118: Cancel culture. Bullying or bravery?

The suicide of a young man at Oxford University has prompted a warning letter to the UK Government about 'cancel culture' on campus. The review into his death 'identified evidence of a concerning practice of social ostracism among students, often referred to as a cancel culture,' according the coroner.

'[The review's] evidence was that this behaviour, where individuals are isolated and excluded from social groups based on allegations or perceptions of wrongdoing, poses a significant risk to student mental health and well-being.'

I brought Susie in to talk about where cancel culture has come from, why it's become popular, and how we parents can help our kids be a force for good. 

PODCAST ON DEI :
This Isn't Working by Tanya de Grunwald

FICTION BOOK:
The Outcast - Sadie Jones

EPISODES: 

• Conflict resolution skills: https://www.teenagersuntangled.com/conflict-resolution-skills-can-deepen-your-relationship-with-your-teen-heres-how/
• Consequnces: https://www.teenagersuntangled.com/32-rules-consequences-and-the-teen-who-doesnt-seem-to-care/

BLOG about consequences:

• https://www.teenagersuntangled.com/blog/whats-going-on-when-our-boundaries-and-consequences-dont-seem-to-work/

Seven Ideas to Reduce Cancel Culture in Yourself or Your Students and Build Resilience from https://growingleaders.com/the-correlation-between-cancel-culture-and-resilience-in-students/:

1. Do not react on impulse. Think first. Give yourself a day to reflect.
2. Practice the 101% Principle. Find the 1% you agree on and give it 100% of your attention. 
3. Listen before you speak. Recover the art of really hearing from the other side. 
4. Phone a friend. Don’t respond in a vacuum. Include others’ perspectives before acting.
5. Apologize when and where you’re wrong. This goes a long way in fostering relationships. 
6. Forgive when appropriate. To make a mistake is human; to forgive is divine.
7. Build a bridge where there’s a wall. Find a way to connect with the opposing side.

https://comment.org/why-we-cancel/

https://www.depts.ttu.edu/rise/Blog/cancelculture.php
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375520893_Cancelled_Exploring_the_Phenomenon_of_Cancel_Culture

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/oxford-student-took-own-life-after-ostracism-over-sexual-encounter-cjx389t5r
https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2024/08/27/the-dangerous-evolution-of-cancel-culture/

https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2024/08/27/the-dangerous-evolution-of-cancel-culture/

https://medium.com/@julesdixon/ostracism-social-exclusion-in-adulthood-8764ea1a4003

https://www.

Transcript

Rachel Richards: 0:02

Music, hello and welcome to teenagers. Untangled the audio, hug for parents going through the teenage years. I'm Rachel Richards parenting coach, mother of two teenagers and two bonus daughters.

Susie Asli: 0:11

Hi there. I'm Susie Asli, mindfulness coach, mindful therapist and musician, a mother of three teenagers, two of them are twins.

Rachel Richards: 0:19

Yay. Do you remember Susie people used to call it being sent to Coventry? Yes, yes, that's it's when you deliberately ostracize someone. And that's a saying in the UK, which I'm sure comes from something political, and Coventry being not a nice place to go to, but nobody else religious, was it really? I've been to Coventry, but I'm sure it's lovely. Anyway, um, typically this is done. This ostracizing is done by not talking to them, avoiding their company, and acting as if they no longer exist, which is what happened to a young man at Corpus Christi College Oxford who subsequently died by suicide. Obviously, it's a really sensitive topic, but I wanted to use it to talk about cancel culture, because the coroner at his inquest has warned the Department of Education, so our British department, and here's my quote, students are self policing at universities. And the inquest concluded that this young man's suicide was likely to have been influenced by the isolation he felt when he was shunned by his peers. Now I know this college is a relatively small one in Oxford, and I can imagine being isolated there would have been really painful. The coroner has called on ministers to take action, warning that future deaths could result if the issue was not addressed. And this is not a UK only phenomenon. This is really definitely a big problem in America, and I don't you know, it's quite widespread wherever you're getting social media as well. We'll talk about cancel culture. What I think is interesting is who decides when someone should be ostracized, what forms of redemption are available to them, like, how do they get back into their community? And what sort of impact is it having on our kids and our culture and how we parents can help our kids navigate this issue, because it's

Susie Asli: 2:04

shifted. It hasn't it, because it used to be just celebrities and it's a media thing, but now it's trickled into real life.

Rachel Richards: 2:12

She's really normalized. Yeah, so let's talk about nuggets first. Yes.

Susie Asli: 2:16

So I have a nugget. My daughter and I, we were, I was driving her to college. She missed her bus, which was very annoying, and I should have just gone, well, bad luck you. You'll be late, but it was an important lesson. And I, I yeah, I folded, and I drove her in. It took me ages, because the traffic was horrible and boring details, but we were not. I was not particularly happy with her, shall we say, and she was not particularly happy with me. It wasn't, it wasn't the funnest of car journey.

Rachel Richards: 2:49

Those are the best we all have. Those I know we it

Susie Asli: 2:53

was long enough to for us both to sort of calm down and settle and actually have a conversation around it. And we'd had a couple of similar sort of incidents, maybe more minor, but where we'd where she'd got really angry with me, and I maybe had escalated with her. And you know that, you know how it goes. And I suddenly thought, we need to do something different. We talked about it, we unpacked it, and we looked at it, and it was fine, and we kind of both apologized, and it was fine, because that's we, that's that's fine for us to do that. But then I was like, well, we could do something different. And I suddenly had this idea that we could use some sort of system. And so we worked out, or we talked about that when she's overwhelmed, she gets very overwhelmed, as do lots of teenagers, particularly girls, I think, and then she's already at boiling point. So I come in and say something random, yes, which had happened the day before, over something completely random, and she freaked out, but she was already at boiling points, which I had no idea. I literally walked in the house. And why don't we make a system? So let's use, I don't know, colors or and we ended up doing traffic lights. So if she or I are overwhelmed, we can tell each other, okay, I'm a red, so tread carefully. Or I'm Amber. I'm really I'm really full, I'm stressed, and usually it's just stressing about homework or something she's got to get done, or a time pressure. Or I'm a green. We don't, you don't really ever have to say that you're a green, because it's, it's that's just fine, but it's really helpful, and it's colored, and we actually used it this morning because she was late for something and and I went, Oh, are you at Red? And she went, actually, no, I'm not at Red. I'm just a bit irritated. Okay, well, that's, that's good to know, but it was, we've used it, and I use it myself as well, because if I'm overwhelmed, I can be snappy or any on anyone else. And if I tell her, do you know what can we wait with this? Because I'm actually a Amber right now, and I think it'd be better to wait till later, just a really quick way of getting to the to the root of what's actually going on. Yeah,

Rachel Richards: 4:51

and sort of like a halt, I stop. And it's interesting, because I think in the complex parenting and kids with ADHD interviewing, that interview, she talked. About how she developed these different words, okay? And for her, there were things like using the word broccoli, or using, you know, if someone was hungry, yes. And actually, so helpful. These shorthand words that we can develop in our families can make such a difference. Yeah,

Susie Asli: 5:14

my eldest had, we talked about this on the podcast, he had Flint, and when he used it, like a year ago, it was when he was 10, but he used these 19 now, and he went, Flint, Mum, oh, okay, I'll go but the color thing works. It needed to be different for my daughter, so we used a different system. I

Rachel Richards: 5:31

love that. I think that's really, really handy. Thanks for sharing. So my nugget is that I've mentioned recently that perhaps desire past can be used in our parenting, where we notice that our child is not following, doesn't want to follow that concrete path that has been set out, and they're crossing, you know, crossing boundaries, or they're choosing other routes. And my daughter has decided that school isn't currently the right path for her, so she wants to work. We found a different course that she can start next September. That's very practical, but that is the equivalent of the three A Levels she would need to get into university. And we've also found a mixture of work and paid experience for her. And I think coming back again to David Jaeger and the interview I did 10 to 25 really, really helped me in this managing my emotions, because I found it very stressful, having to try and think outside the box, right? How do we we've got someone who doesn't want to do this, which is an easy it's not easy, but it's the path that's set out. How do we sidestep that and find something that really works for her? And it took a lot of soul searching and a lot of research, but we've done it, and I think again, it's that high expectation, high support, where you can't just expect, if you if the kid says, I don't want to do school, you can't say, Well, you have to fix it. No, we have to say, Okay, I have high expectations. So you need to be working, you need to be studying all these things, right? You come to me, let's sit down and brainstorm what that might look like, and then I'll help you find some answers. And I think we need this when they leave school, when they go to you to get work after school, there's a lot of kids that leave school, and it's like falling off a cliff, and they need that extra help, like, How do I look for jobs? How do I talk to people? How do I, you know, make the phone calls that are required. And I think it's really been a good exercise for me and my daughter. She feels seen and understood. And I feel like, okay, I understand how the extra support is really important. I think it's

Susie Asli: 7:36

really beautiful. It takes courage as well, doesn't it, to do something outside the box? Yeah, it can be

Rachel Richards: 7:40

very scary. And a friend of mine did a similar thing with her daughter, where her daughter ended up working for a year at a very, very well known department store in an apprenticeship where it was abusive. It wasn't a good situation, but actually it's really helped her, because she's gone back to she's gone into a kind of further education college where it's all about management of, you know, businesses. And she said, what's amazing, she's now had a year where she's been on a shop floor, literally, and she knows what they're talking about when they talk about management. She knows what they're talking about in terms of motivating stuff. So actually, none of this is wasted. No, it's never waste. None of it is wasted. So I think for the parents who are looking at their child going, Yeah, it's, it's, it's okay, and

Susie Asli: 8:25

it takes, I mean, credit to you for doing that as well, because that takes a lot of courage as a parent, isn't it, to do something that isn't the normal easier route, and easier meant as in, everyone else is doing it. Not that school is particularly easy for everybody, but that it takes courage to go, Okay, actually, that doesn't fit my kid. What? What can we do? And how can I stand by you in that and and ignore all the little voices in my head that are probably a bit scared.

Rachel Richards: 8:50

And she's and her school tutor has said, Gosh, I really admire her for making this decision. It's amazing, because a lot of kids get out of school and they go, then say, Oh, well, now what? Now what? Because they haven't really brought it through. So it's, you know, anyway, it's

Susie Asli: 9:04

great opportunity.

Rachel Richards: 9:05

Have you got a review?

Susie Asli: 9:06

Yes, I have. It's, it's a longer one. It's lovely. Thank you to you both. At last, I found something, someone to listen to, relate to, and be reassured by, wow. Parenting my 12 and 14 year olds is wonderful, but also has its difficulties, and I'm left feeling drained and confused as to whether I'm actually doing it all okay for them. Oh, during the club, I thought the episodes regarding screen time and grooming was spot on and informative. I'm actually going to get them both to listen to them with me when we do a longer car journey, so they can hear first hand why I put in place restrictions myself. They often make me feel like I'm over the top and vote too overprotective, you have reassured me I'm doing okay. Thank you, girls from a very grateful mummy who's also learning on the job and winging it every day. Thank

Rachel Richards: 9:47

you, yes. And you know, that's actually quite an old review, so if you're thinking, Did you get my review? They go, they all, all the reviews go on the website as long as I remember, and that was by h 8l, D, E,

Susie Asli: 10:00

thank you for Audible. People

Rachel Richards: 10:03

listen on Audible. How wonderful. Thank you so much. Getting your

Susie Asli: 10:05

kids to listen to it.

Rachel Richards: 10:06

My kids, yeah, well, that's because it's you, isn't it. I really want to listen

Susie Asli: 10:11

to you on that as well as in the kitchen. Now,

Rachel Richards: 10:14

coming back to the question of cancel culture, which can have a devastating impact on people, it's not just happening for kids. There are people at work who've lost their jobs for saying things that aren't accepted as the norm now or the truth. And you know, there have been court cases resulting in large payouts for some of this. And so dei in the workplace is a big thing. And there's an amazing podcast, which I'll put in the podcast notes, where there's a woman unpacking, you know, the good things about dei but also where it's been going off. Because I think some of these things are sort of just going off the road slightly. So if you're interested in that, I'll put the link in the podcast notes. In terms of ostracism, there's nothing essentially new about it, is there? No, no, absolutely. We used to put people in stocks, and it actually comes from the ancient Greek word Ostracon, where they would banish an unpopular or overly powerful citizen from a city for five to 10 years by popular vote. Wow. But there was obviously, there was a community who decided that. And there, what we say, there was Who knows, and there was a way, like, you go, it's five years, and then you're gonna come back five to 10 years, a long time. But the point being that there was a Yeah. Now also, if you're interested in this topic, I'm reading the most extraordinary book called an outcast, which I the outcast by Sadie Jones, which I'll put a link to. It covers all of these issues that we talk about in the podcast too. I've learned so much from choosing this book. It's wonderful. Anyway, an outcast is a person who has no place in their society or a particular group because the society or group refuses to accept them. And when I put this particular story that's prompted this episode up onto Instagram, the response by one of the people was that's just old fashioned bullying. And Professor Kipling Williams agrees he's from Purdue. Being excluded or ostracized is an invisible form of bullying that doesn't leave bruises, and then we underestimate its impact. And I think, I think it's important to understand that people often underestimate, yes, I

Susie Asli: 12:20

was super painful. Yes, I mean remembering just at school where you people fall out and then you're not speaking, they're not speaking to you, just for like, a day. It's super painful.

Rachel Richards: 12:29

Painful. I can't even go teenager. You know, my husband and I have had a disagreement. I have to reconnect before I go to sleep. You can't sleep. No, with that. Anyway, in the Bible, there are multiple examples of people being cast out into the wilderness, Jesus, Elijah, but the wilderness was not presented as a hopeless place. It was a place where they would grow and God teaches them lessons, and it shapes their character. So it was a kind of, not an awful thing. So what's different? Well, the concern is that social ostracism has become normalized within student communities, with individuals viewing it as an expected and accepted response to certain allegations or behaviors. This is the words of the coroner. This normalization hinders the development of healthy and supportive social environments.

Susie Asli: 13:17

It's quite scary, isn't it, because it's like there's a superiority that lies in it isn't there that I am right and you are wrong, and because I'm right, you are going to be punished for it and massive intolerance. It's really it's really

Rachel Richards: 13:31

insidious, yes, and the coroner said students appear to employ social ostracism as a means of self policing their community, often in response to allegations of serious misconduct, and there's no formal process. And that says to me, I will come on to this, because actually, there's this element of feeling like nobody's doing enough, so we're going to do it. I wonder. Yes,

Susie Asli: 13:54

it's interesting, isn't it? Yeah, this needs to be tackled, and nobody's doing it, so therefore we have to step up and do the punishing ourselves. Yeah. And

Rachel Richards: 14:02

you know, the evidence was that students could rush to judgment without knowledge of all the facts, Shun those accused, and then a pile on might occur. So and the problem with that is that you would sense there's no sense of redemption. There's no way of getting back into the group, because there's no due process. So how do you know when this is ever going to end? If it's going to end, it's not guilty till proven innocent. And I think this is one of the big issues with social media, because there's no arbitration. There's no you can be blocked, so you can't actually be heard. And if you say something that's slightly iffy on social media, or that's contentious, you can then suddenly have a pile on from people who then decide you're a terrible person, where maybe you're not. You were just trying to raise an

Susie Asli: 14:44

issue. There's no critical thinking in it, is it? It's black and white, it's right wrong. It's interesting,

Rachel Richards: 14:48

because we've done a conflict management episode. We also did an episode on consequences, and I did a follow up blog on that. And the thing that I found that was very important was that whenever you create a consequence, you need to have a clear path back to A. Exemption, you know, if you are just handing out consequences and not saying so we're going to do this, and because we agreed this, and you did this, and this is how we get back to normality, then you're going to have problems. Yeah? So for them, it's a hopeless place. It's a hopeless place. And interestingly, powerful people who get canceled actually can benefit from it.

Susie Asli: 15:21

Yeah, that's a whole different world, isn't it? When celebrity situation, it's like that's different, yes, when it ripples down into young adults or anybody who's not in the public eye, just so painful.

Rachel Richards: 15:35

No way to fight back, no way to defend yourself. So since the term cancel culture was used. I thought it was worth looking at its difference from a boycott, for example, because people use canceling on brands as well. Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, and being canceled was identified in social media as far back as 2010 with music lyrics referring to canceling people. But according to Google Trends data, there were very few searches for this term until 2018, okay, and some practitioners believe it was ignited by the metoo movement when, yeah, just a reminder, the metoo movement was where, you know, a girl posted some of the sexual assault or the offensive things that were happening to her, and other people used the hashtag metoo to show the pervasiveness of this behavior.

Susie Asli: 16:25

Yeah, no, that's that resonates in some

Rachel Richards: 16:27

ways. It's a good thing because it's allowed people to demand more accountability and higher standards of public figures and brands. So you know, cancelation of Bill Crosby and Harvey Weinstein because they were taken through a process. Yes, people saw that what was happening behind the scenes, but it's quickly escalated to a practice where people are swift to cancel anyone or anything that's considered remotely offensive, yeah,

Susie Asli: 16:50

without listening to the details and the story behind this. And I, just

Rachel Richards: 16:54

before we continue, I just wanted to say Paul Susie turned up today, where I'd only told her last night I was going to cover this, is how my mind works. I do what I'm like, oh, obsessed with obsessed, obsessed. And then I say, by the way, Susie, want to talk about this. And then she goes, Oh, thanks for giving me

Susie Asli: 17:07

emotions. I read a short headline on it, yes. So,

Rachel Richards: 17:11

so the difference between boycotting and canceling. So cancel culture is the best weapon the powerless possess. So people who advocate for it argue that cancelation is a way for the marginalized to strike back, yeah,

Susie Asli: 17:27

because there is, as you said before, it implied in it is this feeling of doing good, yeah, like we're doing the right thing. We're we're canceling these bad people, yes, but

Rachel Richards: 17:36

it's also, it's like we are the underlings, and it's our way of actually gaining some power over people who are very, very powerful, and it's also a way of forcing social norms to shift much faster than they usually do, right? And we have seen this and but the assumption is that you're right, yes, right, that we need dangerous social more norms. Yeah,

Susie Asli: 17:57

that's the dangerous bit that that we're right and you're wrong, because that's never the case,

Rachel Richards: 18:01

regardless of the destabilizing effect of it, and Gen Z has a radical distrust of institutions. Just look, and in fact, you know, the Trump sort of whistle is, we're going to drain the swamp. We're getting, you know, there's a whole lot of narrative now around the institutions, not being affected, being corrupt, all sorts of stuff. So they there's a lot of that. So if you don't have institutions that you trust in, that's when we get vaginities.

Susie Asli: 18:29

Yes, right? Yeah, there'll maybe a lack of trust of of, you know, law and order. Yeah, that's really interesting. And

Rachel Richards: 18:36

thanks to the internet, we no longer regularly encounter people who will give us the other side of our beliefs,

Susie Asli: 18:44

no, because we're in a bubble, no. So

Rachel Richards: 18:46

a number of these people who will make decisions and argue vociferously about something, you know, okay, a small percentage of them will be completely focused on this, but there is an element of drawing people in who may not fully agree with you, but they feel they have no choice. Yes, according to a 2022 survey in Forbes, half of Gen Z participants surveyed felt that some brands and people deserve to be canceled. McKinsey reported on true Gen Z in 2018 has been consumers anchored in ethics. So when we talk about the Gen Z sample, they overwhelmingly believe that boycotting and canceling are different, yeah. So the major difference is that a firm can redeem itself, yes, for a violation. If it's been boycotted, you'll have to say, do this, and then you get this. Yeah,

Susie Asli: 19:42

there's a hope in it that they'll change their mind, isn't it? Cancel

Rachel Richards: 19:45

pressure. You can they will never return or engage. Canceling involves public shaming, and it also involves shaming of not just the brand or the thing, it's the other people who won't engage with your canceling of that. So are you with me or are you against me? Yes, it's an either or, yeah,

Susie Asli: 20:04

and it's the person, isn't it? Rather than a product or a thing, it's a whole person.

Rachel Richards: 20:10

Cancelation tends to be related to social injustice or moral feelings. But again, who's deciding Yes,

Susie Asli: 20:17

and they might well be really valid, like totally valid, but there's always nuances. There's always and as you say, who's deciding looking

Rachel Richards: 20:25

at it correct Exactly. And there's an example of a professor at a small residential institute called Sarah Lawrence College who had their course attacked using private messages. So they were, it was the start of the year. They were, everybody was sort of selling their courses. This is what to expect on the course. And this professor went into it saying, Oh, this is what we're going to be doing. But while they were doing this presenting, there were people messaging other people who were looking at the course, saying, Did you know this? This and this and this, a lot of which was inaccurate, because someone took a screenshot and sent it to the professor afterwards, when the professor didn't get as many people signing up as usual, saying, Wait, I didn't, unless you tell me that you're saying this, how can I defend myself? And that's part of the problem. Yeah. And they were what you might call bullying other people and saying you, if you sign up to this, course, this makes you that type of person. Yes,

Susie Asli: 21:15

oh my goodness, that's, that's, that's complicated. It's

Rachel Richards: 21:18

very complicated as

Susie Asli: 21:20

well. There's a really good element, isn't there, like keeping an eye out and and we don't want social injustice. It's, it's really positive, but it's, it's not nuanced enough.

Rachel Richards: 21:29

It's not nuanced enough. And it's, and I, and I wonder how, when so I've had a situation where my daughter's friend was round here and had put a viewpoint, and I said, Well, that's really interesting. And asked a couple of questions, and then said, well, actually, I have this viewpoint. And they just stood and wonderfully, wonderfully, listened to what I had to say, ask questions, and at the end of it, I just said, you could look at it this way. I didn't say, this is entirely my viewpoint. I said you could look at it this way. At the end they said, Yeah, you couldn't say that on social media. You couldn't say that to people in my generation. And I said, Well, that's really interesting. And what a pity, because actually, surely they should hear should be open, because you are surely they should be open to listening to a different way of looking at it. They could then come up to the conclusion that that's wrong, but not hearing it like this person's never heard this way of thinking. It's

Susie Asli: 22:32

very basic communication, isn't it? You know this this, am I winning the conversation, losing the conversation? Yeah. And rather than agreeing to disagree, yeah. So coming

Rachel Richards: 22:41

back to that conflict management episode, it's really useful, but numerous reports have found that students are afraid to challenge their peers because of reputational consequences. And my daughter said this. They went up to senior school and said, Mommy, I don't want to say anything. And said, What do you mean? And they said, because I don't want to be branded a anything. Yes, which is really unfortunate. Yeah, so, so perhaps what we need to be trying to do as parents is create a cultural shift towards more tolerance, but we can only do that by talking about it and being prepared to listen yes

Susie Asli: 23:18

and teaching them the skills of of listening, of disagreeing, and that there's always stuff. And I'm when my kids tell me stuff, and, like, often I say, Oh, I didn't know that. That's amazing. So that I'm changing my mind. Like, if we can emphasize that, the more I get new information, I change my mind. I get new information that maybe I change my mind again. You know, it's a fluid thing. It's not I have decided this, and this is what I'm going to think for the rest of my life. At the end, it has to be fluid and growing, yeah?

Rachel Richards: 23:48

And when my daughters have said to me, I don't know what to say there, I've been in a group where they're all saying this, and I don't necessarily agree. I said my best defense is to ask questions. Yeah, just say, Oh, yeah. Oh, you think that. So how does that work? And just just be dumb, but maybe, yeah, maybe make them try and explain it. Where's that fact? I'm really interested. Yeah, it's

Susie Asli: 24:08

a really good way of doing it. I'm just coming back to this idea of of, of this clearly, a feeling of, of, there's a lack of somebody doing the right thing, which is why these people, they feel they have to go up on the barricades for somebody else. That's quite worrying, isn't it, that there's not faith that somebody else is going to make this fair in the future, that they have to do it themselves.

Rachel Richards: 24:36

Yes, and what's really interesting is, I'm I'm quoting without having the facts in front of me. But I remember reading a study which was about cynicism, which is another episode I want to make. And it was that when they asked people how they would behave in a given scenario, they said they would behave in a very, you know, good, ethically good way. And. And then they asked them how they thought other people would behave, and that the people said, I think they would be, they would be lying or cheating or whatever. And so the question is, to what extent are we lying to ourselves about our own behavior, or are we now tiring people with a brush where they actually do have good intentions, we just don't see them because we're so scared.

Susie Asli: 25:21

Yeah, gosh, that's really interesting, isn't it? I thought it was fascinating. Yeah, because we maybe hold ourselves to a level that's out of fear, because we think it sounds good and looks good, and maybe you even believe it ourselves, but maybe we don't. We never know how we're behaving in a in a stressful situation until we're in it and and they're screaming out at all. In through all of this is a lack of compassion, yeah? A lack of self compassion and a lack of compassion for for our human fellow humans. It's very, very judgy,

Rachel Richards: 25:53

yeah. And so some may argue that cancel culture serves as a vital mechanism for holding the power accountable, but it's morphed into a sort of way that you could argue people avoid, yeah, having conversations, avoid responsibility and and this really is, I mean, the problem is it escalates so you can have this really painful impact on one person who becomes canceled for without having an ability to explain themselves or the content problem isn't that's awful. And then also, also it, then it can escalate to people becoming violent. Because, again, we've got all sorts of things happening as a result of people thinking they're right, yeah, and these people are wrong and they're terrible people, yeah, and maybe they need to die. And it's just, it's not, not the way we want things

Susie Asli: 26:38

to be. So no, you're right. And there are some really, really helpful, really good things about it that people are aware of a social conscience. They want things to be better. They want this like a an idea of improvement in there, isn't it? We don't want we don't want to accept this kind of behavior, because we want things to be better. We want things to be good, but it's the way it's done. It's the

Rachel Richards: 26:56

way it's done, it's the way it's done. So seven ideas to reduce cancel culture in yourself or your students and build resilience. Oh, don't react on impulse. I'm going to put these in the podcast notes. And actually, I think this is a wonderful conversation to have with your teenagers. Like, how do you cope when you're in a situation and people are saying things that are quite vitriolic, but you don't necessarily. You might agree with some of it, but not all of it, or not. The the the extent of it. How do you cope?

Susie Asli: 27:23

Yeah, because it's also quite fun in that situation is it's a bit like gossip. You get caught up in here. We're all in this together. Yes,

Rachel Richards: 27:29

yes. Again, it's a way of uniting yourselves. And if you, if you question them, then all suddenly you're outside your other two, outside the group. So don't react on impulse. Think first and give yourself time to reflect. Practice a 101% principle. Find the 1% you agree with and give 100% of your attention. So you know, when you're looking at somebody else's viewpoint, try and find something that you could say, okay, I can agree with you on that. Let me have a look at that. And what do what do we have in common? So try to build a bridge rather than a wall. Listen before you speak. Recover the art of really hearing what someone else is saying. And another friend of my daughter said she's got a situation where her brother will just talk at her and he will just if he decided he's right. Doesn't matter what she says, and this is something we need to start tempering. Yes, yeah, we don't have to accept that phone a friend don't respond in a vacuum. So if you're thinking, I definitely am right, find someone else who's outside of that loop and see what they think. This is why people used to use agony ons, isn't it? You know, get outside of your get outside your head, and ask other people apologize when you're wrong. This is something we try to stress on this podcast all the time, isn't it? In fact, it's one of the most powerful do over, as they call it. It's one of the most powerful ways of building connection with people, because then it gives them permission to be wrong. It gives everybody a chance to calm down, forgive when appropriate, we make mistakes. We do stupid things. Doesn't mean you're rotten to the

Susie Asli: 29:05

core, no. And that's such a good lesson for them to see.

Rachel Richards: 29:07

Yeah. And like I said, build a bridge where there's a wall, see what's on the other side, and think, Okay, is there something I could do? Is a way I can there was a book I read called the Baron in the trees. It's an Italian book, and it was all about this young boy who grew up inside this enormous gardens and this beautiful house, and he was served on hand and foot. And one day, he decided he was going to live in the trees, and after a while, he climbed through the trees and then saw there was a wall, and looked over the wall and started seeing what was happening outside. And it's this whole metaphor for just, you know, if you build a wall for your beautiful environment, what are you leaving outside? Yes,

Susie Asli: 29:45

oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, it's a lovely metaphor, and we can model it like we need to model the all of those things. I think it's a brilliant list. Yeah, model it. I drive my kids insane because they ask, they ask me questions, and I studied anthropology, so it's all, there's never like a definitive answer. Whereas. And take a choice. And they go, what do you think about this? And I go, Well, it depends on that, and if you see it from this perspective and that. And they're going, Oh, for God's sake, just pick a side.

Rachel Richards: 30:11

Yeah, that's a lie. Really, really talk about that. I don't believe in horoscopes either, but yeah, I'm very Lee. I'm very sort of got to be balanced about it. But then there's this, and

Susie Asli: 30:18

then there's this context, it looks like that, and in that context, it looks like that. So

Rachel Richards: 30:22

I've married a man who's much more definite about things. I need it. And finally, we all want to be good, but it's an illusion. In biblical times, you know, we can't all be good all the time. We can't so believing that you're perfect and you're right is should be your flag. Like, okay, what am I missing here? Yeah. And in biblical times, communities used to symbolically place all of their sin on a goat and then sacrifice are allowed to run away, hence the scapegoat.

Unknown: 30:47

Oh, I did not know I

Rachel Richards: 30:50

read that. I mean, I don't know if it's true. I didn't check

Susie Asli: 30:52

that one. That's a great story, though, isn't it great? And I've always wondered, why do we call it? I'm

Rachel Richards: 30:57

gonna have an escape chicken or something. Yeah, I need to find something that will run away and escape dark. I go grab one from a pond. Hear them all my all my sins, all my bad stuff, right? Anyway, finishing on an up note, anything else to add? No, no. None of us have been canceled again. Let us know if we're annoying you. If it's wrong, we're always open, and we're open to apologizing. If we've got something slightly wrong, we can do a do over,

Susie Asli: 31:28

yeah, yeah, just cancel us.

Rachel Richards: 31:30

Don't just get boring. Yeah, don't hit on follow, hit, follow, hit, follow. The discussion

Susie Asli: 31:35

out of disagreement is way more interesting than way more interesting. Yeah,

Rachel Richards: 31:39

okay, that's it for now. Susie can be found at www.

Susie Asli: 31:43

Dot, a mindful hyphen life.co.uk.

Rachel Richards: 31:48

You can find all the old episodes at www, dot teenagers untangled.com. There is actually in all of, almost all, I think, of the episodes, there's a kind of button you can press right at the top of the Episode notes, saying, text message here, you can just send an instant message to come straight through to me. Can you believe it? It isn't my phone number, but it does come straight through to me. So you can't call me on that number, but you can text me so I will respond. Yeah, please. Do you're going to just harass me?

Susie Asli: 32:18

I am. Don't forget the milk. Rachel, don't forget

Rachel Richards: 32:22

and yeah, do leave us a review if you get the time, or just give us five stars, it'd be fine. Share it with somebody all that stuff. Okay, have a great week. Yeah, and Goodbye for now. Goodbye for now. You