This is not something that I usually talk about on here, as I am largely focused on criminal justice related issues, but something that is tangent to criminal justice in many ways — cancel culture.

Cancel culture has become all too prominent in today’s day and age. While it initially served the purpose of holding people accountable, it is now counterproductive and only deals out punishments that are too harsh and unnecessarily hasty.

It does not leave room for individual opinion, relying on the masses for support to further encourage the “cancelling” of the subject at hand. It fosters a herd mentality that discourages perspective, one of the most dangerous conflicts in today’s society.

In my high school classes and even in a much broader context, literacy and critical thinking skills seem to be drastically plummeting due to what I feel is a lack of passion. This lack of passion can be traced back to the overwhelming force of cancel culture — by condemning individual thought, cancel culture stops teens from creating their own opinions, their own lines of reasoning, and ultimately, their own passions.

It leads students to be indecisive and indifferent to issues around them, an attribute that is detrimental to any effort towards reform. Cancel culture allows students to hide inside of a group rather than take accountability for their thoughts, therefore allowing students to also say that certain issues do not pertain to them as an individual, and do not require them to take a stance.

This ignorance is what creates passionless, unambitious teenagers who are too afraid to take a stand and make an opinion for themselves. In an age of common opinion, individual reasoning has become irrelevant.

Participating in a serious conversation about an issue is impossible as some opinions are deemed acceptable while others are deemed criminal. However, if we cannot entertain thoughts from both sides of the spectrum, are we truly assessing all angles of an issue?

Having passion is what drives reform — if nobody cares about an issue, nobody will provoke change. Because teens are not expected to form their own thoughts nowadays, there is a decline in organic passion which contributes to a decline in decision making.

Decisions on where to stand on certain issues, decisions on how to approach conflict, decisions on whether or not an issue is nuanced or simply black and white — decisions that force topics to be considered with varying ideologies.

An emotionless classroom, a passionless group, and an indifferent society are the greatest inhibitors to social change as they push for complacency rather than progression.

In regards to criminal justice, many of today’s teens would be too afraid to say that prisoners are human too; saying that someone who has committed wrongdoings can still deserve fair treatment is controversial, and often an unspoken topic.

Our generation is becoming increasingly scared of serious issues and we are limiting our abilities to introduce new solutions as a result.

It is not simply a matter of whether an issue effects you, personally, or whether the whole world thinks one thing while you think another; the ability to be assertive is severely lacking and must be prioritized, as being self-reliant in your thinking is the first step to sparking change.