The Difficult Balance of Justice, Empathy, Truth, and Freedom in Social-Political Discourse and Policy

The idea of "cancel culture" has been producing a lot of discussion in recent days.  The term itself is relatively new to me, but the idea behind it is something I've thought a lot about over the past few years (really more than a decade now).  There is a lot of complexity going on in this idea, and I wanted to write something to try to sort it out and examine its component parts more carefully.  As I think about it, I can see two main distinct issues in the idea.  One issue has to do with the tone of our modern social-political discourse.  The other issue has to do with how we draw the line between freedom on the one hand and protection of the good on the other.  Let's look at each of these.

The Tone of Our Modern Social-Political Discourse

First, the issue of tone in modern discourse.  Here is especially where I think the critics of "cancel culture" make a very strong point.  Our political discourse over the past few years seems to me (and to many others) to have become increasingly shrill, and increasing lacking, I would say, in the virtues of love, empathy, and honesty/thoughtfulness.  It's almost as if we've drawn a dichotomy between standing up for what is right on the one hand, and loving our neighbor, viewing our ideological opponents with empathy, and recognizing the nuances and complexity of the issues on the other.  The authors of a recently-published open letter criticizing "cancel culture" describe it as "an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty."  I think that's well put.  Here is how I myself described the situation on a recent Facebook post:

It is my observation that we are an incredibly judgmental culture.  We are top-of-the-notch Puritans, in the worst sense of that word (and not one that is fair to historic, actual Puritans, by the way).  We have our moral codes that lay out incredibly intricate and detailed rules about who can do what, who can say what, who can think what, when they can say, do, and think it, when they can't, what words are proper to use, what words aren't, etc.  And we ruthlessly judge others on the basis of whether they are living perfectly within our rules or not.  If they step outside of them by just a fraction in any direction, we gasp with shock, call them moral monsters, and decide it is our moral duty to demonize them, ostracise them, marginalize them, label them and call them names, ruin their reputations, careers, and lives as much as we can, and then, to finalize their punishment, we unfriend them from Facebook, without giving any hope of reprieve or forgiveness for all eternity, and then when we've done that we pat ourselves on the back and loudly proclaim to whomever will listen how amazingly just and righteous (and compassionate and tolerant, of course) we are.  Our self-delusion that we are compassionate and tolerant is almost cartoonish in its absurdity. 

If we could manage to learn and practice real empathy across the board, instead of our fake or selective empathy which really means favoring people we like and demonizing people we don't, we would find ourselves living in a much more just and pleasant society.

That pretty much sums it up.  Many people in our society have become very concerned about matters of social justice, which is a good thing (provided that the things they are fighting for are in reality good things, which I think is sometimes the case and sometimes not).  But we've developed a culture in which fighting for social justice matters has taken on what might be called almost a berserker (look it up) or crusader (in the stereotypical bad sense) mentality, where we nail in on a particular issue, define that issue in a clear and simple way, and then systematically refuse to tolerate anything from anybody other than an immediate, one-hundred-percent submission to everything we think is right.  Once we've declared victory (which we do as soon as we jump on the wagon of "the right point of view"), we announce that all reasonable discussion is now over.  There are to be no more questions, no doubts, no alternative points of view.  Frequently, in my observation, this attitude tends to the vehement suppression even of reasonable questions and nuances and complexities that really need to be discussed.  This is what I mean by saying that "cancel culture" not only has a problem with love and empathy but also with honesty and thoughtfulness.

For example, take J. K. Rowling's recent comments on transgenderism and the response she's gotten.  Whether or not one agrees with Rowling, it seems to me that, at the very least, she has some plausible, reasonable concerns.  She has a point of view worth taking seriously and treating with some respect.  Transgenderism is a pretty new idea, at least in terms of something that has been discussed seriously in mainstream culture.  Our culture has undergone a radical shift on this issue very rapidly over a very short period of time.  Surely this is a time when it would make sense to expect a lot of civil dialogue and debate to be going on in our society on this subject.  But, instead of this, the "cancel culture" attitude says that since transgenderism is a "social justice issue," the only moral thing to do is declare loudly and firmly that transgender ideology is correct, announce complete and total victory in the culture wars over the issue, and then engage in a systematic refusal to tolerate any alternative point of view or even any slight hesitation or question about it anywhere, short only of literally making that alternative point of view illegal (and I think that even that barrier is rooted, for some people, more in inertia from our historic American climate than any attitude of respect for people's rights; I strongly suspect that a lot of our "cancel culture" proponents would be quite happy to declare alternative views illegal if it wasn't for the influence of that inertia.)  Are there questions?  Are there nuances?  Is the issue complex and multi-faceted?  Is it difficult to know exactly how to deal with these things in public policy decisions (like the famous bathroom wars)?  We won't hear of it!  There is no complexity!  It's quite simple--we're right and good, and you're wrong and evil, and anything less than total gung-ho support of every single tiny component of our platform is a moral obscenity that cannot be tolerated in civil society!  And you can't possibly be asking questions or doubting what we say out of any good will!  There is no good will except the will that agrees with us!  Everyone who disagrees with us in the slightest is a selfish, evil bigot who is simply motivated by hate!  There is no serious recognition that one's ideological opponents are human beings with complex ways of seeing things, and that even people of good will can disagree about complex issues.  There is no attempt to have any empathy, any understanding of the thoughts, feelings, or concerns of one's ideological opponents.  Those people are the oppressors, and that's all there is to say.  They're transphobes, or homophobes, or racists, or whatever.  The proper response is not to listen to anything they have to say but to call them names, insult them, and make sure they are publicly shamed so that no one, anywhere, will ever listen to them and we can just basically write them out of our society as much as possible.

For another example of the type of nuance cancel culture tends to reject, take an article I just read from John Piper's Desiring God website.  The article is by Greg Morse, a black writer, and is called "Seeing the World in Black and White: How Much Do Assumptions Divide Us?"  This article, being on a website that is not likely to get much broad public exposure beyond a small minority of the population, will probably receive little response.  But I thought it was a very thoughtful, helpful article.  The author asks some questions about how we decide when we're seeing racism in our society.  He asks whether or not perhaps sometimes (important word there) people are too quick to judge other people as racist without due warrant by interpreting certain cues or actions as racist that, in reality, could have multiple interpretations, thus being guilty of rushing to unfair judgment about people.  I'd encourage you to read the article.  The author is very careful and nuanced, and he does not claim that there is not a problem of racism in the country.  He just wants to make sure that in our zeal to deal with racism, we don't run to another extreme of treating other people unfairly.  That's a concern I can get behind.  But, based on what I've seen, I'm pretty sure that many anti-racism advocates in our culture would call this article and its author "racist" for even daring to suggest any nuances or balance.  A lot of people see any kind of willingness to stop and talk about these kinds of nuances as the equivalent of betraying the anti-racism cause and exhibiting racist tendencies oneself--even if, as in this case, the author is himself/herself a member of a racial minority group.  There is a strong push to "listen to the narratives and testimonies" of oppressed racial minorities, which I think is a great and important thing, but it's interesting that whenever racial minorities express anything other than the accepted party line, they seem to be shouted down.  Do we really want to hear everyone's testimony, or just those testimonies that agree with our social-political platform?

I remember a conversation I had once where my interlocutor was insisting that when there is an altercation between a police officer and a black person, we should assume that the police officer is to blame.  I asked her if we should assume the police officer to be at fault even if we have no evidence of fault, and she said that we should--presumably on the grounds that we should err on the side of the minority, who has had lots of disadvantages historically.  I found this chilling, as it seemed to imply the complete overturning of what I would consider a central principle of social justice--the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty.  This concerns me also when it comes to accusations of rape or other forms of abuse in our society.  While we should definitely work hard to ensure that allegations of rape and abuse are listened to and taken seriously, and properly dealt with rather than being dismissed, and while we should work to ensure that people in positions of power are held accountable, yet we must never sacrifice the principle of "innocent until proven guilty."  I fear that some of the extreme forms of cancel culture tend to obscure this by calling for so much deference to the accuser that the legitimate rights of the accused are no longer adequately preserved.  One of the forms that cancel culture's thoughtlessness tends to take is a kind of one-sidedness, where some particular value or issue becomes the center point of concern to such an extreme degree that all other balancing concerns and values are drowned out in an obsessed frenzy to focus all attention on the one chosen issue or value.

On the Right side of the political spectrum, "cancel culture" often takes the form of mocking any idea considered "liberal" and refusing to give it any consideration.  The one-sided characteristic of cancel-culture is manifested on the Right in the tendency to see everything in terms of free-market, capitalist values and to neglect consideration of those who fall through the cracks in a system that puts too much emphasis on the free market.  There is a tendency to make light of those who are suffering in our culture--immigrants (documented or otherwise), the poor, racial minorities, etc.--to fail to listen to their stories, to explain away their problems as being their own fault, as if it is thought that if only these people would act like good, hard-working conservatives instead of whiny, lazy liberals they would be able to attain the wealth, the justice, and the equality they need.  The poor aren't working hard enough.  Immigrants just need to go through the proper channels and be patient.  If blacks wouldn't act so hostile and wear such scary-looking clothing, the police would leave them alone.  Everything tends to be read through this kind of scornful, overly-simplistic narrative, with no real effort to exercise empathy and come to understand the depth and the complexity of the issues.

This is the kind of extremism "cancel culture" tends to promote, and that I find very problematic and dangerous.  As a Catholic Christian, I know we are called by God to love our neighbors, even our ideological opponents.  And love involves being willing to develop empathy towards other people, which means we try to understand and take seriously the complexity of who they are and of their ideas and life situations.  It means we don't oversimplify them, dehumanize them, insult them and demean them, hate them, try to ruin their lives, and refuse to forgive them--even when they hold positions we think are wrong and even abhorrent or when they do things we believe to be very immoral.  And I also know God calls us to honesty and thoughtfulness.  To ignore or oversimplify aspects of reality is to bear false witness against God, who is the author of reality.  We must be honest, and we must try to understand something with all its complexity before we draw conclusions about it and go promoting those conclusions to others.  We need to be willing to listen to evidence about reality, from whatever source that evidence comes from--even from one's ideological opponents, and even when that evidence, that nuance or complexity, sometimes frustrates our desire to have a very simple, very clear moral line to insist upon.  Of course, none of this means that we should not come to clear conclusions at times, including moral ones, or that we should not stand up strongly for what we think to be right.  But we don't have to compromise love, empathy, or honesty in order to do that.  It's a false dichotomy to put social justice on one side and a full-orbed and balanced love, empathy, and honesty/thoughtfulness on the other, and we shouldn't fall for it.

Some might argue that we have to have a strong, angry tone sometimes in order to get a point across that tends to be dismissed or ignored.  We might have to resort to "in your face" tactics.  I grant that there can be some truth to this.  Think of Jesus, or the Old Testament prophets, who sometimes spoke with strong language and strong actions.  I'm not opposing this, but I say that even when we must use strong language or strong actions, we must still keep in mind an appropriate balance between concern over the moral issue we are focusing on and the empathy and respect we owe to those with whom we disagree.  No matter how difficult it may be to get people to listen to what they need to listen to, they are still human beings and we must love them as ourselves (yes, even the oppressors!).  And we must not allow the justice of a strong message to wash out the fact that we must always be concerned to get reality right with all its complexity and nuance.  We can't whitewash truth just to make a sharper point.  And we must always be willing to learn from everyone--yes, even from those horrible people who are promoting injustice (intentionally or unintentionally).  Truth is truth, whoever is speaking it.  There is a whole spectrum in terms of how strongly we ought to speak or what forms our speech or actions ought to take in different circumstances.  But we must always speak and act with respect, love, empathy, justice, and fairness.

Freedom vs. Protection of the Good

"Cancel culture" is about the tone of social-political discourse, but it is also about concrete actions.  It gets into how much tolerance should exist for disfavored views in society.  The "Open Letter" I discussed earlier talks about how cancel culture wants to shut down and exclude people who don't toe the line in terms of favored points of view.  "Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes."  An example I just came across last night:  Gillian Philip, one of the writers of the popular Warriors children's book series, was fired by her publisher because she added “I stand with J.K. Rowling” to her Twitter profile (expressing support for Rowling's controversial views on transgenderism). 

This kind of cancel culture is active in academia as well.  Last summer, I read about a graduate student who had decided to leave the field of academic Philosophy because there were some among her (I'm using her preferred pronoun here) colleagues who held what she labeled "transphobic" views and talked about them.  She published a statement in Medium describing why she was leaving.  You can read her statement here and an article about her (and the broader debate) here.  Here is a sample of her language:

Secondly, I do not feel safe or comfortable in professional settings any longer. . . .  Not only do I have to sit with the knowledge that people who are supposed to be my colleagues actively deny my gender identity, I might even encounter these people in a public space. . .  How can I be expected to attend professional events where people deny and question such an integral part of my identity and act like that is tolerable or normal? . . . 

My gender is not up for debate. I am a woman. Any trans discourse that does not proceed from this initial assumption — that trans people are the gender that they say they are — is oppressive, regressive, and harmful. It comes at a huge cost to me and other trans people both mentally and emotionally to engage with transphobes, whereas it’s easy for transphobes to write transphobic arguments. So, trans people shouldn’t have to engage with transphobes and constantly attempt to legitimize their existences. (t philosopher, "I am leaving academic philosophy because of its transphobia problem," published on Medium on May 30, 2019, bold-type in original)

Here is another example (arising out of the same specific controversy) of such language from a joint statement by Minorities and Philosophy UK and Minorities and Philosophy International:

The right to promote hateful ideas is not covered under the right to free speech. Thus, we resist the charge that this is simply an attempt to silence and stifle philosophical debate. Nobody is entitled to unlimited and unopposed speech in academic philosophy - and we need to identify and call out forms of speech that target, oppress, and silence marginalised groups.  

Not every item of personal and ideological obsession is worthy of philosophical debate. In particular, scepticism about the rights of marginalised groups and individuals, where issues of life and death are at stake, are not up for debate. The existence and validity of transgender and non-binary people, and the right of trans and non-binary people to identify their own genders and sexualities, fall within the range of such indisputable topics.  ("Joint statement in response to the Aristotelian Society talk on 3rd June 2019," published on the website of MAP UK on June 3, 2019)

So, basically, what this graduate student and this joint statement are saying is that academia should exclude people who don't agree with their views on transgenderism.  Such people should not be given academic jobs, and presumably they should be fired if they already have such jobs.  No transgender person should ever have to listen to anyone who disagrees with them, and society should be crafted so that they never have to run into such people.  Here is the concrete side of cancel culture in a nutshell.

On the other side, shortly after the flair up over this graduate student, another twelve scholars put out another joint statement calling for toleration of different views on transgenderism in academia:

We, all scholars in philosophy at universities in Europe, North America and Australia, oppose such sanctioning. The proposed measures, such as censuring philosophers who defend these controversial positions or preventing those positions from being advanced at professional conferences and in scholarly journals, violate the fundamental academic commitment to free inquiry. Moreover, the consequent narrowing of discussion would set a dangerous precedent, threatening the ability of philosophers to engage with the issues of the day. . . . 

Policy makers and citizens are currently confronting such metaphysical questions about sex and gender as What is a man? What is a lesbian? What makes someone female? Society at large is deliberating over the resolution of conflicting interests in contexts as varied as competitive sport, changing rooms, workplaces and prisons. These discussions are of great importance, and philosophers can make an essential contribution to them, in part through academic debate. Philosophers who engage in this debate should wish for it to be pursued through rational dialogue, and should refuse to accept narrow constraints on the range of views receiving serious consideration.  ("Philosophers Should Not Be Sanctioned Over Their Positions on Sex and Gender," published on the Inside Higher Ed website, in the Views section, on July 22, 2019)

On the other hand, these twelve scholars recognized that there is a tension between the call to free speech and academic freedom and the call to public protection of the dignity of persons, but they argued that, in this case, the real problem lies in the damage done to free speech and academic freedom:

We acknowledge that philosophical arguments can lead to pain, anxiety and frustration when they challenge deeply held commitments -- whether pertaining to gender identity, religious conviction, political ideology or the rights and moral status of fetuses or nonhuman animals. Moreover, some of us believe that certain extreme conditions can warrant restrictions of academic speech, such as when it expresses false and hateful attitudes or incites violence or harassment. 

Yet none of the arguments recently made by our colleagues can reasonably be regarded as incitement or hate speech. . . . 

Academic freedom, like freedom of thought more broadly, should be restricted only with the greatest caution, if ever. While the respect due to all people -- regardless of sex, gender, race, class, religion, professional status and so on -- should never be compromised, we believe that contemporary disputes over sex and gender force no hard choice between these commitments.  (Ibid.)

So these scholars acknowledge that there are times when speech should be restricted, such as when it "expresses false and hateful attitudes."  This is because "respect for all people . . . should never be compromised."

In another recent article, Michael Hobbes, a cancel culture proponent, acknowledged that the kinds of social sanctions against disfavored views Rowling and others have complained about do indeed take place, but he pointed out that people are still legally allowed to express their contrary views, and he argued that the kind of shunning cancel culture engages in is not the suppression of free speech but simply a natural part of how it works:

Public figures certainly have a right to express their controversial views. Readers have the right to react accordingly, and publishers have the right to take these views into account when deciding which books to publish. That’s why it’s called, as “cancel culture” critics love to point out, the “marketplace of ideas.” . . . 

The actual debate over free speech is about how to decide which of those views deserve space and attention. Outlets like The New York Times and Harper’s bestow credibility on the opinions they publish. Their employees and their readers have the right to argue that some views do not deserve such credibility. That is not the suppression of free speech; it is the exercise of it.  ("Don’t Fall For The ‘Cancel Culture’ Scam," Huffington Post, 7/10/2020)

I can see both sides of this issue.  It is an extremely complicated issue.  It is also a perennial debate in any society--where is the line of toleration?  There is a tension here between two groups of virtues:  Freedom and respect for persons of diverse views and the value of free inquiry on the one side, and the duty of social and political institutions to protect the values justly held dear by society and to keep their people free from harm on the other.

This is the central issue in the classic debate over so-called "hate speech regulation".  Imagine that a person wants to purchase billboard space on a public highway to make insulting, denigrating speech about black people.  Should he be allowed to do it?  Should the law protect his freedom of expression in this case, or should the law limit his freedom of expression in order to protect the well-being of black people who are likely to feel great pain from living in a society where some public space is taken up with insulting and demeaning them and making them feel they are not welcome as dignified and equal members of society?  One might argue that the black people aren't experiencing any physical harm from having to drive past such billboards, but this response ignores the fact that "harm" is broader than merely "direct physical pain or injury."  We want to live in a society that protects us from those things that cause a significant diminution of our quality of life.  That's why we want laws against murder, physical assault, theft, etc.  But surely living in a society where I am constantly demeaned and hated and treated in an undignified manner, only allowed to live there by a kind of "toleration" that involves people holding their noses and agreeing that "I GUESS we have to let these people live here" is a source of great and real harm as well.  But then, again, if we try to limit such harms, we can only do so by limiting people's free expression, their ability to broadcast their own views in the public square.

This is also at least one of the key concerns in the infamous controversies surrounding bakers and florists being required to provide services to people they disagree with or don't like--such as bakers who hold homosexual acts to be unethical being required to bake same-sex wedding cakes.  There is the freedom of the baker or the florist on the one hand, but there is the harm of a hostile public square on the other.

Cancel culture is partly based on the concern that our social institutions should be ones that promote and uphold certain values and reject others.  If equality in race is a great good to be valued and protected, then our social institutions ought not to treat expressions of racial equality and racism in the same way.  If transgender proponents are right in their transgenderist views, then it is argued that our social institutions ought not to tolerate people who demean transgender people by refusing to recognize things that are at the core of their personal identity.  Opposition to cancel culture is partly based on the concern that if we go too far to protect people from uncomfortable and difficult viewpoints and rhetoric in society, we run the risk of creating a kind of dominating, intimidating society in which orthodox opinions are enforced on people and unorthodox opinions are punished, making people afraid to speak their minds for fear of reprisal.  And this kind of situation is not only held to be harmful to free inquiry, but it seems incompatible with the very idea of a pluralistic society full of people with truly diverse viewpoints all participating together in spite of their disagreements.  What does it mean to say we value diversity of thought and want people of different views to "coexist" (I'm thinking of that bumper sticker) if we immediately add that diverse views will only be tolerated and respected so long as they don't veer off in any important way from the beliefs and values considered important by those with the greatest power and influence in society?  We can't have our cake and eat it too.  A pluralistic society, by definition, is a society full of people who disagree about important things but live and work together anyway.  We can't praise the idea of a pluralistic society and at the same time insist that diversity be limited to views that we don't seriously disagree with or find problematic.

An interesting, and, probably to some, surprising comparison might be made between the debate over cancel culture and the question of the treatment of heretics entertained by the Catholic Church over her history.  In the Middle Ages, the prevailing trend in the Church was that heretics should not be tolerated within society.  The reason for this is that, in the Catholic view, God is of supreme importance.  Heresy, being false doctrine that contradicts the core teachings of the Catholic faith, is greatly dishonoring to God and harmful to the souls of people because it has a natural tendency, if imbibed fully, to turn them away from God.  So the non-toleration of heresy was a corollary of the concern of medieval Catholics to foster a society in which the values of society--such as the public honor of God and the temporal and spiritual well-being of the people--are protected against that which would harm them.  However, in more recent centuries, as the Catholic Church has found herself existing in the midst of an increasingly pluralistic society where Catholicism does not hold sway, the emphasis of the Church has changed towards a greater focus on the importance of toleration and coexistence with those of non-Catholic views, even though she still holds that false religious views can be very harmful and dangerous.  The Church came to put great emphasis on the fact that even people of good will can get confused about what the truth is and can embrace erroneous positions.  Not all who hold non-Catholic views do so out of a conscious rejection of the truth.  The Church also came to place a greater emphasis on freedom of conscience.  She had always taught that people must embrace the truth with their reason and voluntarily, but she came to emphasize this fact more and more and to put greater recognition on the importance of allowing people immunity from civil coercion in religious matters to a significant degree in order to allow them room to form and to follow their consciences, hopefully ending up finding and embracing the truth.  Interestingly, it is the proponents of cancel culture whose position parallels the concern of the Church, particularly in medieval times, to be intolerant of heretics, and it is the critics of cancel culture whose position parallels the concern of the Church, especially today, to emphasize coexistence and respect for conscience and freedom.  Of course, the parallels are not exact.  For one thing, cancel culture proponents generally emphasize social rather than legal sanctions against their modern heretics (although this is not always true, considering the arguments over hate speech regulation, requiring bakers to bake same-sex wedding cakes, etc.)  (By the way, it's easy to make more of this difference than is warranted.  Sometimes there seems to be the attitude that if there are no legal sanctions, there is no harm being done.  But social sanctions like the ones we discussed earlier--getting fired, being marginalized and ostracized, public shaming, etc.--can be quite harmful, just as we saw in our earlier discussion of hate speech regulation.  It's easy to oversimplify the concept of "harm" so as not to notice how one's attitudes and actions negatively affect others or to lightly dismiss such harms as not important.)  But, nonetheless, despite the differences, at the heart of both the modern cancel culture debate and the Catholic debate over how to deal with heretics, there is an important parallel.  There is the same, fundamental question being asked:  How do we balance freedom for people with different views with society's duty to protect what is good and keep people from harm?

Conclusion

To summarize, then:  With regard to our first topic--the issue of the tone of our modern discourse--I feel like our way forward ought to be pretty clear.  We need to stop the trend towards lack of love, empathy, and thoughtfulness in our public discourse.  With regard to our second topic, however--the question of freedom and toleration--I find the questions more difficult.  There are serious concerns on both sides, and none of those concerns should be neglected or superficially dismissed.  Cancel culture proponents are right to be concerned with creating a social climate that is just and respectful towards all people.  Cancel culture critics are also right in their passion to make sure zeal for the good does not turn into a kind of totalitarianism that would stifle necessary freedom and equality for people of diverse views engaging in free inquiry in a pluralistic society.  The balance is a difficult one, and it cannot be decided in a blanket sort of way.  We have to look at the particulars of different situations to see what is best in each case.  And our evaluations here will depend partly, of course, on what we believe to be true and on what values we hold.  For example, personally, I am opposed to racism and in favor of racial equality, but I am not an advocate of transgender ideology.  So, all other things being equal, I'm going to be more likely to consider as positive attempts to protect racial equality in social institutions, but I'm not likely to be as supportive of attempts to banish alternative views on transgenderism from public debate, from the academy, from the workplace, etc.  Here, as in other areas, we must remember that there is no such thing as worldview neutrality.

But even though these questions are difficult, I think we can learn a lesson from the development that has occurred within the Catholic Church.  I think the Church (guided by the Holy Spirit as she is) has been wise to recognize the need to focus on empathy and on living together with those with whom we disagree in our pluralistic times.  In my own personal approach to various situations, I tend to favor open dialogue and debate, and even friendship, across ideological lines.  I am wary of shutting people down or trying to exclude them because of their "toxic" views.  I fear the danger that in doing this we not only tend to exhibit a failure of respect and empathy towards our fellow human beings, but we also promote the creating of echo chambers where people who think similarly congregate and never have to engage people who seriously disagree with them.  We become so sensitive to the harm of having to deal with people who disagree with us on matters we consider very important that we lose the ability to be challenged, and this is very dangerous, for it tends to breed ignorance and a lack of questioning of assumptions.  I see the danger of a society full of people who isolate themselves into little groups where everyone agrees on everything important.  No one is ever challenged, and no one ever learns anything important because everyone they allow to be around them does nothing but pat them on the back for their views and their values.  And the isolation creates a lack of familiarity, which tends to allow empathy to diminish, and thus tensions escalate in society.  A pluralistic society full of people who cannot empathize with or respect each other, and who see it as their moral duty to hate and reject everyone they disagree with, is a society that is in serious danger of greater and greater conflict and division.  Isn't that exactly what we see around us?  This is not a time for isolation, hatred, and the demand that everyone immediately surrender to everything we believe and value.  This is a time for serious dialogue and civil public debate between people who hold strong opinions but who are also capable of empathizing with and listening to their ideological opponents, recognizing each other's humanity and trying hard to work together towards the common good.  I'm not intending here to say how we should handle every particular situation that arises.  I'm not saying that there is never any value in doing a little "canceling" now and again in certain circumstances, when necessary.  I'm just suggesting that, if we feel we have to "cancel" at all, we do it very carefully, with respect, empathy, and thoughtfulness, and with a civil tone.  And, generally speaking, I'm suggesting it might be wise, particularly in our public discourse, to default on the side of dialogue rather than that of isolation and exclusion whenever we reasonably can.

Published on the feast of St. Kateri Tekakwitha.

ADDENDUM 8/5/20:  Another aspect of "cancel culture" I didn't mention above, but which is obviously related to those I did mention, is the tendency to have an all-or-nothing attitude towards historical figures.  A good example is the attempt to "cancel" mid-twentieth-century Catholic author Flannery O'Connor (which you can read about here), or the attacks on statues of St. Junipero Serra.  If we can find anything about a historical figure that makes them anything less than an absolutely perfect exemplification of all our modern ideals, they must entirely rejected.  Buildings named after them must be re-named, we can't read their literature in literature classes, we must show no sign of respect or honor towards them at all--even if the reason they were honored in the first place was because they exhibited important moral virtues or contributed significantly to the enrichment of the world.  One perceived flaw, anywhere, to any degree, and they're out for good.

When I was a young father and my first child was about sixth months old, we were in a restaurant and my daughter was throwing a fit about something (this was twenty years ago now).  I remember my father remarking with bemusement how my daughter was upset simply because "not everything was exactly, perfectly, the way she would like it to be."  Babies and toddlers are known for this, of course.  They are content if everything is perfect, but they have very little flexibility.  If anything is off by a millimeter, they will often go ballistic.  Young children do this because they have not yet gained the maturity, learned through years of life experience, to recognize that life is complex and nuanced and that one must learn to tolerate and even appreciate circumstances that are less than perfectly ideal.  One of the things that concerns me about cancel culture is that it seems to promote a kind of back-to-toddlerhood sort of mentality, a mentality that is immature, unnuanced, inflexible, and incapable of recognizing and dealing with the complexity of the world.  In the article about Flannery O'Connor I linked to above, the author notes that "[t]he cancelling of a writer who possesses the wisdom and the power of Flannery O’Connor demonstrates our impoverished imaginations, our narrowness, and our inability to embrace complexity."  Instead of recognizing the mix that all human beings are, and how people are shaped by the assumptions, biases, and prejudices of their times (and yet often rise above them as well, though not perfectly), and how human history so often exhibits a complex scenario of great wisdom and virtue mixed with foolishness and vice, and how all of our greatest heroes, being human, exhibit the marks of humanity's imperfection, they insist that the only people in history worthy of honor are perfect people (perfect, that is, according to the standards of our own times which also contain their own biases that many of us are often blind to), people who manifest no imperfections, flaws, inconsistencies, or even deviations from any norms currently in vogue.  Taken to its logical conclusion, this would have to result in having no heroes at all, for nobody can really meet that kind of inhuman standard.  But even aside from that, this attitude misses so much of the goodness in the world, like a toddler who misses out on a time of fun or an enjoyable treat because he cannot get over the horrible slight of a world which does not meet his every immediate demand with utter perfection.  As they say, the perfect (or at least what we have narrowly and often unthinkingly defined in our current moment to be the perfect) has become the enemy of the good.

Now we do have to be careful here.  We don't want to become so tolerant we become inappropriately complacent and don't deal adequately with the injustices in our lives and in our society.  We should work for reform, protest against injustice, strive to make the world a better place.  We should point out flaws in our ancestors (and work to see the flaws in ourselves as well), and we should not give a free pass to error or vice.  But, as with so many other things, there is a balance here.  Whereas one extreme is to err towards too-great complacency, it seems to me that cancel culture tends to err to the other extreme of too-little flexibility.  Navigating the proper balance here is difficult, as navigating of balances typically is.  But the quest for virtue and wisdom requires that we seek that balance nonetheless.