Immature Americans = “Cheap Patriotism”

The more I think about the notion that an entire culture has succumbed to the allure of youth, and trapped itself in immaturity, the more troubled I become. Once upon a time, I thought the cult of youth was just the worship of the body beautiful–lithe, smooth-skinned young flesh–and a corresponding fear of aging and death.  But I fear the truth is far more insidious.  The more we become a “visual” culture, the more easily we fall into this trap of juvenilization…the hypnotic draw of TV, video, computer, and ‘Droid have sucked us in.  We read less, we react more.  We ponder less, we play more.  We don’t reflect, we just “like” reflexively.

We blame it all on being busy…we don’t have time to read something substantial. Give me the news briefs, please. Give me the short sentences, the pithy paragraphs, the headlines.  Read a book?  Well…maybe on Kindle, where I can keep pausing to play Angry Birds.

But our appetite for sound bites seems to leave us empty of deep thought while forever hungry for more hot air.   I could spend a lot of time researching and reporting to you what I think is at the root of this cultural phenomenon.

But it doesn’t matter.

Follow up re: “Young People are Stupid”…it’s worse than we think

Thanks to a Facebook friend for providing the link to an excellent and sobering article in this month’s Christianity Today.

It’s not just that our youthcentric culture ignores the fact that youth are stupid (as JTR wrote yesterday), and seems oblivious that pandering to youth’s massive ego is ultimately self-destructive.  The ugly truth is that we have ALL, by and large, been “juvenilized.”  Huntington University professor Thomas Bergler’s lengthy, excellent article (adapted from his book, The Juvenilization of American Christianity) diagnoses the state of the Church in America in four words–and I believe that those same four words describe a huge problem in America at large:  ”We’re all adolescents now.”

Here’s a bit of background on how Bergler sees the changing face of evangelicalism:

New consensus: Young people are Stupid

‘Cause when you can get Craig Ferguson and Jonah Goldberg on the same page, you have literally just “crossed the streams” and lived to tell the tale.

Both men (one a Scottish liberal comedian; the other an American conservative syndicated columnist/author) are scarily in synch with this, and they have a point: young folks, by virtue of their youth, don’t know much. They certainly don’t know as much as they WILL later on, when they have more life experience. So why do we give youth so much credence?

I’ll let Ferguson give his explanation first:

Now, compare that with Goldberg’s assessment:

“It is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance  and stupidity more than youth,” the National Review Online editor said in an  interview. “We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get  less young.”

So why all the focus on the youth vote and “millennials” in politics?  Goldberg says young people having so much influence in a society is  unhealthy.

My view is, they’re going to run the country some day, so we should really explain why they’re so frickin’ stupid about so many things,” he said.

“The fact that young people think socialism is better than capitalism … that’s something that conservatives have to work hard to beat out of them,  either literally or figurative, as far as I’m concerned,” he joked.

I doubt very much that these guys compared notes on this. So is this theory, which they each arrived at independently, correct?

With apologies to the non-aged folks reading this: of course it is.

Lord knows that I was cocky when I was in my teens and 20′s, but there’s no question I was comparatively dumb back then. That’s not to say I’m Mensa material now, just that my opinions and decisions are better informed now than they were then.

The youth today are being feted by advertisers, polls, politicians and schools in ways that have never happened previously, and it’s true that you won’t go to your average septuagenarian if you want help fixing your Xbox. But life is more than Twitter skills or the having the most friends on Facebook. Life is hard, and making proper decisions makes life easier and infinitely more rewarding.

I had a conversation with a youth minister a couple of weeks back on the challenges of kids today, and we agreed on one thing: too many families today are focused on the self-esteem of kids, and not focused enough on the actual life lessons that are needed to turn them into functional, mature adults. We do a disservice, a crime, really, to our kids when we don’t force them to comprehend how little they actually know, and instill in them both humility and the desire/necessity to learn, forever.

I know that my wife and I are certainly trying to give these lessons to our boys. We’re not trying to crush their spirits or hurt their feelings; we’re trying to prepare them for a successful and productive life. My guess is that your average Occupy member has self-esteem scores that are off the charts, but how realistic is their worldview when they demand that their college loans be expunged?

This is changing. Slowly, to be sure, but changing just the same. There is a coming wave of what can only be viewed as counter-culture parents; parents that recognize that kids are kids and they need to fail, to fall down and learn from it. Children are not the pinnacle of human achievement: they’re just the latest model of an ever-changing product line. We need to stop accidentally raising more members of Generation Cupcake™, else we guarantee our country’s demise.

Ferguson and Goldberg each figured this out, and I’ll wager they couldn’t agree on the time of day.

When you can have a high school commencement address which has gone viral like the one I’m attaching below, all is not lost, and our country hasn’t yet morphed into the Lord of the Flies, writ large. And while informing your child “you’re sorta stupid” doesn’t sound particularly loving, I’m willing to bet the alternative is far, far worse.