Reality Trip: Cancel Culture, Love, and Resilience
“As appealing as words sound on paper, Interpretation and change in tone varies from one to another. People love listening to words, yet words have always been the best tool for murder.”
–from Shizilin Tianru Heshang Yulu
(Quotations from Monk Tianru of Shizilin)
There’s no need for a mind fuck. Let’s get real. We like speaking. It’s a gift, and as our ability to work with language met free time and practice, written language by virtue of its utility blossomed. Let’s include numeric record keeping with this for practicality’s sake. For those of us accustomed to the written word, that it should exist and be used so pervasively is less than shocking. It is useful in so many ways: it guides us when we are lost; it saves lives; and it enriches our souls. However, to some, the written word was viewed as essentially damaging.
Socrates, one of the most well known classical era philosophers of the Occident, perceived a problem with the written word: that it is intoxicating and thus prone to being accepted or abused far too quickly. This lens relates to the Greek pharmakon. “What is a pharmakon?” you may ask. Pharm should seem familiar to you as it is the root of the word pharmacy, and pharmacies are places where people obtain medicine. Pharmakon relates to medicine, but also to poisons, drugs, magical spells, poetry, and so too, by extension, the written word in all its spellbinding, and thus damaging, potentiality. The root pharm also relates to pharmakos, scapegoats, those unlucky individuals, who take on the blame of the entire community, facing banishment, brutality, and/or ritual sacrifice. To be under the spell of the written word is to potentially exalt error even unto the point where the error spreads mimetic virus style. This is especially true in the case of those strapped for time since it is far too easy to rush and react without deeper contemplation and exploration.
That being said, I began writing this simply wanting to discuss the charm like, intoxicating nature of the word, and the different mediums of discourse, to emphasize once again that we are seeing an imbalance in the culture. As I was writing, however, I realized that the issue is not only the medium but the force behind it: love. It is love that causes the intoxication of mass hysteria, the high of comradery, and the bloodlust of the cancel culture scapegoat phenomena. It is this love that motivates people to embrace erroneous logic and speech, though other elements, such as poor education, a growing sense of nihilism, the joy of feeling in unity with the group, and an eye for profit factor in.
There are different kinds of love, and it is logical and good that love motivates us to defend whom and what we love most: our families, friends, and country, for example. As philosopher C.B. Robertson elaborates on in his book In Defense of Hatred, it is love that fuels hatred as a self-defense mechanism, for by instinct, we must have the adrenaline of hatred to fight those who would harm that which we love. We must also remember that love is often intoxicating. It brings us warmth and light, especially when our hearts bleed and we despair, working every day of our lives like the punished children of God, though in this day and age, most people won’t respect the motif by virtue of the partitioning urge, science is not religion just as our group is not your group.
I have always found tragedies heart wrenching regardless of who is afflicted. This is natural. Humans, other than sociopaths, have an inherent instinct to care for others, to recognize the suffering of others as that which could be our own. Because of this universal tendency, it is so easy to have knee jerk reactions and see the worst in arguments but partially understood. Unfortunately, the error of having the best intention yet coming to a hasty conclusion is all too common online.
When we have in-person conversations, we have the chance to read body language, ask questions, correct ourselves, or make some different yet more relevant point perhaps in the heat of the dialogue. With writing, we do these things with delay, more susceptible to becoming entranced with the word as the counter arguments that could be have no window for immediate voice, like in live conversation or debate.
With the development of the Interweb, debate has become ever more rapid and plentiful with online comments, replies, and chats. Although there is room for correction and additional remarks, the fleeting nature of people’s attention spans when online reduces the effectiveness of the elements that make for healthy and respectful conversations. It also limits our ability to exercise resilience and responsibility since a different tab can always replace a difficult discussion and someone who has a different opinion can always be blocked. With the Zoom era, whatever live conversations we were already having online have become so much more the common. Live online discourse is definitely a step in the right direction but are also subject to time constraints and moderator based censorship. Without the in-person element, the hazards of online cancel culture still linger. With any online debate, there are relevant cons that have been trivialized despite their extreme social effects, e.g. rioting, lawlessness, and economic damage. Those cons include big tech censorship, corporate bias, account removal or suspensions, online harassment, and the commonplace distortion of other perspectives.
Where lynch mobs were once a problem, and I’m saying this in general—not in a racialized sense since lynch mobs have not been solely racial within time, we now have the cancel culture mobs who will attempt to silence you online, rob you of your platform and reputation, and will try to ruin your material life if possible. What the online discourse culture as it is now has brought is rampant scapegoating. Eleanor from whatever small town said some words that offended someone and then the bolts of outrage fly. Most people are so terrified, they avoid even entertaining a thought that doesn’t conform to the script of outrage culture, which is perhaps a more specific way to think of the dynamics of cancel culture. However you choose to think about it, it’s safe to say that this script exists due to love. People, tired of imperfection in life and feelings of intergenerational hopelessness, think that blaming and destroying will some how open roads to new vistas, righting wrongs that once were, and deliver the future into the hands of the beloved as recovered victim.
The idea that wrongs can be righted is beautiful. That love can fuel great things is inspirational. However, the imbalance and faulty reasoning along with the institutional backing of error and scapegoating are not only menacing and destructive but at heart harmful for the very people they are meant to help, along with everyone else. The emotional quality of cancel culture ignites the vitriol of the people, but intoxicated decisions are often bad decisions even if this is only realized in retrospect. Tearing down other people simply because they have different ideas about life is an equation for distrust, fear, and the prohibition of true learning and exchange.
Thus, I advocate for a more temperate online climate, one that allows opposing views, diversity of idea, resilience in the face of opposition, and releases the scapegoating tendency, one that is more self aware of the flaws inherent in online design and realizes the inevitable persistence of imperfection in the material realm.
As a final thought, it is an established fact that too much time online can be damaging to people who are already suffering emotionally. It’s easy to say Americans need more mental healthcare, but another powerful yet less popular avenue is spiritual cultivation. Learning to manage the mind in order to participate in healthier discourse is key for establishing good roots and thus healthy fruit.
*updated capitalization 11/15/23
