10 ms·

Why Are Millennials Wary of Freedom?

53 points by imartin2k 9y ago

noobermin 9y ago
The author is a professor of psychology, but he then goes on to grossly misinterpret the study on the "contagiousness" of "victimhood", as he calls it. That sort of throws a bit of doubt on the rest of his article's use of citations.
randyrand 9y ago
Here's another question. Why is the quality of journalism from the New York Times getting worse and worse?
- clavalle 9y ago
  It's an opinion piece by a psychologist.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  Because you have so much more to compare it to now?
manbearpigg 9y ago
The Founding Fathers of the United States said, everyone will be free to do whatever he pleases. It produced the greatest culture, the greatest technology, and the greatest generation in the history of this planet. Leftists came along and said, I'd rather hold a gun to the head of people who produce wealth and make them give me some. That's why they don't like freedom.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > The Founding Fathers of the United States said, everyone will be free to do whatever he pleases. No, they didn't. > It produced the greatest culture, the greatest technology, and the greatest generation in the history of this planet. Some dubious claims, and what generation are you even talking about? > Leftists came along and said, I'd rather hold a gun to the head of people who produce wealth and make them give me some. No, they didn't.
- NTDF9 9y ago
  >> The Founding Fathers of the United States said, everyone will be free to do whatever he pleases. So why am I being forced to study programming by taking on significant debt, just to be able to pay rent?
- dang 9y ago
  This sort of ideological rant is just what HN is not for, as the site guidelines explain: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Since we've warned you about this before and you didn't stop, I've banned this account.
white-flame 9y ago
I'll throw a simple stereotype at this: People are simply being raised into being part of a machine that supports them, down to their self-identity and worth requiring unwavering reinforcement to be "healthy", as opposed to a more independent view of the self that deals with both the good & the bad that comes in life. Freedom means that others may or may not engage in supporting you, and that goes against fundamental social interaction being drilled in at public schools. Independent thought is punished, and strongly individualized personalities are medicated away and lumped in with the kids who have legitimate medical issues. There is no dealing with good and bad, there's only dealing with good and enforced elimination of anything that might be construed as bad, and "bad" encompasses more and more every social cycle. People are simply giving up on the notion of the independently maintained "self" entirely, not just benefiting from support from society, but shifting to demanding that unwavering personal support from society. That's incompatible with freedom. I'm not even talking about money or power. I'm simply talking about social interaction. Plenty of disadvantaged people across history held their individual dignity in how they personally acted, took care of their family, etc, regardless of how they're treated, or if they weren't going to be able to rise the ranks.
clavalle 9y ago
Hmm. Seems like Millennials are wary of the abuse of freedom.
wfo 9y ago
Because freedom has failed them. Or, at least, "freedom" as defined implicitly by the author to mean "only a specifically enumerated list of negative freedoms that primarily benefit the wealthy" and "the ability to cast a vote which fundamentally does not matter" -- remember the adage "if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal". Millenials don't feel particularly free to speak when they live in permanent debt, begging the wealthy to gift them with an unpaid internship and praying they don't get sick. When they do speak, their voices are drowned out by billions of dollars in propaganda campaigns. Yet they are told "this is freedom" and you're surprised they value it less? If you asked them whether they want "freedom" of course they would say yes. But it's ridiculous to say a homeless person is "free" because the cops don't arrest and harass him for speaking his mind. It's ridiculous to say a millenial is "free" when those of them lucky enough to get jobs have to toe the line and obey every command from their employer, watching what they say on social media, accepting the most egregious reaches of corporate power into their personal lives so that they have a prayer at one day paying back their insurmountable debts. Millenials, unlike the generation before them, recognize that material conditions are of fundamental importance and that any notion of "freedom" that ignores them is not worth much. The "freedom" to buy a news organization or bribe a politician with infinite dark money is just enshrining corporate power. The "freedom" to buy healthcare is meaningless without the means to also afford it. Millenials see through the very shallow veneer of whines about "freedom" that do nothing but obscure blatant attempts to preserve current power structures. Consider tech contracts: companies write contracts so that they own what you think in your off time. They write contracts so that if you decide to quit, you cannot legally work for years. That is not freedom, it is the opposite. Yet the libertarian screed is "well, in the abstract, you have the freedom to make that contract or not as you see fit"; what consolation to those who need a job to pay rent or buy food. This attitude shift is mostly definitional semantics and is just a natural result of decades of libertarian/conservative weasel-wording around "freedom" so that it is a meaningless platitude that expresses nothing more than "a principle which benefits those with means".
- Bromskloss 9y ago
  > But it's ridiculous to say a homeless person is "free" because the cops don't arrest and harass him for speaking his mind. Shouldn't we rather say that he is free, but that there are _other_ things lacking in his life? Let's not load the word _freedom_ with everything that is good in this world. Being free doesn't guarantee having happiness, food, clothes, friends, health, a successful career, and so on. If we want to talk about all that, there is probably a better word for it. Besides, what word would we use in its place?
maxk42 9y ago
In our increasingly litigious and regulated society they've never experienced it.
- enord 9y ago
  I disagree, I think we've had nothing but. In the developed world, we can't see the forest for the trees. Our gauges are centered elsewhere, and we can't even imagine ever running out. But we do see what people are saying, and communicating and in general being unapologetic about. In fact it's all we ever see, is people lying through their teeth, pandering, proselytizing. Denying climate change, dog-whistling, cancelling firefly. We see it and hear it all day, year round. There's free and protected expression flying over our heads from every direction constantly, more than ever, and causing grief and harm that we see (well... perceive) and feel (or indulge). Still there is a perceived democratic deficit. It's a paradox, but we don't think of it as one, it's more like dissonance. Freedom in general and freedom of speech in particular is just not what it's trumped up to be.
- DamnYuppie 9y ago
  Most likely that is not the cause. They have been sheltered and kept from any form of adversity or harm. They are like zoo animals released back into the wild, they have no idea how to live without their cage.
hashmal 9y ago
Random thoughts: - Freedom and democracy are different things, if some people think democracy isn't that important, it does not mean they do not value freedom. - Maybe the millenials are "not open to diverse opinions", but maybe they're just sick of bullshit. "Free Speech" can be interpreted in different ways (and each country in the world does that).
- namelost 9y ago
  > - Freedom and democracy are different things, if some people think democracy isn't that important, it does not mean they do not value freedom. e.g. Switzerland's infamous vote to ban minarets[1]. A lot of European countries seem to have a problem with religious freedom, despite being very democratic. Contrast with the undemocratic Singapore where people of different religions coexist relatively harmoniously. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_minaret_referendum,_2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_minaret_referendum,_2009
- asabjorn 9y ago
  Various collapsed democracies can testament that defining away the free part of free speech to be a path to authoritarianism, and the first step towards collapse is punishing opinions that disagrees with dogma (e.g Venezuela). In the end it leads to a less efficient country driven by dogma instead of progress. I think this line of thinking stems from the belief that democracy is the default state, and that it can withstand suppressing voices that disagrees with the dogma someone fights for.
- mabub24 9y ago
  I disagree with your first thought. I'll say this as someone who is unabashedly a fan of democracy. I love democracy (I would call myself a "democrat" except for the connotation with the American party). I think devaluing democracy exhibits a profound devaluation of freedom. Democracy is more than just casting a vote. Many non-democracies have elections. Democracies are an elegant and fragile relationship between civic will and laws. The outcome of a desire for freedom is democracy. You don't start with democracy or install it, people create it and protect it with laws that protect personal freedoms. Most countries with alternate political systems have citizens with less freedoms and rule by law rather than rule of law: you end up with legalism, like in China. If people feel that democracy is failing them than I would suggest that that exemplifies a shift in profound ideas about freedom that leads to democracy. From the perspective of a relatively functioning democracy, all other political systems should look worse, should look less free.
floor__ 9y ago
Really hope this article is bs
mbillie1 9y ago
In the US at any rate you need a fairly significant amount of disposable income to meaningfully be free. Of course you are "free" to (attempt to) acquire this income, and most people reading HN will have already done so. But for a large swath of young people working low wage jobs, living at home because they can't afford rent, the notion of "freedom" might not seem that significant.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  How much disposable income do you need to be free? Cheap car, cheap rent, every form of media ever for about $50 a month. You can do that easily on 30k. If you can't make 30k a year, you've got a limited skillset, it's not anyone else's fault. What's amazing for US millenials in particular is just how much we've got and how little we appreciate it.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    You are extremely ignorant of the cost of living in the US if you think 30K is enough to live on.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      I've lived on that, so try again. Why do you believe that's crazy? $500 apt $150 car insurance $100 utilities $ 50 media (Netflix, Spotify, etc) You're taking home about $1800 a month, so that still leaves another $1000 to fill out the rest (food, gasoline, etc). That's plenty of money. You aren't going to be making regular trips to Hawaii, but that's more than enough to do whatever you'd like.
      - tempYeez 9y ago
        That leaves you 700 bucks a month not including the 15% taxes. Once issue and you'd be living month to month as soon as anything actually happened.
        9y ago
Brendinooo 9y ago
No one born in the mid-80s onward ever faced an outside existential threat like Hitler or the Soviets. It's not hard to imagine that people who only know relative freedom have a harder time appreciating that freedom. The grass is always greener elsewhere. Fear is a good answer here, though phrases like "helicopter parenting" and "victimhood culture" might bely some existing biases by the author. Perhaps the fear of the "other" tribe are driving these shifts; after all, I doubt that anyone who says they'd be in favor of restricting speech feel like their speech will be restricted. And it's also possible that a decade or so of gridlock is taking its toll. If this is what freedom looks like, could you blame someone for wanting to try something different? Not saying that's true of me, but I can see how it would happen.
- danhak 9y ago
  Very fascinating. You argue that millennials favor restrictions on hate speech because they have not experienced anything like Hitler. Yet Germany censors hate speech precisely because of that history.
  - ekanes 9y ago
    Hate speech is always a problem. "let's kill all the $value" isn't the type of free speech that most people are trying to preserve.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - white-flame 9y ago
      That's where the distinction between "hate" and "violence" comes in. (at least in the USA) "Let's kill all the $X" is a call for violence. "I hate $X" isn't. It's hateful, but observably some values of $X are currently acceptable while others aren't, depending on what direction the popular outrage trends are heading. Should "I hate the rich/politicians/corporations/nazis/capitalists/white males/etc" be illegal speech? That's quite a can of worms. These free speech arguments are sort of like the government wanting secure encryption, except that the they should still be able to break it. Encryption is either secure for both legal and illegal uses, or it isn't. In the same way, it's semantically unresolvable to have legally-protected free speech for acceptable speech only. Any argument for free speech necessarily empowers unacceptable speech, and any argument against free speech necessarily criminalizes acceptable speech.
derefr 9y ago
I wonder whether this is object-level or meta-level wariness. Object-level: thinking that people today are mostly awful, and that someone needs to police their behavior and choices (e.g. stop people from voting for people like Trump.) Meta-level: thinking that the subcultures trying to police everyone's behaviour right now (e.g. Social Justice) are heavy on bullying, and it'd be nice if this sort of bullying was regulated/stopped/silenced somehow. I know both of these effects exist to a certain extent in the US—but which one is specifically "millennials", and which is older people?
watwut 9y ago
The generation that was in power while incarceration rates skyrocketed (which also means more people without voting rights) and that tends to have quite unforgiving attitude towards failures/mistakes complains that young people are not freedom loving enough.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
generalizethis 9y ago
Maybe they're wary of trolls and they reflect digital forums rather than historical upbringings. Don't we all wish life had an ignore button? Anyway, I wish the author had asked them; their answers would probably be more interesting than the author's helicopter parenting.
kirillkh 9y ago
It seems we are sinking ever deeper into the victimised state of mind where any opinion you express may and will under certain circumstances be used against you, even by people from your closest circle. So the best course of action is usually to avoid exposing your opinions, especially on controversial subjects. Just pretend to be a nice person, smile a lot and never say anything explicit. Criticism can get you in trouble, avoid it if you can. If forced to choose sides, try to guess which is less likely to raise any kind of negativity towards you. Counterintuitively, usually it will be the more radical side, as radicals are often younger and more energetic in forcing their opinion on others, so the last thing you want is to offend them. In short, be a spineless, shapeless wuss with an appearance of calm confidence and a lot of scenical sympathy.
mythrwy 9y ago
I'm not a millennial but are they really wary of freedom? I do see anti-free speech comments from time to time but always assumed that was a hangover from the indoctrination of the public school system. What maybe Millennials see clearer than anyone else (because of the Internet?) is that the system appears rigged. Which is nothing new, it has been since we came down out of the trees. A few people have always recognized and fought against this. It's probably what your mom meant when she said "Life isn't fair". But back to the topic, perhaps Millenials aren't against freedom so much as they are aware that "freedom" is actually the illusion of freedom and doesn't work in their best interest. IDK, just my guesses. The anti-free speech thing is a bit disturbing to me though.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  I'm a 24 year old millennial, and my views are considerably different from my parents. I don't believe democracy is essential, because in my opinion, I live in an example of what happens when democracy goes awry and gets hijacked by the rich(USA). I personally don't feel that certain offensive speech should be outlawed, but I've stayed away from facebook, which seems to be the site creating this feel-good echo chamber for everyone. I think a massive amount of our cultural problems stem less from public school and more from two things: the internet and economics. Information overload stresses everyone out because we didn't evolve to thrive in such an environment, which triggers an us-vs-them mentality. Then social media sites allow for everyone to form their own echo chamber, meaning the us-vs-them mentality is amplified and their beliefs are never questioned. Combine this with a two-party political system that amplifies identity politics and fails to provide an increasing quality of life for young people, and you get an entire generation stressed out of their mind, jaded, and not hopeful that their futures will be better. Plus for most of us in the country, lower level good jobs have all been automated, shipped overseas, or concentrated to a handful of urban areas. I've nearly got a Bachelor's degree in IT, tons of certifications, and years of experience, yet I still can't find a job because I don't live in a tech hub of the country. And I'm lucky because I'm smart. Imagine what it's like for the 50% of millennials who weren't genetically blessed and have an IQ less than 100. In such a democratic environment, why would democracy matter? Why would free speech matter when they see no potential for growth in life?
jayd16 9y ago
In this day and age money is speech and corporations are people. The question is no longer an apples to apples comparison.
mdimec4 9y ago
This is funny the fact that article is [flagged] on HN. Proves the point.

53 points by imartin2k 9y ago

The author is a professor of psychology, but he then goes on to grossly misinterpret the study on the "contagiousness" of "victimhood", as he calls it. That sort of throws a bit of doubt on the rest of his article's use of citations.

randyrand 9y ago

Here's another question. Why is the quality of journalism from the New York Times getting worse and worse?

clavalle 9y ago
It's an opinion piece by a psychologist.
mythrwy 9y ago
Because you have so much more to compare it to now?

manbearpigg 9y ago

The Founding Fathers of the United States said, everyone will be free to do whatever he pleases. It produced the greatest culture, the greatest technology, and the greatest generation in the history of this planet. Leftists came along and said, I'd rather hold a gun to the head of people who produce wealth and make them give me some. That's why they don't like freedom.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> The Founding Fathers of the United States said, everyone will be free to do whatever he pleases. No, they didn't. > It produced the greatest culture, the greatest technology, and the greatest generation in the history of this planet. Some dubious claims, and what generation are you even talking about? > Leftists came along and said, I'd rather hold a gun to the head of people who produce wealth and make them give me some. No, they didn't.
NTDF9 9y ago
>> The Founding Fathers of the United States said, everyone will be free to do whatever he pleases. So why am I being forced to study programming by taking on significant debt, just to be able to pay rent?
dang 9y ago
This sort of ideological rant is just what HN is not for, as the site guidelines explain: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Since we've warned you about this before and you didn't stop, I've banned this account.

white-flame 9y ago

I'll throw a simple stereotype at this: People are simply being raised into being part of a machine that supports them, down to their self-identity and worth requiring unwavering reinforcement to be "healthy", as opposed to a more independent view of the self that deals with both the good & the bad that comes in life. Freedom means that others may or may not engage in supporting you, and that goes against fundamental social interaction being drilled in at public schools. Independent thought is punished, and strongly individualized personalities are medicated away and lumped in with the kids who have legitimate medical issues. There is no dealing with good and bad, there's only dealing with good and enforced elimination of anything that might be construed as bad, and "bad" encompasses more and more every social cycle. People are simply giving up on the notion of the independently maintained "self" entirely, not just benefiting from support from society, but shifting to demanding that unwavering personal support from society. That's incompatible with freedom. I'm not even talking about money or power. I'm simply talking about social interaction. Plenty of disadvantaged people across history held their individual dignity in how they personally acted, took care of their family, etc, regardless of how they're treated, or if they weren't going to be able to rise the ranks.

clavalle 9y ago

Hmm. Seems like Millennials are wary of the abuse of freedom.

wfo 9y ago

Because freedom has failed them. Or, at least, "freedom" as defined implicitly by the author to mean "only a specifically enumerated list of negative freedoms that primarily benefit the wealthy" and "the ability to cast a vote which fundamentally does not matter" -- remember the adage "if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal". Millenials don't feel particularly free to speak when they live in permanent debt, begging the wealthy to gift them with an unpaid internship and praying they don't get sick. When they do speak, their voices are drowned out by billions of dollars in propaganda campaigns. Yet they are told "this is freedom" and you're surprised they value it less? If you asked them whether they want "freedom" of course they would say yes. But it's ridiculous to say a homeless person is "free" because the cops don't arrest and harass him for speaking his mind. It's ridiculous to say a millenial is "free" when those of them lucky enough to get jobs have to toe the line and obey every command from their employer, watching what they say on social media, accepting the most egregious reaches of corporate power into their personal lives so that they have a prayer at one day paying back their insurmountable debts. Millenials, unlike the generation before them, recognize that material conditions are of fundamental importance and that any notion of "freedom" that ignores them is not worth much. The "freedom" to buy a news organization or bribe a politician with infinite dark money is just enshrining corporate power. The "freedom" to buy healthcare is meaningless without the means to also afford it. Millenials see through the very shallow veneer of whines about "freedom" that do nothing but obscure blatant attempts to preserve current power structures. Consider tech contracts: companies write contracts so that they own what you think in your off time. They write contracts so that if you decide to quit, you cannot legally work for years. That is not freedom, it is the opposite. Yet the libertarian screed is "well, in the abstract, you have the freedom to make that contract or not as you see fit"; what consolation to those who need a job to pay rent or buy food. This attitude shift is mostly definitional semantics and is just a natural result of decades of libertarian/conservative weasel-wording around "freedom" so that it is a meaningless platitude that expresses nothing more than "a principle which benefits those with means".

Bromskloss 9y ago
> But it's ridiculous to say a homeless person is "free" because the cops don't arrest and harass him for speaking his mind. Shouldn't we rather say that he is free, but that there are _other_ things lacking in his life? Let's not load the word _freedom_ with everything that is good in this world. Being free doesn't guarantee having happiness, food, clothes, friends, health, a successful career, and so on. If we want to talk about all that, there is probably a better word for it. Besides, what word would we use in its place?

maxk42 9y ago

In our increasingly litigious and regulated society they've never experienced it.

enord 9y ago
I disagree, I think we've had nothing but. In the developed world, we can't see the forest for the trees. Our gauges are centered elsewhere, and we can't even imagine ever running out. But we do see what people are saying, and communicating and in general being unapologetic about. In fact it's all we ever see, is people lying through their teeth, pandering, proselytizing. Denying climate change, dog-whistling, cancelling firefly. We see it and hear it all day, year round. There's free and protected expression flying over our heads from every direction constantly, more than ever, and causing grief and harm that we see (well... perceive) and feel (or indulge). Still there is a perceived democratic deficit. It's a paradox, but we don't think of it as one, it's more like dissonance. Freedom in general and freedom of speech in particular is just not what it's trumped up to be.
DamnYuppie 9y ago
Most likely that is not the cause. They have been sheltered and kept from any form of adversity or harm. They are like zoo animals released back into the wild, they have no idea how to live without their cage.

hashmal 9y ago

Random thoughts: - Freedom and democracy are different things, if some people think democracy isn't that important, it does not mean they do not value freedom. - Maybe the millenials are "not open to diverse opinions", but maybe they're just sick of bullshit. "Free Speech" can be interpreted in different ways (and each country in the world does that).

namelost 9y ago
> - Freedom and democracy are different things, if some people think democracy isn't that important, it does not mean they do not value freedom. e.g. Switzerland's infamous vote to ban minarets[1]. A lot of European countries seem to have a problem with religious freedom, despite being very democratic. Contrast with the undemocratic Singapore where people of different religions coexist relatively harmoniously. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_minaret_referendum,_2009 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_minaret_referendum,_2009
asabjorn 9y ago
Various collapsed democracies can testament that defining away the free part of free speech to be a path to authoritarianism, and the first step towards collapse is punishing opinions that disagrees with dogma (e.g Venezuela). In the end it leads to a less efficient country driven by dogma instead of progress. I think this line of thinking stems from the belief that democracy is the default state, and that it can withstand suppressing voices that disagrees with the dogma someone fights for.
mabub24 9y ago
I disagree with your first thought. I'll say this as someone who is unabashedly a fan of democracy. I love democracy (I would call myself a "democrat" except for the connotation with the American party). I think devaluing democracy exhibits a profound devaluation of freedom. Democracy is more than just casting a vote. Many non-democracies have elections. Democracies are an elegant and fragile relationship between civic will and laws. The outcome of a desire for freedom is democracy. You don't start with democracy or install it, people create it and protect it with laws that protect personal freedoms. Most countries with alternate political systems have citizens with less freedoms and rule by law rather than rule of law: you end up with legalism, like in China. If people feel that democracy is failing them than I would suggest that that exemplifies a shift in profound ideas about freedom that leads to democracy. From the perspective of a relatively functioning democracy, all other political systems should look worse, should look less free.

floor__ 9y ago

Really hope this article is bs

mbillie1 9y ago

In the US at any rate you need a fairly significant amount of disposable income to meaningfully be free. Of course you are "free" to (attempt to) acquire this income, and most people reading HN will have already done so. But for a large swath of young people working low wage jobs, living at home because they can't afford rent, the notion of "freedom" might not seem that significant.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
How much disposable income do you need to be free? Cheap car, cheap rent, every form of media ever for about $50 a month. You can do that easily on 30k. If you can't make 30k a year, you've got a limited skillset, it's not anyone else's fault. What's amazing for US millenials in particular is just how much we've got and how little we appreciate it.
- noobermin 9y ago
  You are extremely ignorant of the cost of living in the US if you think 30K is enough to live on.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    I've lived on that, so try again. Why do you believe that's crazy? $500 apt $150 car insurance $100 utilities $ 50 media (Netflix, Spotify, etc) You're taking home about $1800 a month, so that still leaves another $1000 to fill out the rest (food, gasoline, etc). That's plenty of money. You aren't going to be making regular trips to Hawaii, but that's more than enough to do whatever you'd like.
    - tempYeez 9y ago
      That leaves you 700 bucks a month not including the 15% taxes. Once issue and you'd be living month to month as soon as anything actually happened.
      - 9y ago

Brendinooo 9y ago

No one born in the mid-80s onward ever faced an outside existential threat like Hitler or the Soviets. It's not hard to imagine that people who only know relative freedom have a harder time appreciating that freedom. The grass is always greener elsewhere. Fear is a good answer here, though phrases like "helicopter parenting" and "victimhood culture" might bely some existing biases by the author. Perhaps the fear of the "other" tribe are driving these shifts; after all, I doubt that anyone who says they'd be in favor of restricting speech feel like their speech will be restricted. And it's also possible that a decade or so of gridlock is taking its toll. If this is what freedom looks like, could you blame someone for wanting to try something different? Not saying that's true of me, but I can see how it would happen.

danhak 9y ago
Very fascinating. You argue that millennials favor restrictions on hate speech because they have not experienced anything like Hitler. Yet Germany censors hate speech precisely because of that history.
- ekanes 9y ago
  Hate speech is always a problem. "let's kill all the $value" isn't the type of free speech that most people are trying to preserve.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - white-flame 9y ago
    That's where the distinction between "hate" and "violence" comes in. (at least in the USA) "Let's kill all the $X" is a call for violence. "I hate $X" isn't. It's hateful, but observably some values of $X are currently acceptable while others aren't, depending on what direction the popular outrage trends are heading. Should "I hate the rich/politicians/corporations/nazis/capitalists/white males/etc" be illegal speech? That's quite a can of worms. These free speech arguments are sort of like the government wanting secure encryption, except that the they should still be able to break it. Encryption is either secure for both legal and illegal uses, or it isn't. In the same way, it's semantically unresolvable to have legally-protected free speech for acceptable speech only. Any argument for free speech necessarily empowers unacceptable speech, and any argument against free speech necessarily criminalizes acceptable speech.

derefr 9y ago

I wonder whether this is object-level or meta-level wariness. Object-level: thinking that people today are mostly awful, and that someone needs to police their behavior and choices (e.g. stop people from voting for people like Trump.) Meta-level: thinking that the subcultures trying to police everyone's behaviour right now (e.g. Social Justice) are heavy on bullying, and it'd be nice if this sort of bullying was regulated/stopped/silenced somehow. I know both of these effects exist to a certain extent in the US—but which one is specifically "millennials", and which is older people?

watwut 9y ago

The generation that was in power while incarceration rates skyrocketed (which also means more people without voting rights) and that tends to have quite unforgiving attitude towards failures/mistakes complains that young people are not freedom loving enough.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

generalizethis 9y ago

Maybe they're wary of trolls and they reflect digital forums rather than historical upbringings. Don't we all wish life had an ignore button? Anyway, I wish the author had asked them; their answers would probably be more interesting than the author's helicopter parenting.

kirillkh 9y ago

It seems we are sinking ever deeper into the victimised state of mind where any opinion you express may and will under certain circumstances be used against you, even by people from your closest circle. So the best course of action is usually to avoid exposing your opinions, especially on controversial subjects. Just pretend to be a nice person, smile a lot and never say anything explicit. Criticism can get you in trouble, avoid it if you can. If forced to choose sides, try to guess which is less likely to raise any kind of negativity towards you. Counterintuitively, usually it will be the more radical side, as radicals are often younger and more energetic in forcing their opinion on others, so the last thing you want is to offend them. In short, be a spineless, shapeless wuss with an appearance of calm confidence and a lot of scenical sympathy.

mythrwy 9y ago

I'm not a millennial but are they really wary of freedom? I do see anti-free speech comments from time to time but always assumed that was a hangover from the indoctrination of the public school system. What maybe Millennials see clearer than anyone else (because of the Internet?) is that the system appears rigged. Which is nothing new, it has been since we came down out of the trees. A few people have always recognized and fought against this. It's probably what your mom meant when she said "Life isn't fair". But back to the topic, perhaps Millenials aren't against freedom so much as they are aware that "freedom" is actually the illusion of freedom and doesn't work in their best interest. IDK, just my guesses. The anti-free speech thing is a bit disturbing to me though.

TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
I'm a 24 year old millennial, and my views are considerably different from my parents. I don't believe democracy is essential, because in my opinion, I live in an example of what happens when democracy goes awry and gets hijacked by the rich(USA). I personally don't feel that certain offensive speech should be outlawed, but I've stayed away from facebook, which seems to be the site creating this feel-good echo chamber for everyone. I think a massive amount of our cultural problems stem less from public school and more from two things: the internet and economics. Information overload stresses everyone out because we didn't evolve to thrive in such an environment, which triggers an us-vs-them mentality. Then social media sites allow for everyone to form their own echo chamber, meaning the us-vs-them mentality is amplified and their beliefs are never questioned. Combine this with a two-party political system that amplifies identity politics and fails to provide an increasing quality of life for young people, and you get an entire generation stressed out of their mind, jaded, and not hopeful that their futures will be better. Plus for most of us in the country, lower level good jobs have all been automated, shipped overseas, or concentrated to a handful of urban areas. I've nearly got a Bachelor's degree in IT, tons of certifications, and years of experience, yet I still can't find a job because I don't live in a tech hub of the country. And I'm lucky because I'm smart. Imagine what it's like for the 50% of millennials who weren't genetically blessed and have an IQ less than 100. In such a democratic environment, why would democracy matter? Why would free speech matter when they see no potential for growth in life?

jayd16 9y ago

In this day and age money is speech and corporations are people. The question is no longer an apples to apples comparison.

mdimec4 9y ago

This is funny the fact that article is [flagged] on HN. Proves the point.