It's Like Waiting For The Bullsh*t To Breach The Levees Of Reason

Empathy is a finite resource. Like food and patience and attention. We use it for the people we care about first, and only extend it to others if we have any left over. This used to work out fine.

After all, before the internet smushed us all together, we only really needed to be kind to people we knew in real life. We interacted, mostly face to face, within comparatively small communities. We knew people well enough to consider their “bad behaviour” with some context. And our response had consequences beyond getting blocked.

In my article, The Corrosive Cost Of Cancel Culture, I lamented how empathy seems in such short supply when we disagree lately. Especially online. And how the cruelty it inspires robs us of the opportunity to change people’s minds for the better. D wondered if something more proactive could be done.

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D:

Isn't it also about cancelling with one's eyes on the virtue signalling trophy for their altar ego?

Like Jimmy Galligan, a black classmate of then 15- year old white cheerleader Mimi Groves, who used the n-word immediately after getting her driver's licence and her friend stupidly re-posted it.

(see site at end of response)

Jimmy held on to the video for some 2.5 years and then released it. Just in time for her to lose her full scholarship at U-Tennessee.

How brave and how noble.

His words? “I’m going to remind myself, you started something,” Galligan added. “You taught someone a lesson.”

Sure, there's plenty of blame to pass around but Jimmy Galligan, an erstwhile 'friend', feels entitled enough to punish a white friend for something she said when 15?

Have we learned nothing from the USSR's 'Young Pioneers', from Mao's 'Red Guard' or the 'Hitlerjugend', wherein children were encouraged to 'inform' on their parents?

As you allude, didn't Hawthorn try to warn us of this when he penned 'The Scarlet Letter'?

We are all on a continuum. People can learn. Become educated with compassion.

Even Mimi Groves can learn, who apologized for the post many times before she graduated from High School, but that wasn't good enough, was it?

And what does that say about U-Tennessee and those fanatically slathering around the digital guillotine?

This will divide us.

And the pious prefects preaching their puritanical path to redemption?

Witness what happened to San Francisco's School Board Recall, one reason being that "...the Board spent time deciding whether to rename a third of its schools last year instead of focusing on reopening them."

https://nypost.com/2020/12/29/white-teen-kicked-out-of-college-after-n-word-video-resurfaces/

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Steve QJ:

Jimmy held on to the video for some 2.5 years and then released it. Just in time for her to lose her full scholarship at U-Tennessee.

Yep, I heard about this case. Absolutely sociopathic. And yes, an important piece of this, that was outside the scope of this article, is that corporations and schools need to stop pandering to this bullsh*t.

The lifeblood of cancel culture is the corporations who are willing to capitulate to the demands of a few crazies on Twitter.

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D:

It would be so good if like minded people could somehow organize a ‘if you capitulate to the cancel culture cretins we won’t buy your product/donate to your university/ read your virtue signalling articles’ response.

Like #Push Back C.C. or #buynomore cancel culture…anything.

To do nothing is like wallowing in sickening bulls*t waiting for the levels to rise high enough to breach the levees of reason.

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Steve QJ:

It would be so good if like minded people could somehow organize a ‘if you capitulate to the cancel culture cretins we won’t buy your product/donate to your university/ read your virtue signalling articles’ response.

Hmm, that's the problem though. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I'd personally love to see something like this.😅 But I'd love it precisely because, deep down, I don't mind seeing companies penalised for doing things I disagree with. That's the real problem.

We all have this urge, and we all have to stand on the principle that says "no, if I disagree with you I'll reason with you instead of trying to boycott you or otherwise penalise you."

We can all see how bad this is when we don't agree with the "cancellation", but we have to hold to it even when we agree.

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D:

Well said.

The push back is necessary but using the weapons one abhors does indeed add fuel to the cancel bonfire, a conflagration which will burn us all…is burning us all.

Thanks for the pause.

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Showing empathy towards people we agree with is easy. It’s when we disagree that it’s hard. And lest I come across as if I’m claiming some kind of moral superiority here, I really do share D’s desire to see companies punished for their cowardice.

I, too, see the bulls*t threatening to “breach the levees of reason.”

The only thing that gives me pause is the question of where the line is. If we created our consortium of “anti-cancellers”, at what point would we become the people intimidating companies into bending to our demands?

There’s no denying that strong-arm tactics work. Cancel culture is all the proof you could need of that. And they work especially well against companies that eagerly sacrifice principles for profit.

But those of us who hope to create a saner world, need to hold to our principles a little more tightly. Especially during those times when that empathy tank is running low…