If you don't self-censor, you are technically subhuman

A recent 'survey' suggests white men are angry about needing to 'self-censor' in the workplace. This is the neurological equivalent of being outraged at having to use your thumbs to operate a pencil.

A recent survey revealed that 43% of white men, nearly one in two of them, report having to self-censor at work. Meanwhile, a staggering 25 MILLION of them say they’ve missed out on jobs, opportunities and promotions due to them being white men.

There’s… a lot to unpack there.

Let’s get one thing out of the way; I don’t believe for a second that 25 MILLION men took part in this survey. That would be a degree of statistical power unprecedented in any realm of social or psychological studies. A survey that managed a response rate which rivalled the population of Australia? I’m fairly sure I would have heard about such an achievement.

If I had to guess, I’d say it’s more likely the survey was conducted on a certain number of white males in the USA, and one in four of those asked said they felt they’d lost out on opportunities due to their sex and race. And if 200 million Americans are white, half of those will be male, making 100 million. And if one in four report losing out on opportunities due to their sex and race, then that means 25 MILLION men have experienced this overall.

Of course, this only makes sense if the survey, and those who took part, were a 100% faithful representation of the overall population. Which, if you know anything about anything regarding surveys of the general public, is a wild assumption to make. Presumably, this survey was very self-selecting for aggrieved white males who want to blame something, anything, for their subjective lack of success.

True, I could confirm or refute these assumptions by looking at the actual survey. However, it seems to stem from a Fox News article.¹ And I’m not clicking on or linking to it, because quite frankly, to hell with that. I’d much rather extrapolate wildly from the fragments of data I have to hand. Like they say, ‘monkey see, monkey do’.

But my intention here is to actually focus on the ‘self-censorship’ aspect. Because it’s presented as an undeniably bad thing, that must be stopped.

The thing is, though, it isn’t. And it shouldn’t.

Self-censorship is a fundamental part of being human

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio

Imagine being in a situation where you’re interacting with other people, and you have things in your head that you want to say, but you end up not saying them! Who could live with such mental anguish?

That’s not a rhetorical question, because pretty much every human, anywhere, manages to live with such ‘anguish’, day in, day out. It’s just how humans work.

And I mean that literally. We have dedicated brain regions, like the orbitofrontal cortex, which monitor all the things our brains make us want to do and say, and often put a stop to them by saying “I don’t think that is a good idea, so maybe refrain from acting on it?”

For a whole brain region with dedicated functions, particularly ones so complex and cognitively demanding, to evolve in the first place, they must have had a very important use, in the survival context.

And while evolutionary psychology is always a bit “you can’t prove that didn’t happen!” when it comes to explaining things, there’s a lot of research into how humans evolved such big powerful brains in order to sustain social relationships. Because acceptance and approval from others is a big part of our psychological wellbeing. And that we innately do whatever we can to present the best possible image of ourselves to others, as a result.

And a lot of this will involve being less-than-honest about what we think and feel. Like it or not (and many don’t, with good reason), but deception is a very impressive neurological achievement.

Many creatures are capable of stealth or camouflage, often to an impressive degree. But to know what the reality is, and to create an alternative version that you can effectively articulate to others? That takes some serious brain power, and our brains evolution have been influenced by this, as much as anything else.

There are so many outcomes of this, but one of those is, not saying what you actually want to say to other people, in situations where there would be ramifications for doing so? Our brains spent millions of years evolving the ability to do that! So to condemn it all as some modern societal invention or ‘liberal conspiracy’ is utterly ludicrous.

And that applies whether you subscribe to the spiritual or scientific view. Whether God made us this way or we were shaped into this form by the blood-soaked bandsaw of natural selection, our ability to ‘self censor’, to not share the truth when the situation deems that to be the best course of action, is incredibly impressive and a key part of who we are.

To deny it, to actively want to suppress it, that’s actively shutting down something that makes humans… human.

Why would anyone object to self-censorship?

Photo by Hafidz Alifuddin

To summarise all that’s been said so far; to rail against self-censorship as if it’s some sort of unforgivable inconvenience, that’s the cognitive equivalent of objecting to having to use the toilet, instead of defecating in the middle of the street.

Granted, having to find an accessible toilet to ensure privacy can be a bit of a chore, and it would be less of an effort to not have to do it. But… the alternative is defecating in the street! Which is, by modern human standards, not good. You’d be far more of a social outcast for emptying your bowels in a public space than for ‘dishonestly’ suppressing your feelings of inconvenience and locating a bathroom designed for the very purpose you require.

And so it is with self-censorship. Particularly in the workplace. A context where saying or doing the wrong thing, no matter how much you may want to, can result in serious personal and professional consequences. That’s how the world of work is set up. Anybody who argues otherwise clearly hasn’t experienced enough consequences of modern work. Or hasn’t actually ‘worked’ at all. Not in the traditional sense.

You might think, wouldn’t this mean that ‘self censorship’ being declared some sort of societal evil is the equivalent of a cabal of people who want to defecate in the street coming to power and insisting that anyone who uses a toilet is some form of weak, traitorous, deviant coward?

Well, you said that, not me, I can’t be blamed for it. But I don’t disagree either.

It’s probably tied to the fact that ‘self censorship’ is viewed as akin to dishonesty, and dishonesty is inherently immoral. Because telling a child about to go into emergency surgery for a serious injury “You’re going to be fine” is automatically bad, while telling a friend recovering from cancer that they look gaunt and ugly is only ever beneficial.

Basically, ‘self-censorship’ can only realistically be viewed as a bad thing if you’ve never had to do it before, but now feel you do. Like how an incredibly spoiled child starts school and is told that no, he can’t have all the toys, and must share.

Said child will likely have a tantrum as a result, but that’s just part of the learning process. What we shouldn’t do is arrange to have all the teachers sacked and introduce new rules saying that the tantrumming child must be given whatever they want. Because that would be ridiculous! Applying this logic to society in general would be infinitely more so.

And if you take issue with that, you’re saying I should have self-censored. So, is it a bad thing, or a good thing? Make up your mind!

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Dean Burnett’s books discuss all manner of things, but not this, because this subject only became a thing yesterday.

1. A Yahoo News article (yes, that still exists) reveals that the survey was conducted by JLL Partners for Tim “DEI deserved to end because it made white guys sad” Samuels’ YouTube series. So yeah, I’m confident in saying this survey isn’t a benchmark of academic rigour.