Don't be, Gen Z!
Grow up. Don't fall for an American trope.
For my generation - I would be Gen X by label - United States of America, its style, its messages and what it passed on as its values, provided the model. Older now, I see the deception. It is not subjective view of a post-colonial - the Americans themselves have elected Donald Trump and let us know that they don't believe in what they preached.
I am not just a Gen Xer, but one that grew up in a post-colonial nation. So, United States was not our first disappointment. We already knew the trajectory with Soviet Union. Claims of universal values that come to nothing. I know this bitter disappointment and learnt its lesson - universal values don't work! Don't import the ideas about how life should be from a dominant culture, look deeper and look wider, look inside and challenge everything!
Therefore, do not fall for the infantalised version of yourself. Be attentive - there is no glory in being scatter-brained and attention is, as Simone Weil would say, the purest and rarest form of generosity. Pay attention and the world will come to you. Pay attention and all the combined lies of the new world makers would be exposed.
I can go on and on. These things are easy. They counted when I grew up and they still count. I meet anxious students asking me whether they should drop everything and learn prompt engineering. I asked them about which prompt engineering in 2024, and in 2025, I would ask whether they have heard about AI agents. Go read instead - yes, old fashioned books - and learn science! It's not prompt engineering that would prop up someone in the middle of a jobs recession - literacy and numeracy would.
Things don't change after a fashion. In reality, we don't morph like Narnia. We evolve, very very slowly. My life is not even a blip in that vast expanse of evolutionary time. For all claims of acceleration, we are where we always were. Galileo to me - not much has changed inside, whatever the changes outside are. Don't let them sell the snake oil that you are a global generation with some special attributes. Facebook doesn't define you.
So get back to being human. Don't be Gen Z!
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