In praise of prejudice?

[Marulus]

How a lack of prejudices in our lives takes its toll

Paul Hollander

November 4, 2007

IN PRAISE OF PREJUDICE:

THE NECESSITY OF PRECONCEIVED IDEAS

By Theodore Dalrymple

Encounter Books, $20,

129 pages

REVIEWED BY PAUL HOLLANDER

This slender, incisive and closely argued book is the latest addition to the volumes (such as "Utopias Nowhere," "Life at the Bottom," "Our Culture, What's Left of It," etc.) Mr. Dalrymple produced on various problematic contemporary cultural and political trends and phenomena. His targets include moral and cultural relativism (also known these days as postmodernism), the tangle of attitudes and proprieties prescribed by political correctness, the decline of educational standards and the excesses of individualism.

In this book, "In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas," he focuses on the attractive, if elusive "ideal of life without prejudices, stereotypes, preconceptions and pre-existing authority" and the various unanticipated, disagreeable results of the contemporary quest to attain this ideal. His writings are also aimed at those in the forefront of advocating and popularizing these pursuits: Our modern moralizers, academic intellectuals in the humanities and social sciences, well-known writers and journalists, TV gurus who hold forth against prejudice, or at any rate against certain kinds of them.

"Prejudice" is used here rather broadly, covering preconceived ideas (as in the subtitle), as well as beliefs, values, preferences, predispositions and presuppositions that are, in some way, considered wrong. By contrast, being unprejudiced means rising above the unthinking herd, an assertion of non-conformity and individual autonomy — hence its immense contemporary appeal.

Throughout the book the author demonstrates that being "unprejudiced" — that is, having a totally open mind about important matters — is neither possible nor necessarily desirable. The crusade against prejudice rests on the two essential foundations of modernity: The rejection of tradition, custom and traditional authority and the glorification of the individual, including his or her uniqueness and unrestrained rights of self-determination.

A wonderful stylist, Mr. Dalrymple notes that the avowal of non-judgmental postures coexists with the multiplication of individual rights: "Suddenly the world becomes filled with rights, and new ones are discovered every day, in the way that expeditions by entomologists to the Amazon basin discover new species of insect every day . . . Rights expand to meet the egos of those for whom freedom is nothing but unconstrained action."

The present-day pursuit of such open mindedness has 19th-century rationalist roots, notably in the ideas of John Stuart Mill, for whom such a laudable disposition meant thinking and reasoning in a totally (and implausibly) independent manner, unfettered by tradition, custom, law or public opinion. The ideal individual would make judgments, reach conclusions and conduct the search for truth on the basis of purely factual evidence untainted by emotion or predisposition.

Needless to say, Mill (and other progressive thinkers of his times) greatly underestimated the power of human emotions and irrationality. They also underestimated the human need for taken-for-granted norms and beliefs internalized by generations, and they did not recognize the human preference for avoiding endless agonizing over moral-ethical choices and dilemmas by making use of readily available and widely shared moral prescriptions.

The contemporary American crusade against prejudice, bolstered by egalitarian impulses, has democratized and relativized truth seeking: One person's opinion is supposed to be as good as any other's; only a reprehensible elitist would make claims on superior knowledge or moral judgment, or any judgment.

Being "judgmental" itself has become a self-evident reproach since the late 1960s. Prejudice, judgment, discrimination, belief and bias all came to be lumped together. The crusade against discrimination had particularly lamentable results in education, which is increasingly dominated by a crude species of egalitarianism that frowns upon excellence and accomplishment that is not statistically representative of hitherto underprivileged ethnic groups and the sexes.

It is important to emphasize, as the author does, that on closer inspection this moral, aesthetic and epistemological relativism unravels and reveals itself as highly selective and ideologically inspired. The supposedly non-judgmental postmodernists eagerly denounce the evils they see in the world, especially racism, sexism, homophobia, elitism and other politically incorrect attitudes, instead of contemplating them with equanimity and detachment as befits the truly non-judgmental intellectual.

The connections between modernity, unconstrained or radical individualism, and the pursuit of the supposedly unprejudiced, open-minded view of the word are made clear on these pages. In the first place modernity and mass society are closely linked as important social, cultural and aesthetic distinctions erode; "modern romantics" demand and look for originality or authenticity in order "to feel fully individuated . . . more and more extravagant gestures are required to mark a person from the herd."

What Mr. Dalrymple aptly calls "mass bohemianization" failed to result in a flowering of genuine originality or non-conformity but led to new conventional wisdoms, new definitions of right and wrong, as "one convention has been replaced by another . . . [and] the rejection of convention has itself become the convention" — a good summation of the 1960s and the counterculture it has given rise to.

The obvious contradictions between moral relativism, the non-judgmental disposition and the flawlessly open mind on the one hand, and the new virtues of political correctness and left-leaning political moralizing on the other, are instructive present-day indicators of the endemic conflict between incompatible human values and aspirations.

Paul Hollander's last books (both published in 2006) were "The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries and Political Morality," and "From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States," which he edited.

[source]

A Straussian?

[Errigal]

Here's another review in a Brit magazine which used to be good until it was taken over by neocons. This reviewer, Peregrine Worsthorne is one of the last of the old school.

In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas

Conservative iconoclasts required



Peregrine Worsthorne


Having been a monarchist all my life, it was a bit embarrassing the other day to have to admit to a television interviewer that I could not remember the reasons why I had become one in the first place. In truth, of course — as I explained — I became a monarchist as a matter of course, pretty well by instinct; everybody was doing it. So I did it. The interviewer was not impressed. ‘Sounds like prejudice to me’, he said, putting me to shame. Now, along comes the highly cerebral prison doctor, Theodore Dalrymple to assure me that I was wrong to be ashamed. Prejudices of that kind, he argues, are a thoroughly good thing and the sooner we get back to being a nation which imbibes its sense of right and wrong, and of manners and morals, with its mother’s milk, the better all round.


Not that his nostalgia for the old prejudices includes racism, which is another one that I briefly shared, this time inheriting it from my father who had lost all his money farming tobacco between the wars in what was then Southern Rhodesia He really was one of the old school who believed that blacks had just come down from the trees. In spite of hating that kind of coarse language and thinking, I did believe that white supremacy, at any rate for the foreseeable future, was the best bet for all concerned — a view to which many are now returning.


I am over simplifying. The great doctor’s book is very learned and subtle. Here, for example, are a few of the chapter headings which give an accurate idea of its tone, scope and depth. ‘The Effect of Pedagogy Without Prejudice’; ‘Prejudice a Requirement of Benevolence’; ‘No Virtue Without Prejudice’; ‘Projection of Prejudice Not a Good in Itself’ and so on. Plenty of spicy and appetising food for thought — more than a snack but just short of a heavy meal — all of which, taken together, adds up to a formidable case against encouraging individuals — as is the current practice — to think that they have the right and even the duty to be their own priests, teachers and disciplinarians. Not only is this because, relying on their own small pool of knowledge, they will not be up to the job, but also because, in the exercise of such a right, they are pretty certain to plump for courses which serve their own individual interest rather than the interest of the community — family, school, regiment, profession and lastly nation — to which they happen to belong. Moreover, in most cases ancestral wisdom is more likely to prove a good guide than any individuals’ arrogant reliance on his or her own judgment. True, Edmund Burke said all of this in the 18th century. Where Dalrymple scores is in the telling nature of his contemporary references and his gift for irony and wit.


I have only one reservation: that Dr Dalrymple’s valuable reassertion of the need for prejudice — by drawing attention to the idiotic notions which proliferate in its absence — has come too late. Essentially my worry is that by urging us all to imbibe our virtues and values once again with our mother’s milk — as I and previous generations tended to do — he overlooks one very salient fact which may render this advice a bit counter-productive, even an own goal. That unfortunate fact is that today’s mothers’ milk, unlike that of earlier mothers, is certain to be politically correct.


This is the trouble with encouraging prejudice today: it will be liberal prejudice, since liberalism is what is in the air we breathe. Liberalism is today’s ancient wisdom. To be a liberal, like being a conservative yesterday, you don’t have to think for yourself: indeed you don’t have to think at all. You just have to conform with the herd. Tradition increasingly means liberal tradition; authority, liberal authority; dogma, liberal dogma; the status quo, a liberal status quo. In such a climate, defence of prejudice becomes a defence of everything which Dr Dalrymple and I deplore. So the last thing conservatives need is a return to prejudice. Indeed they need exactly the opposite — a recrudescence of freethinking, iconoclasm and audaciously cocked snooks at received views and liberal pieties — all too often the same thing.


In other words, Dr Dalrymple, I fear, has seized hold of the wrong end of the stick. Not that it matters, since he brandishes it as forcefully as ever.

In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Preconceived Ideas | Theodore Dalrymple | Review by The Spectator