Maria Arpa
This week
Cancel Culture…Plus…
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
and
The Wednesday Whisper
Is this how we get to equality and inclusion?
A practice that has quietly gone on for years has been named Cancel Culture. The difference now is that Social Media makes it faster and easier. The idea of cancelling someone on Social Media refers to critics who attack a person’s reputation and employment when say something deemed to be offensive or disgraceful. Being cancelled does not apply if someone just name calls you. It’s when a determined group are calling for you to lose your business or your job or to have you removed from your position and publicly shamed.
What an increasingly scary world we are living in. Didn’t Jesus say something like, ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone’? I liked that phrase as a way to be sure that only the completely faultless can cast judgement on others.
Now, I am completely sure that ostracization is a very natural and human way of expressing disapproval, in other words voting with your feet. Setting out intentionally to ruin another human being for a view or opinion that does not match one’s own where that person cannot be shown to have done anything other than express an unfavorable opinion is an aggressive act of violence which seems to me to be the exact opposite of creating a world of equality and inclusion.
Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness
I am reminded of times when I have said something others did not like. Once, I was told that my beliefs are responsible for the world being in the state it’s in!! Oh wouldn’t I love to be that powerful and I’m sad that my beliefs have not yet had the impact I am looking for at scale. So far, though I haven’t been ‘cancelled’.
The Wednesday Whisper
Is there now an opinion or belief that you would not say out loud for fear of public shaming?
Does this blog have any resonance for you?
Would you be willing to share this blog and repost it?