I’ve finally arrived at the point where the younger generation seems ludicrous to me; youngsters left and right are sporting disorders like fast fashion casual wear: sensory overload disorder, social anxiety disorder, aggressive-denial disorder, even PTSD because of a being called a name in the third grade by the class bully, and expecting the world to bow to their sensitivities. (And I’m not even going to mention all the popular allergies. . . as I give them a dismissive little shake of my old lady head.)
On one hand, I’m intrigued by how far the brain sciences have come in understanding why some of us are the way we are. Did you know there is a gene for shyness? However, by using genes to dismiss. . ahem, I mean explain our actions and thoughts, are we also suggesting that “well-adjusted” is a dirty word? That to expect a person to mature and “adapt” to society in particular ways is a prejudice of some sort? Adjustment is an action, not an offensive label.
True Stories: Today’s young adults have meltdowns in Disney World bathroom stalls because Cinderella’s castle is overwhelming. Or grad students walk out of their law school classrooms because the professor’s use of the word “violate” in a lecture (as in violate the law) triggers a deep-unreachable memory. Of what, they cannot say, but it must be bad, and fleeing is their only option.
Bill Maher and Charles Blow’s argument a few weeks ago over the phrase “Social Justice Warrior” illustrates the hallmark of this millennial cohort. The New York Times writer did not like how Bill Maher and Brett Easton Ellis were making fun of the folks huddling under that SJW title. And Blow was right. There are people who devote their whole lives to fighting the real battle for social justice and do not deserve ridicule. But Maher was also right; there are youngsters—whom Maher snidely labels social justice warriors—who are emotionally and morally assaulting anyone who has an opinion that is not absolutely undeniably pro ANYthing of color or gender neutrality or anti-cultural appropriation. Don’t like a rap song? Racist! Dislike a woman’s outfit? Sexist fucking pig! Eat at Taco Bell? Thief!
I agree with Blow: those false “advocates” should not be called SJWs. They give true justice fighters a bad name and of course, feed into my horror of the younger generation. Maher should call them Social Justice Whorers, not just frangible snowflakes. They barter in the currency of justice, fancying themselves heroes while setting rigid, illogical boundaries and expectations based on their bottomless sensitivities.
Overall, the media seems rampant with young people who see themselves and others as easily broken. And of course, with that comes their expectation that no one should require anything from them because they are so tender: Please, Treat me with kid gloves at all times. They expect they shouldn’t have to work unless the job is fulfilling, nor study and prepare for a career that will actually support them, nor face something loud, angry, difficult. Anyone challenging their path or their belief systems is a monster.
They could only have developed this way during this particular time and place, when obstacles like simply surviving the winter and fitting into a life-sustaining community are no longer necessary issues. Though I would not suggest that modernity is perfect, today’s young adults enjoy a free and secure life style that all previous Americans did not. . .without realizing so.
In fact, they seem to have twisted the defining features of previous generations into a modern, yet sick form of uber-self-involved, “justice” seekers.
I once gave a gift of a squirt-camera to my young niece for her birthday. She actually wanted a squirt gun, giggling gleefully when such stray toys appeared at the pool; being sensitive to anti-weapon idealogy, I thought I was pretty genius for finding the camera. But still, I was openly “shamed” by a complete stranger for my “pro-bullying” choice. Her words and facial expressions suggested my niece had unwrapped a Bazooka. Asking her, “Wouldn’t it be more fun to let my niece use it, help her develop a sense of humor and boundaries, and teach her to never use the toy in hostility than to ban it?” simply elicited a nasty, lippy raspberry, a roll of the eyes and tut-tut of her chin. So, No. . .social justice whorers have no sense.
Uggh. I think, “Who are these idiot kids? Where are their brains?”
My parents’ generation—“hippies” of the 60s—were truly difficult for their parents to relate to, with their weird rebellion and funky fashion sense. Thus, the word generation gap was born. But I don’t think the rift I am suffering with youngsters today is simply a gap in generational ideology.
The true justice warriors of the 60s were actively fighting prevailing, but illegalized Jim Crow codes; a draft that was sending people to their deaths based on a birthday lottery; draconian traditions that kept women in “their place” during a time that, in some states, required a woman be married to receive birth control and only then once her husband allowed it; They protested schools that refused to let anyone of color attend, blocked water fountains that quenched the thirst of only whites, and manned fair voting registration centers at the risks of their lives. Sure, they might have seemed fragile to their parents for these warriors were also the first to really glom onto self-help books and deep psyho-analysis, but they also hatched the idea that the world could be changed for the better rather than just accepted. Afterall, they were the first to return to organic farming and warn of Global Warming.
My generation—The Me generation (AKA as Generation X)—reacted to the Vietnam war, the gas shortage, the high divorce rates of the hippy generation, by retreating into ourselves, keeping our weaknesses a secret, pretending the world was to be bought, and doing a lot of cocaine in the meantime. Not me per se. . .We worked not just for the family’s financial advancement, but for the accolades and the luxuries of success, only rising up when the moment truly required it. Strategically, however, we protested the Berlin wall, the Iran-Contra dealings, while also advocating for victims of the AIDs epidemic. I was on one of the hundreds of buses, moving thousands of pro-choice people to DC that campaigned against Reagan and then Bush-era infractions to Roe vs. Wade, the last time the choice laws were in true danger of disappearing; meanwhile, one of my closest friends was recruited by the CIA and the FBI. We were diverse, yet accepting. . .and also stronger because of the Hippies.
My children’s generation however, seem to have reacted to forty years of their ancestors’ examples by unleashing themselves to the extreme: they have adopted the psychological digging of the 60s, trying to explain, if not downright excuse their inability to adapt to life on life’s terms. . .They apply social advocacy to the point where judgment of any kind—social or logical— is no longer allowed. . .And they are harnessing, and then twisting the Me-generation of the 80s into a “What I feel must be the truth” sort of Me-ism.
I could list examples upon example of why this is illogical. But instead, here’s a huge generalization: They lack adaptable skills and real world thinking.
This generation of kids is struggling in Med school surgical classes because they have not grown up using their hands (like in high school wood shop, or sewing, or model building, or gardening class. . .See, they prefer computer classes and games, not skilled labor pastimes or work). Parsing out illustrative humor from actual verbal assault is a lost concept among this group (ask Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld why they won’t perform on college campuses). Taking pictures of food is more important to them than cooking or growing it; in fact, a survey showed that a majority of those young persons questioned have ordered a meal they would not eat just because it would look good on Instagram. They seem to think it is okay to violently scream in Chelsea Clinton’s face because they believe her “rhetoric caused” 49 deaths in a Mosque. How exactly Clinton’s very basic, and unrelated condemnation of anti-Semitism could be misconstrued as “hate speech” against Muslims that could lead to a single person firing an assault weapon in a Mosque simply defies logic. Scarily so.
And it doesn’t end there. . .They learn to drive at much later ages and seem to do so not because carpooling makes sense, but because, “It’s scary, Ma!” These kids expect their teachers, even college professors, to take all work late, and give top marks to subpar work. Plus, they skip school at higher rates not to go have some goofy, youthful fun, but because they feel anxious and need to hide at home in their Jammie bottoms. And don’t give me stats about school shootings. Even with those traumatizing events—which by the way what do you think the Boomtown Rat’s I Don’t Like Mondays of my parents’ generation is about—kids still suffer far less violence in their schools than they do in their own homes and neighborhoods, yet today’s youngsters beg to stay home. . . anything to be more of a fear-based victim.
They find victimhood to champion everywhere they look, no matter what they are seeing.
Being called a girl or a boy from birth seems a violation of their human rights. They explode over anyone who thinks Black Panther isn’t an Oscar worthy film. (I liked it, I don’t know. . .and truthfully, Denzel Washington should have won years ago over Daniel Day Lewis. . .that loss felt racist. . .but the value of a movie is subjective and in the Oscar battle of Washington versus Lewis, the choice was probably more about the politics of how DDL only appears in “art” films vs. Washington skating from drama to block buster. Hollywood has always been snobbish about blockbusters and the folks who act in them. Nominating Black Panther was their attempt to pretend they aren’t.) Either way, you better think Black Panther was the best movie ever. . .you old, racist fart, you!
I feel as if members of this younger generation have the heart behind the Hippie movement, but not their causes, and lack the brains of the X-ers. Like they are the hammer and everything is a nail in a time when there are far fewer nails than ever.
This generation does not know what they do not know, yet they are not interested in learning what that might be before they go on the attack or a bender. If only they could find a proper injustice to hammer away on, like hunger or privacy rights or one percent greed. Meanwhile, they are ruled by their emotions, and this difference is a rift, cut by the cleaver of time. To me, they are several steps closer to living the lives of H.G. Wells’s Eloi, soft, fragile, weak, but without the elegance.
Sometimes I worry that life and parenting has changed so much in the last 20 years, with intrusive technology, organized activities, processed foods, transience, etc., that maybe these young adults aren’t just immature and nutty, but actually, fundamentally brain-mutated. In the same way their fingers do not perform well for med school’s practice surgeries as compared to their fathers’ and mothers’ hands, maybe their brains don’t measure up.
Either way, as much as I love my children and their friends, and though I know they along with countless other Millennials do not deserve my rant, I am too old to “get” the ones who do. And definitely too old to help them, and I never thought I would feel this way. Is this rejection and horror simply a Generation Gap or something more sinister?
Steering with My Elbows 