Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Egotistic, self-assured, and largely ignorant of the world outside of their smartphones and padded social groups, the Millenials have grown up. But what have they grown into?
The answer shouldn't surprise us. In The Dumbest Generation Grows Up, Mark Bauerlein reveals how an entire generation of Americans have developed into infantile adults, ruthlessly canceling challengers, rioting in the streets, and rejecting the very people who could help them mature in a desperate bid to create a world free from callouses and regret.
Refreshingly honest, Bauerline reveals how we birthed the utopian monster, casting these "digital natives" as pioneers, padding their egos with endless praises, and allowing them to abandon books, plug into social media, and lead America into the 21st century adrift from the civic responsibility a democratic society requires.
Such a wake-up call is long overdue. Flush with decades of studies and personal antidotes, The Dumbest Generation Grows Up argues that Americans must return to the adult world, or risk losing true, responsible freedom forever.
Synopsis
Dangerous Utopians Back in 2008, Mark Bauerlein was a voice crying in the wilderness. As experts greeted the new generation of "digital natives" with extravagant hopes for their high-tech future, he pegged them as "the Dumbest Generation."
Today, their future doesn't look so bright, and their present is pretty grim. The twenty-somethings who spent their childhoods staring into a screen are lonely, purposeless, and unemployable. Many of them are even suicidal. The Dumbest Generation Grows Up is an urgently needed update on the Millennials, explaining their not-so-quiet desperation and, more important, the threat that their ignorance poses to the rest of us.
Lacking skills, friendships, ambitions, knowledge, religion, or a cultural frame of reference, Millennials are anxiously looking for something to fill the void. Unfortunately, they have turned to politics to plug the hole in their souls.
Knowing nothing about history, they are convinced that it is merely a catalogue of oppression, inequality, and hatred. Why, they wonder, has the human race not ended all this injustice before now? And from the depths of their ignorance rises the answer: Because they are the first ones to care All that is needed is to tear down our inherited civilization and replace it with the products of their narcissistic aspirations. For a generation unacquainted with the constraints of human nature, anything seems possible.
Millennials cannot be blamed, of course, for not learning what no one taught them. Young people who don't read books, don't study history, and are left to marinate in games and social media cannot appreciate the civilization that should have been handed down to them but wasn't. In short, they are suckers for utopian nonsense.
Having diagnosed the malady before most people realized the patient was sick, Mark Bauerlein surveys the psychological and social wreckage inflicted by cultural deprivation and warns that we cannot afford to do this to another generation.