Let’s talk about cancel culture!
Cancel culture is using antisocial and abusive behaviors to silence people who disagree with some narrative. It plays out in several ways: contacting employers, doxxing accounts, shaming, attacking one’s character instead of their ideas, and trying to destroy someone’s life.
This is incredibly dangerous territory for two primary reasons:
First, it’s abuse that people can’t escape. It’s abusing them into a corner with nowhere to go. You strip the target of their agency. Social media platforms have a monopoly so I really don’t want to hear that they can *just leave* especially during COVID lockdowns.
Second, cancel culture is regressive. We need discussion to move forward and be progressive in life, and canceling others is doing the exact opposite of that. All it does is create an echo chamber and cast fear into people who may hold a different viewpoint. It utilizes antisocial behaviors with anyone of a different opinion for retribution.
It's 100% religion. The Catholic Church banned Galileo's 1632 book Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, forced Galileo to recant his heliocentric views, and condemned him to house arrest until he died in his home. You see this today with people losing their jobs or licensure because they have alternative ideas.
People need to feel safe to express their ideas so they can be critiqued. Imagine where we’d be at if certain historical views were never expressed, like that of Galileo or even Albert Einstein, who challenged the mainstream physics narrative and ended up being right.
We’re thankful for those who speak up. They lynch you on social media and we understand why people are terrified to even discuss their ideas. We get anxiety when we make a controversial posts due to what’s happened to us in the past (others attacking our character, relentlessly posting about us, losing streams of income, etc.), but we’ve both decided that we have to continue regardless, because without that our integrity and ability to diversify our beliefs is stifled. It’s sad that we have to put up with harassment but ‘tis life in the current political environment.
People are always going to have a diversity of ideas that are everything from amazing to dangerous. We can’t silence them, we need to leave the environment open for discussion. We should use critical thought to judge arguments based on the intrinsic merits of the argument. Stop telling people to not talk and instead explain to listeners why what they say is wrong.
Humans generally only accept information that confirms their beliefs and attack anyone who disagrees. They fail to falsify theories with data and evidence, yet many claim to be “evidence based” while they reject anything that challenges their belief paradigm. Does that sound “evidence based” to you?
The blatant misuse of psychological terminology to deflect their abuse tactics is also something to be weary of and something I’m witnessing on the daily. They will misuse a serious psychological diagnosis that shouldn’t be taken lightly—gaslighting, narcissistic, and silencing victims—to get others in their tribe to ostracize you, and conclude that you are psychologically unhealthy for simply wanting to discuss the flaws in their logic. Which is quite the conundrum because the true victims end up being canceled and not the ones doing the abuse. It is a guise to cover up their abuse while claiming moral and ideological purity. Textbook abusive behavior.
Don’t fall for it. You are not the unhealthy one for wanting to discuss these topics. On the other hand it is psychologically unhealthy to cancel and abuse others for wanting to discuss ideas.
Comment over here.