There was a time when it seemed almost impossible to cancel your gym membership or contract with your phone company. You felt locked into an unsatisfying relationship with a company that gave you little return on your investment. A company that still withdrew money from your bank account or credit card until you had no other choice but to cancel it. Things have changed greatly and gyms can’t get away with robbing you and phone companies can no longer keep you locked into never-ending contracts with loopholes that require a large sum of money to get out of. Cancelling things has become a lot easier, even people get cancelled nowadays. This got me thinking, does cancel culture lack of compassion?
You can now cancel your friend as quickly as you cancel your Uber Eats or Postmates order. Running a little late, cancel it. You’ve decided you want to eat something else, cancel it. It’s that easy. If you don’t like what your friend is wearing these days, how they talk or because they said something you don’t like or don’t think like you, cancel them. In fact, cancel whatever offends you or is in opposition to your views. Get rid of it, them, cancelled!
Intuitively, I get this ideal. I believe you should trust your intuition, your gut when something doesn’t feel right or when a relationship doesn’t positively serve you. I don’t mean in terms of what you can get from that person. I am referring to how you feel. If it doesn’t feel right, of course, it’s time to move on. I feel it’s important to make this distinction. Not every person in your life needs to be “cancelled” sometimes you just need a break from each other.
What Cancel Culture Creates
Cancel culture creates, shame, isolation, and hate. What happened to reason and learning from each other? Where is the conversation? Where is the middle ground? It’s not about being right all the time or picking sides. There are times when we cancel people without hearing the full story. It’s hard for people to recover their reputation when something negative comes out about them even if it isn’t true. We also miss out on the learning opportunities that come with these cancel worthy situations. We simply cancel and move on just to watch the same thing happen again. When something happens or someone does something that shocks us or that they didn’t think through, these are teachable moments.
We also forget that people change and something they did or said ten years ago may not reflect the person they are today. Your past and present are on trial and unfortunately, they will determine future opinions based on societies given moral code at that time. We don’t see it now but time will show us, in fact, history has demonstrated that this cancel rhetoric should be analyzed and thought through before we rally around it. I am sure you can think of ways that our history as humans, where cancel culture is concerned has resulted in tragic outcomes. How one person’s or group of individuals’ beliefs at that given time without question led to the cancelling or degradation of a people.
I am not saying we shouldn’t hold people accountable for the things they do or say. Further, there are circumstances where people shouldn’t continue to be rewarded or supported as a result of their actions or beliefs. What we shouldn’t do is create sides and force people to pick. Moments like this are the perfect time to build a bridge where open dialogue exists and leads to compassion, growth and understanding. We need to work towards the why in order to create the changes needed on a personal level and as a global community.
