9 Comments

I feel this on such a personal level. I became a young adult during the rise of Tinder and Bumble. Like most women my age, I was sold the bill of goods that men are trash and to never let them pay for dinner, lest they expect things in return (not always bad advice, mind you.)

I always fancied myself the salmon swimming up the proverbial cultural stream (because where I'm from in the South, it's very normal to get married at 18.) I wanted more; to experience more.

After 8ish years of "experiencing more" (read: living the hedonistic nightmare packaged as female liberation) I changed course. I met my husband and fell in love. Currently, I'm drinking my coffee in my house while my baby naps and my cat sleeps on my lap. I am more fulfilled now than I ever was chasing situationships and instant gratification. I feel for this current generation, and I hope they find their way out.

Expand full comment

Sometimes it feels like washing ashore bedraggled on an island after a shipwreck, only the ship is civilization and the island is a stable home life. Maybe it was ever thus. But the exterior darkness sure seems dark these days. Glad you found your way home.

Expand full comment

I saw that video a couple of days ago, and it just made me sad. But your writing has helped me to see exactly what it is that she lacks, and how desperately we have been failing. Thank you!

Expand full comment

It definitely strikes me as more an occasion for sorrow than for anger. Thank you for your comment, and for subscribing!

Expand full comment

Thoughtful piece. Everything is downstream from the dominant cultural values. The forces pushing these changes are impersonal. While I agree wholeheartedly with the tone of sadness and betrayal, I don’t know what actions could have been taken on a personal basis to shift these powerful currents of human nature (Kant’s ‘crooked timber’) and the Schopenhauerian ‘will’ in a different direction.

Expand full comment

There are certainly material causes behind a lot of these changes (the Industrial Revolution being chief among them), and there's a degree of fatalism to all major historical shifts. But I don't think we're altogether helpless against the undertow. Revivals do happen, especially in moments of mass discontent like ours.

Expand full comment

Definitely think our individual choices matter. But I also think, as Thomas Sowell says, everything is a tradeoff, which is another way of saying the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. What the millennials are figuring out is work/life balance, so in that sense cultural evolution is pushing us back to a middle path.

Expand full comment

One of the most insightful commentaries you’ve ever written. You’ve helped me to see beyond my reflex reaction. I still think there’s a degree of lack-of-seriousness in this generation. Thanks to you, I’m not sure how much of that deficiency is their fault versus those who were supposed to teach them life skills. Achieving the age of majority might be well short or actual adulthood.

Expand full comment

You're very kind. Part of the problem with generational "discourse" is that it ends up being about whether the olds or the youngs are to blame. But it always takes two to tango.

Expand full comment