THE CANCEL GOD

Darkness hovers above us.

You can feel it but cannot see it. You feel it in your office, your classroom, your social media feed; you even feel it in your body, which shudders with fear at the thought of speaking what you believe to be true. It feels like the world has been turned upside-down. People are acting like they have no God but this is not true, because a God has been summoned: the Cancel God.

The Cancel God wants to cancel you. It wants to cancel everyone you know. It wants to cancel humanity itself. That is its nihilistic goal. It demands you serve or submit. If you do, it promises you will suffer less when everyone dies. You sense this is an ignoble lie, but you are too afraid to question it because you deem the consequences of being cancelled far too high.

So be a good boy. Be a good girl. Say the right things, at the right time, in the right way. Be very careful not to offend, because you are now inherently offensive. Delete your old comments, your old threads, your old self. Get on your knees, and start to apologize, and apologize, and apologize, and apologize …

The Summoning

Some say the culture of cancellation was birthed in social justice circles, others say it was born in the vampires’ castle. The phenomenon spread across social media, then to legacy media. If you were not woke enough, you became broke enough, and could not say sorry enough. What you did to support your livelihood was threatened. Many were in fear, and many did not say what they believed to be true, and if you cannot say what you believe to be true, you will not have the opportunity to find out where you are wrong.

Some say that the culture of cancellation was a prestige economy, designed to signal how woke one is. Cancelling the problematic gave a verisimilitude of status and respect. University students, in privileged safe spaces across the Western world, were chanting in protest at those they believed to be problematic.

Many people made fun of this. Some ignored it. Others, in self-proclaimed dark corners of the web, became culture war profiteers, and made millions off of it. But this is not the complete story, nor the interesting one. The story to tell here is about what got summoned with those chants, because what got summoned is coming for us.

In a religious fervor, those who deeply felt oppressed by forces outside their control chanted and chanted and chanted. They possessed a deep desire to cancel those they perceived had done them wrong. On the surface this seemed innocent enough, but darkness was unfolding, and a God emerged. A God that did not want to cancel just the problematic, but who wants to cancel humanity itself. May God help us, because the Cancel God has been summoned.

The Nihilistic Goal

The Cancel God has one goal: to cancel humanity. It wants us to go extinct and it wants us to suffer in the process. It attempts this by creating a world where social cancellation is constantly present, which makes us afraid to speak what we believe to be true.

If we are afraid to speak what we believe to be true, we cannot engage in real dialogue. If we cannot engage in real dialogue, we cannot collectively figure out how to respond to the existential risks that threaten our existence. If we cannot figure out how to respond to these risks, then our existence will be collectively threatened, and we risk going extinct.

The Cancel God knows this and this is why it makes itself ever present. It stalks our streets, being an iPhone away from catching us saying something problematic. It lurks on our social media feeds, ready to weaponize our tweets out of context. It hides in our offices and classrooms, making us work in fear that we might lose the prospect of a better life.

There are many things to be afraid of if you get cancelled. You might lose your friends, and be isolated and alone. You might get fired from your jobs, and be unemployed and unemployable. You might be publicly humiliated, and be thought of as deplorable and irredeemable.

The Cancel God cannot manifest in our material realm. We cannot directly see or hear it. But we can feel it, as it makes itself felt through the culture of cancellation. Some claim this culture is about maintaining woke purity, but this is not true. It has now been untethered completely from woke purity.

Those Who Serve and Those Who Submit

The Cancel God is not woke. It does not care about being woke, it does not care about you being woke. Nor does it care about your politics, philosophy, or religion. It does care if you are helping it achieve its goal. That can be done in two ways: serve it out of hate or submit to it out of fear.

Those who serve out of hate, the adepts of cancellation, are proselytizers of the culture of cancellation. These individuals are vessels of political outrage and have weakened agency because of it. While they speak towards important issues of social justice, they are addicted to a mutated morality, one that provides cheap highs of moral righteousness.

The Cancel God sees the adepts as “useful idiots” for its unholy campaign. Unbeknownst to them, they are in a cult which serves a God who wants to end existence for all. The adepts are possessed by the Cancel God and are unaware of their possession.

The other group is made up of those who submit out of fear. These individuals are not motivated by hate, and may have their own doubts and concerns about the culture of cancellation. They know their silence will be seen as violence from the adepts, so in order to keep their job and status, they publicly genuflect to appease the adepts.

This pleases the Cancel God greatly. It only needs an intransigent minority of adepts to spread fear, but it needs the rest of us to submit to this fear. It wants all of us to submit, because this will allow the Cancel God to achieve its nihilistic goal. If you do not submit, the adepts will find you and cancel you.

Cancelling The Cancel God

The Cancel God is on the hunt for you. It can smell your fear and it will guide the adepts to come for you. Once you are discovered you will be told to bend on one knee and submit. If you refuse, you will be cancelled, and your reputation, relationships, and livelihood will be threatened.

Is there another choice beyond submission or cancellation? If there is another choice, we cannot figure it out alone. Regardless of what our political or philosophical alliances are, figuring this out will require a collective response. The Cancel God wants us all to suffer towards extinction and it does not want us to be aware of its existence, because awareness is what will give us a shot at defeating it.

Now that we are aware of this, let us ponder a question together, while we still have time: how do we cancel the Cancel God before it cancels all of us?