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There is a certain type of person who thinks of everything in life as a game to be won. They acknowledge that it's serious. There are still life or death consequences. What I mean is they ultimately don't believe in the framing of "right and wrong" in a societal context.
Here's an egregious example to illustrate my point. Fox news has been focus testing some new rhetoric to try to combat increasing criticism of colonization. We hear folks say things like "we conquered them. That's how it goes. It's not okay today, but it was okay at the time."
The reality is those folks are okay with conquering others through strength and then pillaging the spoils. They would be okay with it today too. They recognize that they don't have the strength to get away with it. So they go along with today's "game" where it's not acceptable.
I feel it's important to keep this in mind as we continue to talk about "the state of discourse" and "cancel culture". Some people are not here for discourse. Their only goal is to shift society towards a game they are more likely to win. One where they have more power.
Maybe you are a person who truly values discourse. Maybe you ferl it's a critical aspect of a healthy society. That's fine. But if you can't protect that discourse from being subverted by bad actors, you're gonna lose everything you claim to believe in.
There is a thing I keep coming back to as the root of a lot of problems. It's this insidious notion that underpins a lot of what people wanna call "discourse". The assumption that *anything* is permissable if you can get away with it. It's a rejection of objective morality.
This was prompted by this tweet I shared earlier. My friend Preeya crystalized something that had been nagging at me. A lot of people's "discourse" is just repeating "I should be able to get away with harming people" over and over. Nothing more than that. https://twitter.com/polotek/status/1281395774450921473?s=19
When you combine that never ending chorus with the clueless people talking about how all discourse is good discourse, you create an environment where bad actors thrive. And as a result, we end up with a society where calling for more harm becomes acceptable.
The environment we're in now is one where people show up to meet bad actors. Not to debate them, but to tell them to fuck off. To make it *unacceptable* for them to participate in respectable discourse. Because that is the only way to keep it respectable.
In order to be successful at rejecting bad actors, we have to have a strong notion of what we want to be acceptable vs unacceptable. We have to work to create a shared morality that a majority of people buy into. It is *that* discourse that matters most today.
This environment is going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people. Not only bad actors. A LOT of people. I believe many of us have never developed a strong moral compass. People don't know what is unacceptable. They don't know if what *they* do is unacceptable.
In a world where you don't know how to hold yourself accountable, how are you gonna hold others accountable? It probably feels easier to join the people saying "we can't know what the right thing is". Hence anything is permissable as long as you don't get in trouble.
I'm gonna stop here because I've got work to do. I needed to collect some thoughts about morality. I'm trying to understand why it's so damn hard for people to do the right thing. Even when they are fully empowered to do so and the consequences are minimal. It astounds me.
