Cancel culture is miseducation
If you are used to visiting the corners of the internet, especially Twitter, you are tired of the words deconstruction and cancellation.
The funny thing is that I am already starting this text, thinking carefully about the words, so I don’t risk being cancelled! I have made my mistakes, and I will make many more. Anyone who opened my Twitter six, seven, or eight years ago would find things I’m not proud of and things I don’t agree with today. And it is okay. Because I have changed. Gladly, I have changed. It was 6, 7, 8 years ago. The problem would have been if I had remained the same.
I will assume that everyone who reads this text will be at least open to dialogue. And to begin with, I will already make it clear that I am not writing this to defend criminal speech, bad charisma, or bad intention, I want to propose a reflection, which, by the way, is a good point to start with: cancellation is the exact opposite of reflecting on something. It is closing the case, closing the subject, and ending the discussion before it even exists.
To me, cancellation is the reflection of disbelief in the most human thing we can have access to: education. Cancellation ignores our ability to evolve and transform as human beings. I know that this capacity for transformation can be used both for good and for evil. But already assuming that it will be used for evil is to level others by a very low rule and is to assume that everyone starts from the same place at the time of learning, when it does not work that way. Let me explain:
We cannot assume that everyone has access to the same level of education and information that we do. In doing so, we do not realize how much our privileges have enabled us to have more knowledge and an expanded awareness of the world around us. The school or university we studied, our family structure, and the friends we have — all this has resulted in the way we perceive the world.
To cancel someone is to deprive some people of the possibility of change, it is to take away access to that wonderful and transformative tool that is education. Cancel culture is miseducation, and I believe in education. And I’m thinking about how many allies we drive away from our fights just because we don’t give them the opportunity to learn from their own mistakes as we have learned so many times from ours.
One of my friends says, “You can love anyone when you know their story.” I respectfully disagree with him. I don’t think I’m able to do this, even with stories that can explain (but never justify) prejudiced behavior, but I am not able to hate either. Because in the end… the cancel culture is nothing more than “good hate” dressed in academic words and memes, wearing the shoes of hypocrisy with an overcoat of superiority.
I am not completely out of this group. Especially the hypocrites. The world is divided into two groups: the ones that are hypocrites and the ones that know they are hypocrites. It’s also important to recognize that in order to change the world, we have to start with our own way of seeing it and, therefore, with our own actions.
So today’s advice is, instead of banking the judges for likes and retweets, start with your own dirty dishes and get a therapist.
