Preparing for the Cancel God
Tomorrow’s events:
The Meta-Crisis of the Meta-Crisis w/ Johannes Achill Niederhauser. July 15th @ 12 PM ET. RSVP here.
Social Design Club w/ Freyja and Joe Edelman. Every Wednesday @ 1:30 PM ET. RSVP here. Join the club here. 60 mins.
Sensing the New Myth: Inner Genius & Collective Initiation w/ Michael Meade. July 15th @ 3:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
The Dangerous Space w/ Arielle Friedman. July 15th @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Breaking the Frame w/ Travis Mann. Every Wednesday @ 7:30 PM ET. RSVP here. 60 mins.
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July 14, 2020
I just finished writing the Cancel God piece. Finally. I was struggling in getting it right. It now feels right. This is a co-created piece with Lubomir Arsov, the creator of In-Shadow: A Modern Odyssey. Lubo did the illustration and I wrote it. The idea is for it to be a “graphic article” released on the High Existence blog next week. Rebel Wisdom will also be releasing a video on it on the same day.
The essence of this piece: cancel culture summoned the Cancel God, which not only wants to cancel the problematic but it wants to cancel all of humanity. I think this is going to be dope. I have a sense that this could go viral but it could also be a flop and go nowhere. I am Stoically prepared for it to be a flop: I will just allow my ego to be bruised and continue on with the next daemon-inspired project.
I am unprepared for it to go viral. I imagine if it goes viral, some people may become defensive and take offence. This is the first time I’ve criticized cancel culture publicly—albeit via a mythological lens—and criticizing cancel culture puts you in the crosshairs of cancel culture. Am I ready to be cancelled?
Stoics engage in negative visualization which is a practice of visualizing the worst, so you are mentally prepared for the worst if it does indeed happen. This is basically the mental rehearsals that athletes do, but for the difficulties of life. Okay. So let's visualize getting cancelled.
What is the worst that could happen? People who read the piece might see Lubomir and myself as dog-whistlers to the reactionary right or they might say we are disagreeing with certain social justice causes because we are disagreeing with the culture of cancellation. While neither of these are true, we could be weaponized in the narrative warfare they are enmeshed in.
Those whom we are calling the “adepts of cancellation” in the piece may scour through The Stoa’s YouTube archives and see some of the “problematic” guests we've had on. While I think we had only four that are not Blue Church kosher—Jack Murphy, Alexander Bard, Justin Murphy, Pat Ryan—that is enough for them to highlight us for platforming “evil” thoughts.
Mainstream publications might do hit pieces on The Stoa or myself. They might say that the Stoic meme itself is problematic because it is too white or too masculine. They might also highlight the fact that Jordan Peterson was my therapist for two years, and they might take ridiculous quotes from these journals out-of-context.
If this does happen, this will also bring opportunities. When something gets cancelled publicly it is basically free publicity. This could draw attention to The Stoa, and this attention could probably be leveraged in clever ways. The aspect I am concerned with most is how this could jeopardize the memetic mediation project that The Stoa is working towards.
So far The Stoa has maintained the essence of being a space where we can host thinkers across the spectrums, and has a growing left-leaning presence. We have had Metamodern and Integral thinkers from the left such as Jeremy Johnston, Michael Brooks, and Brent Cooper. We have had Buddhistic monks with anti-capitalistic proclivities like the folks from the Monastic Academy. We even had Emmi Bevensee, an anti-fascist anarchist.
There are many more people I’d like to invite from the so-called left, but I am concerned if The Stoa is deemed “cancelled,” this might dry up and only people from the so-called right might want to visit. I want to maintain this space where political diversity can exist because that is the only way the memetic mediation project can realize its potential. Despite my hesitation on the framing, I do sense it is useful for The Stoa to be the Switzerland of the culture war.
Of course, none of this might happen, and it is my preferred indifferent that it does not happen, but it is wise to be prepared for it if it does happen. Cancel culture is really annoying and the people who proselytize it are also annoying, and the act of publicly “cancelling” somebody hurts genuine social justice causes rather than helping them, and that is ineffective.
However, if the Cancel God does come for me via cancel culture, because I announced its existence, the experience of getting cancelled can serve as a spiritual practice. I do not want to become emotionally reactionary, and join the forces of the Intellectual Dark Web or those on the reactionary right. Nor do I want to genuflect via virtue signalling to appease the insatiable appetite of the Cancel God.
I want to burrow deep within, and anchor myself in what can never be cancelled. I do not want to react out of anger, or worse, hate. Instead, I want to respond, not react, from a place of love.
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