Snowflake Day

Uh. OK. Isn’t that special? The degree of sheer ignorance here is astonishing.*“you’ll see some bigly examples of entitled, narcissistic Baby Boomers” *– yes, you will. A lot of examples. And that’s why not only a fair chunk of millennials, but the rest of us post-boomer crowd generally dislike them as well. Two wrong’s don’t make a right – and the writer, for all they want to be taken seriously as a “real” grown-up, is already displaying his childishness.

“We’re also the most educated” – confusing time spent in school with an education. Look at the reviews of this 6th grade reader from 1914. That also leaves aside necessary skills no longer taught at schools.

*“We know human-caused climate change is real” – *science is a process, not simply a body of “facts”. The latter are subject to change, either because we learn or develop better models for the physical world, or because people make up facts to suit their biases. We know for a fact the lead researchers into climate science aren’t following a truth-finding process, but are instead interested in hiding the decline, not giving out the raw data because it may be used to dispute them, and developing computer models that get the desired result even if fed a flat line series.We also know the predictions made have not come to pass, and that the lead proponents of “it’s all our fault” cannot tell us how much of an impact we have.  I strongly recommend reading “The Skeptical Environmentalist” if one gets a chance.

“We know why the Civil War started. We know what Aleppo is” – Yet most of them don’t know what evil is shared by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot. Or why postmodernism is a worldview that leads to the death of the mind, of cultures, and people. Do they understand why the horrors of the French revolution were inevitable given the driving ideology? They know what they’ve been told on why the civil war started, but likely haven’t dug into the diaries of the figures involved at all, or looked at sources that contradict those claims. And Aleppo? Who cares? It’s a way to take cheap political digs at non-leftists (even if Johnson is an idiot). In a decade another city will be important, but the ongoing 1400-year war with Islam will still be going on. Do they know Vienna, Tours, Lepanto or why 1492 is significant beyond Columbus coming to the Americas and initiating an age of exploitation and ruin, or somesuch? Do they know Platea? Salamis? Thermopylae? Do they know the Anabasis? Do they truly understand the Magna Carta’s significance in the rights of free Englishmen, in conceptually restraining the power of not only the king, but of government in general, as they scream for the government to assume more control over everyone else’s lives?

“But society has a lot of misunderstandings about Gen Y. We’re overflowing with ideas to shake up our workplaces and make them more creative, collaborative, meaningful, meritocratic, and fun. And since we’ve grown up in a fast-paced world, we’re impatient to have an impact. So people say we’re entitled upstarts who don’t want to put in our dues.” – One of the most disliked guys in a workplace is the new guy who comes in and starts wanting to change everything around without first understanding how things are actually working, and why. Respect has to be earned, and that takes time. Not all consequences of a change are immediately obvious, and understanding the second-order consequences of how things are working aren’t either. Also, patience is a virtue, impatience… isn’t. Change can be good. It can also be bad. So yeah – a guy who comes in without understanding what’s going on and wants to change everything and gets upset that people don’t get on board right away when he’s not in charge and thus not responsible for the consequences of the change is an entitled upstart, and he’s trying to handwave away the dues.
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“We want to collect experiences, not possessions. So people accuse us of being unambitious.” – if that was all, sure. But ambition isn’t just about stuff. It’s also about the willingness to take on responsibility, to guide and lead others. The author of this bit has a fundamental misunderstanding of ambition. Also, experiences are also ephermal. They are of no more value to one than what one can get out of the experience of using a possession. What about a legacy?

“We want immediate feedback more than an annual bonus. So people complain we need constant praise.” – No, they complain you need constant praise because of how you deal with criticism.
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“We like to use (and invent) technological short-cuts. So people call us lazy.” – “Constructive laziness” is hardly a new concept.

“We post selfies on social media because we value connections with others. So we’re labeled “self-obsessed.” – Then connect with others. Show other people off at their best. Oh, wait, yet another picture of you doing something “awesome” or hanging out with your friends or that cool dish from some ethnic place? If one believes everything you post shows what you care about, then I have more respect for the food porn, especially if it’s something you made, than of you being in the damn pics all the time.

All in all, a completely self-unaware portrayal showing that the author really is the child he insists, stomping his foot, that he is not.

The whole post is worth reading.