{"id":36484,"date":"2024-03-07T23:23:32","date_gmt":"2024-03-08T07:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=36484"},"modified":"2024-03-07T23:26:23","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T07:26:23","slug":"do-we-have-the-right-to-hate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/do-we-have-the-right-to-hate\/","title":{"rendered":"Do we have the right to hate?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bothersome, that is how I found this book and my trying to understand.\u00a0 I do not believe I would\u2019ve ever been a philosophy major\u2026.it hurts my head. \u00a0My thoughts on Steven Hicks book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault;<\/em> \u00a0I get it, or I think I get it, we are going down and down the spiral of meaning with Hicks. I think, (not sure I have it right) that he is giving us first the definition and defining characteristics of \u201cpre-modernism, medieval(400 CE to 1400 CE)\u201d[1]<\/a> and \u201cmodernism, enlightenment ( early 20th<\/sup> century)[2]<\/a> to now \u201cPost-modernism as the late 20th<\/sup> century\u201d[3]<\/a>.\u00a0 What I will say, in an optimistic way, is that this book is absolutely thorough!<\/p>\n

\u00a0When trying to read this book, I was drawn to chapter on Free Speech and Postmodernism.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure why, except it seems to go with everything we\u2019ve been talking this semester on ideology and cancel culture.\u00a0 I am wrestling with the question, can we really and truly say whatever we want?\u00a0 Honestly there seems to be certain people who can say whatever they want, consequences be damned.\u00a0 Hicks gets deep into speech code and the meaning of language and deeper and deeper we go..on a podcast episode with Jordan B. Peterson, they go to this very place.\u00a0 They ask \u201cwho gives words meaning?\u201d and where they lost me is when they start going to the dictionary and then start asking \u201cwho wrote the dictionary?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWho had the right to decide that<\/em> was the meaning of the word?\u201d and \u201cwhy do we all comply?\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Here is my bothersome understanding of this book:<\/p>\n

Hate<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do we have the right to hate and use hateful language?\u00a0 Last week our colleague and friend Todd Henley wisely wrote a blog about Lament. We cannot skip over lament and get to the solution to what I believe is another wicked problem of hate. So,Hicks asserts that postmodernists will say \u201cAnyone who thinks honestly about the history of racism and sexism knows that many words are designed to wound. And if you are not a member of a minority group, you cannot imagine the suffering that the mere use of those words inflicts on people. In short, hate speech victimizes<\/em> people and so we should have special protections against hateful forms of speech-not all speech: only hate speech\u201d.[5]<\/a>\u00a0 This is true in my opinion, words have meaning, meanings we all agree to, and hate speech has no place in any public forum. (I would say private forums too, but who am I to say what you do or don\u2019t say in the privacy of your home).\u00a0 Where I am troubled, and please correct me if I am wrong, the author seems to go on to say, \u201cthat we have the right to hate people.\u00a0 It is a free country-and some people are in fact deserving of hate. Hatred is a perfectly rational and just response to extreme assaults on one\u2019s core values\u201d.[6]<\/a>\u00a0 Okay, yes, it is a feeling word, we grow up learning the word and its meaning especially when it came to peas, right?\u00a0 Hicks then says \u201cBut more directly to the point of the argument here, I argue that racial hate speech does not victimize.\u00a0 It hurts only if one accepts the terms of the speech, and acceptance of those terms is not what we should be teaching.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

Hate is a wicked problem, and because it is a wicked problem, I have to say how much the above paragraph is super disturbing.\u00a0 On a very simplified breaking down of the words, I suppose I would say he is right; words only have meaning because we let them.\u00a0 What I cannot get behind is a white male writing a chapter on racial and sexual hate speech saying it does not victimize.\u00a0 <\/em>All power corrupts and victimization of those not in power ie, racial minorities and women, I just cannot get behind saying, \u201cI\u2019m rubber and your glue, whatever you say bounces of me and sticks to you\u201d or \u201csticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me\u201d.\u00a0 All I can say is bullshit.\u00a0 We have already decided as a culture that words have meanings, and hate speech is meant to keep the \u201cother\u201d down.\u00a0 How do we tell anyone on the other end of hate speech, that bully\u2019s words only hurt because you allowed it to hurt you.\u00a0 This is dangerous rhetoric and leads to victim blaming behavior and around and around we go.<\/p>\n

Love<\/strong><\/p>\n

Love is a wicked problem too. Well maybe not so much a problem (except when I say how much I love tortilla chips, that is a wicked problem to my waistline).\u00a0 I know Hicks is not making any case for God\u2019s love, but Love wins\u2026every time.<\/p>\n

I agree, as a voting member of a free society, that we do indeed have the right to hate others.\u00a0 We do not have the right to use public forums to have hate speech.\u00a0 I know there are so many sensitivities out there now, and we all will screw up in one way or another, and I don\u2019t think any of us should be canceled, but we must be held accountable to acknowledging our ignorance, or our actions hurt someone else, even when we didn\u2019t mean to.\u00a0 Why can\u2019t we ask for forgiveness anymore and why oh why can we not forgive?\u00a0 It\u2019s going to eat us alive if we can\u2019t find a way past hate!<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Hicks, Steven. Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. <\/em>(RedlandBay, Connor Court Publishing Pty.Ltd, 2019), 8.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Hicks, 15<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid,15<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> \u00a0Jordan B. Peterson podcast,\u00a0Stephen Hicks: Philosophy and Postmodernism, Jordan\u2019s Conversation with Stephen Hicks<\/em>, May 5, 2019, Scribd.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Hicks, Steven. Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. <\/em>(RedlandBay, Connor Court Publishing Pty.Ltd, 2019), 242<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Hicks,242.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid,242.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bothersome, that is how I found this book and my trying to understand.\u00a0 I do not believe I would\u2019ve ever been a philosophy major\u2026.it hurts my head. \u00a0My thoughts on Steven Hicks book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault; \u00a0I get it, or I think I get it, we are going down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":187,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2489,1764,395],"class_list":["post-36484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-hicks","tag-postmodernism","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/187"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36485,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36484\/revisions\/36485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}