On Patronising

One the greatest plagues in some circles of Western society is the devotion that some people have developed towards political correctness so that it has become very easy for them to miss the wood for the trees (or the trees for the wood?). Take the notion of 'advice', in particular. The classical idea of friendship in the world of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages was a mutual relationship between two people who were willing not only to 'walk with each other', 'have a laugh', or 'enjoy a quiet sunset together', but also to correct one another. Today, of course, we would be extremely wary of 'correcting' anyone, even a friend, fearing that the response will be : 'Oh, just shut up and stop judging me, will you?', 'Thank you very much, I have had a very bad day today, and I don't need your shit right now', 'Do we have to go through this right now? I mean, I am seeing my psychiatrist in less than ten minutes and I am already running behind schedule', and 'I am not having this conversation with you'.

All of these can be summarised in the neat slogan : 'Don't patronise me!'.

Perhaps it is wrong to 'patronise' other people by giving them advice. I wonder, however, whether it is possible to consistently adopt a 'non-patronising' attitude towards the world. As a matter of fact, most parents in the world necessarily have to be patronising towards their children : they have to know what is best for their children, and have to be sure which school, what type of education, and which medium of instruction is the most suitable for them. They sometimes punish their children, in fact, beating them rather cruelly, shout at them to 'correct' them saying that this shouting is in their 'best interests', and enforce all sorts of absurd regulations on them (for example, 'Return home before it is dark', which usually means, in large parts of the world, 2 a.m. for a boy and 7 p.m. for a girl).

None of this is an argument in favour of patronising; indeed, patronising is quite often used as a smoke-screen by people with a holier-than-Thou attitude towards the world. However, once we declare in the name of political correctness that 'all things are equally holy' (or what amounts to the same thing, that 'all things are equally profane'), that will mean, among other things, the end of parenthood as we know it today, since an essential component of parenthood is 'correcting' children by giving 'advice' to them. Some people may not have any problems with that; but those who are worried about this prospect need to do some rethinking as to whether it is always wrong to patronise other people. (Or you might say that it is right to patronise children because they are not 'people'. Well, just wait until the Childrens' Rights Movement gets under way in another ten years : your children could drag you to court for patronising them.)