Much has been written about the attitudes of the younger millennials. The need for instant gratification, constant positive feedback, the demands for flexible schedules, work/play balance and the right to work from home. Certainly, it has caused most of us that are in the older generation groups to shake our heads and mumble a lot
Now if all that doesn’t give you heartburn, this probably will. Many of us were awed by the amount of support that Bernie Sanders garnered among these younger voters. In fact, he quite possibly would have been the Democratic candidate without the harpooning of the DNC in concert with the Clinton group and some segments of the media. Sanders is a self-proclaimed socialist and it was very disturbing to many of us that he stood in such favor with millennials.
A recent study brings the issue into a sharper focus. The poll showed that 58% of the younger millennial group preferred living in a communist, socialist, or fascist country. Only 42% favored a capitalist country. 64% had a favorable opinion of communism with only 44% saying they would be insulted to be called a communist.
It is interesting to note though that 70% of these millennials couldn’t define or recognize a definition of communism, and only 66% could do so with socialism. It seems the most common concept they have of communism, socialism, and fascism is that “stuff is free”. Clearly, parents, grandparents, and liberal-leaning educators have failed to teach these youngsters much about the death and misery caused by these “isms” in the 20th century.
The ultimate death of our freedom and capitalism is a certainty under their future leadership if those attitudes prevail.
Yes, the first people to lose freedom are those that don’t even know what freedoms they have. Everyone of these kids should learn history and see how the idea of communism came up and why the ideas took hold. They should also study the incompatibilities of communism with basic human psychology and how damaging communism can be from a individual, family, government, and society perspectives.
Historically communism always takes roots from children spying on their family and friends; reporting them. Happened in Russia. Happened in China. Is is really hard to believe that it could happen here?
We have failed those that believe socialism, in all its forms, can take care of us. Parents have failed to teach much of that, but then so has our formal educational system. When did it all get so off track?
The problem is that any utopian ideology tends to lead to harm when it is taken so far.
Capitalism lead to workers being maimed and injured in factories. Socialism was created as a response to protect the worker from harm by removing such inequalities. Now workers have health care and are protected by health and safety regulations. Take socialism too far inequality of any more is attempted to be eliminated. Rewards given for hard work is not fair for those that don’t work, so everyone get a reward for their effort. That is the fair thing to do.
I remember taking a difficult final exam in math in my last year of high school. I scored high in that exam — in the mid nineties because I worked by butt off. Others in the class did not. Because majority of the class failed they decided to grade on a curve. I got 100%, and those that got 40% were bumped up to 95% — because it was fair.
I think today quite a few kids out there that never did hard work and had the stellar experience of receiving a reward for such hard work. This is why many are leaning towards socialism and communism. I also think the schools are too socialist leaning in their policies and procedures. The schools need to separate their doctrine from the organizational structure and replace it with an ethics compliance program based on the countries principles and values. None of this left leaning or right leaning garbage. Let kids decide on their political ideology after they get out of school.
Agree with you. How do we now fix it?
For next steps, we’ll need to look into the problem deeper. Let’s talk about trends.
Trend 1. There is a large trend of kids becoming more conservative. I think it’s because they get a lot of unfiltered information and facts from the internet and are seeing both end of the spectrum in political views. Any alterations of the truth in asserted facts, posts, or videos are immediately identifiable. Some of these kids credited their analytical and skepticism skills from many of the YouTubers they emulated.
Trend 2. Less kids are going to post secondary education, especially boys. So less kids are being exposed to those left leaning fantasies. When I say fantasies, I mean utopias. Utopias often conflict with the basics of human psychology. Kids should be exposed to sound bites from the book “Animal Farm”. There are some good ones in there.
Trend 3. The large internet conglomerates are very left leaning and are establishing policies and procedures enforced by algorithms so the users of their platforms only experience left leaning messages. Kids are naturally becoming distrustful of these conglomerates and are seeking out other platforms.
Trend 4. The internet as a whole is shifting from factual knowledge to assertions of facts. This means the internet is being filled up with beliefs and narratives that are burying the real facts, stories, and history. Ten years ago, one online search gave you the answer. Today, you need about thirty to fifty.
Based on these trends, it’s safe to say that kids are going to be advocating less socialism in the future. That’s assuming that there are no barriers impeding that. The main barrier is the kind of information kids have access to from the internet. If that information was made easy to cross check by the kids and given credibility scores — any form of fiction can be immediately identified and de-emphasized.This sounds like an artificial intelligence problem where the strength of evidence, not its popularity determines credibility.
To fix the socialist problem, we need an internet platform and an algorithm. But, we also have to consider the human factors.
AI driven social engineering is a very scary concept. There will need to be safeguards so there are no ghost in the machine issues that will put people into a panic. There is also the personalized reaction too. You hold a belief close to your heart and then see when you do an online search that it’s an assertion with no facts or evidence to support it. You will they say, the internet is wrong and you will ignore the facts. This suggests we need something else.
Along with an internet platform and algorithms, we need to have our kids be aggressively taught critical thinking and analytical from Kindergarten onward to protect them from the left leaning propaganda that is currently being taught. I don’t think grade schools will initially support this. Kids will have to learn this through the internet first to demonstrate it’s possible to have them think analytically. I’m certain once there is traction, the grade schools will follow suit.
To fix the problem, we need money and a whole lot of backers. And we need a lot of patience. If anyone was to do this, their name will be dragged through the mud.
I would like to think you right, Chris, but I have doubts. First, to effect such change at an early age we must have parents that are committed to teaching their kids and demanding more from K-12 schools. That, of course, will only help the future generations and do nothing for the millennials that will soon be the leadership. To accomplish what you suggest in higher education most of the present administration and instructors would need to be replaced and I don’t see that happening. They have built in too many safeguards against it. I agree that one of the “fixes” is the internet, but I really wonder how many of the millennials have the drive to dig into that vs. hanging out in Mom’s basement, going to rallies, and demanding free stuff. Perhaps the best corrector will be maturing and the school of hard knocks we all endure.