Without being subject of comparison, Satoshi forwarded, like many of his predecessors (Socrates, Darwin, Crick, Kevorkian etc), some cheeky but mainly bothering and sensitive headlines, yet loved by the media and fellow Psychology Today bloggers alike. He picked on every minority equally, trying to look deep inside the human mind and giving human behavior a rough scrutiny.
However, no one protested when he said that dropping atomic bombs on Japan was an act of utmost compassion, or why suicide bombers are Muslim (lack of sex), liberals are more intelligent or women are essentially prostitutes, or even called Victoria Beckham a whore (a word he later removed). Why did so many people get irritated to the point where they asked Kanazawa’s head on a silver plate, when he called black women ugly? Are the egos of the colored minority so fragile, to the point where they only felt safe if they discarded the Japanese psychologist from the academia ? Less fragile than those of Asians, Eastern European Jews, Conservatives, women, gays or David and Victoria Beckham’s, which were all subjects of Satoshi’s sharp scientific tongue?
I am almost certain that most of us rejoiced and had a warm feeling of self-fulfilled prophecy and a big fat confirmation bias when Satoshi wrote an entire book about how beautiful people have more daughters. You, parents of daughters, have just been scientifically confirmed you are beautiful, haven’t you? As long as he told us what we wanted to hear and validated our strong opinions about ourselves, we tacitly smirked and admired his acid journalistic style to only burn the man alive when he touched a more sensitive issue.
Many of his Psychology Today fellow bloggers asked for his apologies, the students at the London School of Economics petitioned for his resignation and basically quite a handful of associations of various political colors insisted to show the world they back the human rights of not being considered less attractive by some eccentric scientist. The man was vilified and his career is at a crossroad. Are his accusers happy? To my recollection, no one really remembers Anytus, Meletus and Lycon as doing the world a favor from saving the Athenian youth from corruption, but you certainly all heard about Socrates. Some might say that comparing Satoshi with Crick, Darwin or Socrates might be a bit far fetched and to those I can reply that they all had one goal alone: they were true to themselves, and mostly they served a truth they believed in. Sure, you might say, so did Hitler, Stalin and all the “racist purifiers” who turned a simple stereotype into mere atrocities. As make no mistake: a stereotype that is not held in check leads to the Holocaust, there is no doubt about that. Yet, are we one step away from such thing that we so imperiously felt the urge to take measures against one man and excommunicate him?
Come to think of it, stereotypes, like legends, are founded on a core of truth. Generalizing them is painful, but nevertheless stereotypes are true. They are, after all, oversimplifications of a set of attributes a group of individuals have, especially underlying the negative ones. However, it doesn’t mean they are not based on true attributes. OK, the fact that we nonchalantly dismiss so many people and stereotype Americans as fat, doesn’t mean they are not fat. In this particular case, though, the minority of 40% that are within weight limits might feel offended, but yes, Americans, most of them, are fat.
Stereotypes are usually formed on “the basis of prejudice and are employed to explain real or imaginary differences due to race, gender, religion, age, ethnicity, socio-economic class, disability, and occupation, among the limitless groups one may be identified with”. Real is, in this context, key!
Unfortunately, stereotypes don’t seem to affect only the minorities. If someone, who is still not politically and correctly aligned with the new E.U. norms and regulations, addresses Romanians as gypsies, the latter will feel offended. Being identified with this particular ethnic minority, came in time to mean an insult. The gypsies themselves have their roots somewhere in India. They are nomad people who are generously spread all over the world, but mostly in Eastern Europe. Some of the members of this minority steal, kill, rape and pillage. So do the members of a Danish or Swiss society, of course, with less frequency, but when that happens, it must have been an “immigrant”. Hence, the entire minority of gypsies is labeled consequently. Moreover, a country that hosts a large number of this particular minority came to being labeled as such. The problem with stereotypes is that sometimes creates double standards. The inference is this: when applied to a minority based on what a majority is, might result in a truism, when applied from a minority towards a majority tends to be false. Ayn Rand, whom I particularly don’t like but I happen to agree with at times, once said “whenever you think you are facing contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong”.
I can't believe I am quoting Wikipedia, but here it goes: “sociologists believe that labeling is not only necessary but is inescapable. Even though stereotyping is inaccurate, it is efficient. Categorization is an essential human capability because it enables us to simplify, predict, and organize our world. Once one has sorted and organized everyone into tidy categories, there is every incentive to avoid processing new or unexpected information about each individual. Assigning general group characteristics to members of that group saves time and satisfies the need to predict the social world.” So all we have to do is set our stereotypes straight to save everyone’s time.
History taught us that either absorbed in childhood or at a later stage in life, once it is learnt a stereotype becomes self perpetuating. It dejectedly becomes an immune disease of our mental patterns.
David Cronenberg once said that “all stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true”.
What is truly painful is that fellow scientists hurried in a mob mentality frenzy, as if they didn’t know any better, to crucify Kanazawa. Some said what he did was not science, others used his data to prove black on white that Black women are scientifically proven as being attractive. And that is the end of it, we use science as the ultimate proof to make a point, forgetting it should be neutral. But we are not neutral, so why should science be?
As a woman, an Eastern European with a half Middle Easterner child, I had multiple reasons to dislike “the scientific fundamentalist” Satoshi Kanzawa and yet I didn’t. Am I more tolerant than the rest of the civilized Western world? Maybe not, and Juno knows I am prone, like anybody else, to stereotyping, which is an active process of simplifying our surroundings and ease up our cognitive processes.
Yet, this time, Satoshi seemed to have stepped on a few sensible toes and most probably the reasons for which he is being ostracized are mostly political.
As someone who was born, raised and lived most of her teenage years under a communist dictatorship I always and unconditionally admired the ease and luxury of free speech the civilized West had. After a while, I realized there is no freedom, as we have no free will – another debate that is worth a two cent opinion-, and political correctness is just another trick invented by the spin doctors to get a few extra votes from the minorities. And sadly, the West never seemed uglier that these days.
Written in 2008 and re-posted in 2023.
