Hey, Boomer saturday here. Well, in Europe I’m a Boomer, in the US I’d be a GenX’er 🙂

So I was thinking about what has been going on over the last 10 or so years — in terms of people who are good in principle, but let themselves be manipulated into doing bad things. Destroying the remainder of an old scientist’s life for saying something nice in a slightly awkward way. Misconstruing an author’s maybe somewhat backwards, but nevertheless well-meaning words into something horrible that was never said. Giving in to demands to remove a respected elderly science and reason advocate from a conference because he shared one borderline tasteless video clip online, causing him a stroke from the undeserved aggravation.

It’s called „cancel culture“ and the list is endless. I’m not saying criminal offenders shouldn’t be brought to justice; of course they should. I’m saying that people are being cancelled, lives destroyed outside of the justice system for having a different opinion, or trying to look at things in a more nuanced way, or simply for being slightly awkward with words; and then the mob decides not to look at the complete picture before participating in a public stoning.

While thinking about this, for some reason, the line from this old Eurythmics song came to mind this morning:

Now you think that you’re forgiven, but you can’t be born again

And whoever I noticed doing something like that, and not give an honest apology once they discovered their mistake, I’m sorry to say that I lost all respect and that

I don’t love you anymore.