So just ban talking politics at work if it's that much of a problem. Though why adults can't just address their concerns with each other directly and expect their employer to be their moral police is beyond me.Originally Posted by xerx
So just ban talking politics at work if it's that much of a problem. Though why adults can't just address their concerns with each other directly and expect their employer to be their moral police is beyond me.
Last edited by FreelancePoliceman; 09-21-2021 at 07:51 AM.
When I was a kid everyone always said don't discuss politics, religion, or money at work.
It would still be bad for the business. If cold indifference is your attitude, no one will see you as a leader, and your employees won't stick around. I've worked for racist and sexist supervisors, and it felt wrong to help them advance their careers.
That's also censorship. And political views usually come out anyway.So just ban talking politics at work if it's that much of a problem.
Either you allow people to say what they want and not "censor" them and you deal with potential conflict or you do censor them and you have a greater chance of having workplace cohesion. I don't believe in censorship of people in general but I agree that it can affect team performance in a workplace.
I frame it this way, law or mob.
Cancel culture is the mob, and the government is law. Sometimes the mob is right but it is a extra legal force which can go terribly wrong. Cancel culture is deeper than just modern progressive woke culture, in the past it was racism, sexism and a culture of oppressive social conduct. The social history of man is various different forms of sectarian cancel culture.
Now that doesn't mean the law didn't also aid in racism, prejudice and oppressive institutions but it was still the law and require a certain rational due process. The law and the mob should and often do check and balance each other, and during these periods there is often a tension which creates social change within society. The tension between these forces indicate a new social challenge which needs to be understood and problem solved.
My view is that the information revolution which we are undergoing, like the industrial revolution that preceded it has really disturbed our identity, sense of social belonging, and this creates a great deal of anxiety in us. This anxiety expresses itself in polarization and conflict.
Every system aims to protect itself, and develops more sophisticated and effective methods for social engineering, censorship and repression of real disidents. Democracies are lies, republics or constitutional monarchies ruled by financial oligarchs are facts.
Cancel culture is nothing more than an instigation from the superstructure to protect itself and advance it's interest with more profficiency than direct censorship (and that still happens).
I sincerely believe that some future generation will look back on our time as a dark age for freedom of speech. Not because we don't have enough, but because we have so much that we've wasted on stupid trivialities. If anything, we have more freedom of speech and information than at any other time in human history. There are unlimited literary freedoms in the West, and nearly unlimited scientific freedom; we have complete freedom of association and assembly; anti-blasphemy laws are now non-existent; and the Internet provides virtually limitless access to information.
People literally died for us to have all of this (serious, hardworking, intelligent, and sincere people). But for what sort of "controversial" purpose is it now being used? To claim that Jews have built a giant space laser — not exactly Galilean physics or Martin Luther's ninety five theses. The real enemies of free speech are the people who trivialize it.
Last edited by xerx; 09-25-2021 at 06:34 PM.
Yes they do, and it reminds me of moral puritanism in Christian communities. That's the closest comparison I could draw, in psychological terms of finding people either good or evil (though they don't use those terms, more like "bigot" "right wing asshole" etc) but never being themselves able to live up to the "good" since no one is able to live up to such moral standards.
We live in times of intense moralization, which means high standards everyone knows deep down are impossible to live up to. How do you deal with not being able to live up to some high moral standard that you see the truth? Well, blame others when they don't live up to it, so as to take the focus off of yourself.
I would describe cancel culture as mostly a kind of moral panic, like the medieval inquisition, Salem witch trials, red scare, satanic panic etc. People need scapegoats when they are unfullfilled, going nowhere and anxious. I would put far right conspiracies in the same category of moral panics.
Last edited by WVBRY; 09-26-2021 at 04:35 PM.
The most amusing thing about the criticism of cancel culture is the obsession, especially by baby boomers, on the fact that edgy entertainment is being cancelled. I don't like it either because I don't like the dismissal of ideas solely on the basis of their style of delivery, least of all in the course of haphazard and self-righteous mob justice. And when it comes to speech that explicitly spreads the contrary opinion, I feel that it is more enlightening (and more effective) to deconstruct it clinically. The automatic dismissal of criticism is dangerous in other ways: A movement that lacks introspection doesn't adapt its platform for changing circumstances.
But it is ironic to see baby boomers (this is a generation that notoriously rebelled against their parents in extreme ways) who feel that younger people are adopting the "wrong" values. In what has to be one of the dumbest moral panics in history, the fact that younger people want more politeness is now considered a threat to the social fabric. And that's exactly what it is most of the time: not a principled defense of free speech, but a moral hysteria that's aimed at different tastes, which is driven by people with an equal level of self-righteousness, who can't shrug off criticism, and who obsess over inconsequential trivialities.
sounds like medieval witch hunting except now were burning mens careers instead of female bodies
how so
It has occurred to me that the left's 'woke' makeover was helped by the destruction of the unions, especially via outsourcing and other Reaganite (and Thatcherite) shenanigans. People would still be cancelled otherwise (as they have always been, in every sphere of human life, throughout human history, and by every side), but politics would have been a little more about economics and a little less about abstract questions of what it means to be a man / woman.
I have no sympathy for the conservatives who say that the left-wing is out of touch with the working poor (which is an exaggerated claim in any case). They handed the reins to the avant-garde cultural elites.
Last edited by xerx; 10-25-2021 at 06:06 AM. Reason: .
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