Rikki Schlott Releases The Book The Cancelling Of The American Mind

In THE CANCELING OF THE AMERICAN MIND: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All-But There is a Solution (October 10, 2023/$29.99 hardcover), Greg Lukianoff (co-author of the bestseller The Coddling of the American Mind) and Rikki Schlott offer the first accurate survey of the phenomenon of Cancel Culture since it exploded onto the scene in 2014. Cancel culture is a destructive force that has upended lives, ruined careers, undermined companies, hindered research, destroyed trust in institutions, and plunged us into an ever-worsening culture war. What at first seemed like just another bit of campus craziness has spread far beyond universities. It now infects journalism, the arts, nonprofits, K-12 education, and even medicine. More and more, modern discourse focuses on a moralistic evaluation of the speaker rather than on the merit and validity of their ideas. “If you can show someone to be ‘bad’ by any measure, you don’t have to listen to them anymore,” Lukianoff and Schlott note. “Today, basically anything can be used to dismiss someone as ‘bad’ depending on your political orientation-from dubbing them ‘conservative’ to accusing them of being ‘woke.'” The authors note that over the last several decades, the institutions tasked with teaching us how to argue productively have failed to do so-most notably, American higher education. At the same time, the rise of social media has made every institution, every individual, and every idea subject to the scrutiny of millions of eyes-and vulnerable to being torn down. “Personal attacks, dismissive clichés, and an ever-growing body of taboos abound in virtual discourse,” the authors write. “These destructive methods of argumentation caught on like wildfire for a simple reason: they help people assert moral superiority and ‘win’ arguments by simply shutting down the other side..Why bother meaningfully refuting one’s opponents when canceling them is an easier option? Just take away their platform or career. Nobody else will dare to tread the same ground once you make an example of them.” The good news is that there are concrete solutions. “We don’t have to argue like this,” the authors note. “We can choose to discuss problems in a solutions-oriented way. We can declare a truce with our political opponents and set some ground rules that might help us survive-or even thrive-as a nation. And we can start to appreciate the benefits of living in a country as ideologically diverse as our own.”

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