I have to largely agree with those who complain of the article’s Golden Ageist position.
There is no empirical evidence in the piece. And this is obvious given that any evidence could only be subjective and interpretative based on behaviour between humans.
There is a great deal of objective[0] evidence that the general well-being of humans across the globe has improved. Women’s rights, famine, absolute poverty, gay rights, etc., etc., have all improved objectively in the period the article portrays. Even in the US, the focus of the article, this is generally true.
Could I ask a question? If we were to accept the article’s position as true, how many would trade the subjective deterioration of customs such as politeness and adherence to rules for the objective improvement in those things I list above?
The article doesn't claim that we are worse off for the more adolescent, individualist culture. Just that it poses unique challenges, especially in its excesses and pathologies.
Moreover, it explicitly makes your point:
> The phrase ‘unintended consequences’ used at the beginning of this essay usually implies negative effects, but there are notable benefits as well. .... These youthful character traits have served to make us more accepting and generous in many respects. Rising tolerance towards marginalised groups can be partly attributed to this emergent youthful mindset
Evidence is indeed lacking in the article, but the author is clearly writing against a scholarly background that almost certainly provides mountains of evidence and analyses, quality notwithstanding. Complaining about evidence in a context like this is like one of my friends in high school who went through an obnoxiously cynical phase, exhorting "prove it" after even the most prosaic, non-substantive statements. (I think he had just begun dabbling with philosophy, including epistemology. Or maybe I had and was also obnoxiously regurgitating philosophical claims in other conversations.) This is not an academic paper. It's an essay summarizing some themes that the author and others are investigating--or at least analyzing. And while making some rather concrete claims[1], it abstains from specific, substantive judgments, conclusions, or prescriptions. Personally, it's only when I see the latter that I begin to scrutinize arguments more closely. Otherwise, I understand these essays as merely providing a window into discourse that hasn't yet gone mainstream, and I mostly look for rough coherency. Whether I agree with the claims, let alone the premises, is an entirely different matter. But these essays can help you anticipate socio-cultural memes and identify potential evidence, both confirming and disconfirming.
[1] Specifically, the linkage between high school socialization and culture. Which, IMO, is an interesting thesis I had not come across before; one that is much more concrete and falsifiable than typical Golden Age-themed lamentations; and one arguably in the vein of the Hajnal line hypothesis[2] in that it links particularized adolescent social patterns to broader social phenomena and evolution. By contrast, mere observations that modern culture is increasingly adolescent are hardly new. The TV show Seinfeld parodies and even satirizes it, albeit without ridicule or negative judgment. Compare It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which uses similar satire, except the themes are less subtle and the writers and actors admit to substantively critiquing contemporary culture.
The author focuses on how youth culture in the educational environment transformed society as a whole later on. A similar view could be taken of the effects of social media conventions.
For example, I've more recently been frustrated with lack of communication in business dealings, only to discover that I was "ghosted" by younger employees. I would then have to escalate communication to a senior manager for what should have been a trivial matter. I've read that this is becoming a widespread problem as Gen Z enters the workforce.
While ghosting is obviously not good behavior, it happens for a reason. Younger employees are definitely in the wrong! It can also be useful to take it as poorly communicated feedback - what did the organization, workflow, etc do to cause the ghosting?
In my work I’ve found non-technical account managers take much longer to respond when they don’t know how to answer something and don’t want to offend me by saying that I communicated poorly.
An eye opening rationale for something that's clearly been happening my entire life (50+ years): people are more selfish, less educated, less responsible, and less kind than ever before.
Adam Smith warned extreme division of labor would result in humans that were unimaginably stupid.
After figuring out the fundamentals of physics in detail the last 100 years, what else is there except engineering replacement technology and the same old utilitarian day to day?
It’s clear that more people are educated but we’re still clinging to that division of labor meme hard, and turning grads into dumb ass data entry chimps.
Or you just got lucky with the environment where you were a child and didn’t realise how you were preferring to spend time with worse people over time, blaming the environment for it.
"in the 1960s when the youth cohort of that era expressed their adolescent rambunctiousness and exuberance with particular abandon and swerved even more strongly from ‘we’ to ‘I’ thinking: do your own thing, live and let live, anything goes."
I don't see it that way (Reagan probably did). The post-WW2 era was notable for its conformity. There were lots and lots of rules, and formulas, and laws, about how you had to live your life ... from the nuclear family right down to how to comb your hair.
Some individuals came together right now to overthrow many of those strictures, create music festivals and much less uptight music, explore communes, create food coops, explore religions outside the 'acceptable' ones, protest the war and the draft, read alternative histories (not taught in school after saying the pledge of allegiance), create Earth Day and a Whole Earth Catalog. In short, to create a counterculture - one with quite adult concerns.
There were a lot less people in the world back then. Trying to blame today's behavior on the 10 or 20% of 60s kids among 'those hippies' (the heavily-distorting 1991 TV series 'Making Sense of the Sixties', for example) has never worked. Many mainstream adults (Howe's 'we') were constrained to conformist role-playing back then. But look at the music, films, TV and bestsellers they picked, once off-stage. IMO US people today are less 'adolescent' than in the 1960s.
Prof. Howe's hidebound paean to life with the blinders on is little more than a dip in nostalgia for those without the stomach to look forward instead.
I don't see the conflict between the two characterizations. He's making an observation, and you're simply defending it.
1960s cultural reactions were particularly radical largely because they were relative to some particularly rigid and simplistic social mores. But both generations can easily be placed on a timeline of increasing individualism. Both the construction and emphasis of the nuclear family as well as the bootstrap moralism are part of this increasing individualist tendency. Indeed, even today these norms are promoted by conservatives precisely because the implication is that failure to conform will (and should) result in impoverishment--there is no community to fall back on, and thus no allowance for failure. 1960s reformers thought they could build communities supporting radical individualism, but the latter tended to result in the dissipation of the former--literally and figuratively.
Note that increasing individualism does not imply decreasing communitarianism. (Which is distinct from a concept of "we". The U.S. was one of the first modern nation-states, afterall, and helped to redefine what "we" could mean.) Specifically, the article doesn't actually claim that there was greater communitarianism before the advent of secondary school. The U.S. has always been strongly individualistic, but this was more a harsh reality and de facto state of affairs than anything else. Interpersonal communities could thrive, but they were often based around religion or economic necessity (or both). There's a plausible case that the accelerated construction of a sophisticated, positive individualist culture did indeed coincide with increasing education. I always thought this was simply an effect of more people being introduced to non-religious social concepts while standards of living were simultaneously improving (i.e. less need for communities of necessity) in large part due to industrialization (with its own implications for the role of the individual), which had the overall effect of compounding and exaggerating our predisposition to individualism. But the thesis that a large part of it may instead be related to adolescent socialization is interesting. Notably, it's falsifiable in ways that most other social theories are not.
"...we now have a society where the vast majority possess knowledge and skills necessary for success in various dimensions of their lives, including work, community engagement, democratic participation and more."
Not sure what society the author lives in but I'd love to visit a place where "the vast majority possess knowledge and skills be essay for success."
A large part of the author's thesis is that greater individualism led to more progressive social values. A possible counterexample to consider would be Norway and Sweden, where there is greater pressure toward social conformity than in the USA, but whose societies have long been seen as more progressive.
I'm old enough to have seen this happen in real time and continue to be puzzled and amused by it.
I think the author is trying way too had to make this trend sound more important than it is, and I think the connection to the election of Donald Trump is a real stretch.
But a few areas where we can clearly see how US society as become more child-like (not childish) over the past 50 years. (and BTW, I'm not saying any of this is bad)
1) Starbucks - at some point our morning cup of coffee has turned into a milkshake.
2) Sports memorabilia - signed balls and playing cards used to be kid stuff.
3) The Punisher & Police - adults trying to show how tough they are by displaying their favorite comic book character
4) The end of suit and tie business culture - no comment needed, and thank God for this one!
Note: I've left out video gaming off the list. It seems like a good fit at first, but the medium just too new. We can't say it's something people people used to stop doing once they grew up. The fisrt generation of gamers never really stopped
I don't believe there is really much of a difference between adolescence and adulthood. Sure, as you age, lots about your mental and emotional state changes, and your expectations shift with experience... but most of what we actually want doesn't really change. Freedom, friendship, companionship, intellectual fulfillment, a sense of accomplishment, sex, pleasurably and memorable experiences, and leisure time.
Ultimately adulthood is predicated on sacrifice. You sacrifice something like 35-45% of your waking hours during the absolute prime time of your life to earn money. Then you sacrifice 70% of the money that you just earned to maintain a basic framework in which to live. That framework then then comes with even more responsibility and work.
I often think the reason why adults ultimately have children is because a sense of legacy gives us hope that our children will have to sacrifice less than we did, and therefore it's all somehow worth it.
Not having to sacrifice milkshakes seems like a win to me.
> The [first] generation of gamers never really stopped
I get that this was an off-the-cuff statement, but worth digging into. Video gaming has morphed so much.
I used to game through the night (Quake through Starcraft, Civ, Diablo, etc) but pretty much gave it up when I had kids. I've found social media and online "edutainment" (inc. HN) to fill that life niche (escapism?) so much better, and even when I've made an effort to try to play a game, it never holds my attention that long.
On the other hand, casual gaming has absolutely taken off. I see so many older people even (60+) playing random games when they're waiting for something. My wife and kids do the same.
An interesting article with well cited sources. The Boomer-laid-the-foundations take is of particular note. Unfortunately the ending wanes as I would have preferred not to read another take on the "Trump is the alpha individualist" trope.
I'll save a lot of you a click and a long-ass read here: This entire essay is 1 part "The Good Old Days"...
> In this same period, young people grew increasingly tolerant of social misdemeanours such as habitually failing to keep promises, using profane language, and keeping extra change mistakenly given by a store clerk – minor incivilities by today’s standards, but harbingers of a changing social landscape where the transgression of established norms was starting to become more common and accepted.
...1 part plugging his own book...
> Paul Howe is professor of political science at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Canada. He is the author of Teen Spirit: How Adolescence Transformed the Adult World (2020).
...1 part social/political commentary (Not going to quote the massive section about Trump), and 1 part whining about "kids these days don't want to be cogs in the machine" (Multiple sections about putting "I" before "We".)
It's interesting how you see a lot of research from foreign professors and universities about American trends. And a lot of coverage of American politic in foreign news. The opposite doesn't hold true.
I guess in the social sciences, bashing on the previous administration is seen as a way for career advancement? Even abroad?
You kinda missed the TL;DR, no? He says because of that teenage culture, we now having teenage level thinking and behavior in what should have otherwise been mature adults, and with dire consequences.
[+] [-] avastmick|4 years ago|reply
There is no empirical evidence in the piece. And this is obvious given that any evidence could only be subjective and interpretative based on behaviour between humans.
There is a great deal of objective[0] evidence that the general well-being of humans across the globe has improved. Women’s rights, famine, absolute poverty, gay rights, etc., etc., have all improved objectively in the period the article portrays. Even in the US, the focus of the article, this is generally true.
Could I ask a question? If we were to accept the article’s position as true, how many would trade the subjective deterioration of customs such as politeness and adherence to rules for the objective improvement in those things I list above?
[0]Some objective stats: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190111-seven-reasons-wh...
[+] [-] wahern|4 years ago|reply
Moreover, it explicitly makes your point:
> The phrase ‘unintended consequences’ used at the beginning of this essay usually implies negative effects, but there are notable benefits as well. .... These youthful character traits have served to make us more accepting and generous in many respects. Rising tolerance towards marginalised groups can be partly attributed to this emergent youthful mindset
Evidence is indeed lacking in the article, but the author is clearly writing against a scholarly background that almost certainly provides mountains of evidence and analyses, quality notwithstanding. Complaining about evidence in a context like this is like one of my friends in high school who went through an obnoxiously cynical phase, exhorting "prove it" after even the most prosaic, non-substantive statements. (I think he had just begun dabbling with philosophy, including epistemology. Or maybe I had and was also obnoxiously regurgitating philosophical claims in other conversations.) This is not an academic paper. It's an essay summarizing some themes that the author and others are investigating--or at least analyzing. And while making some rather concrete claims[1], it abstains from specific, substantive judgments, conclusions, or prescriptions. Personally, it's only when I see the latter that I begin to scrutinize arguments more closely. Otherwise, I understand these essays as merely providing a window into discourse that hasn't yet gone mainstream, and I mostly look for rough coherency. Whether I agree with the claims, let alone the premises, is an entirely different matter. But these essays can help you anticipate socio-cultural memes and identify potential evidence, both confirming and disconfirming.
[1] Specifically, the linkage between high school socialization and culture. Which, IMO, is an interesting thesis I had not come across before; one that is much more concrete and falsifiable than typical Golden Age-themed lamentations; and one arguably in the vein of the Hajnal line hypothesis[2] in that it links particularized adolescent social patterns to broader social phenomena and evolution. By contrast, mere observations that modern culture is increasingly adolescent are hardly new. The TV show Seinfeld parodies and even satirizes it, albeit without ridicule or negative judgment. Compare It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which uses similar satire, except the themes are less subtle and the writers and actors admit to substantively critiquing contemporary culture.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajnal_line
[+] [-] mattcwilson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wrp|4 years ago|reply
For example, I've more recently been frustrated with lack of communication in business dealings, only to discover that I was "ghosted" by younger employees. I would then have to escalate communication to a senior manager for what should have been a trivial matter. I've read that this is becoming a widespread problem as Gen Z enters the workforce.
[+] [-] soared|4 years ago|reply
In my work I’ve found non-technical account managers take much longer to respond when they don’t know how to answer something and don’t want to offend me by saying that I communicated poorly.
[+] [-] mimixco|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lrdswrk00|4 years ago|reply
After figuring out the fundamentals of physics in detail the last 100 years, what else is there except engineering replacement technology and the same old utilitarian day to day?
It’s clear that more people are educated but we’re still clinging to that division of labor meme hard, and turning grads into dumb ass data entry chimps.
[+] [-] heavenlyblue|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|4 years ago|reply
I don't see it that way (Reagan probably did). The post-WW2 era was notable for its conformity. There were lots and lots of rules, and formulas, and laws, about how you had to live your life ... from the nuclear family right down to how to comb your hair.
Some individuals came together right now to overthrow many of those strictures, create music festivals and much less uptight music, explore communes, create food coops, explore religions outside the 'acceptable' ones, protest the war and the draft, read alternative histories (not taught in school after saying the pledge of allegiance), create Earth Day and a Whole Earth Catalog. In short, to create a counterculture - one with quite adult concerns.
There were a lot less people in the world back then. Trying to blame today's behavior on the 10 or 20% of 60s kids among 'those hippies' (the heavily-distorting 1991 TV series 'Making Sense of the Sixties', for example) has never worked. Many mainstream adults (Howe's 'we') were constrained to conformist role-playing back then. But look at the music, films, TV and bestsellers they picked, once off-stage. IMO US people today are less 'adolescent' than in the 1960s.
Prof. Howe's hidebound paean to life with the blinders on is little more than a dip in nostalgia for those without the stomach to look forward instead.
[+] [-] wahern|4 years ago|reply
1960s cultural reactions were particularly radical largely because they were relative to some particularly rigid and simplistic social mores. But both generations can easily be placed on a timeline of increasing individualism. Both the construction and emphasis of the nuclear family as well as the bootstrap moralism are part of this increasing individualist tendency. Indeed, even today these norms are promoted by conservatives precisely because the implication is that failure to conform will (and should) result in impoverishment--there is no community to fall back on, and thus no allowance for failure. 1960s reformers thought they could build communities supporting radical individualism, but the latter tended to result in the dissipation of the former--literally and figuratively.
Note that increasing individualism does not imply decreasing communitarianism. (Which is distinct from a concept of "we". The U.S. was one of the first modern nation-states, afterall, and helped to redefine what "we" could mean.) Specifically, the article doesn't actually claim that there was greater communitarianism before the advent of secondary school. The U.S. has always been strongly individualistic, but this was more a harsh reality and de facto state of affairs than anything else. Interpersonal communities could thrive, but they were often based around religion or economic necessity (or both). There's a plausible case that the accelerated construction of a sophisticated, positive individualist culture did indeed coincide with increasing education. I always thought this was simply an effect of more people being introduced to non-religious social concepts while standards of living were simultaneously improving (i.e. less need for communities of necessity) in large part due to industrialization (with its own implications for the role of the individual), which had the overall effect of compounding and exaggerating our predisposition to individualism. But the thesis that a large part of it may instead be related to adolescent socialization is interesting. Notably, it's falsifiable in ways that most other social theories are not.
[+] [-] gravstar|4 years ago|reply
Not sure what society the author lives in but I'd love to visit a place where "the vast majority possess knowledge and skills be essay for success."
[+] [-] wrp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] airhead969|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] timoth3y|4 years ago|reply
I think the author is trying way too had to make this trend sound more important than it is, and I think the connection to the election of Donald Trump is a real stretch.
But a few areas where we can clearly see how US society as become more child-like (not childish) over the past 50 years. (and BTW, I'm not saying any of this is bad)
1) Starbucks - at some point our morning cup of coffee has turned into a milkshake.
2) Sports memorabilia - signed balls and playing cards used to be kid stuff.
3) The Punisher & Police - adults trying to show how tough they are by displaying their favorite comic book character
4) The end of suit and tie business culture - no comment needed, and thank God for this one!
Note: I've left out video gaming off the list. It seems like a good fit at first, but the medium just too new. We can't say it's something people people used to stop doing once they grew up. The fisrt generation of gamers never really stopped
[+] [-] nly|4 years ago|reply
I don't believe there is really much of a difference between adolescence and adulthood. Sure, as you age, lots about your mental and emotional state changes, and your expectations shift with experience... but most of what we actually want doesn't really change. Freedom, friendship, companionship, intellectual fulfillment, a sense of accomplishment, sex, pleasurably and memorable experiences, and leisure time.
Ultimately adulthood is predicated on sacrifice. You sacrifice something like 35-45% of your waking hours during the absolute prime time of your life to earn money. Then you sacrifice 70% of the money that you just earned to maintain a basic framework in which to live. That framework then then comes with even more responsibility and work.
I often think the reason why adults ultimately have children is because a sense of legacy gives us hope that our children will have to sacrifice less than we did, and therefore it's all somehow worth it.
Not having to sacrifice milkshakes seems like a win to me.
[+] [-] photojosh|4 years ago|reply
I get that this was an off-the-cuff statement, but worth digging into. Video gaming has morphed so much.
I used to game through the night (Quake through Starcraft, Civ, Diablo, etc) but pretty much gave it up when I had kids. I've found social media and online "edutainment" (inc. HN) to fill that life niche (escapism?) so much better, and even when I've made an effort to try to play a game, it never holds my attention that long.
On the other hand, casual gaming has absolutely taken off. I see so many older people even (60+) playing random games when they're waiting for something. My wife and kids do the same.
[+] [-] omgitsabird|4 years ago|reply
Also, adults always have gamed, see card games, board games, charades etc.
[+] [-] joemazerino|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwitaway1235|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] airhead969|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bussierem|4 years ago|reply
> In this same period, young people grew increasingly tolerant of social misdemeanours such as habitually failing to keep promises, using profane language, and keeping extra change mistakenly given by a store clerk – minor incivilities by today’s standards, but harbingers of a changing social landscape where the transgression of established norms was starting to become more common and accepted.
...1 part plugging his own book...
> Paul Howe is professor of political science at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Canada. He is the author of Teen Spirit: How Adolescence Transformed the Adult World (2020).
...1 part social/political commentary (Not going to quote the massive section about Trump), and 1 part whining about "kids these days don't want to be cogs in the machine" (Multiple sections about putting "I" before "We".)
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] 908B64B197|4 years ago|reply
I guess in the social sciences, bashing on the previous administration is seen as a way for career advancement? Even abroad?
[+] [-] dtagames|4 years ago|reply