Well said, Gregg.

I’ve not been following this Pinker controversy (nor am I acquainted with
his work), but your points regarding contextualization of the broader
socio-political landscape of the US (and West, more broadly) and the
idealogical protection of egos so as to avoid offense both speak to me.
Within the smaller circles of my work, I’ve lately seen the science and
greater mission of our work threatened to be crumbled under the fear of
offending some big personalities. This is quite worrisome from my position,
as others seem to be apt to deferring these feelings toward me. I hope
that, within the academy and more broadly, we can work to be able to speak
freely [even when it threatens offending others (I’m not speaking here in
the context of race)] in the name of the ultimate ideal of helping others
through high-quality work.

Best,

Cole

On Sun, Jul 19, 2020 at 8:28 AM Michael Mascolo <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Good, courageous work, Gregg.
>
> M.
>
> *Michael F. Mascolo, Ph.D.*
> Academic Director, Compass Program
> Professor, Department of Psychology
> Merrimack College, North Andover, MA 01845
> 978.837.3503 (office)
> 978.979.8745 (cell)
>
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> "*Things move, persons act.*" -- Kenneth Burke
> "*If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well*." -- Donald Hebb
>
> On Jul 19, 2020, at 8:18 AM, Henriques, Gregg - henriqgx <[log in to unmask]
> <[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>
> Hi TOK Folks,
> I thought I would share this post I made this morning on the metamodern
> forum I am on:
>
> Hi All,
> I think when discussing these issues, such as the petition against Pinker,
> the Harper letter, and so forth, it is crucial to distinguish the
> setting/community/cultural context folks have in mind. For example, there
> is the United States as a whole. That might be one contextual setting. When
> folks look at the US as a whole, then you see Donald Trump as the President
> and you see the history of slavery and Jim Crow and the remarkable
> inequities, and much like *@handrews*
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__forum.metamoderna.org_u_handrews&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=wjF8cZoiFchamTuxBdDEmw&m=_lla770peQlgRBFfwJwSfFiONQdygXo-fy8wGS3q6Ak&s=oF_YzrY5UCQAolXMPE6cNw9JH0qdAlyWGQslIJHNo3Q&e=>
>  argues, the general complaints about word usage or political positions
> seem small potatoes.
> However, when we flip the context to inside the academia or leftist media
> centers or other left-leaning ideological contexts, the issue is VERY
> different. I can tell you, I live in the academy, in the social sciences
> (professional psychology) and the climate here is very different. We are
> MUCH closer to thought/language police than people seem to realize. Virtue
> signaling is everywhere, as is an almost Orwellian use of language
> regarding justice and morality (i.e., more often than not in such contexts,
> IMO, those who are doing the moralizing and shaming are not operating from
> a “higher ground”). Not only that, I believe much of it is ideologically
> misguided. Academics bending over backwards to eliminate anything that
> could be subjectively perceived by a person educated in postmodern critical
> race theory as being offensive is not where real change is to be had, IMO.
> Rather, as I saw firsthand in working on the inner city streets of
> Philadelphia from 1999-2003, there are deep class/race/structural issues
> that need to be tackled head on.
> If one is situated in the academy, one should object strongly to the
> letter against Pinker. It justifies language police, which is a problem
> inside hyper-progressive systems and much of the academy has been (is are
> being) captured by this troubling ideology (*see the footnote on pg 122
> of this article I wrote*
> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.gregghenriques.com_uploads_2_4_3_6_24368778_toward-5Fa-5Fuseful-5Fmass-5Fmovement.pdf&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=wjF8cZoiFchamTuxBdDEmw&m=_lla770peQlgRBFfwJwSfFiONQdygXo-fy8wGS3q6Ak&s=MQ4zFryRZc6-i4sQiqrZFYHGgOzw33TjzpSB-H2qAOQ&e=>
>  back in 2005). The bottom line is that we are living in massively
> polarized socio-ideological
> ecologies and because context is everything there are rarely general
> positions (i.e., Pinker letter was “bad” versus “an important signal”) that
> are defensible without specifying the context to apply to argument. Inside
> the context of academy, the Pinker letter is horrendous and the signatories
> should be embarrassed for their actions. In the larger context of a society
> that has elected Trump, it can be seen as a small issue that maybe
> oversteps but makes an important point on principle.
> My hope is that those who operate from a metamodern sensibility would have
> the general capacity to see that the extreme polarization in the US (which
> is probably infecting the West) is a function of inadequate cultural codes
> being defined against one another in problematic ways. We need to
> disentangle those conflicts, eliminate weak positions, and work to seek and
> create common ground based on a clear, rich sophisticated sense-making and
> deep value codes that can stretch across the socio-ecological levels of
> (in)dividual, dyadic, family, small group, community, state, nation,
> transnational and global.
> Best,
> Gregg
>
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