{"id":1443032,"date":"2022-04-18T08:15:50","date_gmt":"2022-04-18T12:15:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1443032"},"modified":"2022-04-18T08:16:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-18T12:16:00","slug":"the-dumbest-era-wallows-in-mediocrity-and-self-pity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-dumbest-era-wallows-in-mediocrity-and-self-pity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dumbest Era Wallows In Mediocrity And Self-Pity"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-dumbest-era-wallows-in-mediocrity-and-self-pity%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1443032&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/dumbestgeneration.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p>In the early 2000s, when millennials were coming of age, many people were optimistic about their prospects. They were growing up with the internet, entering a brave new world where everyone was connected, engaged, and more affluent than ever. All this awesomeness was compounded when smartphones came out less than a decade later.<\/p>\n<p>During this wonderful time, few people dared to suggest that all these new high-tech amenities and continual indulgence would spoil millennials. Rather, many people really believed they would be the most successful generation in history.<\/p>\n<p>However, there were a few voices in the wilderness, calling for sanity and a sober analysis of these innovations. One such voice was English professor Mark Bauerlein, who saw what was happening to young people. In 2008, he wrote the <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/w\/dumbest-generation-mark-bauerlein\/1100817630\">The Dumbest Generation<\/a><\/em>, arguing that millennials would become increasingly ignorant, vain, and immature because of their chronic use of digital technology.<\/p>\n<p>Thirteen years later, Bauerlein\u2019s predictions have largely become true. As he explains in <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.regnery.com\/9781684512201\/the-dumbest-generation-grows-up\/\">The Dumbest Generation Grows Up<\/a><\/em>, a sequel to <em>The Dumbest Generation<\/em>, many of today\u2019s millennials are not thriving as predicted, but instead are \u201cending up behind a Starbucks counter or doing contract work, living with their parents or in a house with four friends, nonetheless lonely and mistrustful, with no thoughts of marriage and children, no weekly church attendance or civic memberships, more than half of them convinced that their country is racist and sexist.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And yes, they are still the dumbest generation, reading less than any previous generation and knowing next to nothing about the world they inhabit.<\/p>\n<h2>The Most Illiterate Generation<\/h2>\n<p>With an obvious desire to tell the world, \u201cI told you so!\u201d Bauerlein begins his book recalling the false predictions of success for millennials. Even though they had every reason to be concerned about the vast amount of idiotic online content young people were consuming, they preferred to see this as a good thing: \u201cLighten up, we were told, instead of fearing these kids who were passing them by, said the most progressive admirers of this new generation gap, the elders had a better option: \u2018What Old People Can Learn from Millennials.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Realists like Bauerlein were berated as spiteful curmudgeons who failed to appreciate the many virtues of the internet. Curiously, it wasn\u2019t the software engineers and programmers making this argument (many of them <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2015\/may\/23\/screen-time-v-play-time-what-tech-leaders-wont-let-their-own-kids-do\">limit their children\u2019s exposure to screens<\/a>), but the humanities instructors who saw the new technology as a shortcut to developing critical thinking skills and being knowledgable.<\/p>\n<p>Besides struggling with the basics of adulthood, Bauerlein also argues millennials are dangerous to civilized society. They are entranced with the idealized utopias and \u201ccan\u2019t understand why that blessed condition shouldn\u2019t materialize here and now.\u201d This has resulted in a noticeable radicalization among young people, who violently protest any views that differ from their own. Although most of these self-styled social justice warriors justify their actions as a noble resistance to true evil, so much of it amounts to collective temper tantrums.<\/p>\n<p>Baffled by these outbursts from otherwise privileged young adults, Bauerlein seeks to understand the underlying motive\u2014assuming there is one. After making a few inquires and observing millennials in their natural habitat, Bauerlein settles on two vapid but nonetheless serious mantras: \u201cEveryone deserves to be happy,\u201d and \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter who you love.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Even a cursory knowledge of literature would dispel these notions. As though happiness were something you could complain into existence. As though all forms of love always work out for everyone involved.<\/p>\n<p>This simplistic logic frequently manifests itself in the many slogans, mission statements, and mottos that have come to characterize woke culture. Bauerlein notes the \u201chack language and lax thinking\u201d and admits that \u201cthe bad rhetoric strengthens [the millennial protesters\u2019] case.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>After all, the woke warriors have mostly gotten what they want. They aren\u2019t challenged; they are constantly affirmed; and they continue to hold the moral high ground despite destroying civilization. Then again, this undeserved outcome often leaves them feeling \u201cbitter, suspicious disappointed, cancel-conscious unforgiving, and vengeful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For Bauerlein, so much of this generational failure can be traced to the decline of reading. Accordingly, he devotes nearly a quarter of his book showing the connection between reading and personal wellness. <\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s no secret that millennials have ditched reading in favor of screens and social media. What might be less known is how this has affected a generation of human beings unable to cope with existence in its fullness: \u201cIt deprived the young of the knowledge and acumen that men and women rightly possess, the exposure to human nature up and down the scale of human evil, beauteous and vulgar, smart and stupid, to strange times and faraway places, acts of heroism and disloyalty, the most eloquent words and sublime sounds and perceptive images.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, perhaps the best part of Bauerlein\u2019s book is his defense of literary reading. While one can lament the drop in SAT scores or the elimination of various liberal arts programs (and Bauerlein does more than his fair share of this), there\u2019s also the psychological training that accompanies the reading of a novel. Real empathy, real analysis, and real introspection are what comes from a good novel. As Bauerlein\u2019s friend succinctly puts it, \u201ca good novel is very good psychology.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So it follows that when a person lacks this experience, he or she will see others as flat characters that lack minds of their owns. They will rush to judgement, misinterpret words and behavior, and never really come to an understanding about anyone, including themselves. This brings about immense frustration in millennials: \u201cThey\u2019re more unhappy, not less, and the trouble they have with people of different beliefs and values, their rising intolerance and readiness to cancel, indicates that this superficial conception of human nature is a not-insignificant factor in their unhappy lives.\u201d This frustration often makes them barbaric, immature, and profoundly lonely.<\/p>\n<h2>No Solutions?<\/h2>\n<p>In his final chapter, Bauerlein expands his scope to popular culture. He notes wistfully how the poet Robert Frost filled the stands of a sports stadium in 1962, something that would be unthinkable now since most millennials wouldn\u2019t know Robert Frost, let alone go and listen to him. <\/p>\n<p>This then transitions to the story of Stanford\u2019s Western Civilization course, which came under fire in the 1980s, experienced various transformation in the past few decades, and was eventually dissolved beyond recognition. By the end, the removal of Western Civ course \u201cwas an emotional contest, not an intellectual one.\u201d No one benefited from its removal, but they certainly lost a great deal.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, all this was supposed to help the cause of the marginalized and oppressed, but only succeeded in depriving them the tools for self-advocacy and intellectual competence. Thus, Bauerlein discusses the rise of Civil Rights icon Malcolm X, who came from nothing but became educated through his constant reading in prison.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s technology-saturated world would have deprived a man like Malcolm X from this kind of learning: \u201cA soul so uprooted and demoralized doesn\u2019t need \u2018equity, diversity, and inclusion.\u2019 It needs a history, literature, philosophy, religion, a tradition complete and concrete, a meaningful framework.\u201d This assertion should be obvious to anyone, but this kind of common sense is lost in today\u2019s academia.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the biggest weakness of the book comes at the very end. After illustrating the problem in so much depth, Bauerlein offers no solutions. Rather, he is openly pessimistic: \u201cThe millennials have exited young adulthood forever; their intellectual habits are formed for life. They\u2019re lost, they\u2019re gone, it\u2019s over for them.\u201d It\u2019s a surprising and disappointing conclusion from a writer as well-read and brilliant as Bauerlein, and it suggests that the wonders of reading, scholarship, and the intellectual life count for little.<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, speaking as a millennial myself, it\u2019s hard not to take this somewhat personally. While Bauerlein was writing <em>The Dumbest Generation<\/em>, I began my career as an English teacher. I fought the same battles against smartphones, internet culture, and educational gimmicks that he has. I\u2019ve always made it a point to read the classics and defend the humanities against the blockheads who claim they are obsolete, bigoted, and boring. True, I did not do this in the lofty ivory towers of a university campus, but in modest public school classrooms.<\/p>\n<p>So I would contend that Bauerlein is quite wrong to doubt my generation altogether. Even if we\u2019re a minority, there are those of us who agree with him and are doing our part to change the culture. And, as Bauerlein himself concedes, it\u2019s not the millennials\u2019 fault that we\u2019re \u201cthe dumbest generation\u201d; it\u2019s his generation\u2019s fault, the Baby Boomers.<\/p>\n<p>But aside from its bleak ending, <em>The Dumbest Generation Grows Up<\/em> is an excellent analysis of millennials as well as a strong case for learning the classics and cultivating the habit of deep reading. Even if his judgments are sometimes harsh, they\u2019re usually accurate.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, millennials are still relatively young (the oldest are in their early 40s), and they can still change their ways. It may be an uncomfortable and humbling experience to hit the books and confront one\u2019s intellectual and moral shortcomings, but it is ultimately a satisfying and necessary one.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Auguste Meyrat is an English teacher in the Dallas area. He holds an MA in humanities and an MEd in educational leadership. He is the senior editor of The Everyman and has written essays for The Federalist, The American Conservative, and The Imaginative Conservative, as well as the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Follow him on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MeyratAuguste\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the early 2000s, when millennials were coming of age, many people were optimistic about their prospects. They were growing up with the internet, entering a brave new world where<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":551,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1443032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/551"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1443032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1443032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1443032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1443032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1443032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}