I have to admit I only recently tuned in to "cancel culture". Up to now it was just something vague that I thought you lived with in Berkeley. But recently it

I have to admit I only recently tuned in to "cancel culture". Up to now it was just something vague that I thought you lived with in Berkeley. But recently it feels more personally relevant (and dangerous) as it has moved from repudiation of celebrity / repugnant-level inflammatory opinions to people's everyday legitimate questions and doubts. It says to me "even you, average person, need to be careful and edit what you say for fear of having your life upended for saying the wrong single word about something". People getting fired from jobs for one badly phrased comment or a moment caught out of context on video. Or fired or forced to resign for not being all-caps in favor of the latest movement. You feel danger in airing partially formed or not-fully-onboard-with-the-movement opinions, aside from the most trusted friends. Maybe it's just magnified out of proportion because it's in the news so much. The problem is that people so vehemently believe they're right, on both sides. It's not that the underlying sentiment doesn't have some merit -- it's that the person or movement believes they cannot be wrong, and anyone disagreeing must be the embodiment of evil. Especially when movements become so symbolic (none of us can know all the details, we advocate for symbols), how can we so confidently think that we are completely right about that symbol and what it implies we should do? When was the last time you were fully onboard with everything a symbol represented? Our culture has become dominated by (or has incentivized) such extreme views, because that's what it takes to make the news. And of course, it's dominated by people who have partial knowledge about a situation and think they're right in theory -- but that's the most dangerous position to be confident about. I used to take positions like that too. But I found that reality is much more complex than expected. It's hard to be a moderate voice against passion. You tend to think that people with such deep feeling (if they're rational people) tend to be angry about something legitimate. But it has gone to the extreme that every issue, no matter what proportion, has risen to outrage. This isn't healthy. The point is to make progress. How do you have progress when the details and nuance can't be discussed rationally for fear of being labeled a non-believer? Silence = complicity? Most people are silent on an issue, you just made them co-conspirators, not contributors to the solution. People can't be outraged about the entire world, all the time, and cause our society to swing from issue to issue like this, and anyone who is moderate or questions how such a movement is getting to its goal gets pilloried.