Does Gen Z have a more "French" view of political philosophy?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Have they beheaded anyone yet?

[It’s so Joever]

It’ll be wild watching Gen Z destroy every single institution ever created because those institutions are some kind of “ist.” I look forward to churches, classic works of literature all being destroyed, forever, and to the state devolving into places like CHAZ. What a beautiful, anarchic, violent future awaits. It’ll make the French Revolution and the iconoclastic movement look like child’s play.

While I thank you for your strong praise of my generation, I assure you we are nowhere near as based enough to do that.

[Ferguson97]

Literally every generation thinks that the generation before them is too old-fashioned and unwilling to accept progress but that the generation after them is taking things too far.

But what happens when it becomes true?

Gen Z was raised by the internet. The idea of them having any sort of power is scary. I’ve not yet met one Gen Z person who wasn’t some form of anarchist.

I'm Gen Z and I'm not an anarchist. So congrats, I'm the first.

But if you're being serious (which I doubt you are) then you either need to meet more people or you have a seriously ridiculous definition of anarchism.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I think the main thing to consider about "Generation Z" is that for the most part they are teenagers or early 20s. And teenagers going through a rebellious phase, trying to stake out an identity and being very earnest about this is something that basically every generation of teenagers goes through.

Of course there are details that are passed on by the very politicised and social media centric era that they grow up in. But on the whole, they're young people being young people like young people always have been. And getting grouchy and cynical about the things that young activists believe in isn't an interesting or new or original outlook. It's just being the same out of touch, grouchy, small c conservative that every previous generation has also always ended up being.

But the thing is they're not being rebellious. They seem to be significantly more prudish than we Millennials are and certainly were at their age. Look at how much we drank and partied and rebelled in comparison to them. Also is still wearing masks in public and refusing to go to parties or concerts or public gatherings rebellious? I guess maybe in a sense but it's a completely different sense than we're use to.

Being prudish and moralising about things like sex would be a way of rebelling against the social norms of their parents, no?

In a sense I guess but look what the Boomers did in their youth. And yet we did basically the exact same thing.

Did we? I'm not sure about substance use, but average age of first sexual contact bottomed out sometime in, iirc, the early 90s and has been drifting slowly upward ever since. There's also a strong subjective argument to be made for a characteristically Millennial terror of divorce that influences our low marriage rates.

[Dr. MB]

I think the main thing to consider about "Generation Z" is that for the most part they are teenagers or early 20s. And teenagers going through a rebellious phase, trying to stake out an identity and being very earnest about this is something that basically every generation of teenagers goes through.

Of course there are details that are passed on by the very politicised and social media centric era that they grow up in. But on the whole, they're young people being young people like young people always have been. And getting grouchy and cynical about the things that young activists believe in isn't an interesting or new or original outlook. It's just being the same out of touch, grouchy, small c conservative that every previous generation has also always ended up being.

But the thing is they're not being rebellious. They seem to be significantly more prudish than we Millennials are and certainly were at their age. Look at how much we drank and partied and rebelled in comparison to them. Also is still wearing masks in public and refusing to go to parties or concerts or public gatherings rebellious? I guess maybe in a sense but it's a completely different sense than we're use to.

That's really only a small subset of people. All my friends don't fit that description and most of the people who might have been wary a year or so ago are totally past that now. Every generation has its prudes and squares it's not somehow unique to gen Z.

The culture now I will say is different than it was maybe 20 or even 10 years ago but that's just how things go. Were you in the early 2000s acting the same way people in the 80s did? I'm sure the teens and 20 somethings of 2040 are going to be doing things a lot differently than we're doing it today. It's less outwardly "wild" but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing. Like look at Woodstock 99. Each generation manifests its identity in a different form.