De-Friended Moderates: The Collateral Damage of Cancel Culture

How many times this year have I seen a frustrated political post like this one (on Facebook)?

"If you believe X, just de-friend me now!"

Or this?

"I've de-friended people who continue to post about X, and will do so again"

 As someone who loves a good argument (I prefer to lose, as I learn more when I was incorrect to start with), I have enjoyed parrying with old friends over the past decade. My kids grew up as I did - as critical thinkers - thanks to the habit of always checking {"speed bumping"} their convictions. A lot of this goes back further than my high school debate team. My dad would explain what a "fallacy" was starting when I was 4 years old, and I'd hear him explain it again to my younger brother and then younger sister (so I got it 3 times).

Unfortunately, as Socrates learned, the majority of people prefer confirmation bias, and get irritated if they are on the losing side of an argument. This is playing out in social media, and I'm observing a consequence in "cancel culture".

Thesis: As people click to de-friend opposition opinion, they lose antibodies. Like a too-clean floor (no longer recommended for toddlers), they lack exposure to true disagreement. And consequently, they go after moderates.

{Good Essay by Elizabeth Bernstein in WSJ}

Memorial Day: Fear and Greed, Part 2

EPA tried to simplify things a few decades ago with a "Solid Waste Hierarchy".  The first was "recycle, then incinerate, then landfill".   That drew an environmentalist backlash, and the "new hierarchy" in 1990 Earth Day was "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".  Neither hierarchy anticipated the international trade issues and controversies.

Reuse and repair beats recycling.  Ghettos and barrios are the best places for that work... Just as auto and engine repair is no longer done in Manhattan.  But that collides with a social fairness "tab" we have open, and in the late 1990s "Environmental Justice" became EPA's forray into social issues.


Definitions from wikipedia 2012.05.27

The United States Environmental Protection Agency defines EJ as follows:

Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation [sic]. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.^[5]

In other words, this environmental outcome concerned the human perception of environmental risk... people who were poor had the same vote on EPA attention as the rich people.  A clean and safe environment was seen as a human right, a protection of people.

The attention of government regulatory staff was to be divided equally, to protect us all.  This shifted the radius or loci of EPA from protecting high property values to protecting humans equally.

In this paradigm, the value of protecting the environment is utilitarian.  How many people are in contact with the environment being protected?

This is not a song for the woods, or rain forests.  It's only the giving that makes you what you are.