Generational Train Wreck Alert!

It’s becoming increasingly hard for me to dismiss the conviction that this generation deserves whatever it gets.

I refuse to believe every college or university student in the Western world is out of their minds, but the media seems bound and determined to prove me wrong.

For these lost twenty-somethings, the capacity to invent drama where no drama exists is apparently beyond measuring. Their will to be miserable no matter what their circumstances seems boundless. Their sense of entitlement and victimhood is off the charts.

Crusty Old Codger Time

If I didn’t read about it day after day, I’d think I was just some crusty old codger huffing about the “good old days”. And maybe I am. You be the judge:

“Harvard’s resident feminists claim that all-female organizations ... are beneficial to the school’s community, whereas all-male organizations are merely breeding grounds for the present and future perpetrators of sexual crime.

On Monday, they demonstrated, accusing Harvard of, among other things, perpetuating the marginalization of female voices. ‘My women’s organization has been more than a social organization,’ one student told the Boston Globe. ‘It has been a mental health respite, a place to discuss sexual assaults ... where I became a feminist, and where I refound my voice.’

The students claimed that female-only clubs were more important than male-only clubs because women experience systematic oppression, and they repeated claims that such clubs were necessary because women ‘earn less’ than male counterparts [debunked here] and because women are ‘targeted and shamed’ for their sexuality. Harvard’s policy, apparently, unintentionally cracked down on what Harvard feminists considered their safe spaces from a patriarchal world: ‘What do we want? Female spaces!’ they chanted. ‘When do we want them? Now!’ ”

Okay then.

The Anguish of Hyper-Privilege

Bear in mind that these are the same protesters who pushed for the elimination of gender-biased organizations on campus in the first place, citing “privilege”. Having succeeding in producing an outcome that is manifestly egalitarian (Harvard dutifully sanctioned both male and female single-gender organizations in response to student complaints), members of a social movement that bamboozled previous generations by insisting it was fighting for equality are now transparently fighting for ... inequality. Go figure.

Bear in mind also that this is the cream of a generation, privileged intellectuals able to pay between $43,000 and $59,000 annually to be educated at the second-most desirable college in the U.S. Bear in mind that over 90% of Harvard grads are employed at graduation. Bear in mind that (all else being equal) the average Harvard grad will be compensated for her efforts in her first year of post-graduation employment in the US$60,000 range. Bear in mind that ten years after graduation over 90% will still be employed full time (the rest having opted for military service, maternity leave, performing arts, etc.). Most will make $100,000-$500,000 annually and 22% will make significantly more than that.

If anyone in the Western world has a less plausible claim to being victims of systemic oppression, I can’t think who it might be.

These are among the most privileged people in one of the most privileged nations living in the most exceptionally privileged era of human history. Put another way, the safest women on earth are now clamoring for “safe spaces”. They’re miserable no matter how blessed they are, and determined to make everyone else as miserable as possible on account of it.

Futile Thinking and Darkened Hearts

Paul tells Timothy that the “last days” will be characterized by ungratefulness. It may surprise us to find “ungrateful” listed alongside more obviously evil qualities like “abusive”, “arrogant”, “disobedient”, “slanderous”, “treacherous” or “brutal”, but it should not surprise us that people whose worldview hinges on random chance and ridiculously long odds find little reason in the circumstances of their lives to give thanks. A deficiency of perspective and the absence of a relationship with one’s Creator will do that. Futile thinking and darkened hearts are the natural end product of thanklessness. The ever-morphing arguments of the Left have become so internally incoherent that the word “futility” describes them perfectly.

It is God’s will for believers that we be thankful, and we have much to be thankful for. There is a great deal wrong with the world, to be sure, but nothing that can’t or won’t be fixed.

In the meantime, defending the genuinely oppressed is very Christian indeed. Grievance-mongering gender warfare is not. It is rapidly becoming evident that there is far more genuine equality in patriarchal Christendom than there is in the social justice ideal for society.