'Linguistic Cleansing': Strategies for Redesigning Human Perception and Behavior

Abstract

James Madison recognized the need to balance competing interests in his analysis of factious groups. In Federalist No. 10, Madison sets out the idea of faction in the following words. “By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Madison goes on to describe two “cures” for faction. One is to “destroy the liberty” that allows it to bloom, the other is to give “to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.” The idea is that free speech serves to protect and enrich the social community. This presumably occurs through the education of participants, and the venting of potentially explosive internal hostilities. America is failing on both fronts.I am not in favor of vile, malicious or “nasty” speech but am opposed to the use of the formal or discretionary power of law and government to intimidate and punish anyone who voices a view that a favored identity group considers inappropriate, mean-spirited, offensive or the like. This opposition to “linguistic cleansing” includes antagonism toward what can be described as the “privatization” of speech control through large-scale collective organization on the Internet and its associated applications. That phenomenon has swept over us with such speed and force that it should not simply be thought of as “private” action in some instances but might even be considered an added component of governmental action when left unregulated. Granting “sensitive” and “hyper-sensitive” identity groups the power of government in ways that allow them the ability to define and determine what “insults” or “offends” them is an unwise delegation of the massive instrumentality of law and its accompanying threat of force or other harmful consequences. This delegation not only grants defensive power but provides an offensive weapon that can be used to acquire power. And of course that power is the “Holy Grail” of political activism. But such unbalanced use of public power creates divisiveness, tribalism and social aggressiveness. On the scale this is now occurring it destroys the ability of individuals to trust and compromise. Little wonder that American society has devolved to its current state or that the strategies to rely on accusations of “hate”, “insult”, and “insensitivity” have in many ways produced a society in which hate has intensified, insult is everywhere, and insensitivity and discourtesy abounds.