Cancel Culture thinking is equivalent to your Doctor treating your symptoms but not your disease. You feel better momentarily, and then you die because of short-term thinking. You wouldn’t accept this from medical professionals, why would you accept it from society?
Treating the symptoms is not wrong, maybe some books should go, maybe some cartoons should have a warning label on them, maybe some monuments should come down. But these things should be done within a larger debate and within full context. Most people don’t want to debate, they don’t want context, they simply react to their emotions and look for a quick easy fix.
Things are products of their time. George Washington owned slaves, he was a product of his time. Dr. Sesus wrote both some funny whimsical things and some off handed things, he was a product of his time. Confederate Generals fought for the South, nearly everyone in the south fought for the South! Civil War statues are not the problem, they are the symptoms not the disease? The disease is in the heart of man that some people are less than human and can be owned. Removing statues has not changed the heart of man!
We don’t have to agree with all that happened in certain bygone eras. But it is entirely WRONG to judge people’s words and actions from the past based on the standards of the present? Who from the past could possibly meet today’s standards and expectations? Will every book, movie, show or creation made before 2021 need a warning label? Will it be possible that what we are creating now be able to withstand the judgmental expectations of society in 20 or 30 years from now?
Cancelling or erasing the past does not make the future better. As a human race, we do a poor job of learning from the past when we can find it and take the time to study it, how much worse it would be if we pretend it wasn’t there.
Treating the symptoms is easy. Cancelling things is easy. Tearing down statues is easy. Treating real problems is hard, they’re complex and rooted deep in our human nature.
We do our society a tremendous disservice if we allow the cancellation of the past because it simply does not meet the seemingly all-important new standards of the present. In fact, like only treating the symptoms of cancer guarantees the inevitable results of dying from cancer, so allowing cancel culture to run rampant may lead to societal decay or death. A price we may not be willing to pay once it’s too late to do anything about it!
