'Cancel culture' is nothing more than at attempt at vigilante cyberbullying through mob mentality and is merely a dying vogue for public shaming and ostracism. The expression 'Cancel Culture' has mostly negative connotations. In July 2020, former U.S. President Barack Obama criticised 'Cancel Culture' and 'woke' mentality on social media, saying: "People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and, you know, share certain things with you." Pope Francis said that 'Cancel Culture' is "A form of ideological colonisation, one that leaves no room for freedom of expression", saying that it "Ends up cancelling all sense of identity". A number of professors, politicians, journalists, and activists have questioned the validity of 'Cancel Culture' as an actual phenomenon. Connor Garel, writing for Vice, states that 'Cancel Culture' "Rarely has any tangible or meaningful effect on the lives and comfortability of the 'cancelled'." Danielle Kurtzleben, a political reporter for NPR, wrote in 2021 that overuse of the phrase 'Cancel Culture' in American politics, particularly by Republicans, has made it "Arguably background noise".
No-one wins in the ‘blame game’, and 'Cancel Culture' is far, far from being a ‘game’. Many, many people may get hurt, especially the one who is doing the blaming and bullying. Every time you judge someone, you are simply revealing a part of your self that needs healing: It's a red flag that you need to do inner work and have therapy.
Anyone who buys into 'Cancel Culture' are not your people so it does circumnavigate you to finding awakened people like you, avoiding the toxic people and trolls. One can conclude that only emotionally immature people buy into that poisonous culture: They fail to acknowledge that we are all human and we all make mistakes driven by our own pain, and have the same fears and unconscious behaviour until we do the inner work to awaken. The same outer critical lens that they view the world through is turned upon themselves. Their anxiety and depression is caused by their judgement of everyone and everything: It's turned within, and they are stuck in ego with no inner space to connect with other people in an authentic way. Everyone falls in life: The only important thing is what you do next. Many people fall and never ever recover or get back up, as they lack any resilience, courage, strength, or moral purpose, so they criticise others instead of doing the inner work necessary to rise again. Never mind the nay-sayers - they are doomed. Forgetting our true Self leads to intolerance of others who are shining and unapologetic in their expression of their inner light, and 'Cancel Culture.' When we know our true Self, we have compassion, understanding, and joy. When we don't we fall into jealousy, criticism, judgement, projection, hatred, comparison, misery, and mental illness.
The only work that anyone can do is to do inner work on themselves and keep their own side of the street clean. It is no-one’s responsibility to point out that someone else needs to clean up their act. Individuals who claim ‘victim status’ as a way of persecuting others are not ‘victims,’ they are lying persecutors. Institutions and social media sites that support 'Cancel Culture' are only doing so out of fear for their own survival, not through a motivation to ‘do the right thing’.
If we are brave enough to follow the call inward, we will find our greatest treasure, and a sense of freedom from the obstacles in life that keep us bound in suffering and conflict. The North star that you are looking for was inside you all along. Opportunities, relationships, creative projects, and miracles will magnetise toward you when you act in ways that are aligned with who you know your Self to be. There is a divine force within us and we are all interconnected.
We are all victims of victims of victims of victims, ad infinitum. So claiming victim status when we are all victims is no claim at all. We are all simply traumatised people traumatising other traumatised people. No-one is in a position of power, when everyone is mentally ill. We are all mentally ill because that is the only way to survive in a dysfunctional, Dystopian world. Those who commit atrocities (for example by trying to ‘cancel’ others) are either unconscious (and need to work on themselves) or conscious (and need to work on themselves.)
As Jesus said in Matthew (7:3-5) "How can you say to your brother, `Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Projection is one finger pointed that way, but that leaves three fingers pointing back at yourself. Psychoanalyst Molly Tuby says that we can glimpse our shadow in our exaggerated feelings about others, in negative feedback from others who serve as our mirrors, when we have the same negative effect on different people, in our impulsive acts, in situations where we feel humiliated, and in our exaggerated anger about other people's flaws.
These people are using projection as a way of not looking inwards at themselves. For example if you have feelings of infidelity you project them on others. If you have feelings of shame you project them on others: Etc. etc. It’s a way of saying "I’m okay but you are not" and when really the first step should be "I’m not okay and I need help". There is no reason to label anyone as not okay. Everyone has the condition until they look at their shadow. Blame disguises your feeling that you are at fault and should be ashamed of your self. Blame disguises your feeling that you are a weak child that needs taking care of when that’s a universal condition. We are all victims of victims. The clue to projection is negativity. If someone is being negative, they are projecting on you instead of looking inwards. We have a collective responsibility to look within instead of blaming and shaming. Everyone has the condition until they look inside. Thats why it's called a 'Blame culture'.
John Andrew Holmes wrote "Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war." We all need to stop being the cause of war. It is our violence, hidden and denied as our shadow that leads to drama, conflict and war. The violence of the world is on each of us. J. Krishnamurti wrote “Inside you is the cause of every war. It is your violence, hidden and denied, that leads to wars of every kind, whether it is war inside your home, against others in society, or between nations.” We are sharing in a shared egoic self and contributing to the collective unconscious. Denial is powerful. The shadow is secretive. You are only as sick as your own secrets.
You can’t cancel anyone as everyone can have a voice, speaking with authenticity, vulnerability and Truth. And more importantly, no-one can ‘cancel’ another person. Mahatma Gandhi said “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet”... And neither should you!
In the Bible in John 7:53 - 8:11 it states that "Then each of them went home, while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her." And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, sir." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again."
When you point a finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back at you:
What are the causes of ‘Cancel Culture’?
Projection
Click here for my article which explains all about the psychological phenomenon of projection:
Every person has the potential for good and evil that lies within, and which of these wins is a battle waged within your self. Far too many people set themselves up for defeat as they are unwilling to acknowledge the destructive part of their own BEing. Utilising various psychological defence mechanisms such people do their best to stay ignorant to their faults and weaknesses. In so doing these elements of their personality are relegated to their unconscious and make up the realm of the psyche that the genius psychologist and spiritual Master Carl Jung called the shadow.
Projection occurs when we attribute an element of our personality, which resides in our unconscious, to another person. It accounts for most interpersonal conflict. Sigmund Freud, who popularised the term in the mid-1890s, believed projection to be a defence mechanism used to avoid the anxiety that is provoked when one is forced to face up to their faults, desires, passions, transgressions, weaknesses, and destructive tendencies.
Those who rely too heavily on projection to shield them from their shadow, who never strive to question whether the image they hold of themselves is perhaps too perfect, go through life forever in need of scapegoats or people on whom to blame all their problems. After driving one’s scapegoat away, it is usually discovered that one’s problems persist nonetheless. This spurs some to look within and to face up to the elements of their personality they have for so long tried to deny. But rather than partaking in this internal reflection, most people merely look for another scapegoat. And then another... Their life becomes a repeated pattern of hate, never loving themselves, and a descent into a personal Hell, forever chasing satisfaction, which is forever out of reach, and losing their mental health, minds and their soul in the process.
This tendency of scapegoating to occur on a collective level can have dangerous consequences for a society. Those unwilling, or unable, to face up to their shadows, are easy prey for internet troll obsessives and also collectivist movements, which have ready-made scapegoats in the form of political opponents, members of different ethnic groups or socioeconomic classes. Scapegoating at the level of collectives, or in other words projecting our problems on to groups of people who differ from us, proves attractive to those who are totally lost. But as Carl Jung recognised there is a tendency within collectivist movements to take this small hook offered by one’s opponents and to hang on it virtually all that is wrong with oneself and the world. When we cast a group of people in this negative light, seeing them as the primary source of all that ails a society, it becomes possible to justify persecution, violence, and perhaps even extermination of the group in question. Projection at the level of collectives becomes even more dangerous as those in positions of power can divert attention away from their own activities, and the harm they are causing, by using propaganda, false flags, and other manipulation techniques, in order to cast blame onto ready-made scapegoats. Such people collectively account for all the atrocities committed in the world and every war that has ever occurred.
The Bible seems to have prophesied the concept of projection: In Proverbs (17:20) it states that "A person of crooked heart does not discover good, and one with a dishonest tongue falls into calamity"; in Titus (1:15) it says "To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled."
We are separated from our selves: And separated from our selves, we are insane. As Mahatma Gandhi said “The problem with the world is that humanity is not in its right mind.” There is a place that we go into both individually and collectively that is the absence of who and what we are and what we are here to do. It is an inversion of our power. A perversion of our identity. And a subversion of our mission on Earth. The problem is it’s not so obvious when we are not actually there, unconscious in our shadow. That our attacking someone is righteous self-defence even when it is not. At times a person can be so sucked into the black hole of nothingness. That is Hell, not a real Hell, but the darkness within each of us. We must turn to our light.
Due to the terrible consequences that can emerge at both the level of the individual and of society when we fail to recognise, in the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, that “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being”
Click here for my article which explains all about the Karpman Drama Triangle:
The Drama Triangle is seen at work in almost all interpersonal relationships.
The Drama Triangle also rears its toxic, ugly head in a business context, and it’s something well worth watching out for. If you find yourself experiencing a great deal of conflict but very little resolution in all your interpersonal relationships, you’re probably stuck in the Drama Triangle:
Here’s what you need to know about the roles we play and act that keep us mired in the thick sticky treacle-like sludge of the Drama Triangle and force us to repeat the same old reactions time and time again. Get that sludge out of you. We need to shift from reacting to responding:
The Karpman Drama Triangle Destroys Relationships (Transactional Analysis) by Psychotherapist Teresa Lewis
Childhood trauma and PTSD
Childhood trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cause people to have an active outer critic, so they judge everyone else all the time. Think road rage, ruined family gatherings, and definitely think internet trolls. Everyone instantly metamorphosing into their scared, argumentative 7-year-old selves, in a downward spiral of fear, blame, and resentment. I have managed to forgive my mother for her Narcissistic abuse and severe childhood trauma that she inflicted on my brother and me. If I can do it, you can too. It will set you free. As psychologists say "If it's hysterical, it's historical." Stop blaming others and address your own childhood trauma.
Tabloid 'newspaper' ‘journalists’ fear losing their jobs due to pressures from their senior editors to print ‘stories’, and the fear of the pressure on those editors by the owners of the papers to sell copy. I know who those journalists and their families are, and they have family members who I know that one could very easily write unpalatable stories about, yet they project and no-one is immune to their soul-selling hatred.
Disconnection
We are in a society that cultivates distance between human beings. We are ever increasingly disconnected in this supposedly ‘connected world’. The Metaverse will be a place to live your life, instead of meeting real people face to face. It’s a tragic and somewhat pathetic second chance for those who feel that they have failed in this world.
Psychopathy and sadism
I have suffered from 'Cancel Culture' from sadistic psychopaths in the following ways:
Being stalked by an elderly woman who was unfaithful to, and lied to, her husband for many months, where she set up a number of secret email accounts to conduct her affairs, in order to obviate her responsibility for her actions as an adult, who was projecting. What you will find is that those that claim to love you only do so as long as you pay them attention. Their hatred is a reflection of their disappointment in being truly unlovable, which they are incapable of attributing to themselves as they cannot love or be loved. They are recurrent offenders.
Having been the victim of a middle-aged full-time troll woman who is hiding and pretending to be someone other than who she truly is and who has set up multiple fake social media accounts in my name, spreading lies and deceit to all my contacts and family, with even her own account using a fake name. She herself described herself as a "praying mantis" because her job is in the sex industry, she is an escort to 'sugar-daddies', having had long-term affairs with married men, and she said that she "Fuc*ks men and then fuc*ks them again in order to 'eat them alive' in order to make money" by selling her sad story under various guises repeatedly to tabloid rags. Not the best long-term business strategy! We have all seen her recurrent pattern played out in public. I do not have any social media accounts. I do not judge the sex industry at all. Trolling is associated with sadism and psychopathy, as these traits often entail the ability to behave cruelly toward others. Trolls seek environments where they can pursue their malignant, sadistic goals. Researchers state that trolling behaviour is limited to a vocal, sociopathic minority, often emerging among individuals with “Dark Tetrad” personality traits, including psychopathy, Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and sadism. Researchers found that Dark Tetrad scores were highest among people who said trolling was their favourite Internet activity. The study found that "The associations between sadism and GAIT (Global Assessment of Internet Trolling) scores were so strong that it might be said that online trolls are prototypical everyday sadists." Internet trolls are horrible people and they recruit similar people. Trolls will lie, exaggerate, and offend to get a response. Another study showed similar results with higher levels of trait psychopathy and sadism predicting trolling behaviour. They are very sad individuals that you may ignore completely and drop like a foul, dirty stone. Such people are pure evil, incessantly looking for scapegoats, and tragically have no hope of healing or transformation.
Having news stories written about me that are false narratives and not the Truth by editors and journalists with family members about whom I could write real Truths about, but have so far held back.
Conclusions
As Epictetus, the masterful Greek Stoic philosopher, reminded us in 'The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness' “Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realise that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting (if you react at all), and you will find it easier to maintain control."
Toxic people are lost souls who are trying to prey on your wounded inner child, when they are deeply wounded as a result of their own childhood. The first thing to do is to lean away, then respond in your own time, if at all, and not react. Take time to breathe. Meditate. Become totally present in the moment. Presence takes you out of the Karpman Drama Triangle. Just cancel the 'Cancel Culture:' It has nothing to do with you. Contact me. I hear your pain.
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Olly Alexander Branford MBBS, MA(Cantab), PhD
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I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have published over 50 peer reviewed scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for four years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.