Thoughts on "Cancel Culture"

The expression “cancel culture” has become a weapon. Some use it for those who they claim do it, while others use it disparage those who think cancel culture is some kind of political movement.

Cancel culture is real.

Photo by Resource Database™ on Unsplash

Recently a friend sent me an article by a first amendment lawyer on cancel culture. The article is by Ken White, and he opens with this on his Substack.

Last March I wrote a self-indulgently long post airing my grievances about the term “cancel culture” and how it’s used in an unprincipled, unproductive way that discourages good discussions rather than encouraging them.

My thesis was this: (1) any productive discussion of cancel culture needs a workable definition of it, (2) any principled discussion of cancel culture must consider the free speech interests of everyone involved, not just the “first speaker,” and (3) any useful discussion of cancel culture needs specific action items — articulable things to do or not to do in order to advance “free speech culture.”

Most of us would agree with each of the three elements of his socially-responsible thesis. He chose to examine the details of a teacher at a liberal arts university who got “cancelled” in what White contends was a clear case of cancel culture at many levels. His article provides many insights.

In this case White said the case was not about first amendment but what he calls a “Free Speech Culture.” Here are again his words:

It’s a Free Speech Culture issue — an issue about how society ought to respond to speech when we disapprove of it — and a Speech Decency issue — an issue about what speech is kind, decent, and moral.

This is where I find his take on the issue helpful:

Here’s how I’ve defined “cancel culture” — it’s “when speech is met with a response that, in my opinion, is very disproportionate.”

That’s what concerns many of us: when the punishment, judgment, decision, or verdict is disproportionate, then we begin to smell something wrong for humans in a society of toleration and respect.

Disproportionality.

To avoid disproportionality we need to set up standards, which almost no institution does. These standards could be called casuistic law: If X is said, then Y is the consequence… and so on.

Social media could learn a lesson here, which is a meaningless statement on my part. “Social media” isn’t a thing. So, I’ll say it this way: individuals using social media will have to decide how to use social media’s call-out culture in a manner that is not disproportionate.

On the same day I received the Substack by White, my friend Sean Palmer sketched on his Substack some ideas about cancel culture from a Christian pastoral angle, and again I found Sean’s ideas insightful. He, too, opens with definition:

First of all, cancel culture is real. It’s real insofar as there is a thing called “canceling,” where some folks decide that some woman or man has done or said something which the first group finds offensive, hurtful, or traumatizing. In response to these offenses, the traumatized “cancel” the offender.

Canceling means offenders should be marginalized, mocked, or de-platformed from spaces that might otherwise host their views. I’ve seen it happen. A man or woman, often with little evidence beyond suspicion, is cast into condemnation to pay for their sins — whether those sins are real or imagined.”

Sean believes in what is commonly called discipline, but not canceling. He continues:

I do, however, think folks who have spiritually, emotionally, or physically abused others, people who have spiraled into horrible behaviors and attitudes which threaten or harm others, and spiritual leaders who use their position to hurt others, should, at a minimum, have a period of time outside of leadership and influence in order to reconcile their lives to God and with others. That is to say, they need time to examine their lives, get right with God, and heal.

In other words, it’s permanent cancel:

Canceling, at least how it’s practiced in many spaces, is the throwing an offender into the penalty box ad infinitum, with no chance or pathway for healing, reconciliation, or renewal.

He now becomes a pastoral theologian with insight. Cancel culture has moral failure in how it is practiced.

“What can’t cancel culture do? Forgive.”

Why? He writes, “That is to say, cancel culture doesn't know what it wants outside of its desire for the offender to pay.”

Now we have two terms for our perceptions of social media’s call-out culture and cancel culture, two terms that speak to moral judgment and moral action.

The Christian needs to work hard to ensure that the consequence of an action is not disproportionate to the action, and the Christian disposition it toward forgiveness. You know me well enough to know that I like Bonhoeffer and I believe his sections on “cheap grace” are fundamentally important for human relations. But a Christian’s disposition is to face forward in the hope of forgiveness and, under definable conditions, even reconciliation when those conditions become favorable.

Sean’s question could become the one we use on social media: What are the conditions under which you would re-establish relationship or forgive or re-institute the person who has done something you deem worthy of calling-out or cancelling?