Phrases such as ‘cancel culture’ and ‘woke’ are thrown around nowadays and everyone understands what they mean. This is incredible as the words themselves have never been clearly defined. It seems that everyone has their own interpretation of the words and shifts them to fit their own subjectivity. The other day, I was using a Facebook page to talk about the football (soccer) team I support. One person was so enraged about an opposition player ‘diving’ (falling over to win a free kick or penalty without having contact made on them) that they expressed that they wanted the person to fall over and die like ‘Marc Foe’. For those who don’t know, Marc Vivian Foe was a Cameroonian international football player who had a heart attack during a match at the World Cup and passed away on the pitch. The response to the post was along the lines of, ‘I don’t think you really mean that?’ and the post was removed. The person then reposted to say that cancel culture was alive and well and that it was now impossible for anyone to express an opinion.
Admittedly, you and I may have different reactions to such behaviours/posts, but personally I think that this is what ‘cancel culture’ should be. as society develops and grows previously normalised behaviours are looked at in a new light. The fact that men and women don’t like being sexually assaulted or bullied, the fact that it is not funny to abuse someone due to their skin colour, seems to have come as a big shock to a lot of people. Whilst there are elements of ‘cancel culture’ which I oppose, for example, we cannot look back at people acting in the moral norms of their times and condemn them. yes, we can say, they should have known better- and if they had actually thought about it, maybe they would have. However, as Voltaire notes, very few people can rise about the prevailing opinions of their time. Whilst it is understandable that people would want to tear down monuments to people who did great things due to some of the not-so-great things that have emerged, or were known but no longer fit into society, we cannot spend our time relitigating the past. Surely these ‘giants’ can serve as a lesson in context? Yes, X freed the salves from Egypt, but the killing of the first-born sons and the genocide of an army but using the sea were bad behaviours. At the time it was seen as acceptable to have slaves and to kill your former slave masters, and in these times that was that, however, having moved on in history, surely, we can see more clearly the sins on both sides and agree that slavery and genocide are bad things?
That bad behaviours became normalised over time; it is now ingrained in society that these are acceptable behaviours. Many of the prominent people who have been ‘cancelled’ (or claim to have been cancelled) have been done so due to misogyny, racism, bullying, and other things which we are now accepting should not be part of culture. Whilst those who have always lived these ways will shout and scream that they are being cancelled for ‘having an opinion’ or ‘doing what they have always done’, it is interesting to note that their behaviours are objectively bad and to stop them is objectively good, yet they claim that what was being done to them is bad and what they were doing is good- why? Because they have lived in a morally inverted world and so if we can stop normalising bad behaviours and start normalising good behaviours, society can finally grow, after all no one likes being called for what they do- even if it is to tell them that their behaviour is bad- because there are few things people dislike more than being made the victim of senseless stupidity.
‘till next time
thegreaterfool2016 