Political Correctness – Maverick Philosopher

Islam and the Perils of Psychological Projection

I have found that it is dangerous to assume that others are essentially like oneself.

Psychologists speak of projection. As I understand it, it involves projecting (etymologically, throwing outward) into others one's own attitudes, beliefs, motivations, fears, emotions, desires, values, and the like. It is classified as a defense mechanism. To avoid confronting an unsavory attitude or trait in oneself, one projects it into another. Suppose one is stingy, considers stinginess an undesirable trait, but doesn't want to own up to one's stinginess. As a defense against the admission of one's own stinginess, one projects it into others. "I'm not stingy; you're stingy!"

I once had a superficial colleague who published a lot. He was motivated more by a neurotic need to advance himself socially and economically, a need based in low self-esteem, rather than by a drive to get at the truth or make a contribution to his subject. He was at some level aware that his motives were less than noble. Once, when he found out that I had published an article, he told me that my motive was to see my name in print. It was a classic case of projection: he could not understand me except as being driven by the same paltry motives that drove him. By projecting his motives into me, he warded off the awareness of their presence in him, or else excused their presence in him on the spurious ground that everyone has the same paltry motivations.

Most of the definitions of projection I have read imply that it is only undesirable attitudes, beliefs, and the like that are the contents of acts of projection. But it seems to me that the notion of projection could and perhaps should be widened to include desirable ones as well.

The desire for peace and social harmony, for example, is obviously good. But it too can be the content of an act of psychological projection. A pacifist, for example, may assume that others deep down are really like he is: peace-loving to such an extent as to avoid war at all costs. A pacifist might reason as follows: since everyone deep down wants peace, and abhors war, if I throw down my weapon, my adversary will do likewise. My adversay is histile out of fear; if I remove the reason for his fear, he will be pacified. By unilaterally disarming, I show my good will, and he will reciprocate. But if you throw down your weapon before Hitler, he will take that precisely as justification for killing you: since might makes right on his neo-Thrasymachian scheme, you have shown by your pacific deed that you are unfit for the struggle for existence and therefore deserve to die, and indeed must die to keep from polluting the gene pool.

Projection in cases like these can be dangerous. One oftens hears the sentiment expressed that we human beings are at bottom all the same and all want the same things. Not so! You and I may want

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation

as expressed in that characteristic '60s song, Aquarius, but others have belligerence and bellicosity hard-wired into them. They like fighting and dominating and they only come alive when they are bashing your skull in either literally or figuratively. People are not the same and it is a big mistake to think otherwise and project your decency into them.

I'll say it again: people are not the same. We are not 'equal.' Or do you consider yourself the moral equal of Chechen Muslim ingrates who come to our shores, exploit our hospitality, go on welfare, rip us off, and then detonate explosives at the finish line of a great American event that celebrates life and self-reliance? I am referring to the Boston Marathon.

I said that the psychologists classify projection as a defense mechanism. But how could the projection of good traits count as a defense mechanism? Well, suppose that by engaging in such projections one defends oneself against the painful realization that the people in the world are much worse than one would have liked to believe. Many of us have a strong psychological need to see good in other people, and this can give rise to illusions. There is good and evil in each person, and one must train oneself to accurately discern how much of each is present in each person one encounters.

This brings me to a penetrating passage from Sam Harris that illustrates my theme:

Our humanities and social science departments are filled with scholars and pseudo-scholars deemed to be experts in terrorism, religion, Islamic jurisprudence, anthropology, political science, and other diverse fields, who claim that where Muslim intolerance and violence are concerned, nothing is ever what it seems. Above all, these experts claim that one can’t take Islamists and jihadists at their word: Their incessant declarations about God, paradise, martyrdom, and the evils of apostasy are nothing more than a mask concealing their real motivations. What are their real motivations [according to these experts]?

Insert here the most abject hopes and projections of secular liberalism: How would you feel if Western imperialists and their mapmakers had divided your lands, stolen your oil, and humiliated your proud culture? Devout Muslims merely want what everyone wants—political and economic security, a piece of land to call home, good schools for their children, a little leisure to enjoy the company of friends. Unfortunately, most of my fellow liberals appear to believe this. In fact, to not accept this obscurantism as a deep insight into human nature and immediately avert one’s eyes from the teachings of Islam is considered a form of bigotry.

Harris has put his finger on a mistake that too many in the West, whether you call it psychological projection or not make, namely, the mistake of assuming that everyone, deep down, cherishes the same values and has the same motivations. This mistake is one of the planks in the platform of political correctness.

And as we should have learned by now, political correctness can get you killed.

General Petraeus, the Koran, and Political Correctness in the Military

Here is General Petraeus' condemnation of the burning by a Florida pastor of the Koran. And here is some excellent commentary by Andrew C. McCarthy. Excerpt (emphasis added):

Down at Gitmo, the Defense Department gives the Koran to each of the terrorists even though DoD knows they interpret it (not without reason) to command them to kill the people who gave it to them. To underscore our precious sensitivity to Muslims, standard procedure calls for the the book to be handled only by Muslim military personnel. Sometimes, though, that is not possible for various reasons. If, as a last resort, one of our non-Muslim troops must handle or transport the book, he must wear white gloves, and he is further instructed primarily to use the right hand (indulging Muslim culture’s taboo about the sinister left hand). The book is to be conveyed to the prisoners in a “reverent manner” inside a “clean dry towel.” This is a nod to Islamic teaching that infidels are so low a form of life that they should not be touched (as Ayatollah Ali Sistani teaches, non-Muslims are “considered in the same category as urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors,” and “the sweat of an animal who persistently eats [unclean things].”

This is every bit as indecent as torching the Koran, implicitly endorsing as it does the very dehumanization of non-Muslims that leads to terrorism. Furthermore, there is hypocrisy to consider: the Defense Department now piously condemning Koran burning is the same Defense Department that itself did not give a second thought to confiscating and burning bibles in Afghanistan.

Quite consciously, U.S. commanders ordered this purge in deference to sharia proscriptions against the proselytism of faiths other than Islam. And as General Petraeus well knows, his chain of command is not the only one destroying bibles. Non-Muslim religious artifacts, including bibles, are torched or otherwise destroyed in Islamic countries every single day as a matter of standard operating procedure. (See, e.g., my 2007 post on Saudi government guidelines that prohibit Jews and Christians from bringing bibles, crucifixes, Stars of David, etc., into the country — and, of course, not just non-Muslim accessories but non-Muslim people are barred from entering Mecca and most of Medina, based on the classical interpretation of an injunction found in what Petraeus is fond of calling the Holy Qur’an (sura 9:28: “Truly the pagans are unclean . . . so let them not . . . approach the sacred mosque”).

I don’t like book burning either, but I think there are different kinds of book burnings. One is done for purposes of censorship — the attempt to purge the world of every copy of a book to make it as if the sentiments expressed never existed. A good modern example is Cambridge University Press’s shameful pulping of all known copies of Alms for Jihad (see Stanley’s 2007 post on that). The other kind of burning is done as symbolic condemnation. That’s what I think Terry Jones was doing. He knows he doesn’t have the ability to purge the Koran from the world, and he wasn’t trying to. He was trying to condemn some of the ideas that are in it — or maybe he really thinks the whole thing is condemnable.

This is a particularly aggressive and vivid way to express disdain, but I don’t know that it is much different in principle from orally condemning some of the Koran’s suras and verses. Sura 9 of the Koran, for example, states the supremacist doctrine that commands Muslims to kill and conquer non-Muslims (e.g., 9:5: “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war) . . .”; 9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the people of the Book [i.e., the Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya [i.e., the tax paid for the privilege of living as dhimmis under the protection of the sharia state] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued”). I must say, I’ve got a much bigger problem with the people trying to comply with those commands than with the guy who burns them.