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Quote of the Day: Should We Trust Anyone Under 30?
I’m a bad poster. I’m not going back to look up the Twitter post that inspired this. I saw an interviewer on a college campus asking, “What are the biggest problems we face as a people?” And the two most popular answers were “sexism” and “racism.” And when asked how we could solve these problems, the student respondents had no idea. I didn’t want to risk watching the video again, let alone link to it.
So many of the worries of the young these days are just absurd. There were some who also said “Climate Change,” but fortunately none of them said “Equity.” To say that “sexism” and “racism” are the greatest problems shows such a breathtaking lack of knowledge about history, economics, and the current condition of the nation and the world… It’s all very, very sad.
As the principal says to Adam Sandler in Billy Madison, “What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.” But that’s not my quote of the day.
My quote comes from an Agatha Christie novel, The Murder at the Vicarage. I picked it up at a thrift store because of the clerical angle, not realizing it was the first Miss Marple novel. Miss Marple says she is quoting one of her aunts, “The young people think the old people are fools – but the old people know the young people are fools!”
This was said nearly a century ago. But now, it’s true.
Or maybe not. Do young people fill you more with hope or despair? Or something in between?
Published in Literature
The young people I know do not reside in the densely, overpopulated cities filled with crime, drugs, and communist approaches to governing so they are not yet wise but on a better path than is offered there. Just have anyone support and defend their assertions regardless of age.
Miss Marple uses the wisdom gained by her years to offset her recognition that she probably sees fewer bizarre events in her rural setting than occur in London but she definitely is always in learning mode.
I think it depends. My oldest daughter may not yet realize that she’s kind of a hardcore right-winger, but when certain subjects for discussion come up, . . . yeah, I recognize she’s way over there. And while I’m sure that we influenced her, when she started college, she fell in with a group of very conservative students through a campus ministry. When I meet these students (they end up at our house frequently) I have a bit of hope.
Youngest daughter might not quite be that hardcore, but then she’s not fond of any kind of political discussion. Oldest is hoping to rope her into the same campus ministry next spring, so . . . maybe she’ll be influenced in the same way.
I do think that there is a bit of an “awakening” among young people that all this woke garbage is garbage. They yearn for something true. I don’t know how broad this awakening is, but I sense it starting. For example, I keep reading stories about high school teachers getting upset because their students aren’t taking pronouns seriously. Or they’re making fun of woke dogma. Boys, usually. So . . . yeah, I have a little bit of hope for the youngest generation.
This is right but it does require some exposure to a correct thinking process.
Though sometimes I think the soul just recoils from the societal falsehoods that burden Americans, and while young people are maybe rejecting what they properly sense is wrong, they don’t entirely know what’s right. This is why it’s important to guide them toward the right kinds of rebellion.
I take some small comfort in one thought: if you had interviewed me when I was in college, I probably would have spouted similarly ignorant opinions. I knew nothing of the real world at that point, so I had no basis for reaching rational conclusions of my own; instead I was likely to just repeat attractive-sounding ideas I’d heard from my peers (and maybe my teachers). It meant nothing. After college I began to think for myself, and most of those ideas (which I’d never really believed anyway) fell away.
We just have to hope that this generation of college kids gets smacked in the face by reality, and hard.
I have hope when talking to my own kids, who are generally quite sensible and thoughtful. I have been working hard to encourage these traits, but I’m sure much of it is beyond my control. For example, yesterday I had a discussion about 9/11 with my younger daughters while driving them home from school. At one point, I was trying to explain to them how patriotic everyone was in the days following the attacks. There were American flags having from the bridges in one of the most progressive counties in America and people were cheering together for their country. My 15-year-old said without missing a beat, “suffering bring people together.”
That idea goes to the last line of the previous comment. A lot of the trouble with many young people today is that they live in a wealthy society that actually functions pretty well. There are those that don’t live in that world, but I’ll bet they are a lot less likely to care about climate change or the negative impact of vague “isms.”
I feel despair when I talk to one friend whose daughter hangs with kids from wealthy private school kids inside the Beltway. Apparently the boys are sending girls they hardly know d**k pics over SnapChat. And there’s other nasty behavior that I won’t go into. My daughters are convinced that SnapChat is evil and does nothing but cause problems.
The schools where I live are struggling with cell phone usage in schools. Kids are getting mixed messages from adults for sure, but the technology has changed everything without most adults giving it any thought. Our elementary school absolutely welcomed Apple and free iPads with our kids are guinea pigs. Now everything my kids write is basically accessible to Google.
Bit of a tangent but the other day I caught some footage of The Who performing at Glastonbury and saw a septuagenarian Roger Daltrey belt out the famous line “I hope I die before I get old.”
I wonder if he’s changed his mind yet?
Ahhh….. that would presume he’s gotten old.
context: Charlie Watts died before he got old.
I hire and thus spend time with entry-level folks – all under 30. They want to learn, succeed, and work hard. And they ask questions.
I got the picks of the litter.
Fair point, “old” is a relative term. Still, I’m more inclined to agree with They Might Be Giants: