That video is one of the most wonderful things I've ever seen on the Internet. The story begins south of Bakersfield, California.
Don't believe the endless stream of divisive rhetoric you see on Corporate Media. It will destroy your ability to be part of a community.
I don't know who this man is, but I applaud this message. I hope all of us continue to share it widely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhctl_lEj3I
What is Cancel Culture? In their excellent new book, The Canceling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott offer many examples of cancel culture along with this definition (p. 9):
Cancel Culture is just one symptom of a much larger problem: the use of cheap rhetorical tactics to "win" arguments without actually winning arguments. After all, why bother meaningfully refuting one's opponents when canceling them is an easier option? Just take away their platform or career. Nobody else will dare to tread the same ground once you make an example of them.There is good news here, however. Once you understand Cancel Culture as one part of an unhealthy societal conversation, the solution becomes quite clear: We don't have to argue like this.
What's the opposite of cancel culture? Free speech. Lukianoff and Schlott explain:
In the meantime, you should know that Free Speech Culture is a set of cultural norms rooted in older democratic values. Embracing Free Speech Culture means turning back to once popular sayings like "everyone is entitled to their own opinion," "to each their own," «it's a free country," and even "don't judge a book by its cover."
Who is my favorite person who exemplifies the opposite of cancel culture? Daryl Davis. Here's one of his recent Tweets:
Daryl's story is incredible. I've described it in prior posts (and see here and here), but here is a recent succinct description of Daryl's wisdom and heroism by Joe Rogan:
I founded this website in 2006 primarily as my way of documenting my journey, my attempt to make sense of things around me. I've always tried to get things right, but that doesn't always work out. Looking back, I've found more than a few articles on this site where modern-day me disagrees with the me of the past. There is no way to get everything right, because truth-seeking is a never-ending task. 90% of the recipe is not giving up, staying in the game, not falling prey to tribal impulses.
We live in a tribal world, however. A world were powerful tribal forces are concocted not only organically, but by large media operations, often working in concert with the U.S. government, including the U.S. security state. Many people scoff that that. They are fish who fantasize that they are totally free, not constrained by the water in which they swim.
Many of the people I formerly spent a lot of time with have remained fully immersed in the left-leaning corporate news ecosystem. They grew up with the NYT, WaPo, MSNBC, CNN and NPR. They have trusted these news sources for many years and they continue to trust them because they see FOX as the only alternative. They have been convinced by corporate media that they must avoid all independent journalists. Most of them think they are already well informed, but they have a one-sided understanding of many salient issues of the day, including censorship and warmongering, issues the democrats of ten years ago opposed, but now they largely favor.
How could that be? If you ask them, they have no answer for why they have flipped 180 degrees over the last ten years. They cannot point to any new evidence that explains their enthusiasm for supporting the war, including the war in Ukraine. It was so utterly strange how so many of them got quiet about the war in the Ukraine as soon as the U.S. turned its military might from Ukraine to Israel. How was it that so many of those gold and blue flags quietly disappeared from social media and front porches, without explanation?
Many of these same people, formerly ferocious opponents of censorship, now advocate for censorship. So much so that many of them deny the existence of the Censorship Industrial Complex, despite abundant evidence from the Twitter Files. Michael Shellenberger recently posted this graph on Twitter. Notice how Democrats have become big advocates for censorship:
Most people I know are intentionally and proudly ignorant of the decision of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision of Missouri v. Biden. They are sure they don't need to know anything about this decision even though they no almost nothing about it. They run away when I try to tell them about these dystopian findings by the Fifth Circuit:
The Individual Plaintiffs have not sought to invalidate social-media companies’ censorship policies. Rather, they asked the district court to restrain the officials from unlawfully interfering with the social-media companies’ independent application of their content-moderation policies....The Plaintiffs allege that federal officials ran afoul of the First Amendment by coercing and significantly encouraging “social-media platforms to censor disfavored [speech],” including by “threats of adverse government action” like antitrust enforcement and legal reforms. We agree... [Article continues . . .]
Geoffrey Miller and Diane Fleischman have discovered the transformative miracle that parenting is. Before I became a parent, I didn't understand that having daughters was going to change me so dramatically and so positively. Parenting was equal amounts of hard work and joy. Among the many other benefits, it was my chance to be a kid again. We all grew up together. And now that my daughters are young women, I continue to appreciate being a father more and more each day.
Brett Weinstein, speaking about the stress-testing of friendships (on the October 29, 2023 episode of his podcast with guest, Joshua Slouch):
I've now been through several of these events in my own life. And I've noticed a pattern, which is that in every case, these divisive crises reveal people's character. And each time I've seen the same pattern: there are people you thought you could trust who absolutely disappoint you. And then there are people that you never expected, maybe you didn't even know them ahead of time, who rise to the challenge and they shine. And you see that somebody, maybe you didn't know their name, but they turn out to have tremendous strength of character and insight, and they stand up at the right moment and defend you for no reason. Right? No reason other than that it's the right thing to do. And so each time I have lost friends, and it's painful. And I have gained people who are much higher quality. And I call this "painful upgrade," Right? It keeps upgrading your social circle.
And I now have to look back on the world. Before I had been through any of these and realized that I was walking around with trust in people that carried with them the ability to absolutely betray under the worst possible circumstances, and that that's dangerous. You are far better to know who actually has the strength of character to face these things. And to limit your significant interactions to that pool of people. Right? It is a gift to know who cannot be trusted with your well being. And I don't like to say that, but I think people need to be alerted to this. Because, you know, people are not labeled. They don't even know themselves whether they're capable of this until they're faced with the situation. It's the crisis that reveals it. And it's the silver lining of these terrible chapters that it does tell you who's really on your team.