On Cancel Culture: Silence Has No Future
It’s the perfect storm for public discourse: At a time when Americans are hungry for leadership and with an election just around the corner, we’re at the height of the pandemic that is cancel culture. The view is dizzying—and from the looks of things, we’ll be stuck atop this mountain for quite some time.
According to the data, the cure for cancel culture isn’t arriving anytime soon. In fact, its grip on public discourse is tightening. Awareness of the term has grown from 44 percent in 2020 to 61 percent by 2022, according to Pew Research.?
As a phenomenon, it’s becoming engrained into our culture at large, shaping how we engage with leadership and public figures. The consequences are profound: when the most important voices are silenced, we risk losing leadership when we need it the most. It’s troubling, then, to find that a Cato Institute/YouGov?study revealed 62 percent of Americans feel the need to hold back their political views due to concerns over social or professional consequences.
Self-censorship as a survival technique in a country where debates over First Amendment rights have been deafening? It’s paradoxical but telling.
And it explains why a leadership void has emerged, and why it’s so incredibly hard to find educated opinions throughout the media landscape. The people who are running the world and improving the human condition are no longer the same people featured on the talk show circuit and commanding column inches in newspapers. ?
It’s yet another reason interest in news has waned. The bulk of today’s news feature the noisemakers, not the intelligentsia with profound insights on how to run the world – they give us hope -- and not the people who actually know how to keep the world running – they give us truth.
So here we are, stuck in a cycle of reactionary commentary driven by outrage when what we really need are bold conversations featuring diverse opinions on how to move our country forward.
Cancel culture burst onto the scene to hold people accountable, but it quickly morphed into something that seeks to punish. The result? Communication—the most powerful leadership tool—has been replaced with silence. Meaningful discourse is disappearing, leaving a void in the conversation when we most need thoughtful leadership to address our greatest challenges.
Perhaps most concerning is how different generations view and engage with cancel culture. Gen Z?and millennials tend to support it as a tool for social justice and accountability. But older generations, particularly Gen X and baby boomers, often see it as a form of censorship that silences legitimate debate out of fear of backlash.
This generational divide reveals a key tension in public discourse: how do we balance the desire for accountability with the need for free and open conversation? ? Has our system of checks and balances failed, or has technology disrupted that balance, too?
But there is hope. It begins with the realization that free speech and civility aren’t mutually exclusive. We need to redefine the public square, one where accountability and discussion coexist, and where leaders feel empowered to voice complex ideas without fear of immediate retribution.
It’s time to reclaim space for nuanced conversations where not every comment made in good faith is met with reflexive punishment. These conversations need to start with the news media, which overwhelmingly abandoned the concept of nuance in favor of conflict long ago.
Not every story fits into the framework of a singular hero and villain, yet this is the overriding theme in news today. That misguided push for clarity, likely fueled by the 24-hour news cycle, is why, from this mountaintop, the American way of life seems so murky.
When a clear day finally hits, it will have been a long time in the making. Cancel culture can’t win, because silence has no future. The most valuable ideas are often the hardest to hear—uncomfortable, challenging, and exactly what cancel culture fears most. But these are the conversations we need to tackle the complex problems in front of us.
If we don't make space for them now, the silence will only grow louder. Even the richest nation in the world can't afford that.
- Jaci Clement CEO & Executive Director [email protected]
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1 个月Very informative????