"No matter what they shout, no echo comes back" is the blow of cancel culture to the freedom of expression

"Cancel culture" refers to the culture of canceling people - mainly celebrities - which, although it has always been a feature of society, is now considered a thriving phenomenon through social networks. The mob mentality unites around a common goal and works vindictively, against someone who said or acted differently from what the majority indicated as acceptable, and thus, it was perceived as an offense. In fact, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, it is considered a way of behaving towards an individual or a group with the usual goal of rejection.

Social media has allowed us to impose responsibilities and punishments without having a seat in the courts, but instead from the armchair of our home. We define what is right and wrong, and we judge constantly. We create an opinion, an idea, an institution and we support it in solidarity, one promotes the other until another one is found who will support the opposite.

I am often confronted with two main questions when it comes to cancel culture; "Who has given us the power to take away the value of honor from people and whether we use this power in a punitive way or to intimidate others?"

First of all, I believe that before we succumb to "cancel culture", in the first place, we must be able to guarantee the absolute correctness of our point of view and then the inability of the person we cancel to change, to improve, to mature. Neither of these two conditions practically exists. After all, it is not uncommon for us to firmly argue that we were right beyond the shadow of the doubt until proven otherwise, or to remove people who, in practice, then proved to us their change.
A change that we can find in ourselves over the years, by our friction with new experiences, different people, by the realization of our mistakes and repentance. Even if the core remained stable, there were some elements that were added and others that we gave up for our self-improvement. How, then, can we exclude from someone else the change of character that we find in ourselves?

Then I realize that we're not claiming this power, we're not gaining it, we're probably obtaining it automatically by creating a social media account, either anonymously or theoretically with real facts, but essentially faceless. This "distanced participation" in cancellation, gives us unlimited power to disapprove, to cuss, to humiliate the other. "Persona non grata" according to Italians, as our life does not change at all. We do not perceive the other as a whole, we completely forget what he has achieved, one moment is enough to deny the status of a long-time admirer. What always remains is "the one" individual characteristic, his mistake. "Actor means light", but when the curtain falls, the light of the stage goes out, and for some maybe even the soul, what "seems to be" does not always correspond to the "be", what if we have somehow connected fame with perfection. Oscar Wilde said that "if you know you do not know much, you are smarter than most people" so as "omniscient" how much smarter are we than the one we cancel?

In addition to the cancellation of public figures, "cancel culture" also appears within the family. It seems that an ideological division, for example, the adoption of a different political belief or conversion, is enough for selfishness to transcend love and family ties and to cancel one of our people from our lives.

Therefore, we conclude that cancel culture works intimidatingly, as if we wanted to punish the other we would talk about the culture of "compassion". The definition of compassion contains the awareness of the pain that someone else feels or the suffering that afflicts someone else in combination with the desire to relieve him of them, to suffer at his side. Instead of canceling people, we can sympathize with them, and plant the fruits of change. No one can guarantee that they will prosper as no one can define with absolute certainty what is right and what is wrong. Everyone has the right to practice "cancel culture", but before we judge we must be judged because, as we cancel, we can be canceled as well.