This is why we have cancel culture
Cancel culture is real and completely natural. It’s exactly what we should expect when for so many in the culture, nature is all there is.
Think about it. If we don’t have a transcendent standard of objective morality by which to judge our behavior, i.e. God, all we have is each other. If God is denied or ignored, we are only as virtuous as much as we compare with others in virtuosity. (Because even if we don’t acknowledge him as our standard, we can’t deny the moral intuition he created us with.) So we criticize, condemn, and cancel because the more we can make others look bad, the better we look in comparison. That’s our plan anyway.
But it ain’t working. Cancel culture warriors can’t hide their hypocrisy as they topple and deface monuments and destroy businesses, selfishly unconcerned with the harm they’re doing to the undeserving. They can’t hide their self-righteous, intolerant disdain as they demand someone’s ouster for merely speaking truth they don’t like. And their ugly arrogance is on full display when attacking and threatening those who aren’t fully on board with their angry protests against “hate.” It’s incredible how hateful, spiteful, mean and nasty some of them are as they try and pass themselves off as our moral betters.
But this is what happens when “virtue” is a nebulous concept untethered to an objective standard…when I have to signal it as true of me by condemning someone else. But if I had a mirror….hmmm.
Self-righteousness is not a virtue. You know what is? Humility. And forgiveness. Two virtues that are sorely lacking in today’s cancel culture.
The truly virtuous don’t signal their virtue; they just live it. And they don’t condemn others for doing things they do or have done themselves. Because they know no one’s perfect, including themselves, and that we are shaped by the times that we live in and the situations we face.
The truly virtuous humbly inspire and encourage others to do what’s right. The virtue-posing, hypocritical, social justice warriors in the cancel culture war merely denigrate and castigate. And ain’t no one inspired by that.
