Our frenetic, mercurial culture continues to provide ample fodder for social critics attuned to the absurd. In the latest in a series of jarring incongruities spawned by the morality-denying, morality-soaked industry of politically correct opinion formation, the culture of affirmation has yielded to the culture of cancellation. How did this happen, and is there a way out?
The “I’m okay, you’re okay” mentality, birthed in the 1960s, enjoyed its heyday. As a reaction to judgmentalism, hypocrisy, and inordinate fear of difference, it was understandable. Racial and ethnic discrimination, religious bigotry, and moral posturing were real problems, and the insurrection of a younger generation against the previous generation’s faults and excesses is to be expected. It’s also predictable that the young generation becomes the old generation, and in so doing enshrines its own weaknesses and blind spots as a cultural orthodoxy against which the next cadre of Young Turks will rebel.
There is doubtless an element of generation effect in the contemporary rejection of an overweening toleration as the unassailable virtue of our times. But it’s also true that intellectual errors give rise to their nemeses not only as a result of reaction, but also as result of logical unfolding. Toleration of difference—I’m okay, you’re okay—was never philosophically defensible as an absolute value. As myriad critics asked, What can an ethic of toleration do against an ideology of intolerance? The practical exigencies of law and order require that some things not be tolerated. So it will ever be.
Thus the culture of affirmation—in which self-esteem was the primary value and injuring someone’s sense of self-worth the cardinal sin—has given rise to the culture of cancellation, where it is not only permissible but mandatory, once a person has fallen afoul of the arbiters of acceptable opinion, to attack that person’s views, attributes, and identity—the more personal the assault the better. Calculation of damage to the person’s self-esteem seems not to enter the equation.
For decades, sophisticated intellectuals analyzing exotic milieus have carefully deconstructed religious rituals such as shunning and scapegoating. Now sophisticated intellectuals unselfconsciously practice shunning and scapegoating with reckless abandon in the corridors of their universities. This development—the replacement of absolute toleration by absolute adherence to “woke” ideology as the regnant orthodoxy—is already generating its reaction. The enormous popularity among young people of Professor Jordan Peterson—“the personification of the backlash to outrage and denunciation culture”—is one barometer.
The way out of this vicious cycle is to abandon the modern construction of new “virtues” and return to the classical and Christian ones. Justice, fortitude, temperance, and prudence—unlike toleration and affirmation—are habits whose practice does not generate excesses that in turn induce corrective reaction. Toleration practiced universally is impractical; certain actions and attitudes must be disfavored or disallowed in order to maintain a tolerant society. Real virtues aren’t like that; they can be pursued relentlessly and applied consistently. In popular speech, it may be possible to be “too just” or “too prudent,” but as a matter of moral philosophy it isn’t. To be just is to give to people what they are due. This can and should be practiced always and everywhere. To be prudent is to assess situations accurately and make the judgments necessary to act wisely. This is always desirable: by definition, one cannot be “excessively prudent,” because prudence would preclude it. Justice and prudence account for what toleration and affirmation do not. Justice dictates that some behavior deserves affirmation while other behavior deserves criticism or correction. Prudence enables the virtuous person to ascertain which situations are which and to act accordingly.
The traditional virtues were applicable to ancient Greece and medieval Europe, and they will work just as well in twenty-first-century America. Reacquainting ourselves with the timeless principles for living an ethical life will do more to promote freedom, stability, and comity than chasing after the next faddish exercise in virtue signaling.
