Message to subscribers.
Hi friends. You may have noticed I’ve been off my posting game the last couple of months (and just when I was starting to get into a groove). I’m posting the reason here with a pledge to be back on track in April.
A few months ago it was discovered that Substack is platforming writers with extreme views that violate its mission to uplift “good-faith discourse” in “creating an internet that celebrates and supports humanity.” Immediately the issues of free speech and censorship came to my mind - what was the right thing to think, to feel? (Because I can’t help myself, an outstanding movie that hinges on issues of censorship is A Royal Affair, with Alicia Vikander and Mads Mikkelsen; watch it immediately).
My fundamental overwhelming reaction was that yet another site had been tainted by the wave of backlash to civil rights that’s been mounting pretty much since civil rights became federally protected. Now I was posting my hard work in the same zone as men who rabidly defend the dominance they see slipping away, emboldened by the increasing number of hysterical voices raised, without which I know they would be too cowardly to speak. (“There is safety in numbers, my dear.”) How long before this was just another YouTube or Twitter crawling with an irreversible infestation?
One of my good friends - the same one who encouraged me to sign up for Substack and share my thoughts - left the platform earlier this month in protest, as I know others have. Amidst several plot points in my personal life, I felt stuck in indecision: how can I continue posting here without condoning the extremists?
After enough time, I am resolved to stay my course. In reality, every platform is tainted. I can exit the world completely, or I can stay and contribute a rational, thinking voice to the pandemonium. Carl Jung believed that changing the world started with the individual; it was not through conversion of groups but rather each person coming to know themselves and understand their true Self. What we need is for people to stay in place, not leave and allow spaces to be taken over. We need to be everywhere that we want to be, and we need to be okay with breathing the same air as those who speak against us.
I’m sure Substack knows that to reactionarily begin blocking the extremist accounts is a slippery slope, and I respect logical decision-making over emotional satiation; I’m not sure if this note about free speech and a free press that they’ve published was already up before this commotion, but it succinctly states, “We take a hands-off approach to content moderation and instead support community moderation, where publishers set their own terms of engagement for their community, and readers choose which communities suit them.”
I hold out hope that humanity still has an evolutionary leap of consciousness left, that we will figure out that concepts like hate and evil and otherness are just boogeymen inside our own head. I hold out hope that the progress that’s been made in my lifetime to make right the wrongs of the past is rooted enough that it can’t be destroyed by angry podcasters with no job. And in the meantime I’ll keep living as though one day things really will change for good, for good.
Look for my next newsletter, on the exquisite Spanish horror film Veronica, coming soon in April. I will also sprinkle in a couple of bonus posts over the next few months to play catch up and pay penance. See you soon!