{"id":18616,"date":"2019-11-20T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T17:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=18616"},"modified":"2019-11-15T14:29:12","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T22:29:12","slug":"open-space-callout-culture-and-the-problem-of-emotional-entitlement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2019\/11\/20\/open-space-callout-culture-and-the-problem-of-emotional-entitlement\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Space<\/em>: Callout culture and the problem of emotional entitlement"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re living in an age of social activism. We value personal expression and social inclusion more than ever before, and this is a good thing. It means that, as a society, we are learning to value greater diversity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we haven\u2019t all learned the importance of discretion.\u00a0The current callout culture is symptomatic of the social disease of emotional unaccountability. It places responsibility for any person\u2019s feelings with the message sender, not the receiver. This is inherently childish.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s value in being considerate of others, but when consideration is expected rather than freely given, it becomes entitlement. This creates resentment, both in the receiver\u2014who feels it\u2019s the world\u2019s responsibility to protect them from offensive stimuli\u2014and also in the sender, who\u2019s unfairly expected to prevent any possible negative reaction by signposting or censoring.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
This story originally appeared in our November 20, 2019 issue.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I recently had an experience of being called out and attacked here on campus. I was accused of being a vile person for sharing controversial writing that was incorrectly assumed to align to my personal beliefs, and then collectively roasted by my entire class for not including a trigger warning, which they believed should be mandatory. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They argued that a trigger warning shows respect and awareness. This may make sense, but it masks a dangerous assumption. The triggered reader feels it\u2019s disrespectful for someone to expose them to discomfort. They feel that since the writer is not aware of the inner lives of the reader, they should tread lightly, and completely exclude sensitive material not accompanied by an explicit denouncement. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, this is an unreasonable expectation. It\u2019s impractical and inconceivable to protect everyone from the possibility of emotional upheaval. Throughout most of life, we cannot control what we\u2019re exposed to. We must learn to modulate our emotional responses; it\u2019s a fundamental aspect of maturation. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As students in the First World, we\u2019re more or less divorced from most visceral suffering. With no objective evil against which to rally, we fight against perceived evils in our own society. Looking for people to crucify, we scrutinize our neighbours for signs of injustice or dissent from the status quo.<\/p>\n

This serves to divide people, and also creates internal duplicity\u2014when there is no necessity to examine one\u2019s own perceptions and feelings, there are fewer opportunities taken to undergo emotional maturation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Internal suffering manifests as externalized discontentment. A deeply unhappy person sees the aspects within themselves that cause discomfort, and then projects them on others to absolve themselves of emotional accountability.\u00a0They blame others for their intangible internal pain, and, therefore, see no reason to resolve the issues causing this suffering in the first place.<\/p>\n

Callout culture is the epitome of this. Social vigilantes are running amok, letting their emotions cloud their judgments and destroying lives in the process. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The more emotionally secure people are, the less likelihood they will be outraged at personal injustices.<\/p>\n

To foster a better society, we must individually work on emotional accountability, to call ourselves out. Consequently, we will feel less triggered by others\u2019 perceived wrongdoings against us. We\u2019ll also create less misery through lashing out, because we\u2019ll be happier, and this will quickly spread to others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re living in an age of social activism. We value personal expression and social inclusion more than ever before, and this is a good thing. It means that, as a society, we are learning to value greater diversity.\u00a0 Unfortunately, we haven\u2019t all learned the importance of discretion.\u00a0The current callout culture is symptomatic of the social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,244],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-views","category-november-20-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18617,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18616\/revisions\/18617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}