Can we cancel the Iraq War as well?

The media and most Americans would rather turn a blind eye to the massive atrocities throughout the world: human trafficking, famine and war. We are launching missiles from drones all over the world killing hundreds of thousands and yet that gets about 1/10000th of the attention compared to something as seemingly trivial as what to do about transgender bathrooms or what celebrity did something bad.

“Cancel Culture” is simply the digital manifestation of a primal human need to sacrifice for collective good or “cull the wicked.” Instead of burning someone at the stake we simply all pile on to social media to utterly eviscerate their livelihoods from the comfort our living rooms. From a primitive survival point of view it makes sense to want to throw members you deem wicked to sacrifice. It’s much easier to throw somebody down a pit in hopes it will fix your problems (as with religious sacrifices or the jewish holocaust.) When you perceive yourself as championing a higher cause: god, saving the planet, protecting “the homeland” you will take yourself off the hook for the atrocities you commit because as you see it “you’re in the right.”

The amount of vitriol and rage against the historical and institutional injustices of America is seemingly at an all time high and yet ironically very little meaningful discussion of the current injustices war and slavery going on today. You would think that this supposed elevation of collective consciousness would address the major atrocities throughout the world we contribute to as well as calling out celebrity misbehavior. It’s much easier to get on a soapbox and preach justice for social capital without offering any ideas of how you plan to do anything about it. Many are quick to speak their mind when doing so will make others think favorably of them without speaking about unpopular topics like war, slavery and genocide all over the world.

Everybody, including Hitler and Osama Bin Laden, THINK they’re in the right. Human beings are motivated by self interest and survival, not equality and justice for all. While we might like to think that we are noble creatures of science, but when faced with the choice of our own survival would we still be as righteous if we had real skin in the game not just posting on twitter?

Most who claim to serve a “higher cause” or “noble truth” end up deluding themselves into believing that their just cause makes their actions just. You’d be hard pressed to come up with a good moral argument for murdering 6 million people and yet an entire nation was willing to go along with this insane notion. It’s not justified to kill someone because they believe in something different than you, even if objectively you have a cause.

We have been doing so throughout human history, banishing from the tribe (when that was a death sentence) all the way to institutional genocide. Despite knowing that death and war are destructive and unity and cooperation is good we can’t help ourselves from drawing imaginary lines in the sand, fighting over imaginary gods and what skin color. As though you had any input into where you were born or who your parents were.

It’s not that there aren’t real problems deserving actions, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that just tearing one individual apart over the internet is going to do anything besides make us feel self important. This isn’t an argument for moral relativism either there is an important need to address wickedness: rape, murder, genocide but also we need to consider the wickedness in our counter actions and not be deluded by the supposed “justness” of our cause.

Once again rooted in juvenile notions of “fairness” (rarely for collective good, usually self serving) or the “holy” cause of “saving the fatherland.” I don’t think anyone would have faulted the Germans for simply trying to repair their broken economy, but clearly they did not stop there. The unbelievable levels of torture and genocide in their eyes in their eyes were morally justified because they had to make things “fair.”

It’s hypocrisy to cry foul about our privilege not being privileged enough when we have clean water, food and a stable government. Why are we focusing solely on our own problems when objectively there are so many more important serious things to pay attention to? Where’s our outrage when it applies to someone we’ve never met in a land far away we know nothing about. Surely our “fairness” notions should be going after the most unfair

Not because we are uncaring selfish assholes (although many are) but because we are simply reenacting the same stories that have been told throughout history. Organized society comes together with the spirit of cooperation and falls just as easily when divided by any number of imaginary reasons.

For all those to claim to preach the word of jesus how many beggars and poor people have you taken into your home and bathed? It’s far more important to consider how we act, what we do then who we are or what other people are doing.

It’s not that we are wrong in pointing out misbehavior, but we ignore our own misbehavior and our own blindness. How can we justify our collective interest in equality and fairness while doing and saying nothing about the barbaric levels of hell that we’ve contributed to throughout the world.

It’s easy to just talk about Iraq being horrible every few years when a story manages to get attention, not so easy to keep at it for 20 years. We focus our attention on self interest, easy low hanging fruit where all we require of ourselves is typing up some hateful comments on social media.

Simply complaining about injustice is an injustice in itself. If you recognize something is wrong and turn a blind eye to it in the words of many a wise man you are just as culpable. Yet we value this collective responsibility to be good humans and love and accept everyone that we ignore our personal responsibility to actually do something about it.

In actuality most people who voluntarily participate in the human sacrifices of “polite society” almost never are willing to go against the collective no matter how horrible. Are you willing to sacrifice yourself for what you believe in or would you rather just sit and watch as someone else is thrown to the fire?

It’s possible to disagree with someone, condemn their actions and forgive them for their shortsighted ways. Just as it’s not productive to argue with children, it’s not productive to argue with someone who believes they are justified in actions that they would otherwise criticize if another did it to them. If you can’t be objective about your behavior and actions then why should anyone else take you seriously?

If you can’t muster up enough energy to give a shit about the massive amounts of slavery, famine, war around the world than at least don’t pretend you’re the reincarnation of Jesus for calling a celebrity a piece of shit on twitter.

There is one simple rule for fairness to apply at all times:

“Treat others as you wish to be treated, and if you can’t do that don’t treat other people as you wouldn’t want to be treated.”