They call it cancel culture and it was born out of pure and legitimate intentions. However, time and the fact that it is practiced massively by human beings has eventually distorted it and turned it into an instrument of post-modern revenge that includes censorship and punishment, and which is put into practice in an arbitrary game where everyone determines their own rules. It's time to stop that.
They call it cancel culture and it was born out of pure and legitimate intentions. However, time and the fact that it is practiced massively by human beings has eventually distorted it and turned it into an instrument of post-modern revenge that includes censorship and punishment, and which is put into practice in an arbitrary game where everyone determines their own rules. It's time to stop that.
So God took it and canceled everyone. All of them. He was fed up, He could no longer listen to those little humans disagreeing with Him, disobeying Him, going against Him, and generally sinning, sometimes with entirely unacceptable sins. Then, for 40 days and 40 nights, God rained down with generous and angry abundance until all were effectively canceled out, in a flood of literally biblical proportions. To prevent the extinction of species, which, if it happened, would certainly be a gesture with a negative impact on God's social image, He decided to spare a few specimens of each species of all kinds of animals that could not survive underwater, humans included. The fish were to be limited in recognition of exemplary conduct and in conformity with accepted norms of behavior at the time, or simply to avoid technical and logistical complexities (perhaps dehydrating the planet was more laborious and technically unfeasible than rinsing it over a month and a half - we'll never know); but apart from the fish, only Noah and his sons were spared. Ham and Japheth and the wives of all of them - at that time, the representation of women was still a non-issue (with such overbearing patriarchy, no wonder God opted for global cancellation) - plus the representatives of each non-aquatic animal species, were to be spared, to continue the existence of life on the planet, albeit in a way that might be objectionable today, since that continuity depended on inbreeding, no matter how many turns one went through to get different combinations of pairings among the survivors.
God chose Noah and his progeny to create offspring on Earth because Noah, after all, was not one of the most cancelable of human beings. For starters, he was of a certain age - 600 years, one month, and 17 days old at the time of the events - which granted him certain blessings, such as the reprieve from cancellation. In addition, he was also zealous in the way he treated his waste, which was always biodegradable, he did not drink from plastic cups or bottles (he did not use plastic, tout court), he did not make inconvenient jokes, he was modest in humor involving others and especially minorities of all kinds, backgrounds, genders and sexual orientations, was non-partisan, only traveled in vehicles powered by renewable energy, did not consume petroleum products, had an extremely small ecological footprint, insignificant even, did not buy in supermarkets, was always farm to table and super-sustainable, did not listen to inappropriate music, did not read books containing the word "black" or even worse, did not use the term "discoveries" to refer to the Portuguese maritime expansion - he did not even know that Portugal would exist many centuries later, which cleared him of a number of potentially serious flaws -, did not make inappropriate references to mental illness and, above all, did not expose himself on social networks - not a single potentially cancelable publication is known to him - which definitely kept him protected from possible arbitrary decisions to cancel him. We found no data or records on religious tolerance, but the truth is that Noah was a citizen with little to show for it, so we can understand the criteria that led God to spare him from global cancellation. The subject is serious, but sometimes it is necessary to play with serious things, even if we know the risk that such daring entails these days. We live in a time when the literal is appropriating all the space of interpretation, eroding centuries and centuries of evolution of language and communication; an evolution that allowed human beings to create and develop intellectual tools such as subtext, irony, and a multitude of figures of speech that enabled previous generations to have fun while communicating. Whoever says have fun, says expand, surpass oneself, look for new frontiers and ways to say what has already been said in more common and conventional ways. Today, anything that exceeds the meaning of precisely what is said can fall into a whirlpool of distortions, misinterpretations, and other curses that risk the most frightening fate of the contemporary age: cancellation. (To be clear, the idea of God canceling humanity by sparing Noah was not mine, it comes right out of the Bible. The use of the term "cancel" is intended as a euphemism for the extermination by drowning that resulted from this allegedly divine decision). Cancel culture is the most pernicious invention of the 21st century. Human beings have evolved socially and technologically to a formidable level of access to information, democracy, and freedom of expression. With the advent of the Internet and social media, information and the power to express oneself have become available to virtually everyone who has access to the technology and devices essential to online functioning. And what do human beings decide to do with all this at their disposal, at the epitome of their existence on the face of the Earth? Censor themselves; arbitrarily cancel out their neighbor. In essence, he plays God, choosing his favorites - which is legitimate - and canceling those he dislikes - which is dangerous, to say the least. The open letter that 153 prominent international thinkers and writers (many of them academics in the United States, renowned writers and journalists, and political commentators, among other figures, such as political and social activists) signed in Harper's Magazine in July 2020 has become famous - and it could not be otherwise. Entitled A Letter on Justice and Open Debate, also known as Harper's Letter, the text took shape from a draft developed by writers Robert Worth, George Packer, David Greenberg, Mark Lilla, and Thomas Chatterton Williams. The final list of signatories included leading names in global activism, arts, and letters, from both the left and the right, such as Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Noam Chomsky, Bill T. Jones, Garry Kasparov, Randall Kennedy, Wynton Marsalis, J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, and Gloria Steinem. In the famous 2020 letter, the signatories defend freedom of expression and criticize what they call "illiberalism" that was, and still is, spreading through society. The text, which begins by denouncing then US President Donald Trump as a real threat to democracy by propagating illiberalism (in this case, right-wing), ends up also criticizing the extreme positions of the left that result in their censorship, taking the opportunity to also denounce "an intolerance of opposing views, a tendency towards public shaming and ostracism, and to dissolve complex political issues into blind moral certainty." Censorship does not recognize any ideology other than its own, which makes debate impossible, on the one hand, and on the other, ostracizes, in certain media, those with whom we disagree and who risk-taking positions that do not conform to the current trend.
Cancellation culture is a post-modern phenomenon, a kind of uber-contemporary device available to the average citizen, who is only required to make a frivolous judgment, a partial and partisan decision, often uninformed, rarely substantiated by facts and valid arguments, and often untimely, which summarily dismisses, without the right to defend or appeal, someone who commits an alleged infraction. Even considering the possibility that the persons ostracized by the method of silencing through regret have committed their wrongdoings - which is not liquid, at least not in all cases - this cannot, or should not, prevent them from defending themselves before being publicly sentenced and punished. However, many of these failures that result in terminations are alleged infractions related to expressions or positions taken in a way that a particular group finds unilaterally offensive. Indeed, offense does not require agreement to be acceptable - what offends me, offends me, regardless of the perception and intention of the offender; however, we must recognize that there are reasonable limits to what can be considered offensive, particularly when it comes to works, texts, sayings, writings and thoughts from other times, for example, or when positions that are simply more conservative (without this conservatism causing harm to anything) than the new morality in force become the target not only of criticism - which would be fair, of course, provided it is sustained - but of abolition. It is this abolition without brakes or rules, carried out by individuals who are, in the same person, plaintiffs, prosecutors, judges, and executioners, that must be prevented. In other words, we must cancel the cancellation, abolish the arbitrary abolition. The debate must always be the space to be protected. The accounts of those who have experienced cancellation are not all the same, but they all share a common feeling: that of not having an answer, of living in silence, in a bubble that distances them from the groups with which they previously communicated. In the case of public figures whose cancellation has led to career damage and the dispersion of fans and followers - "dispersion" should be read in a broad sense, since in many cases it has even meant a definitive break in the relationship between author and public - this feeling of silence around them will certainly be even more serious and heavy. That people should be held accountable for what they say and do is certainly fair; that accountability should be arbitrary and, above all, the consequences of that accountability should be a punishment that is undoubtedly disproportionate to the alleged fault, that is unfair and unacceptable, and will inevitably result in a dark age in which, on the one side, there will be a mob armed for the witch-hunt and on the other side there will be the alleged witches afraid that they are, in fact, witches. And it is a very sad society, one that lives between censorship of others and self-censorship.
In July 2020, Vogue Portugal was involved in a huge controversy regarding its The Madness Issue. The issue itself may not have stirred the emotions and sensitivities of readers (and non-readers) around the world. Still, one of the four covers initially planned for the issue caused an authentic internet revolution, the kind that happens furiously on laptops keyed from comfortable sofas. In an artistic representation of care in mental institutions of times happily past, a model was washed by two nurses in a bathtub of what is presumed to be a hospital. This depiction coupled with the theme, The Madness Issue, and what was termed the "glamorization of mental illness", among other less friendly epithets, led to a borderline decision: the magazine restricted itself and removed that cover and its photographic production from the print edition. In other words, it self-censored in response to a spontaneous movement that tried to shred all potential ideas and possible intentions of both the theme of Vogue Portugal and the production in question. All supposedly in the name of mental health and respect for those suffering from mental illness. The right to indignation, disagreement, or even criticism is not, and never will be, at stake, of course; neither is the artistic and aesthetic choice, or the sensitivity of the authors of the photograph and the production and also of the readers - as we have seen, the subject deserves open debate and there were arguments to defend both sides. What is at stake is the outcome: censorship. Worse: the image that was censored had as its protagonist the model Simona Kirchnerova, "photographed with her mother and grandmother [N. do R.: the two ladies are the model's mother and grandmother in real life], symbolizing that she is not alone, as well as the human evolution that exists in this field", according to the editorial that Sofia Lucas, director of Vogue Portugal signs in that same edition. What's more, Kirchnerova was also swallowed up by the hatred of the mob and the whirlwind of offenses. She, too, has dealt with mental illness and, as a result of the whole situation, ended up having to go back into care. Cancel culture and the spread of hate on social media are inextricably linked and complementary phenomena, and their effects can be devastating. And when they are, it is not only because someone is canceled, put aside, dispossessed of everything they have achieved, as in the case of artists and other public figures who are disgraced and burned in the public fire that burns every day online, needing more and more fuel to continue burning. The numbers keep rising and the studies that accompany them are also increasing: the cancel culture has an impact on the mental health of the canceled, obviously, but also of many users of social networks, especially the younger ones. For example, the website VeryWellMind published in April 2022 The Mental Health Effects of Cancel Culture, an article which it deconstructs and explains, point by point, the potential harms of cancellation - including for cancellers. In October 2022, Insider published Why cancel culture is so toxic and how to effectively hold folks accountable, according to social media experts, a peer-reviewed article by physicians and psychology professors, which concludes that "cancel culture can ultimately cause severe harm to both those who cancel and those who are canceled." The articles are many and all point in the same direction: the origin and intention of the cancel culture are good, but the outcomes are inefficient and potentially very damaging to the parties involved - even to those watching from the outside, as they end up feeling retrenched and conditioned. In other words, in the end, it only results in censorship and punishment. Even if we do not take into account the disastrous mental health outcomes for a substantial part of the young population living intensely in their digital networks and platforms, there are some questions we should ask ourselves, and even taking the case with which this text opens, that of the ironic analogy of the massive and exaggerated cancellation to which God consigns humanity: do we want a world where all others who are not like we are canceled? What can germinate from such inbreeding? What ideas will come out of bubbles where everyone thinks the same thing, in the same way? Let's cancel culture: a medium open to debate and skirmishing is worth more than the perverse sanitization of what we find disagreeable. In an aseptic environment, neither life nor ideas can germinate. In the end, only extermination will remain.
Translated from the original on The [Un]Popular Issue, published July 2023.Full stories and credits on the print issue.
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