Man, it took so many different combinations to put this post together. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, as it’s been a norm developing in society. Today’s topic is moral justice and the life it has taken online. It is a little longer post than usual, but I think it will be a good read heading into Easter weekend. As always, let me know your thoughts, good or bad!
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What’s the biggest trend you are noticing right now? I just spent a weekend in Austin with college friends, and it was a blast partly because Austin is one of the trendiest cities in America. They have benefited from a lot of the handouts that California has graciously sprinkled across the country. Mid-sized, pro-business cities are growing like crazy, and it was cool to see one of the best.
Here at MWF, I talk a lot about trends I notice. but there is one small problem. I miss a lot of things. I view trends as a metaphoric house. Every home you visit has eye grabbers when you walk in. Whether it’s a fancy chandelier, the biggest TV in the world, or an extravagant wine collection, they tend to stand out immediately (I wrote more on this trend here). In society, these are the popular trends like Drake’s new song, what the Kardashians are doing, or a current political issue.
But what about the rest of the house? Well, it’s usually cluttered with a lot of stuff, so it’s not surprising when you miss something. Someone might say, “Did you notice their beautiful Russian rug?”
No, I didn’t. It’s hard to notice the details when many houses look the same. Likewise, as we cycle through the same trends in society, it’s hard to keep up.
Now, I preface this when I try to expand on anything related to society and culture. I enjoy writing about it but also realize there are holes in my thinking (that I wouldn’t mind hearing from you on). I spend lots of time online with my friends on the same tiny corner of the internet. Even in the real world, we keep the same routine within our areas of interest. All good and well; except, I’m still constantly shocked when things aren’t as they seem from my perspective. There are rooms in the house I probably haven’t stepped into. There is a more expensive vase than my eye test can gather. There is a story behind the painting that I don't know.
Alright, enough prefacing. Today, we are going to examine the ongoing trend of the coolest person in the (internet) room is the “morally just” person. It’s a term that has been floated around, but it seems to have only intensified recently. What we have to figure out is whether moral justice is a cool trend or if it's here to stay.
Holier Than Thou
2020, among other things, was the year of “justice”. No need to recap, but the most common being social justice. Along the way, we have morphed social justice into a buzzword for describing any problem in society. The obstacle with that is not every instance of injustice is considered social justice. ~ Well, actually ~ we recognize three other categories, and they are just as prevalent. The 4 types of justices are:
Commutative – Based on the principle of equality
Distributive – Guarantees a common welfare
Legal – Obligation of a government to its people & society
Social – Everyone has a right to a fair say in society.
After the Boulder shooting, legal justice (gun-control) currently reigns as the hot topic in society. Distributive justice led the story when stimulus checks were being debated. Commutative justice controls local issues. But, I can’t stop thinking that we are unnecessarily adding the notion of “moral justice” into the mix. Let's take a further look:
Society is in a phase of using moral justice as a blanket over the other four categories. We have worn out the term "politically correct", but that's the concept. Your ideals, regardless of context, better fit a mold of being inclusive to all 7 billion humans on planet earth. Most people would agree it's wildly idiotic. In reality, there are justices where morality doesn’t have a course, for instance:
Legal justice - Commit murder and go to jail
Distributive - US tax system
Commutative – Capitalism with inflation of goods grants better environments for the wealthy
If I went on social media today (pretending I had a following outside my echo chamber) and proclaimed, “Climate change is a myth, and you’re all wasting your time.” People would be at my neck to tell me, not only how wrong I am, but mainly how horrible of a person I am for having that opinion. That’s throwing a moral cover over a social topic.
It’s become cool to wear the badge of holier than thou. Everyone on social media has their bios littered with societal initiatives showing how active they are. That’s awesome, but why now?
Cool Trend or New Normal?
In one of the first scenes of the movie 21 Jump Street, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill are attending their first day of school. They peel a muscle car into a handicap spot because Tatum thinks it’ll be cool. As they are making their way across the parking lot, Dave Franco, leader of the cool kids, stops them to ask if they truly care about the environment. Tatum responds, but then another cool kid calls them out for being too loud and disrupting his studying. Tatum punches him in the face. To make matters worse, Tatum makes a gay slur at the cool kid who turns out to be gay. All of a sudden, the whole parking lot is disgusted with Tatum and Hill.
I think about that scene often as we keep developing into a morally just society. The movie came out in 2012, yet it is spot on with how it’s cool to care about societal issues. But, if being morally just is only a cool online trend, there is reason to believe it will eventually fade out.
On the other hand, this could be how society will always be. Is it inevitable that every generation after the next will continue to progress a morally just attitude? Maybe so, as it’s the only way the dial has gone over time.
Let's look at both sides.
Argument for Cool Trend
Cultural trends are cyclical. There are 3 different record stores within a 2-mile distance of my house. People are wearing loose clothes again. Bulky glasses are trendy. Barcades offer an 80s/90s night out. Basketball players are wearing short shorts again. Apps like Dispo are bringing back retro pictures.
Trends don't care who you are or what you think; it's all about who the crowd is gassing them up. When big players get on board, everybody else will follow.
Thus, a big domino in the moral justice train is the 1-up game being played. Everyone has a friend who is prone to 1-up the group. You went to Florida for vacation, and they went to the Caribbeans. You bought tickets in the upper deck while they are front row. In the "moral justice 1-up game", you and I are losing. Bad.
Take, for example, the Covid closures last year. We started with a 2-week lockdown. The mood was relatively uneasy as people hopefully prepared for a slowing of the spread. Then, one after another, companies, events, stores, cities, and governments got into a fascinating game of 1-up. I remember Apple was the first big company that closed till late summer 2020. As soon as Apple fell, so did everybody else. It was a daily announcement from a new entity that would push its timeline further back to re-open. Canada even pushed as far as 2022! Health concerns aside, it was a mess.
The same game is being played with you and me every day in how we are living. There is a bar set for how morally responsible you have to be, and if you are not at that standard, you’re less of a person. Of course, the biggest moral responsibilities unfold online.
This is Just an Online Appearance
Lance Armstrong had to disappear quicker than almost any athlete. When I was a kid, the LiveStrong bracelet was the original morality test. Suddenly, the guy got a canceled label for the ages. Maybe he deserved it, but 10-15 years after the fact and I had to Google the facts again to get a refresher. I had completely forgotten.
Basically, he was taking PEDs and winning Tour de France’s like Tom Brady collects Super Bowls. Everyone was disgusted, and he was publicly shamed included being erased from his own LiveStrong foundation. Fast forward a few years, and it came out that literally, every other cyclist was taking PEDs. Just like every baseball player was taking steroids.
Pause... In the grand scheme of time that social media will endure, we’re at the microscopic sliver of the beginning. While everyone is still getting adjusted, what if the first cycle is the morally just internet society? Gen Z is the first generation to really not know the internet without social media. In almost every single instance of our life, there has been a camera present, and you better believe it's going online. We will be more understanding of poor internet choices.
Older generations, Millennials especially, have struggled to connect the dots on the unbelievable societal advancements they have made but still allowing people to grow online instead of shaming. I really believe Gen Z will change this. By the time Gen Z is 70 and old, everyone who was online will have something they regretted. At that point, it will be a question of how many instances.
Much like how I forgot about the Lance Armstrong cancelation, I’ll forget all the other high-profile cases from the 2010s. In the same sense, time + the internet will build a tolerance because the majority of all happenings are negative interactions. The more there are, the more numb people become to them.
With that in mind, I believe moral justice is a cool trend because society isn’t very moral, especially when we interact online. It's always an immediate outrage with no one caring before the week is over. This holier than thou persona we keep demanding is exhausting, and more and more, I get the sense that people are growing tired of it. It’s a hypersensitive phase that won't last.
If moral justice is indeed a cool trend, it will be cyclical. We are in the phase of moral justice being ingrained in society. What happens when something becomes deeply ingrained in society? It becomes uncool. When was the last time you updated your Facebook status that did not involve a photo dump? Facebook quickly became uncool. This is ironic because Facebook is a leading outlet of morally just watchdogs.
Argument for New Normal
Time
We know culture trends are typically cyclical. Although, overall, society is not cyclical. It follows a linear progressive movement. 102 years ago, women could not vote. Now, there are women CEOs. Everyone wants to see change in an instant, but society moves at a generational pace. While it’s cool to be as morally just as possible, it makes sense it’s also cool to be progressive. We have seen this shift in politics.
The United States political system did not begin in parties but factions. These factions would debate the details of the overall common issues. It wasn’t until the Whig party began to form in the north that led to the separation against the Democrats and the creation of the two-party system we know today (with the Whigs dissolving into the Republican party under Lincoln). The two-party system signals there are differences of what is even an issue.
Politics has played a key role in the moral justice shift. Now, it’s a battle of what has worked in the past (Republicans) and a vision of what will work in the future (Democrats). Makes sense why younger generations are leading to the left because they decide what is cool. Overall, the Republican party is going to have to slide left before the Democrats have to budge to the right.
This makes it plausible that moral justice and Democratic ideals will not only continue but increase. If you don’t think, act, talk, or - the dumbest of all - post, like the left model, you’re a bad person.
The ironic thing is, most of it comes from good standards. It's not the substance of moral justice, but the attitude toward it that is off-putting. For example, 200 years ago, you could downright challenge a man to a duel, and no one would bat an eye. Now, people argue the sides of diversity and inclusiveness? We have made exponential ground in terms of moral advancements. It's pretty tough to argue with the trends of history, and they point toward more progression. In other words, more moral justice.
My Opinion
A mentally exhausting thing I do is compare myself to other people. I will catch myself being a little jealous of somebody who seems to be doing better than I am. Maybe worse, I’ll justify someone I perceive as lower than me as not being where they are. We all do it. The problem is, we do it every day. Not only every day but every hour. You used to have to wait until your 10-year high school reunion to compare yourself to high school friends.
Demand for Anxiety management classes increased 4000% on Udemy (an online learning platform) in 2020. Yes, it was a horrible year, but mental health classes were trending upwards either way. In my mind, there is no doubt it relates to our internet comparison addiction. Every time we open our phones, it's a self-esteem check. The moral justice reminders don't seem to be helping either.
So why is mental illness off the charts, but we seem to be holding the moral justice beacon high?
Take a look at this chart showing the downward trend of Christianity (constant with other religions) this century.
The big dip of 2009-2012 for those practicing Christianity seems to correspond with the integration of the smartphone into society. A part of me wants to connect these dots because most humans have the same tendencies. If you're like me, you need some sort of moral stability in your life. If you don't obtain it from religion, you replace it with something else. That something else has to come from society like - I don't know - the internet in your hands every second.
The oxymoron I'm trying to relay here is society's push of moral justness and the decline of religion. Why do I think this is the case? We want to be morally just when it’s at someone else’s expense. Religion requires you to address your own misgivings. The idea of being squeaky clean is what people hate about the church. We can’t fathom doing it that because, well, we’re not a morally just society! Moral justice is checked at the door when one has to look inwards.
I'm of the opinion that moral justice is a cool trend because nobody with a heartbeat (one more time for the people in the back) is morally just. I'm too skeptical of ulterior motives that people hide behind. Most of all, the internet will swallow up everybody that hastily hits send at one point or another. We're just getting started with it.
Conclusion
The stigma around Texas is everything that comes to mind when thinking about the south. Austin doesn’t follow that mold. I kept saying it felt like I was not in Texas. The truth is, almost every major city in the south is progressive. You would have to of been crazy to have imagined that 50 years ago.
It honestly feels weird writing this post… Like a, “How dare society constantly look for what is right!” Don't get me wrong, moral justice is a good thing; standing up for what's right is a good thing; justice for all is a good thing; change is a good thing.
Where it turns wrong is when we create a mold. I didn’t use “cancel culture” in this post because it has taken on a life of its own. It’s now just a political schism. We birthed cancel culture on the account of you can’t be taken seriously in a moral society if you don’t have a squeaky clean record.
In turn, I’m not writing this out of jest or hate (actually took me about 2 weeks to get this thought together). This is a hope to allow future generations to grow. The rules of society should not be one mess up ruins your life. I remember when I first began to care about how I was perceived online. I remember the constant self-assurance that I was up to par. It's not easy, and the sad thing is, everyone who points the finger knows this, too.
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