On Tuesday July 7th, 150 signatories put their name to an open letter calling for the end of cancel culture and ideological conformity.
This got us thinking.
You can’t ignore that the list includes J.K. Rowling. Around the virtual watercooler at Hive, we’ve spoken about how Rowling’s much-publicized, trans-exclusionary views could be dangerous. Many of us don’t want such sentiments to block trans rights we firmly support.
At the same time, we agree with the essence of the open letter. A dissenting perspective (even when it goes against our own views of what’s just) should not be met with vitriol and calls to deplatform, cancel and invalidate someone.
We don’t have the answers. But here are three inclusion inklings so you can get thinking, too.
📺 History that shouldn’t repeat itself
The McCarthy era describes a period in the 1940s and 1950s where Americans were investigated, punished and blacklisted for sympathizing with communism, even in abstracted ways.
We love how this TED-Ed video explains it (and how it could happen again) in six minutes flat.
💬 An expert warning
“Beware of anyone who insists that there is one true morality for all people, times, and places.” warns Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.
✅ A challenge for your week ahead
This week, practice love and perspective taking for the people close to you that seem to have it all wrong. Perhaps they are wrong about some things. But you won’t win them over — and you certainly won’t understand them — if you silence them or shut down your relationship in any way. At the Obama Foundation Summit 2019, Barack Obama gently criticized uncompromising purity and reminded people to see ‘the opposition’ as human.
So, climb into the perspective of someone you disagree with this week, and invite them into yours.
This Got Us Thinking is a weekly blog that brings you easy-going nudges to think differently, do differently and experiment with how to be more inclusive. Each week, we dip into the unanswerable, nuanced and gray areas of inclusion and offer, not answers, but inklings. You can request a topic to be covered by the This Got Us Thinking series reaching out to us here.
