I’ve been asked what I think about the recent phenomenon of the “Cancel Culture,” where people band together, usually on social media, to present a ”united front” against “injustice.” It’s a highly charged topic, and I’ve been asked whether this is a good thing; a spiritual step forward.
This is a chewy topic, and as usual, I don’t have a simple answer for it, although, right off of the top, I’ll say (again) that I don’t believe in “good” and “bad.” I honestly don’t. In a reality based on the knowledge that I am an immortal being diving into intense, juicy life experiences just for the fun of it, I believe only in the experience, and what one learns from it. I understand that some events, or behaviors, may be more pleasant or more unpleasant, more difficult or easy, but those are subjective aspects of discernment, not judgment. With discernment, the interpretation of the event references back to the desires of the individual, not the collective. In contrast, the good/bad dichotomy slaps a collective, social judgment onto an event, or a person’s behavior, that locks one into a limiting interpretation entirely because of what other people think.
Stop for a second and think that through. Re-read it, if you have to. It’s the basic premise to the perspective I’m trying to explain.
While I’m a big fan of discernment and personal integrity, I’m not a fan of folks being judgmental. While it’s no fun being judged, the dynamic also has an unfortunate impact on the person doing the judging. Judgments glue negative or painful emotions to the person holding the judgment, sticking the discomfort in their emotional and energy bodies for a long time. To slap a judgment of “bad” onto something merely because it’s unpleasant in the moment, or because one disagrees with it, is to wallpaper one’s own emotional body with unpleasantness, as well as negate the power of the lesson that was being offered.
Think that one through, too. Every time you throw a judgment, or an expectation, onto another, you’re locking a painful limitation into your own space.
As I’ve skimmed through my favorite online dictionaries, the term “Cancel Culture” has been defined as “A recent social phenomenon in which those who are deemed to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner are ostracized, or shunned. This shunning may extend to social or professional circles—whether on social media or in person—with most high-profile incidents involving celebrities.” The definitions go on to suggest that the reason for the “cancellation” is to “use social pressure, up to and including harassment, to punish, and/or force compliance and conformity in behavior, if not thought.”
Yeeeow! I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounds…nasty. Kinda like Mean Girls given global authority to decry anyone they see fit, for any reason—or none.
In terms of expanding what folks might call “social conscience;” a desire to move society towards a more inclusive, kinder expression of caring for each other, the cancel culture, by its very nature, does exactly the opposite. For one thing, it doesn’t consider the perspective or psychological state of the person being ostracized. It doesn’t teach, or encourage growth. It doesn’t inculcate a lasting shift in perspective of the (alleged) miscreant. Like our current penal system, it just forces compliance and punishes resistance. How is that helpful? How does that allow for compassion, true, heartfelt, remorse (if warranted), and growth?
In the Cancel Culture, someone, somewhere, declares themselves to be The Voice Of The People, and makes a purely subjective decision that an “injustice” has being perpetrated. Yet when these things sprout up, I often find myself thinking, “Jeez! Who elected you to speak for me? I certainly didn’t.”
But that’s the ‘crowd mentality’ nature of this kind of symbolic lynching, isn’t it? That someone with an ax to grind goes after “those who are deemed to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner,” uses social media to activate and unify the seething masses, penalizes the person who personally angers them, and gets their pound of flesh. If they get hailed as “forward thinking” and get a few minutes in the limelight (with a nice rush of ego gratification), so much the better—for them. But it’s no longer about whether someone did something distasteful, or about moving towards a kinder social expression. It’s about the heady rush of power a mob gets from punishing an outsider.
It disturbs me that these “decisions” in choosing who to cast out are often made by people who don’t have all of the facts. They can’t. And yet, once they’ve declared their righteousness, they stop looking for the reality of the situation; they’re committed to the downfall of their chosen victim. In that regard, the crowd mentality is fascinating. An individual can be reasoned with. A crowd? Not so much. There’s been a lot of study in group dynamics, and part of what they’ve found is that, once committed, a crowd will seldom turn back.
It’s like that scene in Men in Black, where Tommy Lee Jones says to Will Smith, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.”
During the Depp-Heard trial, I followed an interesting conversation posted by a woman who felt that Depp should be stripped of all of his worldly goods, scorned, reviled, physically emasculated, if possible, and left in the gutter to rot, because (in her words) “Wife beaters should suffer.” When I pointed out that it hadn’t been proven that he’d laid a finger on his then-wife—although it had been proven that she’d chopped off one of his—this woman didn’t want to hear it. She’d transferred her pent-up hatred of all ‘wife beaters’ onto him, and facts be damned! Screw the courts! She was so caught up in the Cancel Culture frenzy, and felt that it was such a fabulous, world-stage opportunity to punish anyone who’d even been accused of spousal abuse, that a high-profile target like Depp, in her opinion, “shouldn’t be allowed to get away.”
I don’t know about you, but I just wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing her in a jury box.
Daniel Richardson, a researcher at University College London, summarized the results of one of his studies on social conformity by suggesting that the decisions that people make as a group tend to be far more prejudiced and much less intelligent than the ones they make individually. “When people interact, they end up agreeing, and they make worse decisions,” he says. “They don’t share information, they share biases.”
Group dynamics research that goes as far back as the 50’s has repeatedly shown that people will go against common sense and make absolutely ridiculous decisions in order to adopt the view of the majority, in order to be seen as part of the group. It seems to be something of a survival reflex, and it’s been suggested that, the more intense the group, the more eager people are to conform; so that they, themselves, are not shifted into the crosshairs.
“We think of the internet as an information superhighway.” Richardson said, “It’s not. It’s a bias superhighway. Twitter and Facebook are wonderful ways of sharing information, but it may be that, because we’re sharing our prejudices, they’re making us dumber.”
The most ironic thing, of course, is that many of the people who are pro-Cancel Culture are members of social subgroups who once suffered the same kind of social ostracization, feeling like outcasts. There’s a kind of desperation in the way some of these folks will attempt to force their will onto others, utterly blind to the fact that, not only did they hate the dynamic when it was being directed at them, but that, clearly, it didn’t work. Nothing anyone said or did could force them to be someone other than their authentic selves.
It never works. It can’t. It’s a violation of an individual’s spiritual right to self-expression. Experiencing that kind of oppression may be a wonderful—albeit painful—opportunity for growth, and for learning powerful lessons, but for the average person, all it ever does is breed resentment.
So when folks ask me how I feel about the Cancel Culture, I tend to say, “You might want to stop trying to control others, and instead, learn to control yourself.”
Bringing the dialogue into the first-person, for the sake of simplicity; if something I say upsets you, it’s because you’ve taken offense at my words. Taken offense. Taken. You have literally seized hold of my words and drawn them into your own psyche, found something inside of you that is being stimulated by what was said—or, more accurately, how you interpreted what was said—and then chosen to be offended.
And if you’ve done that—and you honestly do not want to feel offended—the onus of responsibility is upon YOU—not me—to release the offense you have taken upon yourself—the offense you have chosen to activate—and choose another response. Indifference is a useful response to someone else’s opinion, but it’s quite a leap. Maybe just acknowledging the anger that you feel—without letting it move outside of your space and be used as a weapon as it changes into the vibration of punishment—can give you a moment to unearth why you’re really angry.
I’m not suggesting that you should see injustice and do nothing; quite the opposite. But the balance of justice is never in what you do; what always matters is why you’re doing it. There’s a big difference between holding someone accountable for their actions in accordance with established law, and moving to punish someone for the pure, visceral pleasure of retribution. Especially when you’re actually punishing someone you may not even know for something that was done to you in your past, by another person; one who isn’t even involved in the current drama.
The true source of your deeply felt anger is seldom about what was said or done by someone you don’t even know. It’s usually something you’ve been suppressing, or repressing, for a long time. And generally, the stronger the emotional response, the longer it’s been festering. The good news is that, having stimulated the stuck emotion actually gives you the opportunity to bring it to consciousness, clean house, and release it.
But the only one who can decide to change how you feel is you. Trying to control another won’t change what’s going on in you. In the first-person example I gave, your emotional state is completely divorced from me, my actions, or my words. Attempting to force me to recant my opinions and stop saying things that stir up emotional linkages in your psyche may be a great game of you attempting to assert control over me, to force me to stop stimulating the demons resident in your attic, but even if you manage to do that (and I don’t see that happening), your demons will still be hissingly active in your own mind. Your unexamined “triggers,” your lack of self-worth, your damaged ego, your inability to accept yourself and love yourself so powerfully that no one else’s opinion can even touch you—that’s all on you. The only person who can resolve those inner terrors is you.
This is such a basic truth in the reality of the human experience that it amazes me that it has to be stated. And, on some level, you all know this! I’m sure that each of you has experienced a moment of interaction with another human being, where you’ve said something harmless; something utterly playful or innocuous, and one member of the group chose to take umbrage with your words. And in that moment, everyone else turned to look at that one person, and may have even said aloud, “What the hell got into her?” Or, “Dang! What’s eating him?”
People, that’s you. That’s what you’re trying to do. While attempting to be viewed as the victim, you’re actually playing out the “Karen” role in this scenario, en masse. Only, in this era of severe social dyspepsia, the children of our country, who have been groomed in the environment of helicopter parenting and the wild scope of, not just acceptance, but conformity, in public education, have learned to band together and censure anyone who has the audacity to say anything that isn’t in perfect accord with their opinions, so that they need not feel the slightest stimulation to consider an opinion other than their own.
All I can ask is, Why? Why do you allow my—or anyone’s—compliance to be so integral to your well-being? It’s just my opinion. That’s all. It has only as much weight in your psyche as you give it. Why do you insist on giving me—or anyone else—so much power over your sense of self? Xavier Rudd has a great song about moving forward, following the beat of your own drum in a world brimming with judgment. The song is called, Struggle & Radiate, and my favorite line is, “What other people think of you is none of your business.“
It’s true. In today’s society, we’re making ourselves miserable worrying about the strangest things; focusing on the intimate details of the lives of people we don’t even know and judging each of their actions, then turning the lens around and focusing on what other people think of us. “Are my selfies pretty enough? Let me add another filter.” “I spent three hours on my eyebrows and no one noticed!!!” “Is my car cool enough?” “Am I getting more ‘Likes’ than that the guy over there?” “How can I make that dude respect me?” Or, on a more personal note, “If the person I’m talking to isn’t immediately fascinated by my life story / gender preferences / political leanings / or wtf-ever—then they are obviously HATERS and MUST BE CALLED OUT AND PUNISHED!!!!”
(Oh, dear—did I say that out loud?)
I challenge you to take a moment here to notice, in your body, how you responded to that last thought.
First off, how many times have you thought it? How many times have you judged another as not just “acting in an unpleasant or distressing manner,” but “A HATER!” for simply not agreeing with you? For not finding the dramas of your life as fascinating as you do? As they used to say in the South, “If yer not wit’ me, yer agin me.” Wow. Black and white thinking. “If you don’t agree with me, you’re the enemy.” That’s hardly compatible with an ethic of broadening social acceptance for all.
How much power did you allow those last few sentences to hold over you? Just a few short, vibratory sounds. Are you retaining a stimulus reflex that, when you hear those words—at least, when those words are directed at you—your emotional armada surges to the fore in response, primed to do battle? How angry, indignant, or self-righteous did you become? How much energy rose up, as you moved to fight, to beat down anyone who has the audacity to challenge your sovereign “right” to set the tone of social mores—for everyone?
The best definition I ever heard for that feeling of “self-righteousness,” was “sanctimonious self deception.” Let that sink in. Every time you feel that surge of righteous indignation, you might want to dip into self-awareness and repeat that to yourself. “Ah…I’m feeling a moment of sanctimonious self deception. What am I trying to shield myself from seeing? Where am I feeling vulnerable and insecure in my position? Where am I trying to control other people’s behavior so that I don’t have to be aware of my own fears?”
The entire control game is a game based in fear. If you allow yourself to explore those dark wells in your own psyche, you’ll learn quite a bit about yourself.
Or did you retreat into superiority? That’s a nice place. Cozy. Above it all. A shield of superiority, where you simply dismiss the opinions of others as being beneath you, lets you feel invulnerable. It’s just a façade of ignorance, of course, but in the moment, it can feel really good.
But do you know what superiority really is, in all cases? No, it doesn’t mean that you’re actually superior to another, or have higher, more lofty perspectives; truly superior people never feel a sense of superiority. They don’t need to. They’re honestly above that, and usually fairly modest. No, superiority is a security/survival reflex that covers a person’s deep-seated feelings of inferiority—and, again, fear. And the less conscious you are of the inner workings of your psyche, the easier and more natural it is for you to hide in that state of superiority, rather than acknowledge how afraid you are.
Hanging out with this entire line of thought might even teach you that there’s a serious cost to your attempted power plays, because every time you attempt to silence another, because something they said has offended you, they own you. You, in the act of moving to gag them, have shackled yourself to them in resistance to their opinions. In doing so, you are feeding power into the very sentiments you abhor.
Which wolf will survive? The wolf you feed.
Funny, eh? In trying to restrict the Free Will of another, you have given up your own Free Will. The highest gift man was given, and you’re tossing it aside in a wrestling match with a total stranger. Just to try to force them to stop saying things that make you cringe inside.
What it comes down to, in the end, is a bit of wisdom from the past. Back before teachers would haul kids into the Principal’s office, charged with having “wounded” another child’s tender psyche with their unwillingness to conform to the current flavor of group-think du jour, and strong arm them into recanting their own truth in favor of another’s. Something that we used to be told as an obvious, practical response to someone expressing themselves in a way that made us unhappy or uncomfortable. A few mindsets that taught us emotional resilience, the ability to respect another’s opinion, even if we didn’t agree with it, and an awareness that we, alone, control our emotional expression.
What are these chestnuts of arcane wisdom, you ask? Here are four I learned as a child.
Stick and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.
Those who mind, don’t matter. Those who matter, don’t mind.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
and the epitome of respect…
Live and Let Live.
Remember, you cannot love or hate something about someone else unless it reflects back to you a quality that’s resident in your own psyche. Be aware of who you’re “canceling.” And why.