And my current position is to be completely opposed to cancel culture. I'm considering it the contemporary ideological enemy. Just making my biases known :)
Ontopic, I just can't imagine any good place this can take a society. If you accept that some topics can be (politely) discussed and some can't, this is equivalent to accepting that people in power decide which topics can be discussed. Because, well... how else are you going to decide except by discussing them? And no, I see no trace of people being able to separate conversation from meta-conversation, as long as it involves the same topic.
Not to mention that it goes again an intellectual and political tradition going back to the Enlightenment. Every time we diverged from open agora, we went to very dark places. That's one hell of a Chesterton's fence. I want a big, big argument pro cancel culture before I can consider it.
That's very much the point. But it's also a distraction, because the Englightenment idea that politics somehow operates on the basis of disinterested rational persuasion and public debate is clearly nonsense.
Politics operates on the basis of applied force and leverage between competing interests. The terrible thing about cancel culture is that it makes this explicit. Groups who are not usually allowed political leverage suddenly act as if they're no longer willing to stay in their usual place of political impotence.
This isn't entirely a good thing, for various reasons, most of which will be familiar. It also isn't an entirely bad one.
But it is unarguably a reminder of how power dynamics really work in this culture, as opposed to the rather self-congratulatory narrative of how we're supposed to believe power dynamics work.
It's also a reminder of what happens when political and business leaders ignore the rule of law and basic standards of representational social justice. Cancel culture and wokeness wouldn't be necessary - and wouldn't even be happening - if there was a general sense that the culture was fundamentally ethical.
Of course it isn't. Given that, there's no need to feel surprised that pushback is happening.
This is an excellent comment from somebody who understands Hobbes :)
> It's also a reminder of what happens when political and business leaders ignore the rule of law and basic standards of representational social justice. Cancel culture and wokeness wouldn't be necessary - and wouldn't even be happening - if there was a general sense that the culture was fundamentally ethical.
Exactly. #metoo exists because reporting sexual assault to employers or the police is often ineffective, so the only resort is the court of public opinion. "Black lives matter" exists because of a number of incidents where a black life was lost and no consequences attached to those responsible nor was any attempt made to prevent it happening again.
> Englightenment idea that politics somehow operates on the basis of disinterested rational persuasion and public debate is clearly nonsense.
This is the ideal to work toward than a law. The enlightenment has helped us progress toward this so politics isnt just a wrestling match with divine rule forever after.
I would like you to define what you're against in more detail here.
There are also things much worse than mere "cancellation" going on; murder and deportation, for example. We don't normally have to say we're against "murder culture", but somehow there are hugely controversial street protests against it.
> I would like you to define what you're against in more detail here.
Among other things, I'm really irritated by the pattern of forcing the conversation partner to properly define his position (likely to be able to poke holes in it) while your original position is floating on air and walking on clouds. You original comment says absolutely nothing, to the point there's a long thread in the subsequent conversation on what you're actually advocating. This happens often enough to be a pattern, and one I keep associating with things I don't like.
(well, you asked).
For the record, I did take a quick peel in your comment history and I definitely, emphatically, don't dislike you as a person. Which I guess makes it easier to take swings at this ideology.
And to be a bit more ontopic, I'm against cancel culture, aka the idea that one of the first tools in our toolset to reach for is some form of silencing people (forcefully, by shaming, by deplatforming and so on). It can be a tool in the toolset and as it happens there was a use-case I agreed with this very winter - my local government closed down a few denialist websites early in the pandemic. But that's pretty much the level I see necessary to get as far as silencing or punishing speech - spreading wrong information in a national emergency situation, or falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater.
Anything less should be solved with other tools, even if it's much more difficult. To me, seeing cancel culture used to solve day to day problems shocks me just as much as seeing somebody use an angle grinder in the kitchen. They can keep telling me all day how much faster it is at cutting, it's still an idiotic idea, to the point I actually have to think for a minute before saying why. Except for the obvious "you're definitely going to cut something you don't want, sooner or later". Which applies to our conversation as well.
Ontopic, I just can't imagine any good place this can take a society. If you accept that some topics can be (politely) discussed and some can't, this is equivalent to accepting that people in power decide which topics can be discussed. Because, well... how else are you going to decide except by discussing them? And no, I see no trace of people being able to separate conversation from meta-conversation, as long as it involves the same topic.
Not to mention that it goes again an intellectual and political tradition going back to the Enlightenment. Every time we diverged from open agora, we went to very dark places. That's one hell of a Chesterton's fence. I want a big, big argument pro cancel culture before I can consider it.