Quote:
Originally Posted by baddog
I had an epiphany the other night.
I was visiting one of my girlfriends and somehow we got on the topic of today's youth (18-25). As she works with job placement, she has gained a lot of insight to the supposed right of entitlement that kids these days think they have.
She mentioned how when she was in college (she's 33) it was not unusual for students to take some time off, and go backpack through Europe, with the opportunity to actually interact with others. This could take place on the flight over, riding the rails, etc, etc. Today, people plug in their iPods and don't even talk to the person sitting next to them.
She blames a lot of this on TV and the Internet, in that parents use these tools as babysitters. Instead of going out to play with the neighbors, kids are playing with their XBox, or in some Yahoo chatroom. This has resulted in a generation of people that have very little in the way of life experience, and social interaction beyond the online forum.
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Many philosophers think we're now shifting to post-modernism and one of it's main social characteristics is that it distracts you from other people and focuses on yourself.
Cities are now designed to keep the flow going. As long as things flow, nothing else matters. This obviously leads to the reduction of public spaces where citizens could communicate with each other. In other words, places where you could actually stop and talk are now frowned upon. Think about malls and how they're designed to keep the people going, thing about the Internet, the place where the flow of information is king (regardless of the source), think about how McDonald's uses bright white lighting to discourage people from sitting around to talk in a warm environment. One author jokes about traffic jams and how the postmodern society hates being stuck in traffic with fellow citizens.
One of these guys goes as far as saying that practically everything in cities is designed to center the attention on yourself, rather than on the community. He claims that advertising, for example, distracts you from reality because while you're looking at it, you disconnect from absolutely everything else and center your thought in the fantasy land portrayed by the ad.
It's really crazy actually.
Basically, post-modernism characteristics are:
- Nothing is certain
- Science flakes because of this
- Since nothing is certain, there is no utopia
- De-centralization of cities (as in multiple centers, not as in lack of center)
- Multiple meanings to everything, rampant polysemy (Saussure's linguistic sign is fucked up here haha)
- Eclectic esthetics
- Self-centered individual
- Live for today, tomorrow is uncertain (think savings, long-term projects, etc.)
- Disbelief in traditional institutions (politics, church, schools, etc.)
Well, I extended myself a bit more than I wanted here... Sorry.
As usual, just another human looking for explanations... The whole post-modernism theory is quite interesting and it is almost the perfect excuse for a "formal anarchy".
It also explains a lot about today's youth and why they behave like they do.