1. Life + Agent Smith = Happiness + Agent Smith

2. Life + Agent Smith = Happiness + Agent Smith (Cancel Agent Smith who appears in both sides of the equation)

3. Life = Happiness [The anti-Buddha and her (gotta be a woman, right) 1^st anti-Noble Truth]

I was replying to praxis, who appears to be an actual person actually writing in this actual thread. — Seppo

You were just repeating what praxis said. I don't see how that helps, it's a discussion, not an opinion poll, but fair enough, it seems I should be talking to the owner, not the dog.

"Imaginary" :lol: — Seppo

So which actual person in this thread has made those claims? Or are we just going to wave our little flags so everyone is quite sure which gang we belong to ... Sure, here goes...

Don't you just hate Nazis, with their antisemitism and warmongering? Grrr!

You were just repeating what praxis said — Isaac

I was agreeing with praxis. I'm pretty sure agreeing with someone is allowed by the forum guidelines.

So which actual person in this thread has made those claims? — Isaac

I never said any person in this thread did. But not having posted in this thread =/= imaginary.

As I stated, I was primarily thinking about about rightwing US politicians who tend to be the most outspoken critics of "cancel culture", despite the fact that they themselves engage in "cancel culture" when its someone or something they disagree with. Praxis gave the example of Trump endorsing the cancellation of NFL athletes who protest police violence. We could give others (for instance, the right's current hobbyhorse of trying to cancel "critical race theory").

So "cancel culture" isn't a neutral descriptive term, but a normative/value-laden one, and criticism of cancel culture in the US tends to be partisan and frequently hypocritical.

Or are we just going to wave our little flags so everyone is quite sure which gang we belong to ... Sure, here goes...

Don't you just hate Nazis, with their antisemitism and warmongering? Grrr! — Isaac

:lol:

I'm pretty sure agreeing with someone is allowed by the forum guidelines. — Seppo

Much to my disapprobation.

I never said any person in this thread did. But not having posted in this thread =/= imaginary. — Seppo

No, of course not, I was being agitative. The point was that since no one here is making those claims, opposing them doesn't progress the discussion. All it does (even if unintentionally) is polemicise an already pretty tribal topic. If there's an argument raised against 'cancel culture', it doesn't help reasonable discussion of it to say "racists and crestionists also complain about cancel culture", it's the equivalent of bringing up the fact that Hitler didn't eat meat in a debate about vegetarianism. Of course some groups are going to oppose cancel culture disingenuously that doesn't mean that all groups opposing it must be tarred with the same brush.

"cancel culture" isn't a neutral descriptive term, but a normative/value-laden one — Seppo

That is becoming more evident than I perhaps anticipated.

People fought wars over justice to get it. — Benkei

Indeed. And now we have a system where justice is on the side of those who have money. What a victory.

Slavery was abolished thanks to violence. Segregation was ended by government force.

Not really, they just went from being openly enforced on the level of government to being openly enforced on the level of interactions between individual people, or subtly on the level of culture at large. In many ways, this is even worse, more sinister, because now the official discourse can be that "those are the acts of individuals", the government gets to wash its hands, and the country gets a good report on the respect for human rights in it.

I don't even think that's really a left vs. right wing thing; that's just a lot of people trying to maintain the status quo because they cannot envisage anything better.

But is there anything better?
Can people actually live in some better way of organizing social and economical life?
If history is anything to go by, then no.

Here's a perfectly good reason not to visit StarBucks and to let your grievances known by spamming them. If enough people will join, media will call it "cancel culture" again. But really, fuck Starbucks. I don't need to listen to them explain away their corporate greed, we need them to stop this and have them pay their employees a living wage.

Boycotting a company will only result in the people working there in lowly jobs to lose those jobs. And then you will be to be blame that they lost their jobs!

By bigoted I mean that one is intolerant of another because of his views, which do not manifest beyond the victimless expressions of thought and speech. There are actions we should not tolerate, however, and censorship is one of them. — NOS4A2

A defining feature of bigotry is that it is unreasonable. We can have well-reasoned objections to what people say and do.

There is something of a contradiction in what you're saying though. Public objection to what influential people say or do is just words, right? Yet those words lead to actions, like people getting fired from their jobs, so it seems that thought and speech do at times result in actions, and those actions have victims. I assume that you wouldn't support disallowing objections to what influential people say and do.

So first the letter's not to be taken seriously because there's no examples; then it's not to be taken seriously because the examples are one's where you'd agree with the cancellations... — Isaac

You need to work on your reading comprehension.

• I didn't say that I agreed with James Bennet’s resignation, assuming it was forced.
• I don't care that a publisher decided to stop printing children's books from a long-dead author.
• From what I gather, New School investigated a professor and did not 'cancel' them. I'm glad that New School investigates accusations of racism, actually.
• I agreed that the David Shor saga was a good example.

The defining feature of bigotry is that it is intolerant. Even the unreasonable can tolerate another’s thoughts and words.

A public objection is just words, and they do not necessarily lead to this or that action. It doesn’t lead to people getting fired from their job any more than it leads to people not getting fired from their job. The contradiction arises when you believe correlation implies causation.

A public objection is just words, and they do not necessarily lead to this or that action. — NOS4A2

It seems that you agree with the title of the topic, that cancel culture doesn't exist.

Neither your agreement nor your disagreement were the point. The point was entirely that you designated people's serious concerns as "hard to take seriously" on the grounds of a lack of specificity that two minutes of internet research could have settled for you.

We need to assess independently whether what the mob wants is something agree with and if so join them. — Benkei

Why are you calling them a "mob"?

Except nobody is stomping anyone's views out, they are brought out in the light in all their stupidity and found lacking. — Benkei

Really? There is a "universal chemistry process" of sorts where this happens, and people are merely passive observers and passive enacters of this?

Something can only be considered "stupid" or "found lacking" by someone. It doesn't happen on its own, without people actively considering something stupid or finding it lacking. Something cannot be "stupid" or "found lacking" per se, regardless of the people making such an assessment.

In short, what you're doing is arguing in favor of objectivism, objectivism in the form of objective morality and objective epistemology, where you take for granted that the "how things really are" can be accessed readily by people and that this access has nothing to do with their volition. And further, that some people have such access, and others don't.

It's a common human tendency to externalize like that, and to take no responsibility for one's thoughts and words.
It's a common human tendency to consider oneself "the mouth of objective reality", as if when one opens one's mouth, it's "The Truth" that is doing the talking, not the person.

Insistence on using this popular epistemic and moral strategy is where the fundamental problem is that the OP is pointing at. No progress toward goodwill can be made as long as this strategy is used.

Could be. I think the desire to censor comes from fear. People who don’t even see censorship might be fearful about where things are headed.

It takes some confidence in your fellow humans to say, "Stop being a big baby and grow the ability to listen to opposing views without fear that we'll slide into a holocaust if you let other people have their say." — frank

So work this out: How does a person "stop being a big baby" and how does a person "grow the ability to listen to opposing views without fear that we'll slide into a holocaust if you let other people have their say"?

Have you worked out an actual didactic program for this? Can you present it here?

Neither your agreement nor your disagreement were the point. The point was entirely that you designated people's serious concerns as "hard to take seriously" on the grounds of a lack of specificity that two minutes of internet research could have settled for you. — Isaac

It was not a lack of specificity but a lack of supporting evidence, and it's still not settled for me.

↪Benkei I suppose the problem with throngs of folks angrily pursuing social justice over the interwebs is that things are often more complicated than most people think. — Olivier5

From where I sit, pursuing social justice over the interwebs is pretty simple. You read the arguments, sometimes you make a post and then you call it a day.

That's about the size of it.

Social change is not always brought on by social will; mostly it's social economics that does it to societies.

In Russia they disregarded the role of economics for 80 years. The country went into an economic decline. It was economics that destroyed the left. Not weapons or coercion or the ruling class.

You can't disregard the role of economics, which is a system much bigger than what humans can handle. We cant' fathom it, we can't control it. It controls itself, and via itself, it controls people.

We, the People, think otherwise. Fine. We are fools.

I sounded there like a nihilist. I am sure there is a fine line between nihilism and realism.

Both right and left wing try to leverage this new social tool to suppress opposition. The question wasn't which political groups use it, the question was whether it was a dangerous tool to encourage the use of. — Isaac

It's not new. The same phenomenon has existed as scapegoating for millennia. Scapegoating is apparently a psychological need.

The point is not whether we should always debate and never fight, I'm with you on that one, there's a time for fighting, there's a time to stop talking and just kick people out of polite society...

...the question I'm raising is how we decide when that time is, not whether it exists at all. — Isaac

I once heard an interesting hypothesis about scapegoating: People resort to scapegoating when their own adherence to the values they profess reaches a critical low where even they cannot deny it anymore. Instead of admitting it and deliberately changing their ways, they metaphorically cast their own sins onto someone else and this way free themselves of the burden of a guilty conscience. This way, they clear the slate and can start fresh.

Hence the name: Originally, the practice was for people to take a goat and throw stones at it; before throwing each stone, naming it with their own sin, and saying that the goat should take their sin and pay for it.

(This was one of the functions of "animal sacrifice".)

Thanks to the same social media and communication technologies even innocent people can be, and often are, pigeonholed, labeled, and "earmarked" for subjection "to a form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles" as per the Wikipedia definition.

When this becomes permissible or is even encouraged by sections of society for political or other reasons, then it becomes a social trend or culture. — Apollodorus

In fact, the animal or person to be scapegoated should be as innocent as possible. Like lambs, infants, or Jesus.

What I miss is a sense of charity. — Olivier5

Why should there be charity? Can you provide an argument for charity?

(I'm not disagreeing, btw.)

Newsweek. They’re the go-to source for political mud- wrestling between left and right. — Joshs

There is no left in mainstream US politics.

It's 2022 why are people still whining about cancel culture, go outside, breath fresh air, watch a movie, go to the bar and grab a beer. — Maw

Indeed, resorting to private consumerism is often advocated as the solution for all of our problems ...

Why should there be charity? Can you provide an argument for charity? — baker

Because nobody's perfect. Errare humanum est. When YOU make a mistake, do you prefer it not when people show a little charity? Or do you prefer to be treated without mercy?

Judge not, least you be judged.

Another argument is that, without things like forgiveness and redemption, societies tend to accumulate hatred until people kill one another.

That's property rights (the employer's). — frank

More like the weakness of organized labour unions. Without collective bargaining, an individual worker doesn't have much chance in getting a good deal, except if the employee is some kind of superstar that various employers are fighting for.

OK. You were talking about rights, tho. Strictly speaking, the ability to fire people is property rights.

Do notice that there is legislation on unfair dismissal of an employee. And this differs by country.

That because of "cancel culture" you are dismissed just show this legislation is quite weak. And in the US?

In the United States, there is no single “wrongful termination” law. Rather there are several state and federal laws and court decisions that define this concept.

In all U.S. states except Montana, workers are considered by default to be at-will employees, meaning that they may be fired at any time without cause.

Hence cancel culture can have real effects, not just silly social media ranting.

Not so in countries where you have had organized labour able to influence the legislation. Like France, Canada or other countries.

A lot of the people "canceled" by cancel culture actually resigned due to public uproar. They weren't fired per se, so I don't think you're grappling with the main problem. It's public intolerance and the vulnerability of a university, newspaper, etc. to public anger.

Or it can just be a social media thing. Richard O'Brien has been pretty thoroughly attacked for his opinion that trans women can't be real women.

So let's squash the composer of "Sweet Transvestite" because he didn't say what we wanted to hear.

It's that kind of nonsense. The opposition to cancel culture (the sane part of it anyway) is saying we really need to grow the psychological muscles necessary for listening to a view we don't like.

It was not a lack of specificity but a lack of supporting evidence — praxis

Alright then...

The point was entirely that you designated people's serious concerns as "hard to take seriously" on the grounds of a lack of specificity supporting evidence that two minutes of internet research could have settled for you. — Isaac

and it's still not settled for me. — praxis

Why not? You lamented the lack of examples, examples were given. Is there something else you're missing?

It's not new. The same phenomenon has existed as scapegoating for millennia. Scapegoating is apparently a psychological need. — baker

As I said to another poster making the same point, I don't think that it's particularly useful to over generalise. 'Cancel culture' can be robustly defined as it is, we needn't simply generalise it to 'all forms of social proscription'.

That said...

I once heard an interesting hypothesis about scapegoating: People resort to scapegoating when their own adherence to the values they profess reaches a critical low where even they cannot deny it anymore. Instead of admitting it and deliberately changing their ways, they metaphorically cast their own sins onto someone else and this way free themselves of the burden of a guilty conscience. This way, they clear the slate and can start fresh. — baker

Is an interesting perspective. So maybe I'm wrong about the unhelpfulness of such generalisation.

A lot of the people "canceled" by cancel culture actually resigned due to public uproar. They weren't fired per se, so I don't think you're grappling with the main problem. It's public intolerance and the vulnerability of a university, newspaper, etc. to public anger. — frank

Resigning due to "public uproar" is one's own choice. Here one should really think what is genuine "public uproar". It's one thing that you are attacked in the social media, it's another thing is some person tracks you down and attacks you physically in the street!

You lamented the lack of examples, examples were given. Is there something else you're missing? — Isaac

Good example that sufficiently support the claims. The examples that you so generously provided do not match the claims very well, though I think the last example is a good example of cancel culture.

The list of claims is as follows:

Editors are fired for running controversial pieces - The Tom Cotton example is an expression of cancel culture, in my opinion, just not a strong example. I think running the Op-Ed was a bad choice (was there nothing better to run that day?) and wouldn’t disagree with a reprimand. I wouldn’t ask for resignation though.

Books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity - No example of this has been provided.

Journalists are barred from writing on certain topics - No example of this has been provided.

Professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class - Regarding the New School example, as I said, I’m glad that they investigate accusations of racism.

A researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study - The David Shor saga is a good example.

Everybody else in America knows about it. I can't imagine caring enough to persuade someone who has managed to remain oblivious.

So Frank, I can’t help wondering how committed you are to ‘growing the psychological muscles necessary for listening to a view we don't like’. Imagine, if you’re willing, that Marjorie Taylor Greene submitted an Op-Ed piece to the New York Times on weekly basis, assuming she knows how to read and write. How often do you think they should publish her esteemed options (instead of something more substantive)?