Political Correctness Gone Mad?

by Stephen Fry, Jordan B. Peterson, Michael Eric Dyson

‘Without free speech there is no true thought.’

–Jordan Peterson

‘You’re telling me I’m being sensitive, and students looking for safe spaces that they’re being hypersensitive. If you’re white, this country is one giant safe space.’

–Michael Eric Dyson

Is political correctness an enemy of free speech, open debate and the free exchange of ideas? Or is it a progressive force, eroding the dominant power relationships and social norms that exclude marginalised groups from society?

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Essays, Society

128 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published November 1, 2018

About the author

Stephen John Fry is an English comedian, writer, actor, humourist, novelist, poet, columnist, filmmaker, television personality and technophile. As one half of the Fry and Laurie double act with his comedy partner, Hugh Laurie, he has appeared in A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster. He is also famous for his roles in Blackadder and Wilde, and as the host of QI. In addition to writing for stage, screen, television and radio he has contributed columns and articles for numerous newspapers and magazines, and has also written four successful novels and a series of memoirs.

See also Mrs. Stephen Fry as a pseudonym of the author.

Reviews

[Pavol Hardos · Rating 1 out of 5]

Christ, what a shit show and a waste of time.

This is a transcript of a debate; a for/against the notion that 'PC' is basically 'progress' - with Peterson & Fry arguing against - but since that would probably sell fewer copies, they went with "PC Gone Mad?" as the title of the book.

Unless you want to study ideological production in action, this is best avoided.

Peterson, ever the intellectual equivalent of a marzipan dildo, rambles incoherently about the 'Left' and postmodern marxism, at one point even explicitly denies power is implied in hierarchies (he thinks power is only present when hierarchies go 'corrupt' and become tyrannies) and generally provides vicarious embarrassment to anyone with a modicum of historical or philosophical education. Fry will break your heart with his inability to grasp how utterly clueless and preachy he has become because people were mean to him on Twitter. He fears shaming for saying something inadvertently stupid, he fears having to learn not to say it, he fears having to apologize. His younger self would have mocked him mercilessly. Dyson makes many a good point only to undermine himself by some grandstanding self-regarding hokum, that always looks even worse on paper. Goldberg turned out as the most sensible of the bunch, but, unsurprisingly, no-one quite listened to her.

That PC is not defined throughout, that it becomes a stand-in for whatever is liked/disliked, is not a bug, it's a feature; for how could an ideological tool from the arsenal of the reactionary right, a whole-cloth invention of the ideological wars from the 90s, come to be defined and debated as if it was a real thing? Dyson and Goldberg came tantalizingly close to actually naming this, but never got as far to be explicit about it, for they too seemed to be treating PC as a real phenomenon and not a bad-faith rhetorical device of the craven and the naive.

[Niall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jordan basically the voice of common sense as usual

[Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

A terrible debate in which the debators failed to define the term they were discussing and as a result failed to reach any common ground regarding the topic at hand.

Peterson tried to steer the conversation to the topic and had none of his points or questions addressed and seemed impatient.

'Digression Dyson' constantly ranted about whatever he felt like.

Fry was trying to reach a common ground between both sides and merely managed to get Goldberg to empathise with him before they all ran out of time.

Goldberg failed to have a good discussion as she and Dyson were too focused on attacking Peterson.

Overall a non result.

Could have been good if they all agreed upon what they were talking about in the beginning.

[Aparna · Rating 3 out of 5]

“We’re here to talk about political correctness and we’ve done a damn poor job of it” - Jordan Peterson (p 95)

Professor Peterson sums up this discussion well. Overall, it’s an interesting debate about freedom of speech, leftist v right wing ideals, and censorship. But some debaters continuously veered off into another direction, bringing up other issues such as race, feminism, #metoo etc. The topic is political correctness: I anticipated a discussion about freedom of speech, social change, behaviour. (All of which was touched on but it lacked continuity).

It would have been better for the debaters to start with their definitions of “political correctness”, and set the direction for the discourse. As we didn’t have this, the narrative felt very fragmented. Jordan Peterson and Stephen Fry tried to bring the discussion back to the topic at hand, however unfortunately we never reach a real conclusion at the end.

[Aidan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel the real value in this debate is in showing the slippery slope that the term "political correctness" has become to discuss. All four debaters seemed to be arguing about completely different societal, political, emotional, and cultural issues brought about by the umbrella term of "political correctness". This inability to argue for or against the issue in regards to the same facets of its societal impact just act to express the complexity of this issue rather than resolve anything. Although, nobody was expecting political correctness to get "solved"... And it might never, if no one is willing to ascribe to it a concrete definition.

[John of Canada · Rating 3 out of 5]

Annoying moderator,2 debaters who would not address the topic but Steven Fry and Jordan Peterson who were both brilliant in their own way.

[Gizem Kendik Önduygu · Rating 4 out of 5]

İzin varsa şuraya bir özet bırakıyorum.

Jordan Peterson: Soruma yanıt alamadım.
Stephen Fry: Beni buraya bunları konuşmak için çağırmamıştınız.
Michael Eric Dyson: Benim bacılarıma saldırdılar.
Michelle Goldberg: Ben sadece burada oturucam ve Jordan Peterson'dan nefret edicem.
​

[Koen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jordan is reason, Stephen Fry tries to find the bridge. The other two do not sell their convictions.

[O Mundo é Bué Cenas · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5
I saw the debate instead of reading this transcript. Hell, what a ride!
So, I'll be honest with you: I saw this because I really liked the theme being discussed but, specially, because I find J. B. Peterson fascinating in his controversy. At the end, however, I leave with the same opinion on Peterson (or, maybe, that he is actually a bit resentful and that can undermine his capacity to argument) but I leave with another interest: Mr. Fry.
Seriously, the paladins of the Enlightenment are really getting on my head, because I found them terrific. Among a fight of people blaming each other for the problems the world is facing, Mr. Fry managed to be a well-thought-out person, which is in searching for a common ground of mutual understanding. And we need this kind of people. Even Peterson managed to see that Fry was, withouth doubt, the great speaker on this.
On the other hand, I found Goldberg interesting, a bit arrogant at times, but overall a open person to discussion. Dyson, on the contrary, was horrible, the worst of the debaters. Playing the race card, really? He just overthrow any possibility of debate between con and pro obliterating the capacity to talk about race and other topics rationally. Messy, I would say. Arrogant. The face of the left doctrinal mind. He just validated Peterson's points, over and over again.
At last, I wish it was more found on debate than on attacks, but wtv, this theme has its difficulties. We are left with a great talk, but somewhat a limited one.

[Orestis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Μια θλιβερή σειρά ταυτόχρονων μονολόγων όπου κανείς δεν αγγίζει το θέμα της συζήτησης εκτός από τον Πίτερσον. Αύτος ο Νταϊσον υπόβαθμιζει συνέχεια το επίπεδο της συζήτησεις με φτηνές φαμφάρες και σλογκανάκια που θα ζήλευε και ο τελευταίος διαδηλωτής με ντουντούκα σε πορεία του ΠΑΜΕ. Η Γκόλντμπεργκ κάνει μια προσπάθεια αλλά όταν πάει η συζήτηση στο διαταύτα αναδεικνύεται η ανεπάρκεια της σε όλο της το μεγαλείο. Ο Φραϊ προσπαθεί με άκυρες μπουρδίτσες να ισορροπίσει ανάμεσα σε δύο βάρκες, σε μια προσπάθεια, υποθέτω, να τα έχει καλά και με τις δυο πλευρές. Ο Πίτερσον είναι ο μόνος που προσπαθεί να παραθέσει ουσιαστικά επιχειρήματα και να κατευθύνει την συζήτηση κάπου. Θλίβερο. Ίσως είναι ανισοβαρές το γνωστικό επίπεδο του πάνελ και ήταν λάθος να καλέσουν τους συγκεκριμένους συνομιλητές.

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had a lot of fun reading this short debate between some folks that I highly respect: Michael Eric Dyson and Michelle Goldberg vs the wishy-washy Stephen Fry and the delusional Jordan Peterson.

Some takeaways:

- White men get really upset when people refuse to live within the realms of the "status quo" that sees them at the helm of society.

- Michael Eric Dyson will always have a special place in my heart for being a gangster ass preacher, unafraid of anybody, going full speed forward against the deranged.

- Michelle Goldberg is a G who speaks nothing but the truth.

All in all, it was a fun read.

[Robert Hudder · Rating 3 out of 5]

A transcript of the Munk Debate with the pre-interviews and post debate session. I was frustrated that the central question never really took hold. It was nice to see four writers/thinkers that I often read debate.

The problem was that it wasn't much of a debate and didn't move off their central points to engage with the others in a meaningful way. Sure, there were a few passes that did seem to highlight how they were approaching the idea differently but not engaging in a conversation seems to be the problem and the solution.

Worth a find on YouTube and a good read.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth reading as:
+ a great demonstration of the elusiveness of 'political correctness' even among those whom you would expect to be able to articulate what 'political correctness' means, even to them.
+ some provocative ideas for any privileged white male (like me) willing to 'listen'.
+ the debate reinforced the importance of interrogating what being a privileged white male means.
…
+ reinforces how the term 'political correctness' is a great weapon to use to avoid discussing the real issues.

[Bill Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and challenging!

The notion of Stephen Fry being aligned with Jordan Peterson to speak against political correctness intrigued me and I wasn’t disappointed. All four debaters had clearly thought deeply about the subject and there are strong points made on both sides. Obviously there are no answers in the book, but it will make you think differently about what political correctness is and how it impacts people.

[André Rio · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a transcript from a Munk-debate.

Between Dyson and Goldberg's ad-hominem attacks, Frye was the only person in the debate to get some valuable arguments in sideways using his trademark humor.

All-in-all a terrible debate.

[Stefan Bruun · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't read the book. Just watch the debate on YouTube. Search for the speakers/authors and you'll find it easily.

[Miguel · Rating 1 out of 5]

(1/10) El resumen es el que hace Jordan Peterson al final: «Hemos venido a hablar de corrección política, y la verdad es que lo hemos hecho de pena».
La traducción al español no ayuda mucho, bastante flojita. Mejor ver el vídeo del debate.

[E J · Rating 1 out of 5]

Peterson sums this up when he says: We’re here to talk about political correctness, and we’ve done a damn poor job of it.


This transcript is the perfect example of why these so-called debates are a waste of time. They achieve nothing. A person reading this will likely find their pre-existing beliefs reinforced. It’s so unstructured that nobody is talking about the same things or making cogent points.
The reason they fail so badly is that political correctness does not have a definition, it’s a vague term that means different things to different people depending on your alignment and is honestly not something I have ever heard far leftists talk about with any particular zeal (and make no mistake this debate is not only supposed to warn against a slide to the far left, it also is completely ignorant of the left and speaks mainly of fairly moderate groups and the fair right). But they don’t pick a version or meaning and stick to it.
I think ivory tower academics are the worst people to be debating political correctness because, take Stephen dry for example, they are cushioned from the very real ways in which microaggressions feed into oppression. Fry and Peterson seem to have in common their obsession with individualism. They do not care how actions come together to affect groups. Meanwhile the other two are rambling all over the place, drawing too many examples and barely managing to address the points being made.
I hated reading this. It made me feel hopeless and angry.
I think it’s best summed up by when Fry suggests we should abandon political correctness and address injustice through the channels of democracy. The idea that democracy will alter the prejudices ingrained in society is absurd: the idea that these problems can be corrected by democracy when the populace is allowed to dehumanise and belittle oppressed groups (aka what so called political correctness seeks to address) is absurd: the idea that our democratic systems being resounding failures that reinforce disadvantages and fail to efficiently improve society is one that is held largely by the (true) left: the idea that leftists are ONLY squabbling over language is so fucking out of touch.

I would not recommend this even to fans of Peterson.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Political correctness: I call it progress:

Pro:
Michael Dyson
Michelle Goldberg

Con:
Jordan Peterson
Stephen Fry


This debate was the most entertaining of the Munk Debates, from a dramatic point of view, as there was considerable animosity from the Pro side to Jordan Peterson. I have been studying the back catalogue of Munk debates as part of a course I am undertaking on rhetoric and persuasive writing. Whilst being entertaining, the quality of debate was low, resembling an argument rather than the intellectual debate it should have been.

I don’t think the hosts helped; the question, if you can call it a question, lacks clarity. In that ambiguity, the Pro side seems to base their entire premise on ad-hominem attacks on Peterson.

I will never be able to fathom why those defending free speech and the right to offend are the ones consistently categorised on the far-right or accused of being on the totalitarian side of political theology. What I find most bizarre about those on what I would call ‘the woke left’, is that whilst they attack the concept of free speech, they take credit for its achievements; the abolition of slavery, voting rights for women, the civil rights movement, gay marriage, all changes that would not have been possible if the state was able to set the limits of speech. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, it was politically incorrect and outlawed by the state.

That leads to a question — why? Why are the woke left desperate to not only have restrictions on speech but are willing to outsource this responsibility to others? This is most strange as woke left are not in power in any powerful western democracy; yet, they claim to be either oppressed themselves or speak for the oppressed. Let me ask you a question, when in history have the oppressed people requested that the state, who are supposedly oppressing them, set the limits of acceptable speech?

This was more like a TV argument than the civilised, thought-provoking debates you expect on something as prestigious as Munk; the nadir was reached when Dyson attacked Jordan Peterson, calling him a “mean, angry, made, white man”, to which you could hear the audience boo (audiobook).

Peterson and Fry won convincingly, switching 8% of the audience.

[Stephen Coates · Rating 3 out of 5]

In May 2018, a debate between Jordan B. Peterson and Stephen Fry, arguing for the affirmative that political correctness had gone mad, and Michael Eric Dyson and Michelle Goldberg, arguing that it hadn’t was held as one of the Munk Debate series in Toronto. This book is a transcript of that debate with some before and after interviews. On the positive side, all four speakers argued their cases with some eloquence, Stephen Fry in particular. However, all four participants largely restated their own perspectives and didn’t engage with the arguments advanced by the others and none of them really addressed the topic of political correctness instead stating positions more concerned with identity politics. Michael Dyson was most irritating, alternatively stating that race didn’t exist and complaining about the, largely historic, mistreatment of black persons. I also found that reading the transcript of a verbal debate less enjoyable than reading text although the time limits ensured that this book is short and succinct.

[Teagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5 stars

There’s a lot of food for thought in this debate, and each side made very good points about how the rights of individuals intersect with those of groups. At the same time, because of the squishiness of PC, the debaters often weren’t talking about the same issues. They couldn’t agree on what PC was, exactly. This was especially apparent on the Right side of the debate—Jordan Peterson and Stephen Fry were usually making very different arguments.

[Lisa Bricker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This got me thinking about terminology and the place of language. But I had to agree with Stephen Fry that there was a noticeable lack of actual discussion of political correctness. Yes, there's a lot of politics to wade through and that HAS to be done, but there were missed opportunities here.

[Alex Cîrciumaru · Rating 3 out of 5]

O discuție oarecum meh la o conferință unde se prezintă niște idei despre corectitudinea politică. Sincer jumătate din ele le ziceam și eu după 2 pahare de vin.. dar presupun ca nu strică să auzi păreri despre subiect

[JJ Myles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This bill was great, political correctness has been a challenge for me to realise the constantly changing platform of what is wrong and right. This is great reading for those who like the psychology behind our actions as a society!

[Rebecca Nolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic debate for my critical thinking class reading and analysis assignment.

[Diego Pedregal · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mejor verse el debate

[Igor Veloso · Rating 2 out of 5]

Four intellectuals who couldn’t agree on what is Political Correctness and ended up discussing gender and race.

“We’re here to talk about political correctness and we’ve done a damn poor job of it” - Jordan Peterson (p 95)

That about sums up the debate. I eventually got tired of Peterson’s antics over the years, but the book, if you want to call it, is actually a transcript of the debate that you may find on Youtube, but honestly, save yourself two hours and just read. If you’re not saving time, you’ll be spared some of the embarrassment. Most of the audience, at the beginning, voted against Political Correctness, being Stephen Fry’s and Peterson’s motion. Most of them was willing to change their minds, but in the end, no one did. Quite the contrary.

Political Correctness is a contentious issue: on one hand it’s about speech and its limits – or none –, but on the other, you can’t talk PC without diving into the language game some on the radical left and right want to play on their culture wars. Michelle Goldberg was a defendant of PC but she actually made good points, and made clear how she sees it and why she tolerates some of it. Michael Eric Dyson was exactly what one would expect from a Baptist minister who is also some form of activist. It is a dangerous combination going around on both sides, and he just symbolizes the worst kind of it.

It did not take long for him to use the race card to hold himself morally superior and make personal attacks – based on race – on Peterson. But due to the nature of intersectionalist thinking, he was careful to not go against Fry too much because he is gay, yet managed to attack him because of his skin colour and for being a man. The other funny thing about intellectuals like Dyson is their understanding of power makes them apt to use it. For example, when a female is around, they actually play the right cards to make them allies to their cause, because after all, they are also part of the oppressed. Dyson used a bit of his knowledge of Derrida to manipulate the discourse to deny the excesses of the left, take jabs at Fry and Peterson for their immutable characteristics, and managed to turn a great speaker like Michelle to follow him in his quest to diminish his opposition in front of the audience. The Dysons of the world love an audience. Their quest for identitarian politics ends up fueling their own narcissism.

Peterson took the bait and helped diverge the discourse from PC to intersectionality. Now, Dyson is right about how an enslaved group can’t be simply freed and expect them to turn up alright. When Americans nuclear bombed the Japanese during WW2 and immigrants flooded the states, there was affirmative action to help the Japanese settling in America. (he does not mention this, of course, because according to intersectionalists, Japanese are “white adjacent”, wtf that means). One could perfectly argue this boost gave them an advantage African-Americans did not receive: higher grades and better life prospects. It is true that there’s always a group that is dominant and others that are not and need to be better represented to make themselves heard. Those are points I have to give to Dyson, but his way of going about it is intersecting a bunch of things and assign them a “dominance meter”, then play the victim every time things don’t go his way. His deflection is also palpable, but I’ll blame that on him being a baptist minister. They debate like they are lawyers, except they make everything about them and not the defendant. Also, he’s clearly being racist, but in the eyes of the new intellectual of this kind, he can’t be racist because his skin colour is not the dominant colour in America, so he feels he can say whatever the hell he wants, even though it didn’t work on this audience. Yet, he called Peterson “mean white man”.

The book is only good if you don’t want to go looking for timestamps, or find it a good way to have the debate recorded. Actually this is normal in these kind of things, we also do it every time a think tank, for example, organizes a summit. The debate was indeed disappointing overall but wasn’t really expecting anything else. The chance for it to go wrong was high. To me did not give anything new because it just confirmed how discussions with identitarians go. They go personal.

[🌶 peppersocks 🧦 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reflections and lessons learned:
“In the old days... you could get your whole family and jump in a threshing machine... dance around and all your arms would fly off and it would be fine, and now they say ‘oh, they’ve banned Christmas’” Stewart Lee,
on political correctness, Comedy Vehicle

As a result of my generation, family and friends mix, upbringing, education, work surroundings, likes and interests, I often refer to myself as a left to centrist libertarian, but not fixed exactly and always open to new learning (hence why I’m reading a book like this on a Saturday morning!). The above comedy quote though, whilst facetious, is often the blurred line that we hear where political correctness gets confused with basic health and safety because people only see the former as bureaucratically restrictive. Without analysis, people will usually try and be kind and inclusive as far as they are comfortable, each most naturally identifying with their own gender, race and class. As an early quote from this book notes - is this “Just a conversation about civility?” So why is something that is now so key for some people to constantly be putting out there as a set of personality faults to fix in everyone? Ironically to be ‘more like me’?

“Be it resolved, what you call political correctness, I call progress,” was the title of the debate. I was surprised by the audience take on this topic given the date and location, and also the panel split as Fry would surely usually be judged on the ‘right on lefties’ side of the fence, but that’s my narrow, lazy reading that many of us try to define for ease of understanding within the context. I enjoyed the contributions from all the debaters and although at times it felt like one side trying to attack one person rather than listen, the whole thing was fairly good natured. I was interested in reading more about the intricacies of the specifics of group needs that then leads to individual freedom, and it was a shame that the genetics element of the argument ignored, but a useful side step around the periphery of a difficult topic. For me it was hard not to agree with Fry

Michael Eric Dyson (pro): “I’m part of the Left. They’re cantankerous. When they have a firing squad, it’s usually in a semicircle”

Stephen Fry (con): “I think it’s time for this toxic, binary, zero-sum madness to stop before we destroy ourselves... I believe one of the greatest human failings is to prefer to be right than to be effective. And political correctness is always obsessed with how right it is, without thinking of how effective it might be...The reason that Trump, and Brexit in Britain, and all kinds of nativists all over Europe are succeeding is not the triumph of the Right, it’s the catastrophic failure of the Left. It’s our fault... It’s a strange paradox that the liberals are illiberal in their demand for liberality. They are exclusive in their demand for inclusivity”

Michelle Goldberg (pro): “The idea of being able to change culture, of not being beholden to traditional structures of the ever-expanding circle of human freedom; that’s an Enlightenment idea”

Jordan Peterson (con): “But the collectivist narrative that I regard as politically correct is a strange pastiche of postmodernism and neo-Marxism, and its fundamental claim is that, no, you’re not essentially an individual, you’re essentially a member of a group...when you speak, all you’re doing is playing a power game on behalf of your group. And there’s nothing else that you can do, because that’s all there is”

[Stefanos Baziotis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately this book was a big let down because it barely discusses political correctness – for any definition of the term. Even Stephen Fry at some point said: “I think people will look back on this debate and wonder why political correctness wasn’t discussed”. For sure what was not discussed is political correctness with my definition, which is disallowing certain terms of the language (supposedly to protect certain groups of people), which is also what Stephen Fry seems to think when referring to PC. Instead, the discussion got derailed with personal attacks, identity politics, systemic racism etc., which are relevant, but not the point. For example, you can act against systemic racism without political correctness, especially because I don’t think political correctness is effective at all. Besides not really discussing the central point, the main problem is that it seems that each of the four people was talking about a different thing, without too much overlap. Even when somewhat specific and concrete questions were asked, which again were irrelevant but ok, the other side just side-stepped the question.

Of all the speakers, I think Stephen Fry was clearly the best. He was to the point, he was empathetic, he tried to connect everybody, his language was passionate and deep, but neither populist nor simplistic, and I just happen to agree with his opinions the most. But maybe, the most important part of Stephen Fry’s speech was that he had a single, clear point, and he tried to address it instead of swirling around. Then, we have Michelle Goldberg. From now on, it starts getting blurry on what each person was debating about and that includes her. I’m putting her second just because she at least gave some good responses, that were somewhat on point (even though I don’t think they were good arguments) and she had a somewhat clear way of thinking. That said, It seems her goal with this debate was not to argue in favor of PC, but rather to argue against Peterson’s ideas in general. From the get-go, it felt like Michelle just wanted to attack Peterson’s ideas (not necessarily attack him personally) and this debate was just a good excuse, a platform, to do that.

Then, we have Jordan Peterson. I think Peterson had some deep thoughts, especially the individualistic vs collectivist thinking, but what he gained in depth he lost in complexity. He started these huge sentences and convoluted arguments, with unhelpful phrases like “horrible”, “obvious”, and “we obviously know where that leads” – without saying what this special location is. And it felt like he was not on point at all. And finally, we have Michael Eric Dyson. Frankly, I don’t know what this guy did there… I couldn’t discern almost any depth in his thoughts. Most of his speech seemed as an attempt to bring out his personal problems, supposedly as an indication of the problems that his race is facing. But honestly, saying continuously “I’m black”, “I’ve been discriminated against”, “cops shoot unarmed black people” and all that, is not really deep at all. I mean ok, these are problems, but what is the contribution to this debate? I don’t think any of these alone argue in favor, or for that matter, against political correctness. And to top all that, he made it personal with Peterson, which was kind of weird, because as I said, it felt as if Michelle wanted that much more, but I guess she had much more tact.

[Sarinda Wijetunge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Raised some very interesting points with thoughts and insights from very articulated and informed individuals of varying backgrounds. It was very thought provoking in terms of identifying where all the trigger points lie, group and individual concepts, rights and responsibility concepts.

But they did not really come to any solid conclusions, probably because they did not convincingly discuss political correctness in its entirety. The perception of “correct” on the political spectrum needs to be defined in a way that can be satisfied by both Left and Right that I guess ultimately results in the value, respect and dignity of every individual in the society.

I felt Stephen Fry had the right line of discussion on the topic of evoked feelings in certain de facto groups by another group imposing language changes and affecting free speech. This was interestingly countered by thoughts from the opposite bench of when does the individual identify as group, or can a group member ever be seen as an individual. Goldberg really nicely acknowledged Stephen Fry’s point on the anxiety and feelings evoked by said movements, as this can create polarisation as opposed to harmony. Peterson tried to steer the discussion sensibly towards the definition, firstly by trying to understand the scale itself, radical left to radical right. He said the extreme right was easier to boundary and define as a place to not go, but the extreme left was not correctly defined properly in his eyes anyway by the opposition. This was a danger to him as if it gave a licence for the rights movements to run free reign and do the very thing they were opposed to: tyranny.

Fascinating discussion, especially when Peterson was challenged heavily. The importance of perception is huge, the seeing the other side of view and accepting that everyone can be your teacher.