I was reading a "funny" story about Gen-Z, where many feel their financial situation is holding them back from being in romantic relationships. Now of course, this isn't ha-ha funny, it is more ironically funny, because many of the same people have said that they value their time more than work, and that they prefer not to be in committed relationships. Both of these things I have predicted for several years are going to come back to haunt them.
Essentially, anyone who thinks they don't need that sense of being loved, is fooling themselves in my opinion. Sure, there might be some edge case examples where some individuals don't need it, but I suspect they are rare. And, I believe that this is even more salient in today's social environment of the young, where people want to be known as something unique, so they keep labelling themselves with an ever fine slice in order to be special.
This causes a major problem, because it is near impossible to really get to know someone without there being a long-term relationship, let alone love them. But, in a world of disposable people, the young tend to throw their relationships away when they aren't providing enough immediate value, or when they are getting too hard. Instead of learning through it, they are just swiping for a new friend, or going online into digital environments filled with strangers, pretending that this validates their existence.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
I reckon that I didn't know much when I was twenty, though at the time I probably felt I was relatively worldly. I didn't know much at thirty either, and probably at forty. But, I think that due to the digital environment and consumerism, the thoughts of the young and their opinions are getting amplified in way that they haven't earlier, and it is creating a feedback loop with availability bias, making them feel increasingly righteous. I think this is part of the reason there is such a strong entitlement culture in the younger generations too, as they are echo-chambered, and fed on algorithms which support their beliefs.
Yet, belief and truth can be fundamentally different, and perhaps increasingly, the belief systems of the young are being challenged by the feedback of reality. As they are getting a bit older and have a little more experience under their belts, they might start questioning their results, because if they have been doing everything right, why does life suck so much?
Look in the mirror?
Not at first. The first thing to do is look for someone to blame of course, and that is anyone who has a different opinion, or lives in a different set of conditions. Older people, for the most part. Blame the boomers (I get called a boomer - Even though I am born the last year of the Gen-X, but reality doesn't matter), because it is them who had it easy to make that money (that Gen-Z don't care about) to buy their houses cheap.
I don't want to work, but I want the benefits of working.
I think that this is a statement that many of the young seem to support through their behaviors, and they apply it to every facet of their life, including their relationships. They do not have an investor mindset, because they value how they feel right now so much more highly, than how they are going to feel at any point in the future. We act in the now, we feel in the now, but every moment in the future is going to be a now also, and what we do right now, is going to impact on what we can do and what we will feel in the future.
I don't think it is surprising that the rates of depression and a host of other mental disorders are increasing, because the environment we have created, and the behaviors we have incentivized are not conducive to good mental health. It isn't just what is happening on social media and in the digital spaces, it is also what is not happening in the physical world, with relationships of all kinds weakening, becoming less supportive, less caring, more trivial and expendable. We have made other people less important in our lives, and they have made us less important, yet we still have the evolutionary need to belong, to feel known and have a sense that we are loved.
The younger generations seem to have bought into the sci-fi worlds that they consume, where people are superheroes, more highly evolved, no longer prone to the needs of a human that have been developed over the last two million years. They think that because they grew up as a "digital native", this means they feel they only need what can be provided on-demand, and only what makes them feel good, is good for them. Anything that makes them uncomfortable, is toxic.
Toxic culture.
I think a toxic culture is one that harms us, rather than improves us. And, that is what we have created, and that is what we support. I think a lot of the younger generations live in toxic cultures of their own making, where victimhood is incentivized, encouraging people to label themselves a victim of conditions, rather than an agent that can influence their outcomes. Yet, because they believe they are right and have an amplified voice in the media, a lot of their whims are being validated in society, even though it doesn't help them get what they actually need.
As a thought experiment:
Imagine you are living your best life, where you are eating the perfect balance of foods and exercising perfectly for your optimal physical condition. Imagine your perfect professional life and what you would be doing and how often. Imagine what your perfect social life would be, who it would be with, and what kinds of things you would be doing with them. Imagine your perfect living arrangements, your house, your material items. Imagine your perfect partner and how you treat them and how they treat you, and how you make each other feel.
Do your current beliefs and behaviors get you there?
Not very funny perhaps.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
