Are we seeing some pushback against the ‘cancel culture’? One can sincerely hope. I for one do not see good things coming from a world where a professor can openly threaten to permanently damage a student’s livelihood and career simply because he does not like what the student has to say. It used to be that this situation happened quietly, and was decried when discovered: adults were in a position to mentor and aid the young. Now? Well, this adult may not be in direct leadership over this young philosopher, and that’s probably a very good thing, but he’s also not afraid to make threats in public and try to drum up a mob while he’s at it.
This article on the whole controversy over a paper that drew some conclusions disliked by the above professor, among others, is worth a read.
The core of it goes both ways, though. Students vs Professors, professors vs students… the ‘woke’ attempting to cancel any sort of speech they dislike hearing. The age of debate and reason has waned. In it’s place is a toxic stew of constantly bubbling turmoil and fervor over thoughts and ideas that is impossible to predict or anticipate. The goalposts change. I was listening to a podcast the other day and was startled to hear the hosts rabbit trail onto a conversation about Seinfeld (which, eh, not a favorite, but they would get back on topic eventually) and then one of them said ‘oh, it is problematic these days.’ the other one asked, ‘do we need to cancel it? I haven’t watched it in quite a while.’ To which the first one replied ‘not yet.’
Not yet. Which implies that in due time, they will. Because history, donchaknow, must be erased lest it infect the future with cooties. Or something. I can’t wrap my head around just what it is they are worried history will do, other than exist and give a foundation to the future. Or maybe that is it. Perhaps they worry that people will look backward into the past of shorter lifespans, vile diseases we have conquered with vaccines, slavery institutions that have been abolished (yes, I am very aware slavery still exists. They have blinders on when it comes to that, though), a past that is inarguably darker and poorer than our present is. If people are allowed to compare to what-has-been, they will be able to see that we are living in a bright future, with the hope of a brighter one coming. Anxiety and depression are at all time highs. Is there a correlation with this cancellation of our history? So that the young of now are not allowed hope?
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One response to “Sore Must be the Storm”
I saw this coming years ago — in a way it first cropped up in my profession — when “revisionist history” first became fashionable. It decked itself out in academic trappings, of course, to lend itself an unearned aura of respectability, and for a time the debates “revisionism” generated were at least marginally civilized. And, to be honest, there was a certain element of necessity in the concept, because at heart — then — it asked the legitimate question of “How much of what is taught as ‘history’ is really nothing more than hagiography?” The discussion/debate/argument was lively, to say the least, entertaining without a doubt, and generally beneficial, because it encouraged, even demanded, better scholarship from both sides in order for each side to sustainably defend its respective position. But then the premise was changed, not by the more radical “historians,” surprisingly, but by outsiders who were more interested in the deconstruction of history consensus, no matter how broadly based or long-held, in order to advance their own agendas, usually social or political. The members of my profession usually reacted in one of two ways. Many, if not most, simply stuck their heads in the sand and began examining and presenting history in ever-smaller and more technical slices, where it was easier to avoid drawing broad and/or significant conclusions, the better to avoid being targeted for attacks by the new wave of revisionists who were armed with their arsenal of assumed moral superiority and self-proclaimed self-righteousness. Then there was the Old Guard (or Grenadier Guards, in the case of myself and a collection of other enlightened colleagues who’ll have no truck with anything Bonaparte) fought back, presenting our own cases and simultaneously demanding that the “new revisionists” defend theirs as rigorously. In time, given the disparity in presentation appeal between our own magnificent eloquence and feeble mutterings of the revisionist camp, who could usually only muster their usual gibberish and babble about “new thinking” (as if any of them were capable of such a difficult feat) and “It has to be wrong because it’s always been presented that way” (hardly a compelling argument for rejecting ANYTHING out of hand), the revisionist wave has been slowed, though be no means stopped, and the tide hasn’t truly yet turned. Still, speaking for my profession, one which is, in my case, every bit as much a vocation — in the classical sense of the word — I can say that, outside of the yellowed-ivory towers of academia, the “pushback” against the “cancel culture” is real and sustained — and is, I believe, spreading. People can be dumb, but they really aren’t stupid: like Gandalf said of Butterbur, given time they can see through a brick wall, and recognize error and injustice for what it is. Given how public awareness has grown — and the rising level of ridicule that has accompanied that awareness — as to how the Progressive and Social Justice movements cheerfully and enthusiastically turn upon and eat their own whenever any form of dissent appears within the Progressive/SJW ranks is witness to the general level of perspicacity that most people possess. That awareness generates a momentum of its own, one which will, in the fullness of time — and very probably while you and I are on the right side of the sod, Cedar — see the “cancel culture,” the works of the “new revisionists” and the failed abortions that produced them are consigned to the dustbin of history which they so richly deserve….
Because I’m Daniel Allen Butler — and they’re not….