Tuesday, August 23, 2016

The New Sleepwalkers

It’s probably too soon to break out the champagne, but statistically, the world has become a safer and less violent place. And yet, those of us who are old enough to remember the twentieth century know that violence is never really out of date.

Between wars, massacres, genocide, famine and pestilence, well over 200 million people were killed during the twentieth century. Communism alone is responsible for over 100 million deaths. It’s nice to be optimistic and it’s nice to trot out statistics about automobile accidents and muggings, but still, in the not too distant past, the world was a bloodbath.

It would not take very much for the same or worse to reoccur.

If you limit your perspective to last year’s traffic fatalities, and even homicides, you can find cause for optimism. You can even find out that the world has never been safer. And yet, if you look back into the past century you might believe that it’s just the calm before the storm. If you think that the civilizational clash between Islam and the West is not going to get a lot worse before it gets any better you have been smoking the wrong kind of cigarettes.

For the record those who are promoting the meliorist view are arguing that the advances of modern science and the decline of religion are causing peace and prosperity to bust out all over. Since many of these thinkers are atheists, and since many of the horrors in the twentieth century were produced by atheist cultures, they do well to ignore the past and paint pictures of a rosy future.

As for today’s America, Ross Douthat finds that youth are less prone to pathological behaviors but that adults are less prone to adult behaviors. It is puzzling.

It turns out that American youth culture has become less inclined toward criminal excesses while American young adults have become more infantile. America’s young people are less promiscuous, less drug-addled, less alcoholic and less criminal than their predecessors. At the same time, America’s young adults are more likely to be living with Mom and Dad, to have jobs that do not look like careers and to be delaying the moment when they will have to settle down and have families.

One finds such statistics compelling. Yet, one suspects that they distort the reality. One’s suspicions increase when we read, from Douthat, that we can try to explain it all by showing how much time America’s children and young adults spend online. When push comes to shove, we can blame it on the internet. At least the internet is not going to take offense and accuse you of a microaggression.

It sounds like a good explanation, except that it tends to absolve all human beings of responsibility for their behavior. If we were serious about blaming it all on Facebook and internet porn, we would want to know about whether the same internet produces the same results for young people around the world. If the internet has turned Johnny in Portland into a slug, has it done the same for his peers in Singapore, Mumbai, Tokyo, Rome and Sao Paulo?

For all I know we are using the wrong standard to evaluate adolescent and young adult well-being. The absence of deviant and pathological behaviors does not necessarily translate into well-being. We would do better to take these statistics and balance them against achievement. Watching internet porn might very well cause there to be less sex crimes,  but are these young people establishing more durable relationships with other human beings.

It may be the case that sex crimes have diminished, but in our national conversation we are talking about nothing but sex crimes. As for achievement, America’s young are not doing very well in their academic achievement tests when compared to their peers around the world… peers who, again, have the same access to the internet and to social media.

I believe we should ask about whether or not these children and young adults have good or bad character. Are they trustworthy and reliable? Do they have a strong work ethic? Do they show up on time? Do they take initiatives? Do they feel loyal to their school or their company? Are they patriots?

There is so much more to well-being than not committing heinous crimes, that one barely knows where to start.

For the record, I report on Douthat’s observations:

First, youth culture has become less violent, less promiscuous and more responsible. American childhood is safer than ever before. Teenagersdrink and smoke less than previous generations. The millennial generation has fewer sexual partners than its parents, and the teen birthrate has traced a two-decade decline. Violent crime — a young person’s temptation — fell for 25 years before the recent post-Ferguson homicide spike. Young people are half as likely to have been in a fight than a generation ago. Teen suicides, binge drinking, hard drug use — all are down.

Of course, responsible people do not commit violent crimes.Sleepwalkers don't either. Yet, the fact that you forgo criminal and degenerate behaviors does not mean that I can count on you to do a good job or to show up on time for the meeting. For all anyone knows American adolescents have become a bunch of solitary wankers who have fallen into a hypnotic trance by overindulging in internet porn.

While we are mentioning hypnotic trances, I would add that in order to judge these statistics we should want to know how many of these children are taking psychiatric medication, whether anti-depressants, anti-anxiolytics or amphetamines. If young people are zoned out, perhaps it’s not the culture or the internet, but pills that are making them that way.

And how many of these children are taking pills because their parents either hover too much or are never around. One accepts that there are too many helicopter parents, but there are also probably too many latch-key children. If children come home from school to an empty house because both of their parents are away working during most of the day, they might very well have used the internet as a babysitter. In that case the fault will not lie with the internet but with delinquent parents.

Obviously, it’s much easier to blame the internet. The internet will not take offense. Parents will.

And also, for what it’s worth, this young generation has suffered the soporific effects of the self-esteem movement, the one that teaches them not to compete because everyone is just as good as everyone else. And they have also been brainwashed into believing that they should spend their waking hours fighting for social justice and demonstrating against microaggressions. If they have suffered a good upbringing they now believe that they should be whining about their privileges and trying to debilitate themselves in order not to enjoy any competitive advantage.

In any event, the absence of bad habits does not necessarily translate into good habits. It does not make for responsible adults. Douthat continues:

But over the same period, adulthood has become less responsible, less obviously adult. For the first time in over a century, more 20-somethingslive with their parents than in any other arrangement. The marriage rate is way down, and despite a high out-of-wedlock birthrate American fertility just hit an all-time low. More and more prime-age workers are dropping out of the work force — men especially, and younger men more so than older men, though female work force participation has dipped as well.

Regardless of which of my several explanations you prefer, the facts suggest that the absence of bad behavior in young people does not mean that they have developed the good behaviors or the good character that they need to conduct themselves as responsible adults.

Not doing irresponsible things does not mean that you are consistently behaving responsibly. The absence of the bad does not necessarily entail the presence of the good.

10 comments:

Trigger Warning said...

Interesting you should mention self-esteem. Countering the Ed.D. demographic (a demo whose ranks are swollen with misplaced self-esteem), Roy Baumeister, an experimental cognitive psychologist, has done some marvelous work in the area of self-control. A good video intro can be found here:

http://bit.ly/2bARKmR

The self-esteem cult, in my opinion, is largely responsible for the viral re-emergence of one of the forgotten and little known 7 Deadly Sins, acedia: i.e., "a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world [leading] to a state of being unable to perform one's duties in life." [Wiki]

Acedia could be as easily described as living in Mom's basement watching porn. It's a symptom of the classic sin of presumption, aka unearned self-esteem.

Funny how we revisit this stuff every few centuries, despite Progress.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

"It sounds like a good explanation, except that it tends to absolve all human beings of responsibility for their behavior. "

Ahh, but reasons and explanations provide a sense of security. If science can explain it, we can understand it. "Science says..." and "Studies say..." Never mind that we don't actually do much about it, but at least we know why it happened. So when Adam Lanza kills his mother, shoots up 26 human beings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and then kills himself, we speculate on why he did it -- because he was psychotic -- and somehow that makes it all better. But we don't do anything meaningful to protect people from psychotics (like forcibly institutionalizing them). Instead, we propose gun control, even though his mother bought the weapons for him. So then no one should have guns, except the government. Because 20th century governments were so reliable and trustworthy, as you aptly point out with the 200 million figure. Still, "Studies say..." and studies ought to be believed.

No one is responsible for anything. That's the net product of social "science." There's a reason, rationalization, excuse and/or explanation for everything. But it never changes the result, does it? Punt.

The problem with this generation of snowflakes is not too much experience, but lack of it. One can avoid all kinds of unpleasant encounters when living inside a cocoon.

Blame the Glowing Box! Hold on... doesn't it have an on/off switch?

We have met the enemy, and they is us. It seems we will give anything away for security, as long as it is couched in the right explanation. The Glowing Box tells us so, so it is true. But what do we give up? Our long-term self worth, our dignity. Self-esteem is a transitory objective -- justifying short-term peace or pleasure. It's a sham.

David Foster said...

Trigger Warnings..."The self-esteem cult, in my opinion, is largely responsible for the viral re-emergence of one of the forgotten and little known 7 Deadly Sins, acedia: i.e., "a state of listlessness or torpor, of not caring or not being concerned with one's position or condition in the world [leading] to a state of being unable to perform one's duties in life."

Peter Drucker mentioned acedia, which he said in the Middle Ages has been typical of the monk who realized, around age 40, that he would never be either saint or abbott...and suggested that the same acedia tended to appear in modern people who had been in the same careers till they reached that state of boredom.

David Foster said...

If you read some of the early writings on self-esteem, circa late 1960s, they are actually pretty rational---along the lines of 'pat on the back when it's deserved, don't just kick in the ass when problems happen.' But along the way it got transformed into 'pat on the back regardless of whether it is deserved or not.'

J said...

I believe we should ask about whether or not these children and young adults have good or bad character. Are they trustworthy and reliable? Do they have a strong work ethic? Do they show up on time? Do they take initiatives? Do they feel loyal to their school or their company? Are they patriots?

These are better questions to ask if we want to check on the health of our society. But we have to go way deeper than that.

The question, "Do they feel loyal to their school or their company?" could be reversed and asked, "Do their companies and schools demonstrate any loyalty to them?". Higher educational institutions are saddling their graduates with heavy debt and little job assistance. Companies are less loyal than ever to their employees, cutting jobs and outsourcing or bringing in cheaper H1B immigrants to replace them. It's a two-way street.

Our young people need to be held to high standards, but so to our institutions and corporations.

How do we turn all this around? Young men need incentives:

1 - We need a reasonable chance of marrying a feminine woman and having a family. 2 - We need a reasonable chance of earning a living.
3 - We need a reasonable chance of earning honor and respect for living virtuously.

There are many forces arrayed against us in these three areas:

Feminism has really damaged young women (and of course men too). Women don't need men anymore (or so they think). Certainly not financially. They may have children with us, but will boot the father out of her and her children's life on a whim. Also, women are taught to act, dress and carry themselves like men. As we lose sexual polarity, we also lose the potential for attraction, healthy marriages and children.

Globalism, open borders and unrestrained immigration have driven down wages and made earning a good living harder than ever for young men. Corporations that are solely focused on the profit motive do not benefit society as a whole. They need to be held to account to maintain their end of the social contract with their employees and the nation.

Men are shamed for our sex drive, our lack of financial and educational success, our desire for respect. Virtue is no longer honored.

Politics is downstream of culture, so ultimately cultural problems are spiritual problems. Until our nation is restored to health spiritually, we will not have the fertile soil we need to create virtuous men.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

J @August 23, 2016 at 11:27 AM:

"Politics is downstream of culture, so ultimately cultural problems are spiritual problems. Until our nation is restored to health spiritually, we will not have the fertile soil we need to create virtuous men."

Agreed. Beautiful statement. Spot on.

The questions your ask earlier are interesting. I would pose another one first: "Do you feel a pull toward anything greater than yourself?" This would be an interesting question to our young people, academics, business leaders and politicians. Anyone, really. Do you believe in something greater than yourself, something you would be willing to sacrifice for because it is more valuable and meaningful to you than pleasure, desire, or even your own life?

The big questions are simple, open-ended and challenging. And don't appear on standardized tests.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

David Foster @August 23, 2016 at 7:21 AM:

I suspect you are pointing to the "greater" that theorists/academics/ideologues seem to crave when they achieve success: they want more, more and still more. So their theories/studies/ideologies must proliferate. It's like they believe "Too much of a good thing is just enough." And things go off the rails, and there's so much piling on. That's really what the self-esteem movement is today. It's a long way from a pat on the back. It's a hammock where servants bring you candy and ask if there's anything more they can do for you so you can feel better about yourself. Hammocks are for a bit of rest and relaxation, not an entire lifestyle.

AesopFan said...

"It sounds like a good explanation, except that it tends to absolve all human beings of responsibility for their behavior."

Looks like a good lead-in to this article:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/its-your-fault-i-killed-14618.html

* **
David Foster said...
If you read some of the early writings on self-esteem, circa late 1960s, they are actually pretty rational---along the lines of 'pat on the back when it's deserved, don't just kick in the ass when problems happen.' But along the way it got transformed into 'pat on the back regardless of whether it is deserved or not.'

There has never been a good idea that hasn't been corrupted somehow.

* * *
J said...
I believe we should ask about whether or not these children and young adults have good or bad character. Are they trustworthy and reliable? Do they have a strong work ethic? Do they show up on time? Do they take initiatives? Do they feel loyal to their school or their company? Are they patriots?

These are better questions to ask if we want to check on the health of our society. But we have to go way deeper than that.

The question, "Do they feel loyal to their school or their company?" could be reversed and asked, "Do their companies and schools demonstrate any loyalty to them?".

This is true on so many levels. If we are going to complain about the me-first culture, we have to recognize that such an outlook is an inevitable consequence of a culture that doesn't reward unselfish behavior.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

AesioFam @August 23, 2016 at 1:30 PM:

"... we have to recognize that such an outlook is an inevitable consequence of a culture that doesn't reward unselfish behavior."

Brilliant!

Dennis said...

AesopFan,

Well stated as recognizes by IAC. We get what we reward. Sadly, one cannot, in this culture or otherwise, stand by or in a mud puddle without getting mud on them especially "blue" cesspools.