The Thinnest of Skins

Longtime readers of this blog will not be surprised or even shocked. They will have assessed the state of mind of Generation Z, which I have called the Big Baby Generation, and will agree that it is seriously deficient.

Presumably, denizens of this group have high self-esteem; they think the world of themselves. They are confident that they can master any task and meet any challenge. Even if the world entire sees them as incompetent, they know, in the depths of their souls, that they are the greatest. If you should dare to dispute their self-love they will punish you severely.

As Gen Zers enter the workforce en masse, their managers discover that they are chronic whiners, looking for a way to avoid hard work. They make a fetish of sensitivity, to the point that they have become chronically thin skinned.

But, what does it mean to be thin skinned? Surely, it means being hypersensitive to insults. And that means, being constantly on the lookout for offensive remarks or even offensive looks. 

This should not come as a surprise. Our current cancel culture has been teaching people how to be hypersensitive, how to find insults where there are none. 

So, we in the world where hurt feelings rule. If you feel that someone has hurt your feelings, you have a right to expostulate. In better cases you have the right to extract tribute or even punishment.

Of course, no sensible or normal human would believe that the so-called offense was really all that offensive, but your thin skin is still smarting.

The rule is: if you felt it was offensive it was offensive. In the absence of a functioning intelligence, you can do nothing but rely on your feelings. 

Those who suffer from thin skin are generally depressed. They feel detached and disconnected, to the point where they are hypersensitive to any sign that they are isolated and alone.

That is the salient point. You do not become thin skinned by lacking self-esteem, for not being sufficiently full of yourself. It might not make immediate intuitive sense, but being thin skinned derives from the sense of disconnection, from being detached from social groups-- which makes you especially vulnerable, like the wildebeest that has wandered away from the herd.

Feeling offended means that you feel like you do not belong to the group. It makes you especially sensitive to anything that resembles criticism. To the point where any manager trying to manage members of the Big Baby Generation will soon discover that he must tailor his language to their sensitivities and sensibilities.

It goes well beyond the insistence on using illiterate and incoherent pronouns.

If we had not read it in the Wall Street Journal, we would have guessed that it had come to us from the Babylon Bee. To take an absurd example, today’s managers have discovered that they should not use the harsh term-- feedback-- but should replace it, when talking to Gen Zers, with the nicer term-- feedforward.

Seriously? 

Everyone knows what feedback means. Do you have any idea what feedforward means?

Culture warriors who prescribe this change defend it thusly:

Feedback too often leaves workers feeling defeated, weighed down by past actions instead of considering the next steps ahead, but “feedforward” encourages improvement and development, its proponents say. 

These people think that they own the language and that they can impose their own quirks and aberrations on everyone else. For the record, it will obviously not work in the long run.

Naturally, the young generation cannot deal with even the least suggestion that they have gotten anything wrong. It is, to say the least, embarrassing.

Companies are also banishing another negatively charged term: “review,” which they are replacing with “connect” sessions, coaching, self-reflection and opportunity discussions.

As I noted above, this thin skinned cohort feels like it does not belong. It feels disconnected, as though it is not really a team mate. 

So, we have produced a generation that cannot deal with failure, that cannot accept constructive criticism, that cannot accept ever having done anything wrong, that does not even want to improve performance.

Of course, dare we mention that in some cases you are not permitted to point out poor performance, lest you be accused of bigotry. When you set about hiring people who cannot do the job and are not allowed to say so, you might resort to creating a new language that will spare their feelings. Lest you be counted as a bigot.

But, if you have your own special language, if you have special usages that are unique to a subgroup, you are forming a cult. The aberrant usage and the absurd wording count as passwords, showing that you belong to a subgroup.

This tells us that today’s young employees no longer really feel like they belong to their company cultures. And in many cases they do not feel proud to belong to our country. 

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