I wrote in a previous blog post, "The problem with millenials", how we have, as a society, unwittingly created a generation of shallow people who are more concerned about instant gratification than forming deep meaningful relationships.
The advances in internet and mobile phone technology have created this absolutely detrimental culture where people are constantly online, sending shallow messages to hundreds, even thousands, of mostly unknown people, constantly expecting immediate reactions to their messages. We have created a generation that spends more time staring at the screen of their mobile device than having deep thoughtful conversations with somebody in real life, and forming deep, meaningful social relationships.
It doesn't exactly help that this same generation has been for the most part lived a completely unhealthily sheltered life, being monitored and watched by authority figures (mostly their parents and teachers) pretty much 24/7, and "protected" from anything that could hurt their feelings and perspectives. We live in a world where parents are constantly, constantly, aware of where their children are, and checking on them at regular intervals, no matter where they are or what they are doing. Children are not being allowed any sort of freedom to experience the hardships of the real world on their own, and to learn from their mistakes (even, and especially, their social interaction mistakes).
So what happens when these sheltered, shallow, spoiled brats grow up and become, for example, school teachers? Well, they tend to perpetuate their own shallowness onto their protegees:
Schools are banning besties to 'protect students' feelings'
So yeah, schools in Australia and the UK are banning "best friends" in schools, so as to avoid children's feelings being hurt.
This is just a projection of the shallow lives of their teachers. They can't themselves form deep meaningful social relationships, so they are stopping children from forming them either. Sure, they think they have good intentions, but as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with them.
"Best friends" are essential to the mental, psychological and social growth of people. People should have extremely good friends they can hang out with and share their deepest feelings, thoughts and troubles with, and have them understand and reciprocate. We are a highly social species, and we need strong social bonds.
If you don't have any good friends, when all your "friends" are little more than acquaintances, and there are tons and tons of them, there really isn't anybody to share your deepest feelings and worries with. If you try to do it with just a semi-acquaintance, it probably won't lead to anything. It easily becomes awkward, and even if it doesn't, there probably is no reciprocation, and any understanding will just be shallow and mostly nominal. The social interaction will be shallow, meaningless and unfulfilling. You will not be able to open up properly. On the contrary, if this goes on for long enough, you'll probably just learn the bad habit of bottling up rather than opening up, and that will only lead to trouble eventually.
And no, "everybody should be your best friend!" simply doesn't work. It's just that paving the road to hell with good intentions. You just can't be "best friends" with a hundred people. Or even twenty people. That's just not how it works. You really need one or two really, really close friends if you want a deep social bond, and somebody to really, really talk with about your thoughts and issues.
Without such deep social bonds, and especially if this is coupled with an overly sheltered life, as is so common today, you become a spoiled brat, and you will end up with problems later in life. It's no wonder that now that the millenials have got to college age, that colleges are all messed up all over the world, and are pretty much crumbling down. They are being brought down by millenials who are incapable of forming deep social bonds, and thus are incapable of truly understanding and tolerating people, who want instant gratification and will throw a tantrum if they don't get it, and who have been taught their whole lives to stand up against "bullies".
That last part is, once again, another example of paving the road to hell with good intentions. A couple of generations have now been risen in an "anti-bullying" environment, where they have been inculcated since early childhood to "stand up to bullies" and always call out bullying where they see it, and never tolerate it.
The problem is that while they have been taught what is bullying, they have never been really taught what is not bullying. They are given example after example after example of forms of bullying... while never being taught about examples of things that are not bullying. Examples of bullying are things like "if somebody teases you", or "if somebody takes away your toy", or "if somebody calls you a nasty name, or laughs at you", and so on and so on. When this is not balanced with explanations of what is not bullying, children very easily generalize and get the impression that bullying is "anything that upsets me".
And when "anything that upsets me" is bullying, then for example disagreeing with them becomes a form of bullying, because that upsets them (especially since they are shallow egotistical spoiled brats who only seek instant gratification in everything and can't stand not getting what they want).
Do you have to thus wonder that these millenials are now "standing up" against people merely disagreeing with their opinions? Even to the point of physically assaulting those people who disagree with them. They have never been taught that merely disagreeing with them is not bullying, and thus they have never learned the lesson. They have got the wrong impression of what constitutes bullying.
All this is like the perfect storm of societal mayhem. Which is now being inculcated into and taught to children from early age by these spoiled millenials who are now becoming teachers.
The advances in internet and mobile phone technology have created this absolutely detrimental culture where people are constantly online, sending shallow messages to hundreds, even thousands, of mostly unknown people, constantly expecting immediate reactions to their messages. We have created a generation that spends more time staring at the screen of their mobile device than having deep thoughtful conversations with somebody in real life, and forming deep, meaningful social relationships.
It doesn't exactly help that this same generation has been for the most part lived a completely unhealthily sheltered life, being monitored and watched by authority figures (mostly their parents and teachers) pretty much 24/7, and "protected" from anything that could hurt their feelings and perspectives. We live in a world where parents are constantly, constantly, aware of where their children are, and checking on them at regular intervals, no matter where they are or what they are doing. Children are not being allowed any sort of freedom to experience the hardships of the real world on their own, and to learn from their mistakes (even, and especially, their social interaction mistakes).
So what happens when these sheltered, shallow, spoiled brats grow up and become, for example, school teachers? Well, they tend to perpetuate their own shallowness onto their protegees:
Schools are banning besties to 'protect students' feelings'
So yeah, schools in Australia and the UK are banning "best friends" in schools, so as to avoid children's feelings being hurt.
This is just a projection of the shallow lives of their teachers. They can't themselves form deep meaningful social relationships, so they are stopping children from forming them either. Sure, they think they have good intentions, but as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with them.
"Best friends" are essential to the mental, psychological and social growth of people. People should have extremely good friends they can hang out with and share their deepest feelings, thoughts and troubles with, and have them understand and reciprocate. We are a highly social species, and we need strong social bonds.
If you don't have any good friends, when all your "friends" are little more than acquaintances, and there are tons and tons of them, there really isn't anybody to share your deepest feelings and worries with. If you try to do it with just a semi-acquaintance, it probably won't lead to anything. It easily becomes awkward, and even if it doesn't, there probably is no reciprocation, and any understanding will just be shallow and mostly nominal. The social interaction will be shallow, meaningless and unfulfilling. You will not be able to open up properly. On the contrary, if this goes on for long enough, you'll probably just learn the bad habit of bottling up rather than opening up, and that will only lead to trouble eventually.
And no, "everybody should be your best friend!" simply doesn't work. It's just that paving the road to hell with good intentions. You just can't be "best friends" with a hundred people. Or even twenty people. That's just not how it works. You really need one or two really, really close friends if you want a deep social bond, and somebody to really, really talk with about your thoughts and issues.
Without such deep social bonds, and especially if this is coupled with an overly sheltered life, as is so common today, you become a spoiled brat, and you will end up with problems later in life. It's no wonder that now that the millenials have got to college age, that colleges are all messed up all over the world, and are pretty much crumbling down. They are being brought down by millenials who are incapable of forming deep social bonds, and thus are incapable of truly understanding and tolerating people, who want instant gratification and will throw a tantrum if they don't get it, and who have been taught their whole lives to stand up against "bullies".
That last part is, once again, another example of paving the road to hell with good intentions. A couple of generations have now been risen in an "anti-bullying" environment, where they have been inculcated since early childhood to "stand up to bullies" and always call out bullying where they see it, and never tolerate it.
The problem is that while they have been taught what is bullying, they have never been really taught what is not bullying. They are given example after example after example of forms of bullying... while never being taught about examples of things that are not bullying. Examples of bullying are things like "if somebody teases you", or "if somebody takes away your toy", or "if somebody calls you a nasty name, or laughs at you", and so on and so on. When this is not balanced with explanations of what is not bullying, children very easily generalize and get the impression that bullying is "anything that upsets me".
And when "anything that upsets me" is bullying, then for example disagreeing with them becomes a form of bullying, because that upsets them (especially since they are shallow egotistical spoiled brats who only seek instant gratification in everything and can't stand not getting what they want).
Do you have to thus wonder that these millenials are now "standing up" against people merely disagreeing with their opinions? Even to the point of physically assaulting those people who disagree with them. They have never been taught that merely disagreeing with them is not bullying, and thus they have never learned the lesson. They have got the wrong impression of what constitutes bullying.
All this is like the perfect storm of societal mayhem. Which is now being inculcated into and taught to children from early age by these spoiled millenials who are now becoming teachers.
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