatever we want
Speaker 1: it and be offensive as possible, and you're just being
Speaker 1: too sensitive if you object. So those kinds of real
Speaker 1: I mean, I find them, thinking morally about it, I
Speaker 1: find both of those reactions to victimhood culture that also
Speaker 1: depart from dignity culture as a problem. Either to embrace
Speaker 1: in a new kind of victimhood or to embrace offensiveness
Speaker 1: to itself, or to combine that in some way, which
Speaker 1: I think you also see, and I think like it's
Speaker 1: not helpful, and neither side is going to you know,
Speaker 1: by pursuing that kind of strategy of rejecting dignity is
Speaker 1: going to bring about more peaceful social relations, which I
Speaker 1: think what you your and' but I don't think that's
Speaker 1: their goal. So, you know, I think about this from
Speaker 1: a psychological perspective, and it just like screams at me,
Speaker 1: like what's going on? Like, you know, there is a
Speaker 1: fundamental need for self esteem that humans have. We have
Speaker 1: lots of other needs, right, but that's one need. And
Speaker 1: it just seems like people are in there different echo
Speaker 1: chambers and there are differences in terms of what actions
Speaker 1: will give them the most status within their own echo chambers. Now,
Speaker 1: the ANTIPC culture, you get a lot of status if
Speaker 1: you go on Twitter and you make fun of a
Speaker 1: liberal or you or you fight a liberal or you
Speaker 1: fight well not not any liberal, but the particular you know,
Speaker 1: the victimhood the liberal that you're talking about, and then
Speaker 1: the other side right that you get their own status,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of stuff you're talking about from
Speaker 1: being for saying like, you know, I was hurt in
Speaker 1: some way I'm a victim, but it just seems like
Speaker 1: a humans capable of more than either of those options,
Speaker 1: Like aren't humans capable of like not being so concerned
Speaker 1: with their own self esteem? And the thing is, you know,
Speaker 1: the people those who I personally find that those who
Speaker 1: are the most thoughtful about these conversations are those who
Speaker 1: are not on Twitter. It depends on where you're at, too,
Speaker 1: so I mean when you're you know, we write mostly
Speaker 1: about college campuses and there it's the it's the victor
Speaker 1: Well that's kind of changed a little too, but it's
Speaker 1: certainly the victimhood culture that it's not that it's dominant,
Speaker 1: but it's what university administrators will give into, right, It's
Speaker 1: not yea, you know, they're not giving into and following
Speaker 1: the complaints of the conservative crowd. I mean, they're not
Speaker 1: the milo anopolisis and stuff. I mean sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: they protect free speech rights, but they're implementing the agenda
Speaker 1: of the activists in a lot of ways. Microaggression training programs,
Speaker 1: being able to list you know, microaggressions on student evaluations
Speaker 1: and investigating professors over it. I mean that's kind of
Speaker 1: just well, right, Jonathan Height would say, they're enabling psychopathology, right,
Speaker 1: and that that's an issue too, is like are they
Speaker 1: help even helping the people that you're purporting to help.
Speaker 1: That's another issue. You know, Lukiana and Height argue that
Speaker 1: they're not, that they're creating depression and anxiety and these
Speaker 1: kinds of things. So you know, there's a good argument
Speaker 1: that it's actually not even helping the students that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to be helping. It's based on no kind of
Speaker 1: actual evidence, like that microaggressions are causing these problems. You
Speaker 1: know that it's almost amazing. You've seen this with implicit
Speaker 1: bias too, like with other kinds of things that there's
Speaker 1: very little, there's no no kind of evidence for, but
Speaker 1: are being implemented on campuses, in training programs and other
Speaker 1: other kinds of things. And that's and so that's a problem.
Speaker 1: It's not and that's because campuses are you know, people
Speaker 1: are on the left, liberals or leftists. So I think,
Speaker 1: like you know, from ten one of campuses, you know,
Speaker 1: I think what people always say is, well, what about
Speaker 1: the right and the broader culture and especially how if
Speaker 1: Trump is president and stuff, And that's all true, but
Speaker 1: that's not what I mean, those people aren't dominant on
Speaker 1: dominant on the campuses, and aren't the ones who are
Speaker 1: threatening free speech on campus and who are are really
Speaker 1: kind of undermining the purpose of the university. I do
Speaker 1: think that. I mean, it's true that some of the
Speaker 1: like the conservative clubs and stuff, who bring in somebody
Speaker 1: that they were bringing in Miley Annopolis. I don't guess
Speaker 1: he's not three more, but especially him, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of bringing in people who are deliberately to
Speaker 1: be offensive. But again that's I would prefer they didn't
Speaker 1: do that. But those are groups of people who are
Speaker 1: powerless on campus and constantly denigrated. And it's unfortunate that
Speaker 1: you're you're seeing that kind of polarization because what's getting
Speaker 1: lost is really the the ideals of dignity that we
Speaker 1: talked about right to actually kind of, you know, instead
Speaker 1: of just just responding to you know, the victim culture
Speaker 1: with more victimhood or or with offensiveness, to try to,
Speaker 1: you know, to embrace these ideals of our common humanity
Speaker 1: and giving each other the benefit of the doubt. You
Speaker 1: can always take offense at that people's words and things,
Speaker 1: and everybody kind of can experience lights and stuff, and
Speaker 1: that's why we kind of know to get along with others.
Speaker 1: One thing we do is we drop a lot of
Speaker 1: things and we you know, you don't pay attention to it.
Speaker 1: So it's a recipe really, I mean, it just kind
Speaker 1: of constant conflict to encourage people to look for offenses.
Speaker 1: And that's what's happening, you know, on both sides to
Speaker 1: some extent. Yeah, Maso says something like Abraham maslw the psychologist,
Speaker 1: is something like when all you have is a hammer,
Speaker 1: all you everything looks like a nail. So you know,
Speaker 1: if we're only you know, looking through the lens of victimhood,
Speaker 1: then we do miss out on goodness and others. Right now,
Speaker 1: this nity culture, the word dignity, well why I call
Speaker 1: it like love culture. Like when you describe dignity culture
Speaker 1: meals like that sounds good. I'm down with. I think
Speaker 1: we need more of this kind of dignity culture in
Speaker 1: our society. And you know, I joined the Heterodox Academy
Speaker 1: that Jonatha and Height runs. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've heard of it and their mission, but something that
Speaker 1: you might actually be interested in joining it. But I
Speaker 1: joined it because you know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: very thoughtful individuals who are making very valid, rational arguments
Speaker 1: why campus speech is being You know, there are real
Speaker 1: issues that do you point out in your book, and
Speaker 1: there are real issues that people in the heterox Academy
Speaker 1: point out that I agree with. You know, that we
Speaker 1: can't be hypocritical. We need if we want to have
Speaker 1: a dignity culture, we need to have to a culture
Speaker 1: for everyone. So that is a good point, and conservatives
Speaker 1: make that point, and I agree with their point when
Speaker 1: they make that, But it does seem like there is
Speaker 1: value in separating, you know, like I keep going back
Speaker 1: to this, but like healthy activism versus psychopathological activism, but
Speaker 1: kind of activism that is, you know, motivation seem to
Speaker 1: be really important here. I study a trait called vulnerable narcissism,
Speaker 1: and I've been publishing papers on vulnerable narcissism. It's a
Speaker 1: form of narcissism where you feel entitled to attention from
Speaker 1: others because of some vulnerability that you have. But it
Speaker 1: is correlated. You know, we have this paper coming out
Speaker 1: soon on the psychopathology of vulnerable narcissism and it is
Speaker 1: core with the lots of you know, reduced well being
Speaker 1: in life, greater depression, greater anxiety, etc. Etc. This is
Speaker 1: not good for those individuals that score high on that,
Speaker 1: and usually that trait develops as a result of real
Speaker 1: childhood trauma, you know, its something that does develop as
Speaker 1: a rational response to protection, you know, for defenses, defenses,
Speaker 1: defense mechanisms. But bringing that into the equation, it seems
Speaker 1: like there is importance in contrasting vulnerable narcissism characteristics from
Speaker 1: genuine compassion, genuine people who are motivated. There are activists
Speaker 1: who are motivated for growth oriented reasons. They want to
Speaker 1: make the world a better place, not only their group
Speaker 1: or their own people like them. So do you agree
Speaker 1: with that distinction? Yeah, I think I think it's important
Speaker 1: to distinguish healthy activism from these other kinds, and that
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense about vulnerable narcisism and stuff.
Speaker 1: I do think. Well, something you said too is I
Speaker 1: think is relevant. Like that we're talking about, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that when you have a hammer, all you
Speaker 1: see is nails. Yeah, this is part of the problem
Speaker 1: is that there's a victimhood culture is a kind of
Speaker 1: morality that looks at things almost solely in terms of
Speaker 1: oppression and victimhood, and so that's why it's power, and
Speaker 1: that's something that exists, right, but it's not all that exists,
Speaker 1: and it's not the whole of morality. And I think
Speaker 1: we've talked about something, you know, just I mean, that's
Speaker 1: not that necessarily that good of a term for it,
Speaker 1: but we think we're thinking of it as moral emaciation
Speaker 1: where you end up kind of losing. So you know,
Speaker 1: there might be all kinds of other virtues and vices
Speaker 1: right for you think and you come to define everything
Speaker 1: in terms of oppression victimhood. I think some of the
Speaker 1: activists have almost lost any kind of moral language that
Speaker 1: doesn't involve that. So for them, you know, when when
Speaker 1: you say, when you try to bring up these other issues,
Speaker 1: it's kind of makes no sense if you're like, well, no,
Speaker 1: but aren't these the good people and these the bad people?
Speaker 1: Are these are the victims and oppressors or you know,
Speaker 1: even free speech and stuff, and you even see it.
Speaker 1: I think you see it with other other things too,
Speaker 1: like you know, if if something is, if something on
Speaker 1: campus is you know, I just thinking like one of
Speaker 1: the uproars was over, like I want to think I
Speaker 1: remember which collegist was at but there was a statue
Speaker 1: of like a man in his underwear and this was
Speaker 1: and they end up you know, protesting it and taking
Speaker 1: it down because they were people were saying they were triggered.
Speaker 1: It looked, you know, looks like a rapist. Would seem
Speaker 1: to a lot of outsiders as a kind of silly response.
Speaker 1: But when I was thinking, when I was watching it, well,
Speaker 1: the statue is like really tacky. I wouldn't want it
Speaker 1: on my campus either, you know, but I can imagine
Speaker 1: seeing like, you know, we're the statue or a man
Speaker 1: in his underwear. I mean, it's but they couldn't just
Speaker 1: say that, right, like, no, get this crap out of here.
Speaker 1: It had to be if it's something we don't like,
Speaker 1: it must be oppression, right. And I think like some
Speaker 1: of the stuff in the Me too movements, who I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm in general for it. I mean something
Speaker 1: like Harvey Weinstein is somebody who's actually like universally agreed
Speaker 1: as nasshole, yeah right, and doing like you know, groping
Speaker 1: and raping and these kinds of things. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of that kind of behavior that you know, for
Speaker 1: a long time then have gotten away with it and
Speaker 1: some off for that, But then it does seem like
Speaker 1: that with some some of the behavior. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a big variation in what people have objected to, but
Speaker 1: you see things like that. You know, there was as
Speaker 1: easy and sorry who got article about him, but you
Speaker 1: know with a woman complaining that you know, she had
Speaker 1: been on a date with him, she went back to
Speaker 1: his apartment and he was, you know, pursuing sex with her,
Speaker 1: and you know them not happy, and there were second
Speaker 1: I mean, if you read the thing, you could see, well,
Speaker 1: well okay, I can see why she doesn't like him,
Speaker 1: right or like he was he had this agenda he uh,
Speaker 1: I mean I think like the older moral language would
Speaker 1: be to call him like you know, a cat or something,
Speaker 1: you know, like somebody but who even the disapprove of
Speaker 1: his behavior and saying well I don't want to go it,
Speaker 1: you know, get out here, I don't want to go
Speaker 1: on a date with your your your lecture or whatever.
Speaker 1: But it was of course again that he was uh
Speaker 1: you know, sexually assaulted. Is that I think was used
Speaker 1: in and uh so it's again kind of looked at
Speaker 1: it as a kind of oppression. So I think some
Speaker 1: of that is like losing the moral language to disapprove
Speaker 1: of something if it's not active oppression, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: an oppression is is like a severe offense. So that's
Speaker 1: you know that that's a problem too. I think with
Speaker 1: the activist it's not that there is insincere some I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: if somebody is lying about something that occurred, like you
Speaker 1: know in the hate crime hopes, is those people are
Speaker 1: insincere in trying to come status. But most of these
Speaker 1: people are perfectly sincere. This is the way they think
Speaker 1: the world works. That this is you know, they think
Speaker 1: that people are being constantly oppressed through microaggressions and uh
Speaker 1: and these other kinds of things, and they're perfectly sincere
Speaker 1: about it. And I think like, and there may be
Speaker 1: and once these terms catch on, I can see other
Speaker 1: people adopting them and take maybe not trying to you know,
Speaker 1: be as extreme about them or something. But the ideas
Speaker 1: themselves are a problem. I think, like if you and
Speaker 1: uh so, I think I can help the activism has
Speaker 1: to reject this kind of victimhood ideology to some extent too,
Speaker 1: or it's going to create those kinds of problems with
Speaker 1: depression and conflict and anxiety and those kinds of things. Also,
Speaker 1: I am a member of Heterodox Academy also, and that's
Speaker 1: an organization that is, you know, a good influence and
Speaker 1: campuses to the extent that it's I mean, has any effect.
Speaker 1: I think in particular, Jonathan Height, who's kind of instrumental
Speaker 1: in starting it, has been talking about this since twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen as well with the cobbling of the American Mind article,
Speaker 1: and so I think their work is important to Lukiana
Speaker 1: and Height. They have a book coming out and they'll
Speaker 1: be on my podcast as well, John and I think
Speaker 1: they approach someone from a different angle, and I think
Speaker 1: their book is broader than the campus stuff, but the
Speaker 1: approach is kind of the you know, what are the
Speaker 1: psychological effects of this and looking at how it leads
Speaker 1: to depression. I think sociologically though, we would see it
Speaker 1: like going back to like moral conflict, that if you're
Speaker 1: thinking about what kinds of environments are conducive to peace
Speaker 1: and peaceful relations and not just lack of violence, but
Speaker 1: actual harmony, and what kinds are not since activity to
Speaker 1: slight they same time you see in honor cultures or
Speaker 1: something there's high sensitivity and complaints to third parties. For
Speaker 1: minor offenses is not something you know that can can
Speaker 1: ever lead to harmony, right, there's no stopping it, right.
Speaker 1: I mean I've had a lot of people say, well,
Speaker 1: I've talked to a lot of people and they'll say, well,
Speaker 1: why isn't this a problem? They'll give examples that I understand.
Speaker 1: You know, they'll talk about, well, you know, things that
Speaker 1: might be considered microgram And again, just because some of
Speaker 1: these things happen and are offensive, doesn't mean that the
Speaker 1: concept of microgression is a good one, right, Like it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean I would defend everything somebody says that, you know,
Speaker 1: if somebody if make slight someone's ethnicity or or these
Speaker 1: kinds of things. I mean, some of the examples that
Speaker 1: are given of microgression seem to be very I mean,
Speaker 1: like the idea that asking someone where there's where're from microgression.
Speaker 1: You know, it's sort of normal conversation. But if somebody
Speaker 1: does say well, I'm from North Dakota and you say, no,
Speaker 1: where you really from because the person is Asian or something,
Speaker 1: I mean that still maybe it depends on who you're
Speaker 1: talking to. I think that's I wonder too, like a
Speaker 1: lot of these things, is this your is this your boss,
Speaker 1: or is this like the cashier or something? Right like,
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know that there there needs to be
Speaker 1: a certain level of generosity, but some of those things
Speaker 1: are are certainly offensive. That doesn't mean it's a microaggression
Speaker 1: in the sense that is used. It doesn't mean microaggression
Speaker 1: is a good concept. It doesn't mean that it actually
Speaker 1: has to harm you to have hurt it. But it's
Speaker 1: perfectly fine if you just want to say, yeah, it
Speaker 1: would be nice to teach people, you know, to avoid
Speaker 1: certain things that commonly offend people, right like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you know that you know, minorities take offense when
Speaker 1: you think of them as somebody who doesn't belong here,
Speaker 1: right because you're saying, no, where are you really from?
Speaker 1: Or something that don't make sense. But to do it,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than just simply talking about what people
Speaker 1: should say or how they can talk about better, but
Speaker 1: actually stigmatizing it and calling it a kind of violence
Speaker 1: and aggression and encouraging then people to notice it and
Speaker 1: take offense at it and not to let it go
Speaker 1: when it occurs. That's something that seems to be a
Speaker 1: recipe for never ending conflict. It's not like you would
Speaker 1: ever get to a point where the microaggressions would stop, right,
Speaker 1: because anything can be interpreted as a microaggression if you're
Speaker 1: encouraging people to do that, So there's no way it
Speaker 1: could ever have any success. If success is meant to
Speaker 1: like produce like racial harmony or something, it can only
Speaker 1: lead to either constant conflict or a situation where people
Speaker 1: stop interacting because there there's too much offense, you know,
Speaker 1: too much taking offense and people are prayed. And I think,
Speaker 1: because I think you mentioned earlier, it may not be
Speaker 1: their goal to have harmony. Certainly not the extreme activist
Speaker 1: seem to thrive on the conflict. Do you think there
Speaker 1: should be more forgiveness in the world for our common
Speaker 1: imperfections as being human. Yeah, I think there should be
Speaker 1: more forgiveness in the world in general. But I don't
Speaker 1: even think forgiveness is something that can be extremely difficult
Speaker 1: if it's severe offenses. I don't even see how forgiveness
Speaker 1: is even hard when you're talking about unintentional words, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think like people constantly say things. I
Speaker 1: mean I wonder sometimes like how much interaction people have
Speaker 1: been with There are always people saying like things that
Speaker 1: are are you know, tacky or inappropriate or rude me.
Speaker 1: You can go example ectrics. Anybody could pile examples of this,
Speaker 1: and usually we let it go because we know that
Speaker 1: we are we are for one thing, we say things
Speaker 1: that are you know, we don't always say the right
Speaker 1: thing for another thing. I think this is interesting too,
Speaker 1: is that if you're quick to take offence because somebody
Speaker 1: has said something that is socially inappropriate, you're really making
Speaker 1: it difficult for people who you know, any kind of neurodiversity,
Speaker 1: people who don't pick up on social cues as well, right,
Speaker 1: or people from different cultures you know, who also might
Speaker 1: not pick up on all the cues and know exactly
Speaker 1: what's offensive. So you have to have people you know
Speaker 1: coming in from other countries. So if you have diversity,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a lot of like awkwardness in
Speaker 1: uh in conversations and stuff, and without without a kind
Speaker 1: of like charity or or forgiveness where you're where, where
Speaker 1: you're letting most things go and trying to be understanding
Speaker 1: of what people are trying to say, what you know,
Speaker 1: rather than taking offense without Without that, you're not going
Speaker 1: to have, you know, any kind of harmony Bradley, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for chatting with me today. You raised
Speaker 1: a lot of really thought provoking and important points and
Speaker 1: thanks for the work you're doing. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: This was good conversation. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
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