The Right Way to “Cancel” Culture… and maybe Disease

“Cancel Culture” is one of the funny buzzwords of these days. It’s all about boycotting a celebrity when they say something “offensive.” It can be loosely appplied to Wokes’ destruction of statues and staging of massive riots. Perhaps even this thing where children “stand up to parents” over the ABS-CBN closure. But they don’t know what they’re doing. Perhaps Get Real Philippines can show a better way of “canceling culture.”

Get Real Philippines have always held that culture is one of the biggest factors in Philippine society’s problems. When Filipinos lack discipline, consider rules as mere suggestions, steal from and badmouth each other, it’s rooted in the culture. Same with local conflict, family conflicts, murders, crimes of passion, politics and all.

I’ll reiterate that the cultures of the world were not created just for beautification. They were ways of picking out people and removing undesirables to aid in survival. One Jewish man wrote, his culture’s focus on dressing well and decorum was to “separate oneself from the wild animals.” While his intention was not meant to be violent or harmful, the words he used carry that same basic premise as a Nazi trying to kill a Jew or other ethnocentric ideas.

SJW and Woke point-missers

When pretending to campaign for peace, woke activists and social justice warriors spout out non-working motherhood statements such as “give peace a chance,” “love thy neighbor,” “peace through understanding,” “make love (actually just sex) not war.” They actually fail to understand that culture drives conflict. They cannot effect any change in the world (if they could at all) unless they accept that change should be implemented in cultures. Ironically, they at times even defend those same cultures.

Social justice warriors or communists like to snipe at “systemic oppression.” But they get it wrong when they assume that systemic oppression happens only in capitalist or modern societies. Systemic oppression happens in tribal societies and ethnic cultures too. Tribal leaders get abusive with members of their tribe, make slaves of others’ tribes, perform tribal mutilations, headhunting, and more.

Wokes are so angry about racism and chauvinism, but fail to look through history and see that it originated in tribal practices. The same goes for slavery, infanticide and killing of disabled people. All these things that wokes are worked up about are not products of modern national-level dictatorships or fascism only. National politics will always be an extension of village-level politics. People at the national level will likely behave the same as when they were handling little villages.

It’s much observed that Filipinos are naturally divided, with borders already existing between the different tribes and ethnicities. They only care about themselves, and care nothing about the bigger picture. At times, they are not content with their piece of the pie, and they hope to seize the whole pie. That’s how it’s been for a long time, vested interests vying for monarchy or autocracy over the whole country. It’s all a product of our culture.

Covid-19 comes to town

Covid-19 may be a game changer by making us all change culture at least in the sanitation department. I said before that we might all take on an antiseptic culture. But think of tribal cultures of old: aren’t they mostly unsanitary?

The collecting and eating of wild animals in China that health authorities tag as the cause of Covid-19 is part of tradition there. If they had reduced or eliminated those parts of traditional culture, perhaps Covid would have not spread.

Let’s have a funnier situation for this one. Say, an immigrant is invited to a certain banquet. He has a tradition where he gets a spoon, puts it in his mouth so his saliva on it and puts it back in the food that will be shared with other people. His tradition is that because sharing the same spoon means sharing in the community. But we of the modern age and know modern health will recoil and say, how disgusting, that’s how you spread germs and disease, especially Covid-19! So we will have to ban your tradition! This would mean a conflict between the modern practices and old traditions.

So today’s modern age, humanity might have to do away with a lot of traditions that are contributing to the spread of disease. You might think of the recent wild drinkouts when pubs opened in the United Kingdom. But I’m actually thinking of Whang-Od, the celebrated tattoo artist in Benguet. People are so worried that her traditional tattoo method will go with her to the grave. But let’s conjecture, what if it’s been found that her tattoo method is unsanitary? Wokes are all about “canceling culture,” so if they want to be consistent, they should be willing to cancel a tribal tattoo technique if needed.

Woke Canceling fails in spades

I remember a cable TV ad where it showed people of different cultures later morphing into people in modern suits, with the narrator saying diversity and culture are in danger because of societal modernity. But what if, because of modernity, cultures that lead to conflict are removed? Isn’t that better?

Well, there’s really no need to change from traditional wear into suits. But some traditional practices need to go. Filipinos had to get rid of headhunting before. No matter the complaint from people, if it’s wrong, then that culture has to go. Our webmaster Benign0 talked about the “murder mentality,” which is not about murdering people, but murdering our culture or parts of it that we adore, but are actually dragging us down. Political patronage for example is etched into our traditional culture, so if we want to get rid of corruption, we might have to shave a bit off our traditional culture. I wrote before that if we need to improve our society, we might need to become more “un-Filipino.”

Woke culture certainly should be among the things to murder. Wokes probably assume they are making a better world when “canceling” stuff, but they’re actually doing the same thing as people who want to eliminate undesirables. They also want to get rid of people who don’t agree with them. That makes them the Nazis.

Wokes ought to practice what they preach. They can’t keep on yapping about socialism and revolution if they’re still going to Starbucks or McDonalds so they can can post their woke stuff using their iPhones. They claim to be “pro-poor” but the support some of them give ABS-CBN, a company running on capitalism and political connections which has a goal of enriching itself and not the poor, is a bit ironic too.

I mentioned before situations such as barangay people who put mentally disabled into cages and other such stuff that happen at the village level. Employers beating employees physically, slavery still being practiced, etc. Wokes better address that level first if they are serious about doing something for the world. Because if they can’t be successful at that level, they won’t be successful with the world at all. But wait, are they all about changing the world or just trying to act cool?