Why we Cancel
A series to compassionately understand why we cancel and point fingers.
Part 1: Introduction
How can we understand each other, if we don’t even understand ourselves?
Here we are. Together we have created a world where moral purity is both mandatory and utterly unattainable. The comment section labels people racists, nazis, sexists, ____phobic, misogynist, reducing their important meaning with every post. We fire professors for saying words that SOUND like other words. We call a celebrity an unfit mother based on a single photo. We cast out people for thinking different than us, all the while our leaders point fingers, driving us further and further apart.
How can so many speak in support of mental health yet actively participate in this rhetoric? How can we judge so definitively? Have we lost our compassion? Lost our trust in the good most of us hold in our hearts?
Perhaps we have?
Once we became “woke” we soon found hardship around every corner. No longer able to reside within our own struggles, blissfully ignorant to those of others, we got angry.
We organised.
We used our platforms.
We demanded change!
And change we got.
Thankfully, within a few years we accomplished things I believe would’ve been impossible without our collective outrage. Yet, we soon found, injustice and suffering continued. Unable to ever sleep again, we lost our ability to dream and perhaps with it, our ability to trust, show compassion and see each other as complex and evolving humans.
Instead, we fixated ourselves into our identity, intrenched ourselves within our group. Labeled others “them” and closed ourselves off for honest and nuanced discourse.
This forever evolving finger pointing is best encapsulated by Outrage Culture. A behaviour that exhibits just how little we have grown, since we labeled people witches and watched them burn for entertainment.
We pounce on anyone who dares to step outside the ideology deemed appropriate by our council and when we watch someone get canceled, we conform, we step in line. We adhere to popular opinion and push away ideas that could jeopardise our position within the group.
When we disagree with someone’s public damnation, we silence ourselves. We watch the flames with our heads hung low. Either way, we pretend we are morally pure. Knowing the serpent can easily turn its head.
Of course there is a place for anger and outrage. It can be useful. It can bring change. It is undoubtedly true that there are evils and wrongs in this world that have to be fought. But anger and outrage can influence reasoning and snuff compassion. Driving us further and further apart, leaving us with an ideology that is potentially flawed and no closer to the truth or a desirable future.
WHY WE CANCEL is a series, not about the canceled but, about the canceler.
It is my humble attempt to compassionately understand why we continue to think in such binary terms of right and wrong. Why we rather see someone burn at the stake, then allow for the complexity and nuance of their humanity. Why we can’t see that they could have easily been us, had our circumstances, learning, upbringing and surroundings been different.
For the sake of my still blissfully ignorant 11 month old son. I hope to identify spaces that bring us understanding and perhaps show us a way forward. Because ultimately, by understanding ourselves, we might be more open to understanding each other.
