In my life I have never felt less free to express my opinions. What have we done to the world?
There have always been generational differences and youthful rebellion. What is unusual at the moment is that the older generations are saying that we need more freedom and should welcome different perspectives and ways of thinking about the world whereas the young generations are saying that we need to restrict people’s behaviour, what we say and even how we think. This is the opposite from the usual youthful cry of “more freedom!” which previous generations shouted when they were young.
The main preoccupations of Gen-Z seem to be climate change, trans rights and racial justice and some of the more vocal among them also seem to be claiming (falsely) that previous generations did not care about these things. Why the last two minority issues? What about majority issues like war, social problems, poverty, resource scarcity, organised crime, covert surveillance, and so on?
In the end, we all get our world view from the media, forming opinions about politicians we have never met, about places we have never been and about events which will never effect us. The main preoccupations of a smart-phone addicted generation are transmitted to them by those devices. Maybe we do not naturally think like this but someone else (e.g. US post-structuralist academics and/or enemy state propaganda machines or maybe just profit-optimising algorithms) has brainwashed us using social media. Now people conflate anger with caring and say that if you are not angry then you do not care. What nonsense! The truth is that anger increases user engagement, leads to more clicks and more clicks translates into more advertising revenue.
In my life I have never felt less free to form my own opinions. What are we doing to the world?