I’ve always been someone who forcefully pursued free speech. So disagreements whilst teaching – over trans-gender indoctrination – didn’t scare me, however annoying and exhausting they were. I’m not claiming to be brave; I didn’t feel unnerved by the disputes and cold-shouldering. Depressed, occasionally – which is another reason the Free Speech Union is so important: to give isolated free-speech advocates a sense of companionship.
What does scare me is the realisation this isn’t enough. Free speech is vital, but it’s not sufficient to win the social, political and intellectual conflict now raging. The outcome of this conflict will decide whether Britain remains a mainly peaceful place – where the ideal of debate and democracy is the accepted way for dealing with disagreement – or if we’ll get political violence and civil war.
No doubt many will find that a daft piece of hyperbole. I’ll try to explain the reasoning behind my fear.
It’s hardly original, to say that the most terrifying aspect of trans-gender ideology is what should have prevented it achieving anything: a rejection of objective reality, replaced by personal ‘truths’ (by definition relative) and self-validation. Self-worship has triumphed – at least for the moment – over the building blocks of our culture and society: religion; philosophy; political plurality; artistic expression; science.
We need to understand how a ‘be kind’ quasi-religion has become the unchallengeable ideological power of today, running our institutions and public life. We especially need to grasp that it took hold through rule by a ‘progressive’ elite, evangelically committed to enlightening a fictional population of uneducated peasants and right-wing hate preachers. This delusional self-flattery fits perfectly into the fake but beguiling intellectual background behind wokedom.
The key thing is to look closely and distinctly, at those originating, promoting and following this ideology – especially the first. Their previously obscure academic nonsense has now spawned confusion and suffering.
The originators comprise an unimpressive yet relentless group, located in university humanities and social ‘science’ departments. These were greatly empowered by their vast expansion under Tony Blair, with the opportunity to brainwash almost limitless students. Their forerunners are the sociologists and philosophers in the Frankfurt School who invented and promoted ‘critical theory’. This is often abbreviated to ‘theory’, as if it offered some universal explanation of everything – something its disciples claim to believe.
As a piece of creative thinking applied to literature and the discussion of artistic interpretations, critical theory can be interesting and mainly harmless. No objective truths are involved, since any literary text can and should offer a multitude of meanings.
The problems arise when semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism – and especially the meaningless ‘deconstruction’ – claim that objective scientific truths don’t exist, outside the language we use for them – even suggesting that reality is created by language. Everything becomes relative. This absurd idea is behind the mess we’re in, since it makes language the unarguable reality. A perfect position for envious non-science academics, suffering from fears of inferiority and irrelevance.
At a stroke, this grants semantics unlimited authority. That’s why ‘progressives’ are obsessive in controlling language and demanding conformity to their rules for its use. It’s how they’ve grabbed and maintained power. Just look at the scores of genders conjured out of thin air – an obvious absurdity, yet one which sees our cities and public buildings bedecked in worshipful rainbow flags.
In essence, ‘theory’ is incoherent nonsense, proclaiming the non-existence of all truths except its own – especially scientific ones. In doing so, it’s in fact telling us to ignore what it says. Unfortunately it hasn’t been ignored and the reason is obvious: it’s promoted by shameless conmen, with enough people fooled, making it impossible for them to admit this has happened. It’s a cult, akin to Scientology or the Reverend Jim Jones’ ‘People’s Temple’; ever vigilant and ever needful of heretics for its survival and promotion.
Time and again this pattern recurs in human history, from business to religion to politics to academia. If sufficient numbers are involved – as perpetrators or dupes – then the incentive gap is too large for wide-scale disavowal. There are too many people with too much to lose. They dominate our universities (including Oxbridge), our media, our politics, our civil service, our intelligentsia, our arts, our public sector, and our top industries and businesses. In short, all our public life.
The situation is equivalent to the Soviet Union and its block; just look how long that lasted and the horrors perpetrated! There are increasing numbers of dissidents against wokedom, but vastly outweighed by those who see nothing to gain from challenging this orthodoxy. Aside from those with an unshakable belief in objective truth, many don’t have much to gain. The point is that belief in objective truth is essential in our society.
The most dangerous aspect has been how many ‘top academics’ are quiescent, if not active in promoting this ideology, even amongst scientists. Very few – if any – believe in it, at least not when they speak privately. But the rewards for collaborating are huge.
Now to the second group. The promoters of this rubbish in our wider society are the managerialists, uncritically applying the ‘ideas’ of the first group. Managerialists have no beliefs, no values of their own; they just want to manage. It’s an activity which they see as an end in itself, even though today it largely involves the pretence of working. They’re happy under all ideologies, especially those which crush independent thought. They find individuality baffling and dangerous. The same sort of people were happy as 19th-century colonial administrators, although they then had real work to occupy them.
Because the fact is, many ‘managers’ today have virtually nothing to do, especially in the top-heavy public sector. The woke ideology – likewise based on nothing – is an absolute gift, to fill their time in an ever-expanding way.
The final group are the followers. This is where real hope lies. Virtually no one believes in or follows woke ideology, other than under painful duress. It’s a stunningly horrible and annoying system, and there are many signs that the young are openly rebelling against it. They do have a strong sense of what’s objectively true and detest those who deny it – at least, until indoctrinated in our schools.
Fighting that indoctrination is what’s needed. It requires free speech but also an understanding of how we got here, with a robust defence of the Enlightenment values of objective truth and empirical reasoning. We need teachers – new and different ones – to do this.
The alternative is too horrible to imagine. If objective reality continues to be rejected in favour of conflicting ‘personal truths’, our society won’t survive.
Paul Sutton can be found on Substack. His new book on woke issues The Poetry of Gin and Tea is out now.
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I don’t think things are quite as simple as Mr Sutton suggests. He distinguishes between “objective scientific truths” (which are simply true) and “personal ‘truths’” (which don’t necessarily have much to do with truth all); and he does so, moreover, as if all utterances must go in either one category or the other. (Objective or subjective?) But, in that case, into which of his two categories does his own distinction go?
When he says “belief in objective truth is essential in our society” is he stating something that is objectively and scientifically true or is it his personal truth only? He can hardly claim it belongs within science (which branch, chemistry? biology? physics?); so does that mean it is merely his personal truth? And therefore nothing the rest of us need be interested in? And if that is so, why does he publish it? This is a conundrum for which I think he owes his readers an answer.
I used the term ‘personal truth’ as it’s the commonly used one, for the Woke-types – as in ‘these are my truths’. In fact, those are only personal opinions.
But I set up no such binary with scientific truths – since there are a host of other truths, which I’d not claim are personal, yet aren’t scientific. I’m referencing your ‘he does so, moreover, as if all utterances must go in either one category or the other. (Objective or subjective?)’
For example, mathematical ones, and also the underlying Kantian ones of space and time. I don’t want to get into the whole a priori/a posteriori and synthetic/analytic stuff – but I’m familiar with it. Mathematical truths – for example, the existence of an infininite number of primes – aren’t scientific, nor are they subjective.
The statement ‘belief in scientific truth is essential in our society’ is my opinion. Again, you seem to think I’m saying nothing but scientific truths are worthy. Nope. But I say that scientific truths aren’t just linguistic – and that belief in them is essential.
And most of us live that way too – go up 30,000 feet in a jet-plane and you’ll be believing the laws of aerodynamics are essential. Get treatment vi some complex drug, and you’ll believe the same about biochemistry, immunology, whatever.
But saying this doesn’t mean anything I say should be met with ‘Aha – is that a scientific truth? If not, belt up’. Well, you can say that – but it’s not quite the smart comment you presumably think it is.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
And reading through your comment again, I should have also refuted another aspect of your statement ‘He distinguishes between “objective scientific truths” (which are simply true) and personal truths….’
Scientific truths aren’t ‘simply true’. They’re true by observation – and the Popper stuff on falsification of theories. And those truths can become untruths – for example, time as an absolute, or energy as continually variable. Or the existence of phlogiston. I’d in fact use the word ‘assumptions not yet disproved’. But the danger with that is it is too easy (for some) to elide with ‘opinions’.
But the idea that I’m dividing truths into personal or scientific isn’t anywhere in my article. Another category is moral truth – not an area I know anything on.
Also, I’m nowhere suggesting that opinions aren’t important, We’d hardly be having a discussion, if I did – nor would I write opinion pieces. My opinion, that belief in objective reality is essential, isn’t given as some universal truth. And I don’t anywhere say ‘just ignore opinions’.
But we all live as if there’s an objective reality – and it’s unclear how we could do otherwise. Just as Wittgenstein observed about the squirrel gathering nuts, for the winter. Does it do so because it thinks it can ignore/has answered Hume’s fork? Nope – it’s just life.
I’d refer back to the totalising of a Critical Theory statement that no truths exist, outside of language. Even ignoring science, I can quickly prove to you that there are an infinite number of primes. That’s a truth – and universal.
You may not say, explicitly, that only scientific truths are worthy but I think you do imply it. You plainly associate the “objective” with what you think worthy and you equally plainly associate the “objective” with science. And then of the non-scientific truths you instance as worthy, one is mathematics, which is so an integral part of scientific culture that science is hardly conceivable without it; and the other is “the underlying Kantian ones of space and time”. Now, here, it isn’t clear (not to me at least) what you are mean. If you mean that our modern understanding of space and time is non-scientific, that, surely, isn’t true–and, in that case, all that you are left with as capable of being true (or worthy) is science. And then you do consign your own observations to the mere “personal truths” category (now renamed “opinions”).
On the other hand, you may mean that it is Kant’s philosophy that is capable of being true (or not) and hence worthy (or not). But then, in that case, philosophy being part of a much larger culture of ‘letters’ that includes “literature”., why, are any destructive effects there of “theory” merely “interesting and mainly harmless”? How can that be so unless ‘letters’, where “no objective truths are involved”, matter less, are less capable of being true, are less worthy than the “objective truths” of science? And then, again, you consign your own observations to “personal truths”, re-named “opinions”.
The conundrum seems to me still there before you. If your own opinions don’t belong in science, how can they be, according to your own understanding, anything but merely “personal”?
My article is about the absurdities of Critical ‘Theory’. How it claims that there are no absolute truths, in a absolute statement that is self-abnegating. If you are able to deduce from that how I only think scientific truths are worthy, then you’re wrong. I studied Chemistry then did a DPhil in physical chemistry/laser physics, both at Oxford. But I’m far from prioritising science as somehow more important in our understanding.
Alarmingly, It doesn’t seem you’ve read any Kant. My reference is to his famous a priori/synthetic truths, of which our perception being inevitably spatial and temporal is the easiest to grasp. I’m not talking of space/time in some scientific (Einstein) sense.
You also don’t understand the distinction between mathematical and scientific truths. Mathematics is a priori. Science is a posteriori – though in its most abstract aspects, the two can be hard to separate.
Have you read any philosophy? Or, indeed, done any science? Your posts seem to suggest not.
The effects of Critical ‘Theory’ on literature are harmless, whereas positing that science isn’t objectively true is not. For example, if someone disagrees about a literary text, it isn’t equivalent to denying the biological reality of XX/XY sexual identity. The latter has caused significant suffering and abuse – the background to my writing the article.
My article is not merely my observations. Are you saying that the entire corpus of scientific knowledge (and its manifestations in our lives) are just my opinions? Where did the IT come from, on which we’re communicating?
As a counterpoint, where can one find the equivalent examples of what Critical ‘Theory’ has achieved – other than its disastrous effects in our universities and – disgracefully – our schools?
You’ve grabbed on how my opinion piece (in this case an article based on my opinions on the deleterious effects of ‘Theory’) isn’t scientific. I never claimed it was. As explained, I don’t think only science is worthy of discussion. If you DO, then how are your posts scientific?
So, I’ve given my answers. Are you interested in providing any? Specifically, on the shortcomings of Critical Theory and the denial of scientific reality, in the gender-theory debate. And on the other points I’ve made..
If not, then there’s no discussion occurring.
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Let’s begin again, and forget about Popper, Wittgenstein, Hume, Kant, your knowledge of chemistry and mathematics and my ignorance of Kant and other things. (Though, incidentally, I did several decades ago read the whole of the Critique of Pure Reason and remember thinking I had understood it. Of course, what I understood, I can’t remember.)
I believe I am no more an enemy of the laws of aerodynamics or friend to critical theory than you are yourself. I haven’t ever written anything in favour of the former but I wrote my first essay against a variety of the latter more than fifty years ago and have watched the destructive effects ‘theory’ has had on the study of literature in universities ever since. It hasn’t so much destroyed the humane study of literature there as replaced it. It is as if astrology had replaced astronomy. You may think that harmless, I can’t.
Where we differ is over your original contrast (which, as far as I can see, you maintain) between “objective truth” (true for everyone) and “personal truths” (‘true’ just for those for whom they are). the former not needing scare quotes, the later demanding them.
But this contrast seems to me a mental trap, automatically relegating to the ‘subjective’ everything that falls outside the ‘objective’ (typically the sciences, mathematics, logic) and doing so willy nilly, regardless of any deliberate intention to relegate them there. So all literature, philosophy and exchanges of opinion such as our own – none of them being ‘objective’ – are relegated there. And once seen to be so, they lose any authority they might have been thought to have. Someone who claims, for instance, that Shakespeare is the greatest writer in English isn’t saying something that is true or false; he’s saying something that is merely ‘true’ for him; he’s being autobiographical. And we find ourselves in the queer self-contradiction that whereas the findings of science are objectively true, the sentence in which we say so isn’t.
What follows I think, is that we drop the objective/subjective opposition when we are trying to think about truth, that we get out of the trap.
I forgot to say, by the way–not that this is something I think that we would disagree over–that by calling what they have to say a ‘theory’ our common enemy hopes to install it on the ‘objectively true’ side of that opposition.
As I’ve repeatedly stated, I neither agree with, nor posited, your binary. The terms ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ were used to contrast the personal ‘truths’ of say identity politics with the objective truth of say the second law of thermodynamics. How many times have I said I think there are other truths? I’d say moral and aesthetic ones, for starters. Possibly religious ones too.
Maybe because you don’t understand the more complicated language, you overcomplicate the meaning of the words objective and subjective.
You then labour the same point: Is my writing objectively true or not? It’s a point-scoring exercise, and a wearying on. There’s a vast amount of philosophy on the trap of solipsism – the idea that anything I say is inherently subjective. I’d also reference Wittgenstein’s arguments on the impossibility of a private language.
You say not to bring my knowledge in, then make points that have been well-addressed by many philosophers. I’m not inclined to try and redo the thoughts of far greater minds than mine, all the way from Socrates. This isn’t some ‘ab initio’ discussion. Nor do I believe you reject the existence of objective truth. It just seems you want to say ‘But saying science is objective is a sentence which I can be clever about – is that statement subjective or objective?’ It’s objective, though it can’t be proved by induction.
And your unwillingness to discuss Kant means you ignore my point that there are some objective truths which are not scientific – his famous synthetic a priori ones – especially that all of our observations of the world are framed spatially or temporally (a gross simplification by me).
So you made an unjustified leap by saying: ‘So all literature, philosophy and exchanges of opinion such as our own – none of them being ‘objective’ – are relegated there.’ – in saying that’s where my position leads.
The second law of thermodynamics posits that entropy can only ever increase, in a spontaneous process. Another formulation is that heat always flows from a warmer to a colder body, spontaneously. Those are my statements, from memory.
You could leap on those and say – ‘Are you being subjective or objective?’. My statements are objective, in the content, but they’re my statements plucked from my mind. And even if I go back to my old text books, I’m still the one doing it.
Similarly, the scientific method is objective. Look around you for the evidence and its effects. None of us can escape the ‘trap’ of being in our own consciousness – but that point is a dead end. I guess one could rehash Descartes Cogito.
Anyway, I’ve said all I can. If you want to ignore it (as you have most of what I’ve written) and repeat what I’ve addressed, well, that’s me done.