Let's Discuss The Morality Of Cancel Culture
Or Accountability Culture, however you might reference it
At its core, Freemasonry is a moral society.
Behind the veils, its symbols illustrate profound spiritual and philosophical truths. But at their first level, before the veils, the exoteric lessons they teach are moral truths.
Indeed Freemasonry is defined as:
A peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory, and illustrated by symbols.
Given that, I think it is sometimes necessary that as Freemasons, we sometimes discuss what is happening in our world, with the goal of determining if what is happening is moral, or not.
These past weeks have seen a lot of people losing their jobs because of things they have said regarding current events in the Middle East.
I presume that those losing employment would view this as Cancel Culture while those dishing out the consequences would view it as Accountability. But the words we use to describe these incidents don’t speak to the morality involved.
So let’s discuss it…
Is it moral for an employer to fire an employee for publicly voicing a hateful, immoral, or ignorant opinion unrelated to the employee’s work?
Let’s take it a step further. Is it moral for an employer to fire an employee for privately voicing a hateful, immoral, or ignorant opinion unrelated to the employee’s work, if that private expression becomes public in some way?
Let’s chat about it…
From the Hat Tip Department
The inspiration for this post came from an essay I happened upon yesterday. That essay can be found here:
Let's start with your first question: "Is it moral for an employer to fire an employee for publicly voicing a hateful, immoral, or ignorant opinion unrelated to the employee’s work?"
Set the stage, did they do this at work, or off the clock?
Businesses rely on their reputations and on their customer bases for their livelihoods. And the Vienna/Austrian Business School - a totally amoral system which runs everything today - says that profits are King. Profits are degraded by loss of customer base. However, it also says that any publicity is good publicity. (see also amoral).
Therefore, retaining an employee who expresses hateful, immoral, ignorant opinions may affect the bottom line, in that, it will create a condition whereby your customer base self-selects itself. If the customer base you have, have lots of disposable income, and they leave, and the customer base who like the opinion of the employee come to shop, but, they have less disposable income, you are kinda up a creek without a paddle and your employee has just become an even bigger cost-center (under the business theory all employees are strictly cost-centers). And, employees are the face of your business - they, their appearance and their behaviour at work, are part of your brand.
What's an early 21st Century capitalist to do? Well, owning your own business is a lot like being the king of your castle at home - you get to make your own rules. You get to serve the customers you want and you get to remove people from your premises if you don't want them there. People do not have to trade with you with if they don't like your product or if you wear your politics on your sleeve, of if it's Tuesday and you have purple hair and they don't like that. That's their prerogative and the market will speak. On the other hand, people say they hate Jeff Bazos but I don't see them cancelling their Amazon subscriptions, so, there's that.
No business decision today is made base on morality. None. Should they be? Sure. But - they aren't. Mostly. There are some sterling exceptions, but they are few and far between. People start their own businesses to be captains of their own fates and to have command of their own little corners of their own little worlds - to build their own little fiefdoms. Their own security. They like to have independence and to make their own rules. That's why they're entrepreneurs and business owners. Morality does not enter in to it. It used to. Back in the 1980s you had to elucidate on your incorporation papers what social good your company served. That has been systematically eliminated by every State Secretary of State in the forms.
On the other hand, we all live in a society, such as it is today. And social pressure has always been brought to make people straighten up and fly right. Always. It's not cancel culture - it's the way it's always been. In our colonial period, if you failed to show for Court Day (quarterly) with your musket and bullets and cleaning kit, and drill with all the other members of the local militia which the county land-owners called up by direction of the legislature (no militia just self-constructed itself) , you faced being cancelled. Nobody would trade with you, you were shunned in church, nobody would sit on a jury if you had a case to be heard. You. Were. Cancelled. Until you straightened up and flew right. Sure, social media makes that more immediate - but it's the same system we've always had, and always, the malefactors have cried about how unfair it is. Which is why people moved to the frontier - they got peace and quiet and got left alone to do their own thing.... until they got killed because they found out staying alive is a little easier with other people than without them. It's a delicate and dynamic balance. And in the early days we had lots of room to spread out and find people we wanted to be around. We are now crowded into cities and remaking our "tribes" in fraught times. Generally, the more cheek-to-jowl people have to live with each other - the worse they behave toward each other. This has always been true. There's an argument to be made that social media brings us all too close to each other in all the wrong ways and pushes us too far apart from each other in all the wrong ways.
Also, while the First Amendment protects you from the government, it does not and never did protect you from your fellow Americans, nor from the logical results of your words and actions - that is - personal responsibility. You can say whatever you like, and other may respond in whatever way they like, as well. You are not protected from that. Nor should you be.
Social media fueled cancel culture is just the modern version of The Scarlet Letter. We've been doing this to each other from before the beginning. And, I'll argue, the same Puritanical shaming-culture roots feed it, regardless of the modern political or cultural-trending veneers that are slapped on it.
As to your second question: "Is it moral for an employer to fire an employee for privately voicing a hateful, immoral, or ignorant opinion unrelated to the employee’s work, if that private expression becomes public in some way?"
Again, firing anyone is a business decision, and that's not made based on morality, usually. It should be, but, it isn't. Would I do it? Maybe - depending on a lot of other factors. It seems to me, I have a better chance of bringing them around if I keep them on the payroll because then I have influence and leverage over them. On the other hand, if I find out they're prancing around in the woods wearing white sheets and hoods, that's probably gonna be a hard "Nah dawg" from me, and a frog-march down to the FBI for them. There's a spectrum there.
It is legal for an employer to fire an employee for opinions they may express, at work or elsewhere, such as social media. There is two sides to the coin no matter how you feel about it. We should all be able to voice our opinions under the Freedom of Speech act. But even more valuable and greater is the golden rule of Silence, and it's friend contemplation.