{"id":35347,"date":"2024-02-06T01:23:39","date_gmt":"2024-02-06T09:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=35347"},"modified":"2024-02-03T01:38:11","modified_gmt":"2024-02-03T09:38:11","slug":"honor-and-shame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/honor-and-shame\/","title":{"rendered":"Honor and Shame?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

\u201cCancel culture\u201d has always seemed to be one of those terms that everybody uses differently. Ask ten people what it means, and you\u2019ll get ten different answers. This coupled with the fact that many examples of canceling seem happen to celebrities and\/or public figures, I\u2019ve never really given too much thought to cancel culture. This book changed my mind. This book made me sit and up pay attention.

In The Canceling of the American Mind: How Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All<\/em> Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott analyze society\u2019s shift toward \u201cspeech policing\u201d and \u201cideological discrimination.\u201d[1] They liken our current era to the Red Scare of McCarthyism in the 1950s when colleagues and neighbors were encouraged to denounce each other for unpopular views.[2] They also point out that cancel culture is a \u201cnatural extension of call-out culture: going from pointing out a problem to calling for the head of the one who caused it.\u201d[3]

Two chilling examples helped me understand the extent to which cancel culture is a threat to objective truth, reason and free speech. The first is the firing of Professor Richard Taylor from St John\u2019s University in New York. His offense was to ask his class a nuanced question about trade, which included grappling with the reality of slavery.[4] As far as I understand, he in no way expressed support for slavery, but rather he was doing his job by making students analyze and think critically about historical events.

The second striking example happened at Stanford Law School. Stuart Kyle Duncan, U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals judge,\u00a0 was invited to speak but effectively shouted off the stage by disrupters.[5] In this case a legal professional who certainly would have had something valuable to contribute to the education and understanding of the protesters, law students, was threatened and silenced to the point of being escorted from the event by federal marshals.

These two examples call to mind Lukianoff and Schlott\u2019s words: “It’s clear by now that both the left and the right can perpetuate cancel culture. And the only way out of this sticky situation is for both sides to adopt an attitude that allows for people in our society to have radically different points of view on any number of issues.”[6]

The more I learn about cancel culture, the more I\u2019m convinced of an idea that\u2019s been rattling around in my head for a while now. Bear with me as try to work this out, and please don\u2019t cancel me if you disagree. I see American culture moving away from its traditional guilt-based framework and becoming a more shame-based culture.[7] At the risk of making sweeping generalizations, we seem to be increasingly concerned with how our words and actions will be perceived than with their objective right-ness or wrong-ness. I hear people talking about \u201cthe optics\u201d or \u201cthe message we\u2019re sending\u201d. The facades we put up on social media, in other words showing only the best parts of our lives, play into this cultural shift as well. We are increasingly hyper-aware of how we are perceived by others, whether they think well or think poorly of us. Lukianoff and Schlott connect this to cancel culture in describing a common American\u2019s \u201cfear that saying the wrong thing could change your life forever.\u201d[8]

From an anthropological standpoint, shame-based culture is not better or worse than guilt-based culture. However, we\u2019ve probably all seen ways in which this cultural shift has caused individual harm and wreaked havoc on various pockets of society. In the wake of these seismic cultural shifts, what can be done to restore a little sanity and respect to public life and discourse? Lukianoff and Schlott offer a number of ideas:

1. When we find ourselves in a contentious discussion, address the argument and not the person (or any aspect of the person\u2019s identity or any past actions or stances taken by the person).[9]<\/p>\r\n

2. Fight against the “erosion of civility in discourse.” Let\u2019s abandon tactics like shouting down our opponents or moral grandstanding. Let\u2019s get better at listening and reasoning together.[10]<\/p>\r\n

3. Make your dissent known. “Reform has to come from within. The right has to reform right and left has to reform left\u2026Ingroup moderates have to find their voices.”[11]

I\u2019m curious, which one of these suggestions is the most challenging for you? Or maybe there\u2019s another aspect of this that you find more challenging? For me it\u2019s often difficult to make my dissent known, because I truly want to be sensitive to others\u2019 feelings and viewpoints. However, this book has helped me understand the value of speaking up instead of letting myself be silenced.[12]<\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\r\n

1 Lukianoff, Greg & Rikki Schlott.\u00a0The Canceling of the American Mind: How Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All.<\/em>\u00a0NY: Simon and Schuster,\u00a02023. <\/em>Chapter 3.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

2 Ibid., Chapter 1.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

3 Ibid., Chapter 1.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

4 Adam Goldstein, \u201cProfessor removed by St. John’s for asking history question files lawsuit\u201d <\/strong>February 8, 2021. https:\/\/www.thefire.org\/news\/professor-removed-st-johns-asking-history-question-files-lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

5 Sabrina Conza and Alex Morey. \u201cStanford Law students shout down 5th Circuit judge: A post-mortem\u201d <\/strong>March 13, 2023. \u00a0https:\/\/www.thefire.org\/news\/stanford-law-students-shout-down-5th-circuit-judge-post-mortem#:~:text=On%20Thursday%2C%20U.S.%20Fifth%20Circuit,by%20dozens%20of%20protesters%20who<\/a><\/p>\r\n

6 Lukianoff, Greg & Rikki Schlott.\u00a0The Canceling of the American Mind: How Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All.<\/em>\u00a0NY: Simon and Schuster,\u00a02023. <\/em>Chapter 7.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

7 I was first introduced to the concept of guilt, shame and fear-based cultures through the work of Roland Muller, specifically his book Honor and Shame: Unlocking the Door, <\/em>but there are many other sources that deal with the topic, notably anthropologist Ruth Benedict and missiologist Paul G. Hiebert.<\/p>\r\n

8 Lukianoff, Greg & Rikki Schlott.\u00a0The Canceling of the American Mind: How Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All.<\/em>\u00a0NY: Simon and Schuster,\u00a02023. <\/em>Chapter 9.<\/p>\r\n

9 Ibid., Chapter 6.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

10 Ibid., Chapter 7.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

11 Ibid., Chapter 7.<\/p>\r\n

12 This week, more than most, I found myself with much more to say than 750 words allows. I can\u2019t end without a nod to these two articles from Christianity Today that deal with different aspects of cancel culture in relation to our faith. https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/ct\/2020\/august-web-only\/old-testament-calls-out-cancel-culture.html<\/a> and https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/ct\/2022\/november-web-only\/john-calvin-martin-luther-reformation-cancel-culture.html<\/a><\/p>\r\n

 <\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cCancel culture\u201d has always seemed to be one of those terms that everybody uses differently. Ask ten people what it means, and you\u2019ll get ten different answers. This coupled with the fact that many examples of canceling seem happen to celebrities and\/or public figures, I\u2019ve never really given too much thought to cancel culture. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2310],"tags":[2489,1535],"class_list":["post-35347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-of-leadership-3","tag-dlgp02","tag-lukianoff","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35347"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35510,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35347\/revisions\/35510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}