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My Semester with the Snowflakes
- luord 7y ago> Later at some point during the day, a young student placed a glove with red paint on it on one of the flags as she wanted to demonstrate her displeasure with something…I’m not quite sure what. > These hardworking kids are very kind and thoughtful. A far cry from the picture that is often painted of them. I'm... Confused, to say the least. In fact, those two paragraphs encapsulate my confusion at the post in general.
- blackflame 7y agoThere was once a guy in his mid-40s that tried to rush the fraternity I was in. I don't think there were any rules that prohibited it either except extreme creepiness.
- tempay 7y agoFor those who didn't know (like me), "to rush the fraternity" means to join a social organisation at the university: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternities_and_sororities#Rushing_and_pledging_(recruitment_and_new_member_periods) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternities_and_sororities#Ru...
- blackflame 7y agoYea they’ve only been around like 250 years or so on both sides of the pond.
- sillysaurusx 7y agoWhy would people be unwelcome after a certain age? They’re just as valid of a student as anyone else. “Tried” implies he failed. I wonder if it was due to his own merits, or due to bias against him due to age.
- kortilla 7y agoFraternities have very little to do with the education aspect of being a student.
- blackflame 7y agoCollege provides more education opportunities than just those found in the classroom. Social skills are just as fundamental as arithmetic in a successful career.
- blackflame 7y agoBecause it’s mainly a social club and some of the events include things like date night with a sorority. I’m not sure exactly why, but for some reason girls ages 18-23 really feel weird about being on a date night with someone old enough to be their dad. The point is, it’s never to late to learn something new but keep in mind your limitations change as you age. People remember their youth as it was yesterday but there are reasons why we prohibit adults talking to minors
- catchmeifyoucan 7y agoWell written piece! Never stop learning. In a way there's an underlying political statement here on how diverse opinions and education changes perspective.
- kortilla 7y agoIt’s not really “education” that changed his perspective but rather immersion in a group of people with a completely different mindset. The same could be accomplished spending time with them in a job, a volunteer group, a prison, etc. He also likely wouldn’t have changed his perspective much if he took the courses online asynchronously.
- sneak 7y agoI wonder what percentage of the United States, due to time commitments related to family and work, get to spend time/immersion in groups other than their facebook/instagram tribe and television/radio broadcasters. My hunch is that it’s pretty low.
- abraae 7y agoIf you are part of an enormous tribe comprising virtually half the country, made up of people who think like you and more or less share your views, why would you hang out with the other tribe?
- sneak 7y agoI don’t think either of these tribes comprise “virtually half the country” or even an approximation thereof.
- catchmeifyoucan 7y agoYou are right. Fair point. I jumped and made the association there - but it's the group environment.
- atoav 7y ago
- BMorearty 7y agoI love this essay.
- lechemin 7y agoInteresting article. Read it this morning. Curious what the 'snowflakes' think about it.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gfodor 7y agoI’m not worried about the kids in college now who are too young, busy, and roll their eyes at mainstream American political culture to give a shit about the latest outrage-du-jour on Twitter. They’ll be graduating into the strongest economy in American history. They’ll be just fine. It’s the young adults who are a few years into their career being crushed by high prices, low wages, holding useless degrees under piles of debt that I imagine make up the majority of the online outage mobs and who are likely going to be a lost generation.
- sysbin 7y ago> They’ll be graduating into the strongest economy in American history. They’ll be just fine. How are you forecasting that future? Seems strange to read it with what you see now and as you phrase the lost generation that's struggling from inflation & low wages.. I'm skeptical but I think the worst is yet to come for the next generations. Unless all the young adults that are struggling don't just all commit suicide in the years to follow. It's going to be a disaster when time comes and they need to retire but cannot. The burden will go on the young even more so than what we can imagine today.
- siquick 7y agoAnd no mention of the elephant in the room - climate change. It feels like we're already seeing it here in Sydney, Australia. We've had dangerously low air quality from bush fires for the last 1.5 months and we now have a serious water shortage. I've been accepting of climate change up until recently - now I'm genuinely worried about the future here.
- moneywoes 7y agoIs there any solution in sight?
- atoav 7y agoThis interactive MIT tool gives you a feeling for the possible solutions: https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/ https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/ I won't spoil it for you, but you could find out that you might want to phrase that question of yours differently..
- sneak 7y agoIt’s interesting how much implied context is in this: that someone old, and related to the military (presumably right-leaning from the “snowflake” term), likely distrusts/disrespects someone young and wealthy from the coasts (presumably left-leaning from geography). Are we really so polarized? Are hundreds of millions so gung-ho to flock away from the center? Can the whole American situation be approximately summed up, statistically, by these two exaggerated caricatures? It seems that’s the tone of the article. Maybe it’s right, maybe it’s wrong, but either way I would hope that the real situation is more nuanced than that. Maybe the situation on the ground really is that bad in some places. I don’t leave my house in the US much other than to fly out of the country, and only know what I read online about it. Can someone with direct experiences in these places shed some more light?
- Ygg2 7y agoStress of life is polarizing people. Extreme conditions give rise to extreme beliefs.
- rumanator 7y agoExtreme conditions give rise to desperate solutions that materialize into extreme beliefs.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y agoI feel like this is a pretty weird reading of the article. The author makes it clear that the real situation is more nuanced than that, that the people he's met at Yale aren't trying to flock away from the center at all.
- sneak 7y agoI feel like the article is written into that presumption/expectation. It comes very much from a “I was like that, but now I am like this” place.
- atoav 7y agoI'd say what is polarized isn't necessarily "all the people", instead the perceived discourse is polarized. And like in any really entrenched discourse, the one side thinks to know exactly what the other side wants and thinks, without ever talking to each other. One of my best friends became a neonazi years ago. I don't live in that village anymore, but every 3 years I manage to meet him at some party or so. He has a extremely clear (and sadly utterly fantasized) image of my political goals and ideas. One of my goals is apparently to introduce muslim Sharia law nationwide, although I never ever mentioned anything about Sharia law to him. It isreally hard to speak with him about anything at all, because he always seems to "know" what my opinion is, to the point of misrepresentation, while I am more or less just curious what he wants. What he says is usally a progression of: "I just want the foreigners to respect the rules!", "Deport the foreigners!" or "Shoot the foreigners!", depending on how many beers we are in. The whole thing is spiked with unsolicited explainations why liberal ideas "like mine" (although I am usually more on the realistic side) will never work and it sometimes feels he is telling this more to himself than to me. This is rightwing Austria, his grandfather was a Nazi and this is where the discourse in the US is moving as well.
- jtwaleson 7y agoPrevious discussion 4 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21864639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21864639
- telesilla 7y agoThanks for the link - it opens up more questions after I listened a while back to the Serial podcast about Bergdahl's desertion that lead to the author's injuries. https://serialpodcast.org/season-two https://serialpodcast.org/season-two
- g000m 7y agoGreat quote: "To me there is no dishonor in being wrong and learning. There is dishonor in willful ignorance and there is dishonor in disrespect."
- he0001 7y agoI always thought the “liberal snowflake” term is quite odd. I guess I could qualify or classified as one. There’s something wrong with that statement. I think the meaning of it is quite the opposite. As a liberal, you realize that you are not a special individual and must cooperate to gain more, to distribute the available resources for some sort of greater progress, such as health care for everyone etc. Being the opposite is just what a snowflake would be. The one of a kind, just me and my capabilities and resources against the rest of the world. If you don’t have an insurance to give the appropriate healthcare to your loved ones, you, and only you are the failure here, not the collective “us”. I believe I was less liberal in my youth, but since when I got my children I can’t bare the thought of not being able to pay their health care if they ever needed it. Even though that’s not a problem for me, I still think of it very often when I see them sick.
- EncryptEntropy 7y agoStop reposting this over and over.