Rejecting the Outrage Machine
For the record, and not that anyone asked, I could give a fart in a windstorm about the royal family. I’m unclear why they still exist. It seems like a colossal waste of money to finance these people who aren’t in charge of running the U.K. anymore. However, I don’t know them. I can’t have any real opinion regarding the character of people I’ve never met.
It’s fascinating seeing people who don’t know jack-shipoopy make sweeping judgments about total strangers. Everyone’s an expert on the internet. The sexism, classism, and racism running through my social media pages is deeply depressing.
I mean, seriously people. C’mon.
Also for the record, I could give a flying feat of fornication through a rolling yeast hole about the publisher of Dr. Seuss’s books deciding to stop publishing six books most people have never read, Mr. Potato Head becoming gender neutral, bidding farewell to Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and the Land O’Lakes lady, and all of the other “cancel culture” nonsense people rant about because they’re so full of privilege they can’t fathom why we as a society and as a species may opt to evolve and be better.
Admit it, Karen (or Chad), you didn’t think about any of these things for a moment until the media whipped you into a frenzy of outrage. Don’t even try to claim that you waxed poetic to your pancake box or your rice pouch or your butter stick. Because you know damn well that you didn’t. You also know damn well that you don’t know the first intimate thing about Megan and Harry or the Queen or Charles and their interpersonal relationships. What seems clear is that the bubble of royalty has not kept them from being as dysfunctional as the rest of us.
This is not a plot twist.
It’s time for Seuss’s racist cartoons, inexplicably gendered vegetables, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and the Land O’ Lakes lady, and yes, the royal family, to change. That’s not cancel culture, it’s evolution. Your lineage does not make you special. The idea of royalty and royal blood is racist and classist and outdated. The idea that your gender or your skin color or your ethnicity or your social class or your sexual orientation or your religion or your job convey some level of superiority is fake news. We’re all just a bunch of atoms temporarily converged, made from the same star stuff to which we will all return. None of us gets out of here alive and none of this matters.
We evolve. It’s the nature of being. Things die and decay and from that decay new things are born. Everything has an ending, and every ending is a beginning. Life is canceling things every moment, but it’s also creating new things every moment. That’s the nature of being.
Lighten up, Buttercup.
The next time the outrage machine gets your knickers in a twist ask yourself, how important is this thing I’m finding so egregious in the grand cosmic scheme? Did I care about this yesterday? Will I care about this after the outrage machine sparks some fresh outrage about something I also didn’t care about before and won’t care about moments later? Will the end of this thing about which I’m currently feeling outrage result in making life better for other people or living things or the planet or the universe? Will letting go of this make room for something far more inclusive, promising, wonder full?
If the answer is yes, let it go.
What needs canceling is The Outrage Machine fueled by our 24–7 infotainment news cycle and the outrage wired algorithms of the internet. That starts with deep breaths and deeper contemplation about what’s important and what, much like a potato’s non-existent genitals or a fictional character on a cardboard box, is inconsequential. We learn, we grow, we let it go.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
