Alex Tsakiris, Four Questions About the Future of Skeptiko |414|

Unless you need the training, the trick is to get into an elite college, and then drop out after a year spent making connections. Seems you get most of the shine from getting in.

Does that apply to Graduate school? Because going to an elite university for graduate school was the biggest mistake of my life. I am not from an elite family and I would have been much better off going to a state school than worrying about how to get a group of elite idiots to accept me. When you have to convince a committee you know what you are doing in an oral exam to get your degree, your success depends more on fitting in socially than it does on intellectual talent.

I don't know if this translates into good advice for anyone today, but personally I wish I had gone to state schools for college and graduate school. I did get my start in my career through a connection, but the connection was not one I made through school.

Getting further off topic ... I think it might have been a mistake for me to accept advanced placement credit in college for ap courses I took in high school. As a freshman in college I was thrown in with sophomores in math and science and I had to work a lot harder while trying to adjust to college life. Taking the tough courses in high school is fine but they didn't really prepare me to skip freshman courses in college (at least at the university I went to). As a result I decided to major in a field that I liked but where I had the most natural talent rather than the field that interested me most - I can't really say if that was a bad thing or a good thing - in a way it could have been good.

(I get a headache trying to figure out if I chose the right path through life - I had a full scholarship for a CPA/MBA program in my local area when I graduated high school which I never even considered accepting at the time - and only later in life realized the value of- I retired at a relatively young age and at this point in my life I have devoted more years to investing than science or engineering.)
 
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Unless you need the training, the trick is to get into an elite college, and then drop out after a year spent making connections. Seems you get most of the shine from getting in.

Course to get into an elite college is rough now. You have to be quite intelligent and driven, a perfect conformist. I hope such conformity doesn't diminish creativity but I suspect it does narrow your vision a bit.

Credentialism seems to have run amok as folks try erect (often needless) barriers to entry and secure some kind of income security. We're in a scarcity mindset right now.
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Well, it all depends on what you are looking for. As for kids today... I'd suggest working for the money unless they have some kind of invention of their own. But, if you want the $$ mostly you will waste your time in college now. I can use my own children as example (cause I like to brag too). My 24 yr.old son is making over 6 figures & is scouted by headhunters constantly. Why? He's not always "charming" in fact he's likely to tell you where to hang your hat if you annoy him. The reason is he has a work ethic. He went to work with his dad since he was 6 (on weekends). I taught him early how to walk up to a stranger at a gathering & extend his hand & say "hello, I don't believe we've met I'm _____". He quickly will help others.

By 9 years old I had him understanding bank accounts & his own credit card (this is key/how to handle money). We showed him how to make money. He got computers from Good Will fixed them & resold them. He had a lawn business, and at school (LOL) opened his locker into some kind of a store (yes, the school called) I understand he changed locker positions and they carried on (he hired some other 5th graders on commission). He & his sister would charged neighbors $45. to paint their mail boxes (nobody can refuse a cute kid with a wagon & a can of paint). Baby sitting was stupid I warned them (that's how other parents told their kids how to make $$$).

Once he started working for someone, he upped it all the time. More sales, thought outside the box. Told off his college professors who, didn't understand "brick & mortar" stores were going the way of the dinosaurs.

So now what? Well, I told him that I saw him in his own private jet soon. So, he got the expense reports for the cost of some of the executives air flight cost. um hum... pretty high. He'll be scouting around for that jet within a year (he's busy building his first house from the ground up right now). It wasn't "college" that got him AND many of his superiors (who are in their 30's) into these positions. It is both their own expectations & how they carry themselves. Like they are in charge. It was NOT college.

Down side? 40 & 50 yr. old men hate when a 24 yr. old is right all the time.

Never take "no" for the final answer.
 
Finders keepers!

The $2K lost me at the starting gate. I'd pay that if I knew it worked, but absent that it just broke the mood, spoiled the illusion. Ease me into it a little!
there are a bunch of DIY versions the course out there from people who are familiar with it. to his credit, jeffrey seems to have done nothing to stop this.
 
Does that apply to Graduate school? Because going to an elite university for graduate school was the biggest mistake of my life. I am not from an elite family and I would have been much better off going to a state school than worrying about how to get a group of elite idiots to accept me. When you have to convince a committee you know what you are doing in an oral exam to get your degree, your success depends more on fitting in socially than it does on intellectual talent.

I don't know if this translates into good advice for anyone today, but personally I wish I had gone to state schools for college and graduate school. I did get my start in my career through a connection, but the connection was not one I made through school.

Getting further off topic ... I think it might have been a mistake for me to accept advanced placement credit in college for ap courses I took in high school. As a freshman in college I was thrown in with a bunch of sophomores and I had to work a lot harder while trying to adjust to college life. Taking the togh courses in high school is fine but they didn't really prepare me to skip freshman courses in college (at least at the university I went to). As a result I decided to major in a field that I liked but where I had the most natural talent rather than the field that interested me most - I can't really say if that was a bad thing or a good thing - in a way it could have been good.

(I get a headache trying to figure out if I chose the right path through life - I had a full scholarship for a CPA/MBA program in my local area when I graduated high school which I never even considered accepting at the time - and only later in life realized the value of- I retired early and at this point in my life I have devoted more years to investing than science or engineering.)
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You nailed it Jim. Wish I could have told you the CPA would be the way to go. Because I quickly figured out, they know what everyone makes, how the company is doing & when to strike. It's a good position in a good office w/a course path set ahead of you. But hey, I'm a forensic accountant by trade so... I can see the up sides.

It is a very "safe" course to charter.
 
This situation would be absolutely Hellish to look forward to for an old man, providentially at last solitary, who has come to realize the treasured value of, "Serenity Now."
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LOL, the idea only gets worse for an "old woman"! WTH would I do with 72 virgins?! HEY! Maybe THAT was the whole idea! They sold them this nutty idea! They bought it and NOW (dom, dom, dom) HELL FIRE! 72 virgins complaining about their shoes~ when's dinner, I'm tired, I don't like the show, I want some tea, I don't like tea, I'm TIRED, somebody hold this, where's my new diamond watch????! My feet hurt, my back itches, who picked these colors out?
 
Getting further off topic ... I think it might have been a mistake for me to accept advanced placement credit in college for ap courses I took in high school. As a freshman in college I was thrown in with sophomores in math and science and I had to work a lot harder while trying to adjust to college life.

Similar experience Jim. At age 17, I found myself suddenly in the center of a freezing and gloomy big city, taking 21 semester hours in calculus and Chemistry II, English II, Physics III, the very first semester - at an elite school. I made B's and C's for the first time, and was devastated - with my advisor telling me that I should "study and be in class 1 hour each day for each hour of classload"... (*21 hours). They were so full of shit - the instructors were arrogant, lacked any skill in teaching, would show up with pillow-head, obviously just having gotten up, the coursework turned out to be career-useless, and the money was a complete waste. It was nothing but baby-sitting 18 - 22 year olds until the academics could identify and peel off academic careerist employees from the mix. Those who would group-think, follow a rubric, procedure and comply. All of us have been mired in a prolonged struggle with such cocooned idiots for centuries now.

As Nassim Taleb says “Never hire an A student unless it is to take exams.”

What I eventually figured out was that 'I' was the valuable product, and not them. The university garnered its reputation off of the quality of student they passed through their bowels and not the inverse. I have several of these framed pretty-looking documents hanging on my professional wall, yet everything I apply in my career I have had to discover, develop and master, myself. The university gets subjective credit for the success of myriad alums just like me, yet in reality had very little to do with it.
 
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What I eventually figured out was that 'I' was the valuable product, and not them. The university garnered its reputation off of the quality of student they passed through their bowels and not the inverse.

When we eliminate standardized intelligence and aptitude testing, in favor of 'grades only' college entrance - no longer sending our best and brightest to college, but rather some politcally correct facsimile thereof, and double the costs of college every 6 years (because of free college and scholarship induced inflation) - the poetic justice will be, that universities will cease to be able to maintain this charade (no value provision, as the highest cost node in a value chain) much longer. The market will adjust with prejudice. There is no free lunch, and they will be called on their masquerade.
 
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LOL, the idea only gets worse for an "old woman"! WTH would I do with 72 virgins?! HEY! Maybe THAT was the whole idea! They sold them this nutty idea! They bought it and NOW (dom, dom, dom) HELL FIRE! 72 virgins complaining about their shoes~ when's dinner, I'm tired, I don't like the show, I want some tea, I don't like tea, I'm TIRED, somebody hold this, where's my new diamond watch????! My feet hurt, my back itches, who picked these colors out?
Makes me think of that old joke by Rodney Dangerfield, "...take my wife... Somebody please take my wife." (or in this instance, "wives".
 
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Oh please. Who gets into all this nonsense (Satan & Satanist nonsense)? People (kids mainly or immature people) who just want to do the opposite of their parents or authority figures. You can tell by the words they use. If it was an original idea they wouldn't be using the opposite wording. I've been around these people (when I was younger of course) because I found them amusing to watch for a bit. Tomb stones as table tops, upside down crosses all forms of nonsense. Not an original idea among them all. It's all about "let me get some attention".

Not to make this political, but when I saw the Podesta group & those idiot Clinton's all into "spirit dinners" oh man, that told me a LOT. Attention seeking weirdos who haven't had an original thought in their lives. Not to mention it was sick to watch old people act like 16 year olds that want to break away from mommy & daddy. "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! I'm a "fringe" person. (as if).
They do want attention, but the ones you described are not what I am talking about.
 
When we eliminate standardized intelligence and aptitude testing, in favor of 'grades only' college entrance - no longer sending our best and brightest to college, but rather some politcally correct facsimile thereof, and double the costs of college every 6 years (because of free college and scholarship induced inflation) - the poetic justice will be, that universities will cease to be able to maintain this charade (no value provision, as the highest cost node in a value chain) much longer. The market will adjust with prejudice. There is no free lunch, and they will be called on their masquerade.
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You are SO RIGHT Ethical. The colleges I've seen, oh boy. Something DOES seem to be going on there. What is allowed, I mean in "my day" that wasn't happening, as nutty as the 70's were. In the lower grades they put totally destructive kids in the classes as well. I think something is going on. Even MS13 is in a bunch of the schools. A parent has to be so involved now, it's not like "Leave it to Beaver" and the teachers! omg, some are just so stupid I don't know how they stay alive without tripping on their own feet.

It's pure insanity. College courses should be on YouTube (or whatever) like some Stanford classes are (I've watched some really great college professors). Then they could give the testing at a local secured location. Charging 1/10th of what they charge.
 
He sounds like a rare 24 year old in 2019, so I don't doubt he'll continue to do well, as social skills appear to be on the decline. Hate to speak so broadly, but my impression is that 20-somethings these days are diffident and consensus-oriented, and not particularly driven.
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Yes, he's kind of an odd ball I guess. Reading down on the comments, I so agree w/so many. I wanted both of my kids in all the "gifted" classes (like all parents). Like they represent how a good a parent we are :-\

BUT, thank God when I spoke to the school psychiatrist, she said "oh God no, don't do it". Those classes are filled w/kids who don't fit. I thought of my mom who is still one of the smartest people I know (but common sense.. eh no, she totally lacked that). Not a good look.

ANYWAY, the school psychiatrists daughter worked for NASA, she said they tried to pigeon hole her. She almost failed everything. She told me if I could just get my kids OUT of this school system they would do fine. I finally understand what she was telling me.

The 20 somethings today (as you said) seem to be so... self absorbed, ungrateful and self entitled. Both my "kids" have to raise their partners. I don't mind in my sons case as she is the sweetest little thing. But, he has to teach her how to handle money, get her student loans paid off, even life choices. But, it's all good, I like being a mother to her & showing her things.
 
I agree not everyone needs to go to college but if you like school, it's okay to get as much of it as you want (without going into extreme levels of debt) even if you don't need it for your career.

I have a graduate degree in a scientific field, but worked as a software engineer in an unrelated field. I don't think my time in college or graduate school was a waste although I know not everyone would want to do that. I learned that I could do original scientific research and get published and also study up on a subject to the point where I know as much as anyone else in the world. It gives you a kind of intellectual confidence where no one can BS you on anything. (Kind of like the intellectual version of martial arts where no one can physically intimidate you if you know how to defend yourself). The knowledge that I could be a world class expert on whatever I wanted to learn about has helped in my personal and professional life. Education was not a waste.
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But Jim, you are smart, driven & not afraid to ask questions. A lot of these "kids" today... they don't get that. You're self directed, a lot of these kids have been turned into "cogs". You have critical thinking skills. They ended up owing thousands of dollars in student loans & are now left to jockey for positions that pay $15. an hour.

It's going to be a whole new landscape out there in 15 years... I'm moving further into the forest!!
 
Hate to speak so broadly, but my impression is that 20-somethings these days are diffident and consensus-oriented, and not particularly driven.

As a college admissions professional in California I can confirm, although with one caveat; the driven students I see are rare, but it's almost always because of a strong family influence paired with natural aptitude.

I have watched campus culture change in the last 15 years. Many factors (rising costs forcing students to take multiple low paying jobs to pay rent, over scheduled lives, debt burden, etc.) but it's technology, and most pointedly social media and portable 24/7 video content that is changing the way people communicate.

It is alarming for many reasons, but especially in the realm of consciousnesses, as it abdicates mindfulness to the pursuit of trivialities. The lack of sustained focus, and the inability to deal with being alone with one's thoughts leads to a borg-like mentality where people need to connect digitally in the most shallow ways to sustain a perpetually distracted existence.

Software engineers knew what they were doing when they created systems designed to be addictive. It's a sad reflection on societal values in silicon valley and the self deception they are somehow improving the world.
 
As a college admissions professional in California I can confirm, although with one caveat; the driven students I see are rare, but it's almost always because of a strong family influence paired with natural aptitude.

I have watched campus culture change in the last 15 years. Many factors (rising costs forcing students to take multiple low paying jobs to pay rent, over scheduled lives, debt burden, etc.) but it's technology, and most pointedly social media and portable 24/7 video content that is changing the way people communicate.

It is alarming for many reasons, but especially in the realm of consciousnesses, as it abdicates mindfulness to the pursuit of trivialities. The lack of sustained focus, and the inability to deal with being alone with one's thoughts leads to a borg-like mentality where people need to connect digitally in the most shallow ways to sustain a perpetually distracted existence.

Software engineers knew what they were doing when they created systems designed to be addictive. It's a sad reflection on societal values in silicon valley and the self deception they are somehow improving the world.
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You nailed it. Now, I'm wondering what we do about it?
 
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But Jim, you are smart, driven & not afraid to ask questions. A lot of these "kids" today... they don't get that. You're self directed, a lot of these kids have been turned into "cogs". You have critical thinking skills. They ended up owing thousands of dollars in student loans & are now left to jockey for positions that pay $15. an hour.

It's going to be a whole new landscape out there in 15 years... I'm moving further into the forest!!

I agree (and I wrote) I don't recommend taking on a lot of debt and it's not for everyone. One difference today is how high tuition is for undergraduates so you have a good point based on that alone. I realize there are a lot of other problems too ... see quoted excerpts below ...

When I went to college I had partial scholarships and tuition was a lot lower than today. Even then the college president said unashamedly he had to raise tuition so the reputation of the school would remain among the best.

But in some fields, particularly sciences, there are fellowships in PhD programs so you don't necessarily need to go into debt. I remember when I first learned this when I was taking college courses during summer vacation after my junior year in high school, it changed my plans for the future, it was like discovering a new continent, it opened up such vast possibilities for me. Years later on my grad school applications I said straight out I would not go if I had to pay. Where I went, students had to be Teaching Assistants for one course for one semester, and work in labs until we decided where we wanted to do our thesis research. The thesis research is under the direction of a research professor so it's like working as a paid research associate but they eventually give you a degree. (Some corporations have similar associations with universities, you work for a company doing research but you get a degree from a university - (I think the company pays tuition to the university.).

I don't know where being self directed and critical thinking skills come from. I suppose they could be learned but in me they were innate. I was always fascinated by science and computers - they were my play and subject matter for reading. I would borrow books of science experiments from school and I remember mooning over an ad for a programmable calculator in Scientific American for months before I was able to buy one. The personal computer had not been invented then. Before that I had toy "computers" some you had to wire logic circuits yourself some were mechanical you "programmed" with pegs to add in binary.

If my parents did anything to encourage my intellectual curiosity it was to teach me to read at a younger age than most children and encourage me to read and share their values that learning was "good", and provide a safe quiet home where I could learn.

As a kid trying to earn money, my sales skills were not very good. I didn't like to ask for a lot of money for my labor so I was always underpaid for cutting grass and shoveling snow. Same thing years later when I worked for myself as an engineering consultant. I enjoy helping people too much. As an adult I think most things are over priced (except equity shares and real estate during a recession!) I don't know what to spend my money on because I don't like to get ripped off and I think most things are a rip off. My talents in "business" lay more in cutting costs, improving efficiency, managing money, and investing - which I make use of managing my personal finances and investments.

I don't have kids but I have heard that school theses days in some ways does more harm than good. If I had children, I would be careful about how they were educated (as my parents were with me - my family moved to a suburb with good public schools when private school in the city became too expensive).

--------------------------------------

In his book The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics, Mark Lilla, professor of humanities at Columbia University, a liberal, explains how progressive students have been intellectually damaged by identity politics:​
(Excerpt by Ed Driscoll)​
As a teacher, I am increasingly struck by a difference between my conservative and progressive students. Contrary to the stereotype, the conservatives are far more likely to connect their engagements to a set of political ideas and principles. Young people on the left are much more inclined to say that they are engaged in politics as an X, concerned about other Xs and those issues touching on X-ness. And they are less and less comfortable with debate.​
Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: Speaking as an X…This is not an anodyne phrase. It sets up a wall against any questions that come from a non-X perspective. Classroom conversations that once might have begun, I think A, and here is my argument, now take the form, Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B. What replaces argument, then, are taboos against unfamiliar ideas and contrary opinions.

...​
Adam MacLeod wrote in Undoing the Dis-Education of Millennials
I teach in a law school. For several years now my students have been mostly Millennials. Contrary to stereotype, I have found that the vast majority of them want to learn. But true to stereotype, I increasingly find that most of them cannot think, don’t know very much, and are enslaved to their appetites and feelings. Their minds are held hostage in a prison fashioned by elite culture and their undergraduate professors.​

...​
According to Camilla Turner writing in telegraph.co.uk:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...ive-taught-schools-fuels-anxiety-young-women/
"Dr Joanna Williams, a lecturer in higher education at Kent University ...​
... said that if girls are instilled with a mindset of victimhood at a young age, it can set them back later in life. “When women go out into the world of work and experience obstacles, rather than persevering they think ‘oh these are the insurmountable barriers I was told about'."​
...​
Dr Williams said that the narrative continues at university where students are told that there is a "rape culture" or some kind of "epidemic" of sexual assault on campus.​
...​
“It is very difficult for women to present themselves as powerful, strong and capable if they think they need to be wary and anxious," she said.​

...​
4:25​
Camille Paglia: “It’s really started at the level of public school education. I’ve been teaching now for 46 years as a classroom teacher, and I have felt the slow devolution of the quality of public school education in the classroom.”​
...​
“What has happened is these young people now getting to college have no sense of history – of any kind! No sense of history. No world geography. No sense of the violence and the barbarities of history. So, they think that the whole world has always been like this, a kind of nice, comfortable world where you can go to the store and get orange juice and milk, and you can turn on the water and the hot water comes out. They have no sense whatever of the destruction, of the great civilizations that rose and fell, and so on – and how arrogant people get when they’re in a comfortable civilization. They now have been taught to look around them to see defects in America – which is the freest country in the history of the world – and to feel that somehow America is the source of all evil in the universe, and it’s because they’ve never been exposed to the actual evil of the history of humanity. They know nothing!”​
~2:04​
Camille Paglia: My generation of the 1960's, when I arrived in college in 1964 there were parietal rules in place so that the women in my dorm had to sign in at 11:00 at night. The men could run free. It was my generation that rose up and said that we wanted to be treated equally and we want freedom. And the colleges said the world is a dangerous place. You could be attacked you could be raped. We said, "Give us the freedom to risk rape. Freedom is much more important than protection and safety. And that's what young people have given up today.​
~5:59​
Christina Hoff Sommers: And right now the fashion is the identity politics, intersectionality, this is all the rage, and its the premise of this theory it's the idea that all the oppressions intersect with one another and form this matrix of oppression. And so young people in a typical gender studies class now learn that they inhabit a society that is this matrix of oppression and depending on your identity you might be advantaged so you have unearned privilege or you might be burdened because of your race or maybe your disability or your gender or preference and on and on. But underneath it all is this assumption that the United States is a white supremacist imperialist capitalist patriarchal oppressive society. And in order to liberate ourselves we have to, I don't even know what they want to do - because it's all - maybe blame one another and form - have little feuds, on social media and on campus.​
 
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Not all sects of Satanists follow Satan. The world Satan simply means adversary. They are archetypal energies not judeao Christian superstition

The Satans of old are not the same as the Satans of modern imagination. But that does not make 'Satanism' meaningless or impotent. Magic lore teaches that the imagined forms generated by believers can be inhabited, or used, by spirits whose character is not known. It was also worth observing that the idea of 'adversary' is not an opponent or enemy - but a tester. The idea of playing 'devil's advocate' is closer to the truth.

You are quite right to say that not all Satanists follow the same entity or energy. Satan as devil is a Christian fiction, just like Lucifer, the serpent of Eden and the pagan spirits and gods - like Pan. The idea of a single agent of evil may have a use of some sort - but it is a confused fusion of fictions and legitimate ideas about adverse spirits, real demons and plain bad folk that it muddies what is actually a complex subject.

The fundamental problem with the Abrahamic tradition seems to be that it is substantially fiction and folk lore laced with some legitimate spiritual and metaphysical insight. As a tool for understanding anything the divine it is close to useless for the modern mind., So even talking about Satan outside a history of religion context is not at all useful. I don't support the easy fall back on a confused and useless term to convey, short hand, what are confused and useless ideas for the sake of saying something. If we are to have any conversation about evil we have to move well away from most Christian notions.
 
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You nailed it. Now, I'm wondering what we do about it?
I am 69, and I remember all sorts of discussions about how the youth was going to hell, but many years ago. Television, a variety of fairly mindless crazes, the discovery of sex(!!), pop music, pop concerts, they were all supposedly heralding the end of civilization. My dad was convinced I would not get far because my spelling wasn't too good (and now we have spelling checkers - yay!). By the time I received my PhD, we laughed and he dropped that idea.

That doesn't mean I totally dismiss your concerns, but I just think fads come and go. When a fad - like perhaps the current fetishisation of certain minorities, or useless dumbed down courses - isn't novel, it just drops out of existence.

I think the universities and scientific research are going to take a big hit. People won't want to waste their money going to take idiotic courses, and their research will increasingly be laughed at. People are becoming increasingly wary of modern medicine, which sometimes does a lot more harm than good.

The new era will be different, but not necessarily worse.

David
 
Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: Speaking as an X…This is not an anodyne phrase. It sets up a wall against any questions that come from a non-X perspective. Classroom conversations that once might have begun, I think A, and here is my argument, now take the form, Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B. What replaces argument, then, are taboos against unfamiliar ideas and contrary opinions.

See https://www.thecoddling.com/
 
You nailed it. Now, I'm wondering what we do about it?

Its going to sound glib, but - be the change you want to see. Apart from that we have to endure the generational tides in all their manifestations.

My grandson is being weaned off his iPad, to which he seemed all but surgically attached. I bought it for him in the deluded expectation his parents would use it as medium, and not a message. But they discovered it shut him up and all my noble intent was crapped on. Now he's not so dependent on it. He has an iPhone, and iMac, a notebook, a Play Station, and he's saving up for an Apple watch. Thank God he's no longer addicted to his iPad, though.

But its not the tech that's the issue. I have an iPad on which I mostly read kindle books. I have an iPhone and an iPod on which Ilisten to very little music and mostly play audio books and podcasts.

This might get a bit like the gun debate in that the tech is not the issue, its the user, and the predatory culture that exploits the user. Shallow minded folk are going to be shallow minded whether they have an iPhone or not. Are they better off staring out a train window thinking shallow thoughts or playing candy crush or listening to brain rotting 'music'? But we might fairly also wonder if they are better off being exposed to idiotic conspiracy theories and the manipulative mind numbing tripe of the MAGA variety? If tech allows zombies to organise easier maybe we should pray for a Carrington Event?
 
And so young people in a typical gender studies class now learn that they inhabit a society that is this matrix of oppression and depending on your identity you might be advantaged so you have unearned privilege or you might be burdened because of your race or maybe your disability or your gender or preference and on and on

The interesting thing about this is that what can seem idiotic to us now can also carry a valid message. I do think a lot of stuff being taught or pushed in schools and unis is overly emotive stuff pushed by adults who probably need therapy and a few more years of maturation. I have listened to some of the tortured angst that passes for academic output - and it needs to be recycled via an intellectual compost bin.

But, I was one of the first environmental protesters against the drowning of Lake Pedder in Tasmania in the 1960s. I also campaigned against the Vietnam war and for women's, gay, and Aboriginal rights. At the time I was ridiculed and reviled. These days I am a leader in promoting the rights of people with disability at work - and I recall when that was not a popular or accepted theme.

There's stuff being pushed today that I find awfully done. But that may be because the people who are driving it are young - and what they are saying is full of naive, ignorant and arrogant angst. There is a real problem that there is a generation of over-sensitive 'snowflakes' being created. But I have to reflect that 40 odd years ago we were tough because we had to be, and it does seem that the world at large is still pretty demanding and would chew up and spit out some of these overly sensitive souls. However things are also changing and the world is softer and gentler than it was - in some areas.

As adults I think we can look at today's youth and wonder if they are being well served in their education - but let's distinguish method from content.
 
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