I.
Richard Hanania writes,
I want people to stop giving younger generations names. Except in articles like this where you deconstruct the concept, there is rarely any reason to use terms like “Generation Z” or (God help us) “Generation Alpha.” For cohort analysis, you can just split people up by the decade they were born and get all of the same benefits without the drawbacks. The names of generations used to mean something, and were applied retroactively. Today, we simply assign young people to arbitrary letter cohorts. This is pathological, and likely has had harmful downstream effects.
A thousand times YES! I've always hated and resisted the stupidity that is labeling generations after an arbitrary and fluid defining of what constitutes them and then drawing (jumping to) conclusions. Generation analysis that depends on these labels is not science; it is hokum used by shallow minds parroting real social science.
That said, Boomers suck, Gen X rulz!!!
II.
Greg Lukianoff writes,
All of this is why I resist the very modern expectation that the best speech is somehow gentle, hygienic, and emotionally pre-approved. No. Free speech is valuable in part because it gives us a way to fight without using fists. Self-government is deadly serious business. Historically, disputes over power, humiliation, injustice, and corruption have often been settled with blood, prison, or both. Speech offers another route: jokes, chants, songs, satire, mockery, sermons, pamphlets, editorials, and sometimes gloriously juvenile acts of public ridicule. It is not always pretty or kind, and only a certain kind of Victorian mind would expect it to be.
The lesson he’s teaching is that being polite isn’t always best. This is important to take to heart especially as it pushes back against what is otherwise a good practice, manners. I preach and attempt to practice the mantra of pleasant honesty—disagreement done with grace.
I don’t think Lukianoff contradicts that mantra, but it does suggest that it can certainly be overdone. Not only is there a risk of communication failure by overly disguising one’s position. There is also the risk of insufficient protest. As Lukianoff makes clear: when voices of opposition are stifled, the oppressed are made to suffer. The upshot eventually is even more violence in rebellion.
To put an exclamation on Lukianoff’s topic, Afroman is everything good about America. And whether you like it or not is my point.
Substacks referenced above: