[Posted by Chuck Almdale]
The Canceling of the American Mind:
Cancel Culture Undermines Trust and Threatens Us All – But There Is a Solution
Greg Lukianoff & Rikki Schlott
Simon & Schuster, New York | October 2023 | 307 pgs text, plus foreword, appendices, notes & index
The prior posting looked at the eleven case studies presented in “The Canceling of the American Mind,” most extensively on the debacle at Hamline University and very briefly on the other ten. This posting looks at several categorical sets presented in the book, beginning with the three foundational errors of Cancel Culture (the “Great Untruths“), then the Perfect Rhetorical Fortress of the Left, the Efficient Rhetorical Fortress of the Right, and finishing with what we need to do to bring Cancel Culture to an end.
The Three Great Untruths
These three untruths were originally presented in Lukianoff & Haidt’s “The Coddling of the American Mind” in 2015. As Jonathan Haidt writes in his foreword to “The Canceling of the American Mind,” these are:
…ideas so bad, so wrong, so contrary to ancient wisdom and modern psychology that if any young person embraces all three, they are practically guaranteed to be unhappy and unsuccessful….[in the years] since the book was published the disease has metastasized and spread far beyond universities. It now infects journalism, the arts, nonprofits, K-12 education, and even medicine. Show me an organization where people are afraid to speak up, afraid to challenge dominant ideas lest they be destroyed socially, and I’ll show you an organization that has become structurally stupid, unmoored from reality, and unable to achieve its mission.
The Canceling of the American Mind: Forward, pgs. xi-xiii
1. The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
This is the opposite of “anti-fragility” or resilience. There are things that absolutely must have challenges, shocks and setbacks in order to develop properly. When children are shielded from all dirt, germs & viruses, their immune system cannot develop properly and they’ll likely suffer from auto-immune diseases. Shield them from risk, teasing and exclusion and you block their development of normal social and emotional skills and condemn them to anxiety and social incompetence.
2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.
This is the opposite of Stoicism, Buddhism and other ancient traditions that teach that our emotions and automatic reactions are often wrong, lead us astray and perpetuate our own ignorance. They should be examined and questioned, not held out as inarguable truths. Your anger or fear is yours alone, possibly completely self-generated without reference to outside reality, and certainly not necessarily the result of the behavior or intention of others.
3. The Untruth of Us versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and bad people.
This is the most destructive of the Great Untruths, the root of almost all conflict between peoples, the dark side of “groupism” or tribalism which has the beneficial quality of supporting our survival and success. Ancient wisdom warns us that we are all hypocrites, ignorant, fallen; we should remove the plank from our own eye before trying to pluck the mote from the eye of another. We, the flawed, should be quick to forgive, and by the measure we forgive we may in turn be forgiven by others. Teaching that some groups are irrevocably bad and other unquestionably good is exactly the worst policy.
The Perfect Rhetorical Fortress of the Left
Over several decades as many in academia fell under the spell of Cancel Culture, the rules below evolved. Now, inside the walls of the left wing’s Perfect Rhetorical Fortress:
“…lie layer after layer of argumentative dodges, ad hominem diversions, and rhetorical defenses that protect those inside from ever having to address the substance of their opponent’s arguments….using its full power allows you to divert or derail any possible debate. The key factor that makes these dodges so effective is optionality: you are never obligated to use them. You can apply the barricades to dismiss arguments, while letting other people just waltz through.”
The Canceling of the American Mind: Forward, pg. 115
The following ‘barricades’ are the authors’. I’ve considerably shortened their descriptions and discussions which covers pages 116-129.
Barricade 1: Is the Speaker Conservative?
If yes, they can immediately be dismissed, no additional questions or permission to speak is necessary. This covers at minimum the 36% of Americans self-described as conservatives. It’s also liberally applied to any liberal or leftist who dares to criticize anything about Cancel Culture: Noam Chomsky, Gloria Steinem, Salman Rushdie, J.K. Rowling and Steven Pinker are among the many on the left who have been viciously attacked.
Barricade 2: What’s the Speaker’s Race?
Racism has been redefined to apply only to dominant racial groups. Members of minorities cannot be racist by the new definition because they do not have “institutional power.” You are permitted, even encouraged to generalize about dominant racial groups (primarily White, European or Asian, including Jewish) all you want. Whites are considered automatically racist; if they deny it, they are considered even more racist and are demonstrating ‘White Fragility.’ This barricade eliminates 59% of the population; 76% if you include Hispanics who consider themselves white.
Barricade 3: What’s the Speaker’s Sex?
Any argument by a male can be dismissed as “mansplaining.” This originally referred to a man lecturing a woman on her field of expertise as if she knew nothing about it. In recent years it has become generalized to shut down any comment from any man saying anything on any subject, while assuming that a woman will automatically know more about certain topics whether she’s studied them or not – Title IX for example – simply because they’re a woman. With this you can knock out slightly less than 50% of all Americans.
Barricade 4: What’s the Speaker’s Sexuality?
“Straights” are now purported to benefit from “heterosexual privilege” – “unearned, often unconscious or taken for granted benefits afforded to heterosexuals in a heterosexist society based on their sexual orientation.” As such, they are privileged and biased, thus they cannot know what they are talking about, so you can safely ignore everything they say. As only 3-5% of the male population is bisexual or gay, that means you can ignore or shout down 95-97% of men. When we layer these categories with others like politics or race, where do we now stand? 93% of the population is heterosexual or conservative. 98% is heterosexual or white. 98.9% is heterosexual or non-black; 99.1% is heterosexual, non-black or conservative. That leaves only 0.9% capable of saying something worth hearing.
Barricade 5: Is the Speaker’s Trans or Cis?
About 98.4% of the U.S. adult population is “cisgender” or just “Cis,” meaning: if you were born male (produce small motile gametes [sperm]) and you agree that you are indeed male; if you were born female (produce large non-motile gametes [eggs]) and you agree that you are indeed female. If you are “Cis” you have nothing worth saying, unless it replicates whatever the non-cis say. But if you are non-cis and utter a “wrong opinion” (i.e. cis-like), you can still be ignored and canceled.
Barricade 6: Can the speaker be accused of being “phobic”?
Even if you’ve made it past the previous hurdles, if you can be accused of any –ism (racism, sexism) or –phobia (transphobic, Islamophobic), then you cannot be permitted to express an opinion. You are suffering from ‘internalized (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.).’ Anything you might say is likely to be dangerous and harmful to someone, somewhere, some time, now or in the unforeseeable future.
Barricade 7: Are they guilty by Association?
If you associate with anyone who doesn’t pass the above tests or is otherwise “beyond the pale,” you are equally guilty by reason of such association. Bad people, and all those who associate with them, can have only bad opinions. Lukianoff and Schlott were deemed guilty by association to Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson (who is loathed by the Cancelers) because Peterson wrote a foreword to a recent edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago and the authors once quoted from that book. Such an association, however remote, cannot be forgiven.
Barricade 8: Did the Speaker Lose Their Cool?
Don’t get angry no matter how crazy the Politically Correct rules get, how persistent the screams and shout-downs, how unfair or untrue the accusations. If the Cancelers scream, that’s fine, because they’ve been made to feel unsafe or hurt. The feelings of the canceled or about-to-be-canceled are merely their innate racism or phobias coming to the surface, therefore unworthy of respect.
Barricade 9: Did the Speaker Violate a “Thought Terminating Cliché”?
These are overused terms intended to shut down discussion: “dog-whistle,” “on the wrong side of history,” “right-wing talking points,” “punching-down,” “white tears,” “stay in your lane,” “do your own work” (i.e. I will not explain to you what I think you should already know).
Barricade 10: Can you emotionally blackmail someone?
When all else fails, you can get what you want through sadness and outrage, using claims of “harm,” “unsafe,” “disrespected”, “lack of belonging,” “un-valued,” and other purported trauma caused by your intransigence, -phobia, -ism, or privilege. This is similar to the 4-year-old’s wail that “if you loved me, you’d…(fill in the blank).”
Barricade 11: Darkly Hint Something Else is What’s Really Going On
When you’re losing the argument due to lack of facts, allude darkly that something other the current issue is the real problem. “This is really all about some other bad thing (e.g. too much white cisgender privilege, someone used the N-word), that’s why I’m right even if everything else I said was wrong.”
This rhetorical fortress is truly perfect. Anything anyone says about anything can be immediately dismissed without engaging in rational discussion, an act which cancelers will not do. All the above barricades are variations on the basic ad hominem (“to the man” personal attack, recognized for millennia as an illegitimate argument.
The Efficient Rhetorical Fortress of the Right
These are the special tactics of the political Right. These are termed efficient because – unlike the convoluted and numerous barricades of the left’s Perfect Rhetorical Fortress – in one fell swoop they get rid of so many viewpoints with three simple rules, discussed on pages 163-175.
1. You don’t have to listen to liberals (and anyone can be labeled “liberal” if they have the “wrong” opinion).
2. You don’t have to listen to experts (even conservative experts, if they have the “wrong” opinion).
3. You don’t have to listen to journalists (even conservative journalists if they have the “wrong” opinion).
4. And, among the MAGA wing, there’s a fourth provision: You don’t need to listen to anyone who isn’t pro-Trump.
These are simpler than the left’s rules – therefore they are the “efficient” fortress – because they arose not from college dorm rooms and academic departments where layer upon layer of rhetorical dodges were added on, but from everyday politics and talk radio. They are rooted in the Right’s growing distrust of authority, which to some extent is well earned. This was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, when unearned and/or unsupported certainty came from many scholars and experts, usually parroted by journalists. Rather than look at each statement, they just shut them down with their own blanket “expertise” – all liberals, “experts” and journalists, are wrong, whatever they say, because they’re liberals, experts or journalists.
What Can We Do About Cancel Culture
The final third of the book, pgs. 211-307, is an extensive discussion of what can be done to counteract our Cancel Culture.
1. Raise Kids who are not Cancelers
Revive the golden rule; Encourage free, unstructured time; Emphasize the importance of friendships; Teach kids about differences; Practice what you preach. Should anyone, including you, be forever judged by the worst, dumbest thing you ever did? Aren’t we all much more than that?
2. Keep Your Corporation Out of the Culture War
Hire more broadly; Define what you stand for; Face problems in small groups; Practice what you preach. Management is not there to resolve all employee personal and interpersonal conflicts. The company need not reflect employee personal values and politics. A business is not a school campus. Diversity is of more than race or religion; it is of politics, opinion, philosophy, backgrounds, ages, educational levels. Tell employees if they’re so offended they cannot do their jobs, perhaps they don’t belong there.
3. Fixing Kindergarten through High School
Start seeing kids as unique, intellectually independent individuals; Emphasize curiosity and critical thinking; Foster anti-fragility and emotional well-being. Avoid these three common unhelpful lessons: the oppressor-oppressed dichotomy, trigger warnings, automatic punishment for a bad joke or faux pas. Rebuild from the ground up by considering expanded use of: school vouchers, parental involvement on spending their own tax dollars, Montessori or Reggio Emilia style teaching, unschooling, vocational trade-oriented teaching, home-schooling, the Khan Academy.
4. Reforming Higher Education
As higher education is the home ground for Cancel Culture, big changes are needed here. Alumni should emphasize need for free speech & academic freedom before donating; Ban Political Litmus Tests; Abstain from taking political stances; Install an academic freedom ombudsman; Reduce bureaucracy; Demand results; Stop requiring college degrees for work where a college education is not required; Create new systems such as micro-credentialing, small-scale educational pods, self-study equivalency tests.
5. Reinvigorate free speech culture, not merely free speech laws.
Good free speech laws plus bad free speech culture will not lead to free speech in practice. We must be highly tolerant of difference: “It’s a free country,” “Sticks and stones…”, “address arguments, not the person,” “who am I to judge?”
Link to Part 1 of this review.
Link to Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE): https://www.thefire.org/
Link to F.I.R.E. YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/thefireor
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