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In the days following Charlie Kirk's murder, has seen a wave of employers being contacted regarding off-color remarks made by employees on social media about his passing. The debate is, does this constitute cancel culture, but by the right instead of the typical left? Some have argued that it is not the same thing, due to the disparaging comments being immediate, vs old comments dredged up in an attempt to cancel someone. There is a big difference between someone desecrating Charlie Kirk in an overt manner right after his passing, compared to a social media post made 10+ years ago against living targets that could be deemed as racist only under the most uncharitable light.
My take is, contacting an employer with the intent of getting someone fired for something not work-related or fired in the public interest as a 'concerned citizen', by definition, is cancel culture. Sure, one can argue that this is a different degree of cancelation, but it's the same principle. Someone posting a vile comment on his social media celebrating someone's death doesn’t necessarily affect his ability to do his job, like making sandwiches or whatever. Sure, if said individual confessed on social media to spitting in customers' sandwiches or making disparaging remarks about customers, go ahead and get his ass fired to protect the customers if no one else. But this is not like that. Consumers and other employees are not negatively affected by an employee holding a grudge against a dead podcaster.
To turn the tables, imagine if George Soros died and many of those same people wrote "good riddance" on their social media accounts, should this be grounds for cancelation? By the above logic, yes if you want to be morally consistent.
relevant tweet https://x.com/politicalmath/status/1967066826590028174
I’ve said before that I don’t think these people should be fired, and I will expound in a way that will convince no one: antifragility. Since this issue seems to be coming up with a lot of teachers, I’ll focus on them.
I don’t think conservatives know how to effectively address the problem. In the long term, simply firing the “dumb” ones can actually make things worse. Because of that, I like that teachers feel free to got mask off. It has been very difficult to convince normies how many extreme leftists have infiltrated our institutions, and I want to know which teachers are radical leftists.
I suppose I shouldn’t jinx myself, but I’m confident in my ability to have more influence over my kids’ values than their teachers do, and I want to bring other parents along with me.
Now if we want to actually crush the entire institution of public education then I'm here for it.
I have actually been thinking about this recently in some sense. For example, school shootings.
It is a FACT that you are more likely to die driving your way home from work than in a school shooting (I haven’t examined this in a more rigorous way but think it still would be true). We would call someone afraid to drive home irrational because it impacts your quality of life quite a bit. Yet if I tell a liberal friend of mine that it’s in the best interests of students to play down (even if inaccurately!) the threat of school shootings because the net cost of generalized fear to learning is worse, they look at me like I’m crazy. But I’m pretty sure I’m right, and I’m also pretty sure that in a few decades people will agree with me.
Humans are not designed to live in a a constant state of fear. It’s physically and psychologically damaging. This is incontrovertible. Kids in particular are way too good at picking up the “vibes” of adults. So honestly everyone who works with kids should be extra vigilant about what vibes they give out. If kids feel “permission” to feel constant fear, that unhealthy.
I realize this might not be what you mean when talking about promoting “antifragility” but it seemed related to me. There’s some line where we cross over from being understanding and empathetic to losing a certain degree of thick skin necessary. Just like how phobias are worsened by validating them.
Semi-caveat to teaching “thick skin”: research indicates that teaching children the world is safe, just, interesting, that people are fundamentally nice, etc. improves their life outcomes. It turns out that at least when establishing base primal beliefs, in aggregate there is no such thing as teaching a child to have a too-positive outlook having a drawback (kids tend use these rosy beliefs more like a prior than a rule, which limits downsides).
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