So why are things just such a mess overall?

There has a been a dramatic paradigm shift in how we raise children and integrate them into society

For the first time in our society we no longer teach our children how to fit in with society. We don't teach them the importance of holding a job. We don't really teach them how to hold a job. We don't teach them to interact with people. We accept that they simply prefer to do everything "online". We don't teach them accountability. We don't teach them to even really be responsible. But probably most importantly... we don't teach them anything about disappointment, much less how to handle disappointment. We do everything in our power to protect them from anything uncomfortable. They go up with a sense of entitlement that no previous generations have ever had.

My dad often times referred to a fictional person who he called the "kindly old grey haired philosopher". This particular philosopher had one philosophy that was the same for all of life's troubles. That philosophy boiled down to two words. "tough shit". So whenever we didn't like something or started to complain about the unfairness of life, my dad would simply ask us if we remembered what the kindly old grey haired philosopher would say... and we shut up. The words "tough shit" were simply implied. We we also reminded about starving kids in Africa or we heard about how many other people in this world had things worse than whatever trouble beseeched us that day.

Not today. Today our kids decide what is and isn't fair. They are not expected to assimilate into society, they expect society to assimilate to their needs. If they do not want to take difficult classes like higher level math, economics, chemistry or staple subjects like English, then apparently schools just dump those courses. No explaining why Math or Science is important or any push that we need people to actually learn enough to become doctors or engineers. Just bend to the will of the GenZers as if they somehow actually know better. In fact, I am not convinced they know much of anything.

When you talk about the so called "woke ideology" that is literally tearing the fabric of society apart, it really is about pushing a flawed philosophy onto everyone else. But rather than go from top to bottom (have adults with responsibilities push the woke messages), we appear to be starting at the bottom. Teaching kids as they are growing up, so that eventually when they become adults that they can push the ideology out into the world. The problem is the expectation that everyone else should just go along with it, when in fact the vast majority of society rejects almost completely.

The reality is that paradigm shifts do happen from time to time in isolated types of situations. We had something similar with the whole flower child revolution from the 60s and 70s. While that caused much consternation at the time, what was pushed out of that was the fact that the boomer generation sort of went in the opposite direction. The boomers became arguably the most success driven an responsibility driven generation since the greatest generation. Many of the flower children joined in after some time, and now just see that time as something they grew out of. Because those ideals (of a society that prospers without hard work and sacrifice) are always doomed to fail.

This is literally the new "me" generation on steroids. More to the point, for some ungodly reason that I cannot figure out there are adults who seem to push this thinking and others who are willing to bend to it out of fear of retribution.

The good news is that I get a sense that this is changing. We saw the first of the resistance when Donald Trump was elected (a complete slap against what was known at the time as political correctness). We are seeing successes of people like Governor DeSantis today doing a full court press against the "woke" culture. What happens over the next few elections is going to determine the direction of where we go as a nation. Either pushing ourselves to a society of slackers who worry more about social media presence and what gender they are today. A generation who will need to get used to asking if we want paper or plastic or if we want to supersize that meal. Or we can reject it and go back to a functional society where people once again value hard work and sacrifice. A country of true freedom and real tolerance.

We are at a serious crossroads.