“People are constantly trying to use you to help them create the particular illusions by which they live. This is particularly true of the collective illusions which sometimes are accepted as ideologies. You must renounce and sacrifice the approval that is only a bribe enlisting your support of a collective illusion… You must be willing, if necessary, to become a disturbing and therefore an undesired person, one who is not wanted because he upsets the general dream.” ~-Thomas Merton
Currently, Green Bay Packers’ star quarterback Aaron Rodgers is lighting up the media airwaves, triggering supporters of vaccine mandates and receiving a slew of backlash. For his personal medical decisions, the establishment media has taken to digitally tarring and feathering him, up to and including, lying about what he’s said in order to discredit him. The hate, vitriol, and slander are flying at him, yet Rodgers has harmed no one.
This is the gamut of scorn that all people in Rodgers’ shoes must go through in today’s society when they challenge the status quo. It has many names but ‘cancel culture’ sums it up well. It is a form of weaponized ostracism and most who go through it don’t survive.
Recently, however, some folks have reached un-cancelable status. Joe Rogan, Dave Chappelle, and now Aaron Rodgers have reached points in their careers where no one can pull their strings and, therefore, the calls from the cancel cult fall on deaf ears.
Canceling or censoring someone’s peaceful views is not done for the betterment of society. It is done because it challenges the collective view of the established norm. The collective hates to have its views challenged because it forces them to defend often illogical, unreasonable, and even completely false ideologies.
