Pinker’s Chapter 7 supplement — “amnesia of success” and mission creep
Pinker argues that successful moral movements can erase the baseline that made them necessary. Once lynching, marital rape, routine child beating, criminal punishment of homosexuality, or casual animal cruelty becomes taboo, later advocates naturally concentrate on subtler harms. The expanded category can make the present look uniquely bad because severe former practices disappear from memory while detection and vocabulary improve. He calls this amnesia of success and the category expansion mission creep.
The idea is a warning about historical comparison, not a proof that later harms are imaginary, that equal treatment has been achieved, or that every accusation is an overreaction. “Political correctness” is Pinker’s evaluative label for what he sees as excesses—speech codes, ritualized offense, symbolic prohibitions, and disproportionate safety measures. His examples are selective and his boundary between prudent norm enforcement and excess is contestable. The stronger analytical claim is narrower: compare the severity, frequency, reporting system, and legal legitimacy of conduct across time before concluding that heightened attention means heightened incidence.
Figure 7-1 in Rights shows the growing frequency of rights language, while the chapter’s behavioral series test whether more attention coincided with less violence. Chapter 7 synthesis · Rights expansion and “amnesia of success,” PDF pp. 529–533 (file not included in this release) · Race, taboo, and Pinker’s political-correctness critique, PDF pp. 548–550 (file not included in this release) · Rights-revolution synthesis and limits, PDF pp. 658–660 (file not included in this release)
23 Cancel Culture Examples: Brands That Have Been Cancelled
https://helpfulprofessor.com/cancel-culture-examples/