Abstract

When it comes to cancel culture, some love it and some hate it.  Like much in this nation, it is a subject that divides most people.  At root, cancel culture is about establishing new social norms through ostracism.  When a person fails to live according to the standards of political correctness, that person is in danger of being canceled, which can be anything from relentless online trolling via social media to being fired and blacklisted from whatever industry in which one works.  Essentially, it is not a new phenomenon.  Hawthorne wrote about it in The Scarlet Letter:  Hester Prynne was cancelled and ostracized from her community for violating norms regarding adultery.  Today’s Puritanical culture of political correctness has different standards for men and women, blacks and whites, and insists on those differences as a form of making reparations for perceived gender and racial wrongs committed by an immoral patriarchy.  Of course, not everyone agrees with that viewpoint, which is why the subject of cancel culture is so contentious.  This paper will provide a sample of topics and titles regarding cancel culture.  It will also provide an outline and sample essay on the subject of cancel culture to show how this issue can be discussed.

Essay Topics

1.  Does cancel culture help or harm society?

2.  Is cancel culture unjustly expecting perfection from everyone?

3.  Does punishing people for past mistakes really help to promote the common good?

4.  Cancel culture is a Communist tactic to enforce social rules and instill totalitarianism.

Essay Titles

1.  Why It is Time to Cancel the Cancel Culture

2.  Falsely Accused of Harassment, Yet Cancel Culture Took His Job Anyway

3.  Rush to Judgment:  How Cancel Culture Has Undermined the Principle of Innocent Until Proven Guilty

4.  Cancel Culture is Just Another Name for Social Media Mob Rule in a Time of Political Correctness

Essay Outline

I. Introduction

a. What is Cancel Culture?

b. How it affects the world 

II. Background

a. Manifestations of cancel culture

b. How it operates

III. Comedy

a. Joking is a cathartic way to help people deal with differences

b. Cancel culture sees all offensive joking as bullying and impolitic

c. Not allowed to make offensive jokes

d. Comedians have to be PC for fear of being cancelled

IV. Karens

a. Karens demand conformity

b. They lecture at will

c. They do not allow anyone to have any fun that they deem irresponsible

d. Everyone becomes a Karen in the PC cancel culture

V. Puritanism

a. Cancel culture is a form of Puritanism

b. No one is allowed to have any faults or make mistakes

c. Cancel culture forgives no one

d. It is malicious and undermines the spirit of Christian charity that fosters true community

VI. Conclusion

a. Cancel culture is a cancer on society

b. Cancel culture should be canceled

Introduction

Cancel culture is the idea that anyone who offends the politically correct sentiments of the Left will be canceled, i.e., tarnished on social media, boycotted by Leftist consumers, or piled upon by activists until the company that employs him feels enough pressure to terminate his employment.  Canceling a person for holding offensive beliefs is something the Left takes pride in doing.  They see it as part of their mission of militancy to establish new norms of thinking and behavior in society.  The problem is that not everyone agrees with the worldview of the Left, so it creates tension in society.  Those on the Right or of a Libertarian mindset reject the Left as “woke,” a term that is meant to belittle the Left’s activism.  Even beyond this contention is the fear that the cancel culture has created in society:  people feel more inclined to follow the norms of political correctness for fear of being canceled by the cancel culture mob.  This creates obvious effects in society.

Essay Hook

Cancel culture is responsible for establishing a pattern of new cognitive and behavioral norms in society that are likely to transform all subsequent generations of Americans into good little Party-line following acolytes of Big Brother. 

Thesis Statement

Cancel culture has killed comedy, turned everyone into a Karen, and...…the 10 Commandments of Political Correctness.

Puritanism Run Amok

At root, cancel culture is nothing more than Puritanism rearing its head all over again. The best depiction of Puritanism in American literature can be found in Nathanael Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.  This is a story about a woman named Hester Prynne who becomes pregnant and has a child—all while her husband is away from the colony.  Obviously she has committed adultery but she will not say with whom she has committed this sin.  The Puritans of the colony, suffice to say, cannot countenance this apparent slap in the face to their most-refined and august sensibilities—so they effectively cancel her.  She has to live on the outskirts of the colony like an isolated, fringe cast-off, and when she does step foot in public she has to sport a giant letter “A” for Adultery, which signifies her sin—that way everyone in the colony knows to avoid her.  It is a horrifying portrait of how self-righteous and cruel the “woke” mob can be.  Today, we are seeing this same cruelty emerge all over again.

Conclusion

Cancel culture is very much a plague on society:  whereas society is meant to be a place where people can live and work together without fear of isolation or reprisal for “wrong-think,” it has become a place where everyone lives in fear of saying the wrong thing because it could mean being stripped of the right to work, the right to live, the right to speak, and the right to be part of the community.  Instead of canceling everyone for past sins or for comments that go against the PC doctrines, more charity and humility could stand to be seen.  It is only through charity and humility that real brotherhood can emerge.  The kind of uncharitable enforcement that cancel culture demonstrates is deadly to all society.