The Folly and the Brilliance of Cancel Culture

Issue 51

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I have no interest in writing about cancel culture probably because, at a minimum, I’m not really sure I know what it is. Write what you know. Admittedly, when it entered the lexicon (mine anyway), there was a minute where I thought I knew what it was, but I lost track immediately and am now viscerally turned off by references to it. And here’s the thing: there are many references to it! The Urban Dictionary tells us that cancel culture is largely “a modern, internet phenomenon,” a social media one, more specifically, which makes me wonder why I see and hear so many references to it when I’m barely on social media. A curiosity for another day, perhaps? Or never? Rhetorical questions.

For today, conscious politics practitioner, we’re going to take a simple and shallow dive — maybe more of a snorkel — into the guts of what cancel culture appears to be about. Something of an exercise, really, to see what it all looks like through our oh so conscious lens, something I/we do know something about — and which is always fun to explore on a Sunday.

Nowhere in this particular example was the canceled one even challenged, as far as I can tell, to take responsibility for anything.

One thing, though, before we go. I think it’s worth noting that in the midst of all the bloviating about cancel culture is the fact that by no means is it a strictly modern phenomenon. Think Galileo. Think Hollywood Blacklist. Think multitudes of other examples. Also, as aptly described by NPR, there is a level of “semantic bleaching” that occurs whereby the original meaning or intent of a word or phrase enters the mainstream and becomes a cudgel, which we are clearly in the midst of seeing with “cancel.” So it’s a good thing that whatever one’s definition or use of the whole idea of cancel culture is, there are some things about it that, for our purposes, are always true.

Judgment

When one is thinking in terms of canceling another — believing that another’s words and/or deeds are and/or have been beyond the pale — and when one is hell-bent on making sure everyone in the world sees it their way, that is pure, unadulterated judgment on glorious display. It’s also, as you well know, pure, unadulterated old consciousness.

Responsibility

In short order, I found a plethora of comments in the realm of, “so the internet canceled her.” Please tell me you know the internet cannot cancel people. What I encourage us to pay attention to here is the abject abdication of responsibility infused in the statement: the internet did it. You’d be forgiven for not even noticing it what with abdicating responsibility being all the rage in today’s Republican party to say nothing of our society in general. (I have ranted about this before and definitely will again because of the rank hypocrisy and all.)

There can even be abdication of responsibility by the one being canceled. For example, when a freshman member of the House of Representative was stripped from her House committee assignments because racism and anti-semitism, she and her supporters blamed cancel culture itself: "So who's next? Who will the cancel culture attack next?" Nowhere in this particular example was the canceled one challenged, as far as I can tell, to take responsibility for anything. More visceral ickiness. I just feel the vitality drain from my being when I see and hear this stuff and that’s one way I know I am steeped in the old consciousness. (Listen to inspiration.)

Intention

Right. The internet doesn’t cancel people, people on the internet cancel people. They choose to make hay of someone else’s words and deeds and, thus, attempt to cancel them. But why? As a conscious politics practitioner, I’d give anything if cancelers were called to account for precisely why they are doing what they are doing. They won’t be, of course, in this milieu, and that dynamic — responsibility aplenty and none taken — renders the canceled cancelers co-keepers of the old consciousness. (To be sure, one of our most important jobs as early adopters of conscious politics is to speak in terms of intention all the time, thus encouraging and demanding it of the greater body politic.)

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Clearly, one must be steeped in the old consciousness to enjoy playing cancel culture and we are not. To play in cancel culture is folly for new consciousness people in the way that it’s folly to build a 5-D house with 3-D lumber. It’s just not going to work. All that judgment, all that responsibility-abdicating, all those hidden intentions. Yeah, no.

We wouldn’t be judging. We wouldn’t be abdicating responsibility. Our intentions would be transparent.

However, exclamation point, there is, for sure, some brilliance in the genesis of one’s cancel tendencies, which we conscious politics practitioners will recognize immediately. When we are finding ourselves judging, hating, not tolerating something/someone, we just zero in on the nugget that lives in its juicy center, basically the opposite of what we don’t like, and springboard into cultivating whatever that is. The law of attraction is always on. Intentions matter.

For example, if we were the ones upset with renowned author J.K. Rowling for whatever it was she said about transgender rights eclipsing women’s rights, we’d know it would be folly to cancel her by ranting to her and the world about what she’s saying no matter how much we disagreed. A more elegant, more brilliant approach — conscious politics-wise — would be to focus our attention on the cause of transgender rights. We’d make hay of promoting that. We wouldn’t be judging. We wouldn’t be abdicating responsibility. Our intentions would be transparent. We would feel satisfied.

Good exercise! At least now I know why cancel culture repels, but that’s just me.

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NOTE: Next week will mark the first anniversary of The Conscious Politics Sunday Newsletter. At the moment, I have no idea what that means, but I might be curious about what it means to you. :)

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