interlude: kids these days...

[zwol]

So Chad Orzel linked to an Inside Higher Ed article entitled Sharing Ambivalence and I was trying to write a long, thoughtful, reasoned response to it but I'm just too fuzzy-headed to back up my reactions with logic so I'm going to throw it open to the floor here: Am I crazy, or do the guy's conclusions (such as they are) completely not follow from his anecdotes? Is it not the case that college students have done drink, drugs, and sex since time immemorial, and pretty much lived in the moment, and not worried about presenting a consistent moral philosophy? Aren't these kids demonstrating rather more capacity for self-reflection than a grumpy old man like myself would normally expect of kids that age, particularly the party-all-night set? Should the kid in the lead anecdote not at least be given credit for acknowledging that anyone you sleep with is in fact worthy of being taken out to dinner and treated like a real person?

(See also comments on Chad's blog.)

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

He lost me when calling Mom and Dad by their first names was implied to be part of social decline. I'm done. I don't call my parents by their first names, but I don't think that ksumnersmith's family, for example, is what's sending our society straight to hell in a handbasket.

I also stopped reading a Harold Bloom book because he was ranting about how opposite-sex friendships destroyed the natural order of the world. I solemnly gave that book the bird and returned it to the library.

And yes, like other human beings, college students are not always philosophically consistent and sometimes motivated by short-term pleasure. OMG. Oh noes. Teh shock, teh horr0r.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Many of Harold Bloom's peculiarities are explained by him being one-quarter fictitious on his grandfather Leopold's side.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have often made reference to partners I haven't met as "X's imaginary friend," but I didn't realize that Fictitious-American was an ethnicity!

[queenpam.livejournal.com]

My friend Tara posted this one right before you posted this, interesting juxtaposition there.

I think the biggest flaw in the article is that he really hasn't picked typical people and typical annecdotes to draw conclusions from. If you want to draw conclusions about a set, you need a sample that actually represents that set--his sample is carefully picked to support his own agenda. Furthermore, if you want to draw conclusions about how students today are different from students some number of years ago, you're also going to need a representative sample from back then too, which the article is also lacking.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

He lost me at the phrase "ostensibly victimless." I'm not terribly inclined to spend time picking apart his arguments after that--he's obviously got an agenda that doesn't square with my version of reality.