I have very little problem with cancel culture, in general, especially the most recent edition. It’s objectively funny when people act as though cancel culture is some kind of recent development.
The practice of ostracizing people for their perceived behavior is an age-old tradition. The only new aspect of modern cancel culture is the behavior for which people get canceled. Instead of people in the margins being further socially punished because of deviation from Puritanical rules or the entrenched systems of imbalanced power, people in positions of fame, power, and authority have started to face the consequences of misogyny, racism, homophobia, and transphobia. People in traditional places of societal dominance freaked out once they started seeing the time-honored weapon of ostracization wielded in defense of minority groups instead of for their oppression.
So yeah, I’m totally fine with that development. BUT . . . if you’re deconstructing from a religious tradition characterized by judgment, shame, isolation, etc., does that feel like the best possible way to eliminate unwanted behavior from a progressive society?
I want to reiterate that cancel culture has its place. But I think the reflexive response of dunking on every bad take and shaming every problematic behavior has its share of negative effects. Once it becomes the go-to reaction to every vestige of an oppressive system, cancellation becomes the prevailing form of discourse in the culture. Doesn’t it ever feel like we’re living in a world of he’s awful/she’s awful? It’s as though with any issue du jour, the only real choice is that whatever side you pick, the other side is deplorable.
Personally, I think cancellation would better serve us all if it were just one sharp blade on a social Swiss army knife I like to call “Unfollowing.”
I’m not going to pretend to be the authority on social change. I’m far from it. But I recognize that the biggest power structures tend to run everything, and those of us who want to stand against them (whether it’s a religious system, the economic structure, government and politics, racist protocols, or the patriarchy) have an uphill climb ahead of us. Some infractions deserve to be judged and shamed, sure, but organization, protesting, inspiring, teaching, connecting, leading can all be effective forms of unfollowing the prevailing systems. Whatever specific actions we might develop to resist the powers that be, what speaks to me in my soul is to begin that struggle by unfollowing the protocols and problematic leaders the system offers up for us to follow.
Don’t participate. Refuse to contribute to that system. Stop cooperating. Even think a little bit differently than the conventional wisdom suggests.
I do believe it’s our nature to cooperate with the way our tribes, communities, and society at large. But when we see that the system is wronging someone . . . unfollow.