The Problem with Millennials

Bashing Millennials has become passé even a little unfair because the Boomers were worse in many respects and face it, we all know Millennials who introspective and knowledgeable some are even friends or family members.

Yet Millennials are the products of a dumbed down government education thanks to a certain brand of Boomer as well as a mind numbingly stupid culture determined to be first in the race to the bottom, so of course they are lacking in important ways.

A law school professor, whose students have been Millennials for several years now, notes contrary to the stereotypes, the majority wants to learn, also true to stereotypes most cannot think, do not know very much and are enslaved to appetites and feelings.

His words; their minds are hostages in a prison fashioned by elite culture and their undergraduate professors, and they cannot learn until their minds are freed from that prison.

In 2017, in his Foundation of Law Course for first year students he realized they were especially resistant to the ancient wisdom of foundational texts.

Many of them dismissed unfamiliar ideas as classist and racist, unable to engage with such on their own merits, outside of their cultural paradigm.

So, he laid down the ground rules in a prepared speech to serve as a precursor to his course.

It is a classic but please pardon the indirect pun of the tale.

The Speech Summed Up

. He starts by saying many students are not educated but dis-educated, or more bluntly indoctrinated.

So it follows they have to be de-programmed before taught how to think.

. Reasoning requires an understanding of truth claims even those thought false or bad.

Here he mentions the problem of labeling things with various “isms” which prevent understanding of uncomfortable or difficult claims.

. Reasoning requires correct judgment, and judgment involves making distinctions, discriminating.

Students learned how to avoid critical, evaluative judgments by appealing to simplistic terms such as “diversity” and “equality.”

. Reasoning requires understanding the difference between true and false.

Reasoning requires coherence and logic but many students learned to embrace incoherence and illogic.

. Incorrectly associating truth with subjective feelings, which have nothing to do with true or false claims and constantly change.

. When describing an ideology, don’t use a word that ends in “ism.”

Except for terms like communism, socialism, Nazism, and capitalism which are established concepts in history and the social sciences, and used to gain knowledge.

Terms like “classism,” “sexism,” “materialism,” “cisgenderism,” and (yes) even racism are generally not used as meaningful or productive terms, at least not in the way students understand it, as most of the time they don’t promote understanding.

“Isms” prevent learning, so slapping an “ism” on things is not conducive to higher learning.

Consider that slapping a label on the box without first opening the box and examining its contents is a form of cheating.

Labels have to be peeled off to look into the box because that’s when surprising truths are discovered.

. One of the falsehoods pedaled is moral knowledge progresses inevitably, that later generations are morally and intellectually superior to earlier generations so the older the source the more morally suspect it is.

There is a term for this, chronological snobbery, or to use a term understood in the modern context, “ageism.”

. Two moral values are valued above all else, diversity and equality but they must be properly understood, but the way it’s been taught makes students irrational and unreasoning.

Having both diversity and equality is contradictory, because differences and sameness can’t exist at the same time, so the idea is incoherent.

Similarly, equality is not for its own sake. Nobody is equal in all respects. We are all different, which is to say that we are all not the same, which is to say that we are unequal in many ways, which is a good thing, although not always.

Related to this: the word “fair” does not mean equality or something you don’t like.

. Don’t bother to inform others about your feelings on a topic, but do tell them what you think about it.

If you can’t think yet, that’s O.K., tell us what Aristotle thinks, or Hammurabi thinks, or H.L.A. Hart thinks.

Borrow opinions from those whose opinions are worth considering.

He then references Aristotle and his teachings that men and women enslaved to their passions do not have worthwhile opinions amongst others things.

Only the person who exercises practical reason and attains practical wisdom knows how first to live his life, and then order his household, and finally, when he is sufficiently wise and mature, to venture opinions on how to bring order to the political community.

Many students don’t know how to disagree with an argument, so he sets the goal for each of them to encounter at least one idea they find disagreeable promising to coach them on HOW to disagree.

Then he underlines his three ground rules for the rest of the semester.

1. The only “ism” I ever want to come out your mouth is a syllogism. Don’t use ‘isms’ like racist, classist, etc. You are not allowed to fault others for being biased or privileged until you have first identified and examined your own biases and privileges.

2. If I catch you using the words “fair,” “diversity,” or “equality,” or a variation on those terms, and you do not stop immediately to explain what you mean, you will lose your privilege to express any further opinions in class until you first demonstrate that you understand three things about the view that you are criticizing.

3. If you ever begin a statement with the words “I feel,” before continuing you must cluck like a chicken or make some other suitable animal sound.

To their credit, the students received the speech well, and so far this semester, only two students have been required to cluck like chickens.

If only other students are as lucky to re-learn from a professor who challenges their wrong thinking.