I don’t concur - there is a clear difference between “I don’t agree with you, but different people have different opinions” and “I don’t agree with you, therefore you need to suffer loss of livelihood and perhaps even incur physical jeopardy.”
And the fact that customers were threatening your livelihood over a food order or whatnot doesn’t make that behavior right or good.
Social consequences (“canceling”) are fine for things that are bad. They’re not fine for things that aren’t bad. Advocating for slavery is a bad thing, and slavery-advocates should be “canceled”. People who advocate that black people should be treated with decency and fairness should not be “canceled”, because that’s a good thing.
This isn’t terribly complicated. It’s a tactic – and it’s sometimes appropriate, sometimes not. It all depends on the circumstances.
But that’s not usually what it is. Usually it’s “what you said is bad and therefore I’m not going to spend my money to benefit you any more” – maybe even “and I’m going to urge others to also not spend their money to benefit you”. But it only sticks if lots of people feel the same way. I’m not going to boycott some store just because a stranger says “that guy wore a red hat!”. That doesn’t resonate with me. But I might stop shopping at a store if I find out the proprietor donated to an anti-gay organization. And I might even tell others why I’m doing so. That’s part of a free society – I’m free to do this.
This is just free speech as the answer for speech one doesn’t like. And a bunch of crybabies whining about being criticized.
If we’re allowed to praise and reward people for the past, then why shouldn’t we be able to condemn and punish as well?
It seems like you want to control people’s thoughts.
With this sort of subjective approach, a pro-lifer could just as well say, “Canceling is fine for things who are pro-choice, not fine for things who are pro-life.”
It is nothing but appeal to majority. This is what Kearsen1 and I are referring to: Many people are comfortable with cancel culture only because it happens to favor them in the current political climate of our time. They wouldn’t be okay with it if they happened to be in the minority and on the targeting end of it.
At any rate, I did not intend this thread to be about cancel culture in general (we’ve had many threads about it elsewhere,) but rather, about how people are supposed to future-proof themselves against it when the future is very unpredictable.
You said earlier, abovethread, that canceling is OK for things that you consider bad, not things that you consider good. I don’t think that, if pro-LGBT advocates getting doxxed or boycotted because of their pro-LGBT stance, that you would call such LGBT-ers “crybabies whining about being criticized.”
Yes, of course they could. So what? How is this notable? Free speech can have consequences.
It’s not “cancel culture” – it’s “free speech in a society in which the wealthy and privileged and powerful are no longer immune from social consequences for their speech”. There’s nothing new, except that the wealthy and powerful are, from a criticism and social consequences perspective, no longer totally insulated from the consequences of what they say. Are you saying that’s a bad thing?
They’re not. This would be an impossible task. I might be criticized in the future. So what? This isn’t new or notable – it’s always been a possibility. There’s nothing new here.
Doxxing and boycotting are very different things. No one should whine about being boycotted. No one deserves customers who don’t want what they’re selling.
Doxxing is a tactic that is appropriate in some limited circumstances (those using anonymity to shield themselves from the consequences of spouting hate), but not most.
Did you actually read what happened there?
That doesn’t “align” with my current views. My point is only that this is not a new thing, it’s not a left thing, and it’s really not a big enough thing that it actually is a thing at all.
So, it’s not about having an opinion, it is about expressing that opinion that you don’t want to allow people to do.
Actually the law in most places at the time was actually hanging for being a horse thief. It wasn’t the mob that hung you, it was the law.
Well, in some cases yeah. If someone says, “I was wrong when I said that, this is what I learned, and this is what you can learn too.” then that is an excellent defense, and one that nearly everyone will accept.
If they say, “I don’t have to defend my actions from back then.” or they double down on those expressed opinions, then people will rightly think poorly of them.
Ahh so its slanted in the direction you want it to be slanted, for “bad” things. Color me surprised.
THAT is exactly what led to this discussion, knowing what is bad is easy in hindsight, going along with what is the overwhelming choice in the past is seen as bad today…
What’s your point? How is this new or notable?
I agree that there is a difference there, but I also disagree that you are framing it in a valid fashion.
If I don’t agree with you, then I am allowed to express that. If others also don’t agree with you, they too are allowed to express that. We are even, as a group allowed to agree with eachother on not agreeing with you.
And if I don’t want to give you money or other support due to what you have siad, then that is my right. If a group of people don’t want to support you based on what you said, that is their right.
If you find yourself not getting money or support, because of what you said, it is not due to cancel culture, it is because you have said something that a large number of people do not wish to support.
The only remedy that you have there is to remove people being allowed to express their opinions about you. How do you want to to go about that? What freedoms are you willing to sacrifice in order to not get criticism or risk of consequence?
I didn’t say that customers threatening my job over food was right or good, I said it was a normal thing that most of us have to deal with in our lives. There will always be those who will want to enforce a consequence. You are not going to change that by silencing criticism.
Of course, I wouldn’t boycott a place if they were doing what I though was good, and I would only boycott a place if I though they were doing bad.
That you somehow think this is hypocrisy, I don’t understand.
Put it this way, if I put up a pro-Biden sign in my business’s window, I’d probably lose 75% of my sales. I wouldn’t be happy about it, but I wouldn’t be whining about being criticized.
Would you say that Trump supporters would be wrong to stop using my services?
It’s not that hard to be aware of how the things that you say will be interpreted now, and in the future. This is not some giant game of gotcha. It’s just people expressing their opinion on the opinion that you expressed.
It is both new and notable because it is costing people their livelihoods over something they said 30 years ago that was per the norm, and you think its different when the thing is seen as “bad”
So now for you, define bad so it lasts through the ages and then think about how restrictive that might be to speech. BE SPECIFIC
A privileged, affluent person losing a high-powered position isn’t costing them their livelihood. Falsely imprisoning someone does that, or enslaving someone. Maybe this guy didn’t deserve to lose his job – but it was his choice, and/or his employer’s choice. They (and you) can blame liberals or SJWs or whatever, but they didn’t make this guy resign. He did it himself, or was pressured by his employer. That’s who you should blame.
Why would I have any interest in doing this? I’ve never claimed to have any special insight into the perfect, permanent definition of what is “bad” or “good”.
It’s easy to tell what is going to be bad with foresite as well.
It is not going along with the overwhelming choice, it is advocating for that choice that’s going to get you into trouble.
If you are from the 80’s and you never said a word about SSM, then you have nothing to worry about. If you advocated for it, then you are very well thought of. If you advocated against it, then you may have some explaining to do in order to not be thought to harbor some toxic positions.
We often times say we are on the right side of history. That is because we believe that in the future, people will look back and see that we were. We could be wrong, and that is something that we are willing to accept.
If you truly think that your position is on the right side of history, then you shouldn’t be afraid to express it. It’s not really all that hard.
If you are wrong, you are wrong. If fascists in the future look back upon my anti-fascist posts, and refuse to honor me with a statue because of them, then that is a consequence I am willing to risk. Just as if someone is anti-SSM, and believes that that is the right side of history, then they will have to accept the consequence that those in the future may think poorly of them if they are wrong.
The entire point of my bringing up Shirley Sherrod was to show that it is not something new.
She was attacked for expressing something that she had said years prior. something that she brought up specifically to be used as a learning experience.
Do you think that “I choose to inflict death on someone I think is a horse thief” and “I don’t want to work for/hire/buy from someone who thinks that women are not fully human, and published an article to that effect in 1987”? Again, the original article wasn’t some offhand comment or made in an era where the idea of women having full civil rights was weird, it was a thought-out, published statement made shortly after the first major-party female vice presidential candidate.
Why do you guys always go back to your personal choice side of this argument? No one disagrees with that, YOU make the choice to not eat/work/spend money on etc. THAT isn’t cancel culture.
Calling for their termination/punishment IS, and that fact that people are scared shitless that it could happen to them or their company should open your eyes .
Back in the time we ALSO lived by the judgments of others, haven’t we? Social reputation, “honor”, all those things were about how others would find us worthy or wanting as a way of validating ourselves. Only that once upon a time we thought we had an undertanding of that the yardsticks were agreed upon and would stick around.
But the reality is by just being alive you are going to get a whole shitload of things wrong.
How to handle yourself? There is an ancient exhortation: “do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God (or whatever is your source of guidance, I’d edit)”. So try to do that which is most just, do what reduces or alleviates suffering, and be humble about yourself. Do your best for self and world, as you best understand it and know that you may still get it wrong.
But let’s split this further into two categories: how you’ll be judged in historic time vs. just later in life (and maybe not that much later). The first one is easy: If in the future they take down your statue or change the name of your scholarship, what do you care, you’ll be dead. In the second, if possible, when you come around to changing your view and now undertand what you were wrong about and correct yourself, leave a record of that in words and actions. Make it possible for someone to say, “yes, here’s this quote from 20 years ago, but here are other quotes and deeds from the last 10”. If someone wants to disregard that then they are the arses.
That contemporary organizations are seen flailing about reactively in the effort to adapt to the new realities and in some cases take actions that actually mean not dealing with it but are the fast easy thing to do (let go of the person, instead of address the root problem or the validity of the complaint) is a different aspect of the problem and those organizations need to learn to manage it.
I don’t see how that follows, unless the protagonist is expected to act 100% amorally opportunistic at every point on every matter. Some individual enountering that future revelation may simply adjust their positions to be more conspicuously feministic and would not need to adopt an LGBTQ-hostile position while at it.
And it’s as much as we can do.
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Oh, and BTW re Genghis Khan – as long as your local ruler submitted willingly when given the chance, the common people carried on fine. Make it a fight, and things sucked greatly.