Canceling cancel culture with compassion
[Music]
[Applause]
i
am unabashedly a daddy’s girl
my daddy is the first person to have
told me that i was beautiful
he often told me that he loved me and he
was one of my favorite people in the
entire world
which was why it was really challenging
to discover that we had a deep
ideological divide
that was so sincere and so deep
that caused me to not talk to him for 10
years
before the term was coined
i cancelled my father
in the last few years cancel culture has
of course come into great prominence
it’s existed throughout time
but cancel culture in the bigger society
is when a person
in prominence says or does something
that we the people disagree with
and the decision is made to make them
persona non grata
they are done they are not to be revered
they are not to be
a part of our world anymore and that is
in the public
realm i’m going to talk to you today
about the private realm when we choose
to cancel the people
in our circle the people in our core
the people who love us and who we love
and it has been mutually beneficial but
due to a deep and sincere
ideological divide we make the decision
to cancel them out of our lives
i want to suggest that cancel
culture needs to change
and instead we need to move to
compassion culture
but before i go there let me tell you
two of the premises that exist when we
indulge in cancel culture
one we have to believe that we’re right
a hundred percent no possibility of
being wrong
and two the other person the person
we’re going to cancel
clearly does not have the ability to
change
to grow to develop
obviously both of these are problematic
because
sometimes we’re not right i don’t know
about you but there have been times in
my life when i knew beyond a shadow of a
doubt that i was right
only to discover that i was
wrong badly wrong
completely missed the mark so if it
could happen to me
and perhaps it’s happened to you perhaps
it could happen to others
the second is a little even more
challenging because
i know that i’ve changed over the years
haven’t we all though the core parts of
betty have pretty much stayed the same
there have been key elements that have
changed drastically
the betty of eight years old was not the
same as the betty of 18
which was not the same as 28 which was
not the same as 38.
i’ve changed and if i’m able to change
shouldn’t i extend grace to believe that
others can change too so
what should we do instead of canceling
people we should use the tool
called compassion i find the definition
of compassion
is a fascinating one and it’s not one
that i hear people talk about
compassion means to suffer
with someone to suffer
alongside them imagine
when someone say grandpa says that thing
that’s caused you to decide he’s no
longer invited to thanksgiving
what if instead we chose to suffer
alongside him we decided that our love
was so big so deep
so strong that we were willing to
suffer even when it could be potentially
painful
now let’s be clear i am not denying
anyone’s right
to cancel anyone else what i’m
suggesting
is that maybe that’s not the best way
when we think about the situation with
grandpa thanksgiving
if we choose to cancel him we are no
longer in proximity to him
not only do we not to get to hear his
point of view
we don’t get to share ours what if
we’re the only person because of our
deep connection
and love and affection for our
grandfather
and substitute anyone you choose what if
we’re the ones to plant seeds of change
seeds of influence seeds of difference
now to be fair i cannot promise you that
just because you plant the seed
that it will get water that it’ll get
any sunlight
or even a little fertilizer but what i
can tell you
is that if you don’t plant it who
will i find it interesting
this idea of suffering alongside someone
it means that we are choosing to value
the totality of the person
rather than one particular aspect
like a framework or a mindset or a
belief system
we’re choosing to believe that the
entire person is more valuable
than any of the individual parts
and i found an amazing duo who
demonstrated this
beautifully perhaps you’ve heard of them
the late justices ruth bader ginsburg
and antonine scalia were close
close friends and they
were completely divided in terms of
belief systems
in fact antonin scalia once said
what’s not to like other than her
thoughts on the law
he believed she was wrong she believed
he was wrong
they did not shift in that point of view
whatsoever
and yet they had tea together every week
and every new year’s eve they spent it
together with their families
they went on family vacations together
they chose to suffer with
each other rather than to cancel each
other
their love and respect for each other
continued to grow
even though they never saw eye to eye
i imagine that curiosity might be a part
of that
that if we choose to be curious about
that which is different
we might discover something along the
way
after all if we are who we are because
of our lived experiences
isn’t that true for someone else and
have we ever decided to use that tool of
empathy
of walking a mile or so in someone
else’s shoes
to really discover the context for why
they believe what they believe
now by now you’re probably saying yeah
okay betty this sounds good but what
about you
what about you and your dad
it’s a fair question after 10 years
of not talking to my dad i picked up the
phone one day
called him and said i bet
if it were up to you you’d probably go
back in time
and change some things i know i would
but since we can’t how about we start
again
and he said yes because i love you
i always have and i always will
i am so grateful that i made that call
because there was no way for me to know
that a few years later
my dad would develop alzheimer’s
and a few years after that he would die
and we never saw eye to eye
about the thing that divided us
ever but our love
continued it continued through those ten
years when we didn’t speak
and it continued in the six years after
so i am encouraging us to become a
society of people
that choose compassion over canceling
i’m asking us to consider that curiosity
might be a better practice that we might
choose
empathy that we might choose to have a
love that is so
deep so wide so strong
that it can surpass differences
why are we so scared of differences
anyway
i also want us to be a people that plant
seeds seeds of change seeds of
influence seeds of diversity
again i cannot promise to you
or anyone else that planting that seed
is going to make a difference but
what if it does i am the sum of who i
am because of everything that i’ve been
exposed to
my mind has changed over the years and
grown because of the people
in my life who planted seeds in me
some that i saw and some that i didn’t
so wouldn’t it be great if instead of
having a cancel culture
we create a compassion culture where we
are willing to suffer
alongside the ones we love because
we love them and can’t we become
a community that plants seeds
after all if we don’t
who will
thank you
[Music]
you