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Gregg Hurwitz in Cohort 360 
June 16 2021 at 06:36 pm
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    We know we are all imperfect and flawed and even the healthiest of us were certainly so when we were younger. If social media now means that we can never forget, and so-called cancel culture means we can never forgive, our society is stuck in an impossible and painful trap.


    It’s like saddling people with original sin without any promise of redemption.


    This fuses people to their own flaws and mistakes for eternity. And it encourages paranoia which warps reality and makes their own memories a threat to them. In short, we are establishing a society that perpetuates a trap of fear, guilt, shame, and anger.


    On top of that, we tend to punish most productive conversation about any of this. And we punish any person, corporation, or entity affiliated with the “offending” individual. For any sane person, this encourages not admitting/not learning—and more rage.


    People who live with fear, guilt, shame, and rage and who are forced to repress those feelings and any discussion of those feelings or they risk being shunned by society and face reputational and financial ruin have scarce options available to them. Decompensate under anxiety and depression. Proclaim your virtue and never acknowledge flaws/faults/areas you need help with. Give in to the rage, join whichever tribe provides seeming overlap with your grievances, radicalize yourself, and go to war (proverbial or otherwise).


    And there’s another trap too. If you choose not to wade into this morass on a particular issue then your silence “means” you actively support radical socialism or racism or whatever is the cause du jour.


    It’s amazing anyone engaged in the world is functional. Maybe we aren’t.


    It’s important to remember that the vast majority of Americans don’t believe in any of this. Privately and separately, they fear this apparent world gone crazy even as they find forgiveness satisfying and essential in their own lives. So a small number of very loud, widely amplified voices have caused the rest of us to quake in fear that our inevitable and very human frailties will be exposed.


    What are some concrete suggestions for how we break this spell and illuminate the path of forgiveness?



    An Ask for Help:


    In keeping with my tough-guy crime novelist façade, I am an enduring fan of American Idol. It strikes me as a template for a functional America. A necessary meritocracy that rewards the best instincts in the contestants, it features talent who the judges and much of America loves and encourages without regard to melanin, bodily proportion, ruralness or urbanness, gender expression, or anything else.


    In an age where Red People and Blue People no longer agree on moral arbiters (politicians, faith leaders, journalists), American Idol features three judges who’ve shown consistently that their primary aim is encouraging candidates to be the best expression of their purest self (turns out America pretty much digs that too). In Katy Perry we have pure light. In Lionel Richie we have pure love. In Luke Bryan we have pure goodwill.


    A few weeks ago, a sixteen-year-old Top 5 finalist named Caleb Kennedy, a terrific country singer-songwriter from the small town of Roebuck, South Carolina, was removed from the competition after a video surfaced of him at age twelve seated beside someone wearing a Ku Klux Klan-style hood. Mr. Kennedy, who proved himself to be a sensitive, caring young man, did what most anyone does nowadays: issued an apology and disappeared.


    If we want different outcomes, can we start here?


    I cannot imagine anyone better suited than these three judges—Light, Love, and Goodwill—to have an honest mentoring discussion to chart a course forward for Mr. Kennedy out of what must feel like immense darkness. Might ABC do a special event featuring the four of them, all from different backgrounds and cultures, walking through this moment together and showing this young man a way back?


    How could we get America—Red America and Blue America—on board with the spirit of this rather than getting hung up in their respective potholes?  


    How can enough of us show ABC that this doesn’t represent an untenable financial risk for them but that it might be the kind of truth and reconciliation Americans not only want but need to see?


    What other venues/events/platforms could we begin to showcase these types of different discussions?


    Where are there other opportunities I’m missing?



    Overall:


    What am I getting wrong?

    What am I missing?

    What might you agree with if it was rephrased?

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