In regards to everything, from education to healthcare to governance, if one wishes a work done properly, one must do it oneself. The evidence of education, healthcare and governance in the USA all being such a cantankerous obliging of nightmares suggests that nobody in the USA is actually willing or able to do anything for themselves however, but to the contrary are quite eager to shun all personal responsibilities concerning things said and done by themselves and by their favorite personalities no matter the circumstances. Much of the social discourse is literally nothing but making excuses for the avoidance of tantamount importance, all of culture nothing better than symbols to hide one’s shame underneath or fantasies to be lost in entirely, whatever it takes to forego empathy or understanding greater than self-styled comfort levels.
Reasonable minds positively detest whenever religious or political polarities pick and choose which tenets of their own belief structures they give weight to, and which tenets they pointedly downplay or causally omit altogether. Bad things are indeed bad when someone else commits them, but should someone from the home team prove culpable of the same thing then we can all agree there must be some rational explanation for the words and/or actions to be taken out of context or overblown out of proportion. This is no less common among prosperity indoctrinated brand loyalists in regards to branding that, at first glance, is neither religious or political in nature but namely, popular culture itself. Be certain sight unseen that one’s nationality or faith is supreme regardless of never actually having explored or partaken in any alternatives, and be certain that one’s favorite products and services are supreme as though honesty in marketing had ever been a thing at all.
Despite the endless divisions among we the peoples of this modern era, what unites the masses is the shared notion that our respectively own comfort zones, echo chambers, news bubbles safe spaces and gated communities whether physical or ideological must not only be perpetuated at all cost, protecting what privately we tell ourselves are our best interests or better angels from the bad things outside, but that the biases, desires, fetishes, quirks and whims we instill into such spheres be regarded as the real best interests and better angels of the world at large. This is why people love their social media, whose platforms are fundamentally a DIY segregation, where all users and abusers are free to block and cancel to their heart’s inanity. This is also why society is built upon the branded symbology of church and state and industry, because symbols of god and country and capital service no other purpose but to masquerade personal biases, desires, fetishes, quirks and whims as anything but. Reasonable minds would find the necessary importance in accountability, but eternally does everyone make exceptions for their own regards, or for the regards of those they wish to be, to befriend or wish to have sexual relations with. Anyone and everyone outside those perimeters, anyone and everyone not prioritizing your own biases, desires, fetishes, quirks and whims thus regarded no more highly than background extras or non-player characters, with guarantees for life and liberty noticeably lacking in a proper society sold on marketing by those who benefit from undivided attentions and resources. Self-contradictions are expected where convenient, as though convenience magically matters more than the well-being or livelihoods of others. If the customer were always right however, they’d never have voids to fill.
I oppose the death penalty, any war, every war and private gun ownership, because I fundamentally oppose lethal force no matter the reasoning and because I believe that all persons deserve the chance to learn from their mistakes. I oppose cancel culture for the same reason, though I imagine many calling for permanent censoring see themselves as peaceniks with no self-reflection. I do accept physical violence when it may save a life, for it is the lone universal language and miserably the only language too many persons are capable of understanding. Prisons I feel deserve to be populated exclusively by rapists, murderers and bankers, those persons who have proven themselves incapable of existing without doing harm unto others. Anyone else deserves a chance to rebuild their persona, their principles and their convictions. Because a new ally, a new friend, a new worker or a new customer, or a new lover is far more preferable to a new funeral. When subjectivity knows no end, then cancel culture knows no bounds. If there are no finite terms for determining precisely how a redemption or reconciliation may come to pass, then detractors must realize that transgressors bettering themselves is not the grand design. Which saves the transgressors quite a lot of hard work, the realization that lessons learned may never be reapplied, so why even bother soul-searching or making restitution? Under such conditions, calling a person out no matter how vile is no form of justice, it’s a public temper tantrum. It’s insisting that outsiders adapting your feelings carries more water than does solving the actual problem.
Individuals should have the right to support Warren Ellis or not, for example, and if that decision comes from publishers it’s not producing goods and services for meeting existing demands, but manufacturing demand for preordained standards and practices. No groups can impose their will upon hapless others, lest we acknowledge how free agency and free enterprise are ultimately license to bully. If you object to Warren, by all means stop buying his books, and should you cross paths in public feel free to punch his lights out. Whether opposing his existence or accepting his existence you cannot mandate others to replicate your decision either which way. That is what liberty means. Saying this is not to condone his crimes or sins, but to allow others to hold the same fundamental right in choosing for themselves what their own thoughts and feelings might be, where their attentions and resources might go. As with removing unwanted personalities from the world stage while unironically hash-tagging for peace, everyone just loves the idea of liberty, at least on paper, but not when it applies to anyone existing for any other reason but catering your ego. Warren Ellis had an obvious cult to himself through the old Whitechapel boards for years, and nobody saw the potential harm from elevated ego, elevating any ego? Yet how might he reform himself, when none are allowed to ever again speak his name or acknowledge his existence? Is coming back from a bloodless death any less impossible than the bloodiest of deaths? Is it victim-blaming to acknowledge how the people he used and abused freely bought into his advertising and gave themselves over to his control? Is it victim-shaming to acknowledge how favored persons helping themselves to absolute control over all life are praised and hero-worshiped nonetheless but all the more, the lying celebrities, the cheating politicians and the stealing executives? Because the real crime here, by all appearances, seems to be a failure to at least pretend to endlessly feed one’s ego, with the people most vehement about canceling whoever having no qualms about supporting far, far worse in other aspects of their life. Like fellow professionals trending outrage toward Warren while having no issue openly pursuing work with companies who have destroyed immeasurably more lives than even Warren’s reach could ever accomplish. Or audiences so concerned with human rights, mindlessly supporting the business endeavors of wealthy men such as Steve Geppi, Ike Perlmutter and Steve Mnuchin, the political icon those men publicly and financially support in turn responsible for over half a million pandemic deaths as well as the biggest surge in nativism in decades. There is no moral compass to these debates in effect, only a battle between which fantasy is superior, which game of make-believe is most comforting. As with anything else in this society purportedly shared, complications only ever arise from efforts toward enabling pocket dimensions, fantasized personalized exceptions and private exemptions to the rules, from obsessively making room for the bigger ego’s merry little way.
Social media is DIY segregation. It’s the circle jerks of preaching to choirs, hiding from accountability the self-esteem of biases, desires, fetishes, quirks and whims inside comfort zones, echo chambers, news bubbles and safe spaces, when gated communities both physical and metaphysical are fundamentally purposed with blocking out the mass of reality. At some point our culture and society got sold on the erroneous notions that being loved and entertained are not only forms of survival, but that they are the only forms of survival, when nowhere in the history of human civilization has feeding egos resulted in anything positive. It’s politically correct and socially acceptable to believe guarantees for life and liberty only pertain to ourselves, to who we wish to be, wish to befriend and wish to bang, with everyone outside the folding circle left as cannon fodder and human shields.
The joke was always that social networks were tangible forms of the Jungian Collective Unconscious, but the artificial heaven/hell is way beyond counseling now. Disney firing Roseanne for her rightwing social media posting and Disney firing James Gunn for his leftwing social media posting, when the posting had nothing whatsoever to do with their day jobs, in both cases amounted to Disney telling its audiences what they should or should not support with attention and resource. Partisans could see the offense for the member of their own team, but rarely saw when the shoe was on the other foot, while absolutely nobody considers how social media empowers the individual user to abuse others in explicitly the same exact manner, as though words and actions might only be evil when coming from a corporation. Doing the right thing must never apply to Joe Q Citizen, because personal responsibility is such the buzzkill. “When will Bezos save the planet” copy/paste the enraged masses, casually oblivious to how the money they proactively waste on collectibles via amazon could just as easily afford baby food for the struggling single mother round the way. Always everywhere is it the matter that others must obsessive-compulsively respect your nonreturnable feelings above and beyond the sun, the moon and the stars, others must socially play judge and jury to preserve your sense of entitlement, your creature comforts and self-assured privilege, others must privately make whichever sacrifices for your peace of mind. Don’t insist on others solving the issue of Warren Ellis, you yourself must stop playing along with the system which grew the things he and the many, many like him will naturally learn to regret. Absolutely nobody needs to be entertained, or loved, but everybody does need to make choices for themselves, choices which do not compel a cost from anybody anywhere.
History is nothing but egos versus everyone else, but now everyone is enabled to rationalize entrapment, extortion and exploitation, even for the subjective sake of mere feelings. I’m saying it’s no form of independence to require followers, and it’s no form of independence to be part of a following.
Not one of 60 accusers actually hurting enough for pressing charges makes me wonder, and without questioning the legitimacy of their claims- Warren was obviously selling himself as a pervy uncle in a cult leader guise for the last 25 years at least- if there are no existing laws to cover the specifics of his crimes and sins, if that’s what prevents them from pursuing litigation, then I would think the accusers would all be far more anti-establishment than they are. But the situation sounds more like the matter of each one actually just being upset over never getting publicly acknowledged by him as his soulmate, and with each one refraining from pressing charges over the hopes that such a social embrace might yet still occur. And instead of voicing this themselves, admitting to jealousy, they are relying on competing personality cults for influencing the wills of persons who have nothing whatsoever to do with any of it. I do not feel he should have cowardly scrubbed all his means for online contact as he so quickly did, and while I do think people have the right to communicate their disdain to his agents/managers if not to him directly, I do not believe anyone has a right pressuring his publishers or giving ultimatums to his collaborators. Nobody has the right to mandate the thoughts or feelings of others. Firsthand warnings are one thing, but if we are to allow forbidding people from deciding for themselves where their attentions and resources can go, then we cannot with a straight face continue granting liberty so much credence. It is actually really easy to function without double standards, especially when peer pressure and popularity contests are not exactly well known for imparting wisdom, or problem-solving. And if even the court of public opinion is unwilling or unable to provide specifics for his sentencing, then justice is not what is being pursued. With nothing objective to work towards, he could easily come away from all of this that much worse of a person.
I think symbology of god and country and capital are appealing because they can masquerade every shame as anything but. In that same regard, through avatars and proxies do irresponsible powers become personalized embodiments of the very worst of what symbols are capable of. The thumbnail fronting your private group is no more ethical than a flag fronting national boundaries. It’s virtual simulacrum, socializing identity as Intellectual Property with digital voodoo dolls. But destroy the doll in the reversed binding spell of the web and away from keyboards the living, breathing person is destroyed, because symbols are insanely awarded more gravitas than what they represent, despite the fact they simply cannot exist without human life. What anybody anywhere might simply like is entirely weightless, all the thoughts and prayers of the world unable to fill a dinner-plate and all the allure of what’s fashionable never actually resolving any problems. There is a distinct reason why we never find the emperor’s new clothes at the thrift store.
Whatever flattery or critique to be found in one’s self-perception informs them on how to relate to the world, it’s not about how the world must relate to them. That is nobody else’s obligation, or responsibility, to cater your ideal self or your ideal worldview. You can choose to react to the universe, but it exists without reacting to your mere being or your wishes. All inconveniences aside back and to the left, it is in fact not the decor of your clubhouse which matters, your yearnings behind closed doors, but what you actually say, what you actually do.