I love this conversation. It's courageous and important, and offers a banquet of valuable food for thought.
I've myself never been "cancelled" in any of the more blatantly obvious ways. I've mostly just been ignored into the far distances of irrelevancy and invisibility.
I'm definitely on the left, and would even go so far as to say I embrace socialism, but I have a ton of doubts about the Marxist notion of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" (workers, ostensibly). That is, for me, the political left centers on anti-authoritarianism -- which perhaps ought more often to be stated in more positive terms like "pro-liberty". No, like real liberty, not neo-liberalism, etc.. So I tend to lean rather heavily in an anarchist direction. But I don't do this in a way that is utterly stupid, I hope!
I see "the state" (governments) largely through a particular historical framing, in which "the state" (governments) co-evolved with corporate capitalism. These two seem to share a common orthodoxy of ideology, which I tend to want to call "ethos". That is, the values of the system of the state-capitalist conjunction (or whatever you wanna call it) are ... roughly identical. And so I'm all about re-thinking and re-imagining cultural ethos as a means of opening up politics to intelligent, honest, respectful and kind discourse. And that means I celebrate diversity as necessary to dialogue. And so I celebrate courageous acts of speech ... truth-telling (even when it's just about our own favored understandings and perspectives).
For these reasons, the kinds of "cancelling" you folks are talking about seem to me--mostly--a symptom of unwillingness to encounter and engage with ideas and pieces of "ethos" other than one's own. This splinters us lefties into irrelevancy. And, as you all agree, this results in us being irrelevant, because alienated from one another and isolated from public / communal discourses and dialogues.
I'd like to republish this video at https://rword.substack.com/, in order to reach a larger audience with this necessarily "disturbing" (LOL) ideas. I find it anything but disturbing, myself.
I love this conversation. It's courageous and important, and offers a banquet of valuable food for thought.
I've myself never been "cancelled" in any of the more blatantly obvious ways. I've mostly just been ignored into the far distances of irrelevancy and invisibility.
I'm definitely on the left, and would even go so far as to say I embrace socialism, but I have a ton of doubts about the Marxist notion of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" (workers, ostensibly). That is, for me, the political left centers on anti-authoritarianism -- which perhaps ought more often to be stated in more positive terms like "pro-liberty". No, like real liberty, not neo-liberalism, etc.. So I tend to lean rather heavily in an anarchist direction. But I don't do this in a way that is utterly stupid, I hope!
I see "the state" (governments) largely through a particular historical framing, in which "the state" (governments) co-evolved with corporate capitalism. These two seem to share a common orthodoxy of ideology, which I tend to want to call "ethos". That is, the values of the system of the state-capitalist conjunction (or whatever you wanna call it) are ... roughly identical. And so I'm all about re-thinking and re-imagining cultural ethos as a means of opening up politics to intelligent, honest, respectful and kind discourse. And that means I celebrate diversity as necessary to dialogue. And so I celebrate courageous acts of speech ... truth-telling (even when it's just about our own favored understandings and perspectives).
For these reasons, the kinds of "cancelling" you folks are talking about seem to me--mostly--a symptom of unwillingness to encounter and engage with ideas and pieces of "ethos" other than one's own. This splinters us lefties into irrelevancy. And, as you all agree, this results in us being irrelevant, because alienated from one another and isolated from public / communal discourses and dialogues.
I'd like to republish this video at https://rword.substack.com/, in order to reach a larger audience with this necessarily "disturbing" (LOL) ideas. I find it anything but disturbing, myself.
Courage, my friends!
I'm about halfway into this one. Pretty interesting discussion.
Talking Cancellation | Clementine and Jay from 'Fucking Cancelled'
Rune Soup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpdDpPGgeg8