Dalrymple writes that cant, or humbug,
is far worse than hypocrisy. For if by hypocrisy, we mean a failure to live up to our professed moral ideals, most of us are hypocrites, and thank goodness. A society in which everyone lived up to his moral principles unswervingly would be intolerable. Apart from the fact that no mesh of such principles could ever be fine enough to catch all life’s infinitely variable exigencies, a person of no moral weakness, while perhaps admirable in the abstract, would be an uncomfortable, even frightening, person. It is good not to be a liar; but never to lie is to be an unsocial being, with as much feeling as an automaton.
Without hypocrisy, he says,
there would be no gossip; without gossip, no literature and precious little conversation. The dose of hypocrisy necessary to maintain social intercourse is a matter of judgment, for while many instances of hypocrisy are reprehensible and properly the subject of adverse comment, and some instances are beyond the pale, hypocrisy is as necessary to human existence as love or laughter. The only effective way to eliminate hypocrisy from human affairs is to have no moral standards.
Cant
is more destructive than hypocrisy because it is harder to expose and a humbug deceives himself as well as others, while a hypocrite retains some awareness; he is a rogue rather than a villain. Cant is the vehement public expression of concern for others, or of anger at an opinion casting doubt on some moral orthodoxy that is not, and cannot be, genuinely felt, its vehemence being a shield for insincerity and lack of confidence in the orthodox opinion. Cant is contagious, and, when widespread, creates an atmosphere in which people are afraid to call it by its name. Arguments go by default; and if arguments go by default, ludicrous, bad, or wicked policies result.
Era of woke cant
Dalrymple declares that
we live in an era of cant. It has never been, in my lifetime, as important as it is now to hold the right opinions and to express none of the wrong ones, if one wants to avoid vilification and remain socially frequentable. Worse still, and even more totalitarian, is the demand for public assent to patently false or exaggerated propositions; refusal to kowtow in such circumstances becomes almost as bad a sin as uttering a forbidden view.
He notes that
wherever people are punished, legally or socially, for expressing an opinion contrary to some recently adopted orthodoxy, or for failing to express the tenets of that orthodoxy, cant is bound to flourish; further, people who begin with an awareness that they are uttering cant come to believe that it is true because no one likes to think that he has spoken only from conformity or pusillanimity, or to avoid unpleasantness and the ruin of reputation. Hence, cant spreads rapidly once it takes hold in a society, and becomes difficult to challenge, let alone eradicate.
Wokeness has a tendency to inflation.
When cant becomes generalised, it is necessary for anyone who desires to distinguish himself from the majority of people to go further in his cant. It is like fundamentalism in Islam: you can always be outflanked by someone more orthodox than thou. Once a new canting doctrine becomes orthodox, it will be outflanked.
Dalrymple observes that woke leaders
are seekers of power, if only the power to destroy, which is often a delight. Cant is the weapon of the ambitious mediocrity, a class of person that has become much more numerous with the extension, but dilution, of tertiary education. Such people believe that social prominence is their due.
Britain, he points out,
has long been a world leader in cant.
The habit of canting
can reduce people to a single, or highly predominant, characteristic. It makes people’s opinions seem like a scratched record that causes the needle to jump and replay again and again the same snatch of song.
Cant is,
among other things, a defence against unwelcome thoughts.
Dalrymple reminds us that nowadays,
the instillation of cant, as well as the prevention of anything else, is the main business of education.
Wokeness
takes over minds and reduces their ability to consider other points of view, take in contradictory evidence, or sympathise with anyone not in total and unconditional agreement. It is intolerant. It promotes monotony and eradicates subtlety, nuance, and irony; it does not recognise a tragic dimension to life. It is inherently utopian because it assumes that moral perfection can be reached. It is boring. It achieves its victories by use of repetition (though frightening vehemence plays its part). It intimidates by gathering crowds, by anathema, and excommunication. Humour is its enemy. That is why jokes are the particular object of its obloquy.
Dalrymple asserts:
Unlike hypocrisy, one can say nothing whatever in favour of cant; but where having the supposedly right opinions is taken as the larger part of virtue — much larger a part than actual conduct — cant has little to oppose its spread and much to encourage it.
