From Purity to Progress

A specter is haunting the left—the specter of cancellation. Naturally, hand-wringing and thinkpieces abound—is Gen Z a generation of puriteens? Is America too divided? Why can’t we just talk to each other anymore? If you’re anything like me, you felt your blood pressure kick up with every oversimplified question. I balk at the oft-repeated rhetoric that “both sides are bad,” or the notion that “extreme beliefs” are equally harmful across the political spectrum, as if the solution to the problem of American polarization is that everyone just needs to chill out. I am no stranger to the hot defensiveness that bubbles in my chest when well-meaning people string out such claims. I have drafted many a mental op-ed, looped around retorts about how the “radical left” has no material sway in American politics and how obviously far-right rhetoric is the one posing a real threat to lives and democracies and how centrism is not the most moral position and how passivity is not the answer and and and! 

I still believe those things are true, but that’s not the article I’m writing today. Rather, I want to talk about a problem with many names—cancel culture, wokeism, and identity politics among them. Cultural critic P. E. Moskowitz labels it secular puritanism, “a quasi-religion in which your adherence to rules and norms endows you with moral authority over others, a religion in which any misstep from these rules and norms is viciously punished.” I want to talk about the unique ways that this quasi-religion has taken root right here in Provo, among the left-leaning and Mormon-adjacent.

I will default to calling it secular puritanism, because unlike the term “cancel culture,” Moskowitz’s phrase has not been co-opted by conservative vitriol. Simply put, secular puritanism is a mode in which adherents validate their perception of their own moral purity by scrupulously policing the perceived moral purity of others. It’s the disease that makes us disregard the whole of a person off the merit of one off-base remark, or execrate people in difficult situations if they make choices we would’ve done differently. 

Widely, it’s become the default modus operandi of white left-leaning people, despite being borne of such conservative instinct. A pattern of callouts and cancelation allows white liberals and leftists a simple way to evade their white guilt and downplay the ways they are complicit in and benefit from systems of oppression. Instead of being forced to confront uncomfortable realities, we are able to race to the margins, desperate to prove our own innocence by publicly denouncing the sins of others. Boycotting a classic novel by a dead author or refusing to speak to your Trump-supporting relatives at Thanksgiving is an easy way to remain pure and undefiled before yourself. 

This might start to sound familiar—in post-Mormon spaces, I find that some leftists leave behind a purity-obsessed and insular culture only to join another. We find it easy to condemn Mormonism for encouraging members to avoid contact with people who do not “share the same standards,” a suggestion often used to cast unfair judgment on others. However, are we not replicating this same line of thinking when we refuse to interact with people who do not meet our exacting and rigid standards of moral and political purity, or lord our moral authority over those we perceive to be less virtuous? It’s a common perversion of Christianity to point out the sins of others in order to prove one’s own righteousness. We might use different language in our left-leaning circles, but the sentiment is the same—I am only good if others are bad. And if I’m not good, my self-perception crumbles.

So why do we do this? We are well-intentioned, informed people trying to do good things. Secular puritanism is insidious because it fulfills this impulse—it provides an illusion of productivity and progress. In a society that often feels as though it is careening toward a fiery demise, we operate under the slow machine of late-stage capitalism, underrepresented politically and constantly let down by the systems meant to serve us. Many of us attend a university that spurns its marginalized students. Under such circumstances, it makes complete sense that we would grasp for control and authority anywhere we can get it. Canceling and call-outs feel more satisfying and productive than the slow, messy work of political change and grassroots organizing, work that involves grappling with complexity and working in relationship with people who are often selfish, upsetting, even triggering. We all want to feel like we are doing something to push the work that we care about forward. We are primed by a punitive, capitalist, hyper-individualized culture (or perhaps by the vestiges of a religious upbringing) to go about this in ways that involve validating our own purity out of fear that, upon closer inspection, we will fail to meet our own standards. 

Marx’s comparison of religion to opium was not as scornful as many perceive, but he did believe that, despite providing real and needed comfort, religious conviction could blind people to their material reality and the work needed to improve it. He wrote that “religious suffering is at the same time an expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering,” and I would argue that secular puritanism and religion are rather interchangeable here. We cling to secular puritanism because it gives us control in a world in which we have very little, but the black-and-white politics of such a worldview ultimately have little bearing on our material reality. Only when we reject the “illusory happiness” brought about by secular puritanism’s illusory control and authority will we be able to make actual progress within the causes we care about.

The same capitalist structures that keep us atomized and isolated are what keep us on the defensive, unable to connect with other people with whom we hold at arm’s length, on edge about what they might say. Walking on eggshells makes us insular, makes us jumpy, makes us small. Even as I write this, I feel the need to couch my words in disclaimer, to build up shields against takedowns I can already hear clamoring in my mind. Last time I published, I dreamt that night that I was reading a scathing, surgical, line-by-line critique of my essay.

I do want to acknowledge that very often, especially in our own community, the instinct to turn inward comes as a result of very real harm that so many have experienced at the hands of people and systems who are ignorant, prejudiced, or outright cruel. I am not advocating for people who have been hurt to place themselves back in harm’s way. I intend only to suggest that, against the allure of recreating punitive systems in the name of constructed purity, we assess ourselves as individuals and find ways to move through the world in more tender, expansive, and community-minded ways—whatever that may look like for you.

So what is the solution? Moskowitz put it best: “We must give up the illusions of moral purity in favor of mutual understanding. We must give up on self-denialism, we must admit the reality of the world as a messy place, one in which offense, complexity, diverging interests and ideas are inherent. Only by refusing to figure ourselves moral authorities over others’ ideas and lives, and refusing to live in denial of our own desires, can we make actual, material progress.” 

More than anything, I guess I hope this can be a catalyst for us to each take a firm, kind look at ourselves, and give ourselves spaces to wonder—where can I bear to be more tender? What reaction feels expansive? How do I recognize shared humanity, even when it’s painful? There is no simple solution, because this is not a simple problem. Secular puritanism drains the world of its nuance and complexity to create an easily digestible network of black and white situations and people. The antidote is to reintroduce that lost complexity, to allow lines to blur, to live in a world a bit grayer and murkier than the one we might prefer to inhabit. While that may be scary, I think it will be infinitely more beautiful. And now that we don’t have to be perfect, I hope we can be good.