How the new ethics is changing the standards of communication and what is wrong with it

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Some of the new rules are no different from the old ones, but others will be difficult to get used to.

There has been a lot of talk about the new ethics lately. The writer Tatyana Tolstaya dedicated her YouTube blog to this phenomenon, Ksenia Sobchak arranged the Dok-Tok show, the popular science resource N + 1 launched a whole content resource. Let's figure out why the topic has become so popular, what the new ethics is and whether it is worth following.

What is the new ethics

You may have noticed that over the past few years, the norms of communication between people have begun to change. There is more and more talk around about sexism, racial discrimination, harassment, awkward jokes on social networks and real life. When it comes to this, the term "new ethics" is often mentioned.

When exactly this concept appeared and who introduced it is unknown. It originated on the Internet and has no clear definition, but we can say that this is a new culture of interaction with the world. The concept of "new ethics" is very broad and includes several aspects at once.

Fight against discrimination

That is, racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, eyelism, and so on. This includes, for example, the prohibition of discriminatory speech. For this, they can be fired in some companies, and banned on social networks.

There are also sanctions for refusing to hire a person based on their age, gender or nationality. For example, the Labor Code of Russia since 2013 prohibits specifying in vacancies the requirements for gender, race, skin color, nationality, language, origin, property, marital, social status.

Advocating for social justice

Some large Western companies have had a diversity policy for quite some time. Organizations not only do not allow a candidate to be refused on the basis of his nationality or gender, but also deliberately support a certain percentage of "minorities" in the team - including in leadership positions. This is how they work, for example, in Google.

In addition, some companies or even entire countries are introducing gender quotas. This means that there must be a large number of women on the board of directors or in the government.

And the American Film Academy in September 2020 put forward a list of requirements for films-nominees for "Oscar". Among the main characters, as well as in the film crew, there must be women, national minorities, LGBT people - otherwise the film will not be able to apply for the award.

Such measures are supposed to support people who, due to prejudice, find it more difficult to get a good job and make a career.

Combating Sexualized Violence

In 2017, actress Alyssa Milano tweeted the Me Too movement. Under this hashtag, women from all over the world talked about episodes of sexualized violence and harassment that they had to endure. Some of the victims dared to give their names and point out the offenders. This was followed by a string of public accusations and lawsuits.

A stormy public discussion began. The flash mob showed that the violence and harassment are of monstrous proportions, and something needs to be done about it.

The media and social networks began to talk about the culture of consent in sex - about how important it is to get a conscious "yes" from a partner to any action. And in some countries, laws have emerged to punish harassment on the street or in the workplace.

Changing hate speech

This means avoiding words and expressions that may offend or offend a person or a whole group of people. This includes offensive words that emphasize a person's gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality, social status. And also any other harsh incorrect statements.

The new ethic suggests that speech itself can be a form of discrimination. In almost any language, words describing, for example, men or members of their own race are mostly neutral, and when it comes to women or people of a different ethnic background, there is a lot of neglect and outright insults.

Some people, as well as entire publications or social networks, are trying to make the language more neutral and comfortable for everyone: they work on convenient wording, they are banned for harsh and offensive statements.

Cancellation culture

For an offensive statement or joke, rudeness and unworthy behavior of a person, it is not always possible to punish according to the law. Therefore, the "guilty" are actively punished on the Internet, deprived of their jobs and reputation: they write angry messages on social networks, boycott their products and services, lower their ratings, and break contracts.

Something similar happened to many media personalities: J. K. Rowling, Regina Todorenko, Taylor Swift, James Gunn and others. They were, as it were, “abolished”, erased from the public space - that's why the phenomenon came to be called the culture of abolition.

Rules of conduct in conditions of distance

In this context, the term "new ethics" is also used, albeit quite rarely. Due to the fact that more and more people work remotely, new rules of etiquette began to form, which are not yet clear to everyone. What and how to write in work chats and emails, how to behave during video conferences with colleagues, how to have a remote interview, and so on.

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Where did the new ethics come from and how does it differ from the old

New ethical ideas are often perceived as something fresh and innovative. Someone treats them with delight: it's good that the world has changed and people began to treat each other more tactfully. Someone, on the contrary, is outraged that it is not clear who invented and imposed rules that are difficult to follow. Don't take a step, you will offend someone already.

But in fact, no one specifically created a new ethics. And many of its rules existed before. It has long been considered, to put it mildly, incorrect, to insult people, touch them on different parts of the body without permission, or refuse them to work only because of the “wrong” skin color. It's just that the injured party did not have many opportunities to make the incident public, which means that the offender often went unpunished.

Now the situation has changed: thanks to the Internet, those who were not very polite realized that these actions could have consequences.

True, there is a moment that really makes the new ethics fundamentally new in some aspects. This is the idea of social justice - more precisely, the form that it has taken in the modern world. In 1989, American lawyer Kimberly Cranshaw formulated the name and the main theses of intersectionality - a concept that assumes that some people in society are more oppressed than others because of their gender, race, class, health status, religion, and so on. And since a person, by the fact of birth, suffers from discrimination, society should try to compensate for this and provide him with more opportunities than someone who is less oppressed. This is where the ideas of workplace diversity and gender quotas come from.

Intersectionality - or "intersection theory" as it is called in Russian - can be difficult for some to understand and accept, and it naturally attracts a lot of criticism.

What's wrong with the new ethics

Many of the ideas of the new ethics sound quite sensible. It seems that people will finally learn to treat each other with respect and there will be less insults, inequality and injustice in society. But the new ethics also has a downside - and, unfortunately, rather dark.

She divides people into categories

A developed society seems to be striving for equality. Most modern people understand that personal qualities do not depend on gender, nationality, health status and other parameters that we do not choose. At the same time, the new ethics again brings us back to the position when people find themselves in different "camps". Some appear as more privileged oppressors, and others as oppressed. As before, people are labeled and only their content changes.

There have long been statements on the Internet that now white heterosexual men are the most hated and criticized category of people. And, alas, there is some truth in this: men are often perceived as rapists, white people as racists, wealthy people as thieves who profit from the poorer, and so on.

As a result, because of the new ethics, we are returning to the same thing we wanted to get away from: segregation, intolerance and enmity. For example, the same white men are accused of all sorts of troubles and dream of depriving them of their rights.

She's very confusing

The new ethics does not define clear rules of conduct. Everything changes very quickly, and people cannot always adapt to new realities. With the basic norms, it is more or less clear: do not offend people, do not violate their personal boundaries, do not harass. But there are many nuances that can lead a person to the epicenter of a scandal, although he did not seem to want anything bad.

Take the recent story of the writer J. K. Rowling, one of the most famous victims of the new ethics. Rowling was initially accused of transphobia - for calling biological women women. And then in anti-Semitism and anti-Semitism - because the greedy and ugly goblins from the Harry Potter books resemble the stereotypical image of the Jews. That is, the writer did nothing wrong, but nevertheless managed to offend many people.

It leads to censorship

Undesirable information is blocked, people who speak out inconveniently are banned, "canceled" and hounded. And this is not only about truly hostile statements and actions, but also about what can be equated with them. Here again we have to recall the blatantly absurd and at the same time very indicative of the situation with Rowling, who only wrote that menstruating people are women. Or a recent story in Sweden - when a schoolchild was asked to take off his pectoral cross for a general photo, because it could embarrass his Muslim classmates.

Censorship and suppression of facts that certain categories of people dislike can be more than just offensive. Sometimes this leads to dire consequences. In the same Sweden, for many years, they hid data on the increase in crime, which began after the massive arrival of immigrants in the country. As a result, the number of crimes has reached catastrophic proportions. A similar story happened in the UK. In the small town of Rotherham, she has been trading a network of pedophiles and pimps for many years, most of whom were from Pakistan. About 1,500 children became their victims, but neither the police nor the authorities did almost anything about this, as they were afraid of accusations of racism.

It leads to double standards

It turns out that some people can do more than others. The fact that they themselves were discriminated against on the basis of skin color, nationality, gender, can serve as an excuse for very unpleasant actions. Even for crimes.

After a student professing Islam in France cut off a teacher's head, some journalists blamed the country's politics for the incident. And in the US even a book was published that justifies the robberies committed by members of the Black Lives Matter movement during the protests.

She takes radical forms

Actor Kevin Spacey was accused of harassment and sexualized assault by several men. Without understanding, Spacey was removed from all roles and hounded for a long time. At the same time, only one incident reached the court - and that the accusing party could not provide any evidence.

Some BLM protesters in the US openly crack down on “white people” and claim that white skin is violent.

In Norway, you can get a prison sentence for hate speech, even if a person speaks out at home. Although the criteria for hate speech are not fully defined. In Germany, they want to delete from the constitution the very word "race" as discriminatory.

And these are just a few examples of how a new ethics - generally a good and humane idea - turns into something strange and very far from the original idea.

Do I need to follow the new ethics

There is a grain of rationality in the new rules and guidelines. There is nothing wrong with reconsidering your views and behavior and accepting that a person must be respected regardless of their gender, skin color or sexual orientation. It is perfectly normal to follow the rules of decency, to refuse harassment, offensive language, inappropriate and discriminatory jokes. It is hardly worth saying in a mixed team that women are stupid and cannot occupy high positions. Or in a company with a disabled person, joke about disability.

At the same time, it is important not to go beyond common sense and remember about the other side of the new moral norms. Although it can be very difficult to do this, given how unpredictable the environment and the "rules of decency" are changing.

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