RE: Dealing with the Discontents

If you're never taught how to learn, how do you learn it?

I think that the education system is lkely better at teaching now - but the way they teach is worse. The expectation in the past was that a student was expected to learn - now, nothing is expected of them. They are pandered and catered to - by parent and society.

The environment you are observing is a bit different though, isn't it? The older generations went through real hardship, real war, real atrocity - they weren't damaged by someone getting their pronoun wrong.

I also don't think that Gen-Z has the most psychological issues, but that the stigma of addressing those is finally disappearing and treatment is actually encouraged.

Yes - for better and worse. Youth of today are old-hands at psychological talk, because they have been therapized since toddlers - well intentioned or not, it has made many of them oversensitive to what they should barely feel. They are like adults who have grown up on a bland diet and had their first taste of a mild chili meal. Sweating the small stuff.

Again, not for the sake of being better in itself, but to be better for the system.

Perhaps this is hand in hand though? If we aren't being better, how can we make a better society. And if we don't make a better society, how can we be better? This degradation down to the lowest common denominator means we are constantly going to keep degrading.

The expectation in the past was that a student was expected to learn.

At least in my school, it was learning and learning how to learn. My math teacher (besides teaching us how to calculate when we would be allowed to drive again after a hard night out) always said: "Math is not about teaching you math, it's teaching you how to solve problems."

That is indeed something that is not going well right now. The problem solving capabilities are incredibly low - result of parents and society solving every problem for everyone. Forgot to buy all the ingredients? Call an Uber eats. No need to work something out with what you have. Can't make it up the stairs at first try? No worry, mom/dad will carry you, no need to scramble your way up and maybe bump your head to learn how not to do it.

they weren't damaged by someone getting their pronoun wrong.

it has made many of them oversensitive to what they should barely feel.

Absolutely correct, it does seem exaggerated to us. A friend of mine, looking at that generation, very cynically said that the world needs a war to get things back on track. On the other hand, though, everybody suffers at their own level. One doesn't understand the other's suffering, it's too personal. Experience can not be taught.

This degradation down to the lowest common denominator means we are constantly going to keep degrading.

That is always my main argument. The system keeps itself alive by destroying what is left of values, pushing humans into worker bees lead by instincts, with no deeper connection nor to each other nor nature nor anything, and with no connection at all to themselves. The question is - how to turn that around? It's easy to destroy values and community, but it's very hard to build it again. Anarchism is based on pure value beings, and is a wonderful theory, my favorite Utopia - but for it to work, you need to educate people on values. That was tried before by many, and has led to authoritarianism. It boils down to two questions: a) are there universal values, values given by "god" or whatever you will call it? and b) if not a, then who gets to decide what values are the correct ones to teach?