News   Apr 24, 2024
Latest Iteration of 50 Eglinton West Proposes 46- and 58-Storey Towers
 868     1 
News   Apr 24, 2024
Sustainability Month: Mass Timber Construction Showing Long-Term Economic Benefits
 1.2K     1 
News   Apr 24, 2024
Aspen Ridge Freehold Townhomes at Crosstown in Master-Planned Community
 599     0 

Grumpy Middle-Aged Man on Snowflake Culture

Admiral Beez

Admiral Beez

Superstar
Member Bio
Joined
Apr 28, 2007
Messages
12,170
Reaction score
6,262
G’ah, today i received the Toronto Star’s Insider Guide to Colleges and Universities. My teenaged children were reviewing the guide as they begin to consider their future studies. I couldn’t help but notice all the writing about “safe spaces” and something called “consent culture”. But worst of all was a call out to this company, https://safepod.ca/ and its treacle-like company audits and workshops about inclusivity.

I think back to my great grandfather, who in his late teens and early 20s was a senior officer on a British clipper ship in the 1880s, to my grandfathers who in their early 20s were both married with kids while commanding anti aircraft batteries and serving in the British army in Burma against Japan, to my parents emigrating to Canada in the mid-1970s in their early 20s, with three young children, and then to myself and my brothers, getting university educations, families, homes, etc. Sure, with each generation it got a little easier, but now we seem to be a society of pansies. My great-grandfather onto my brothers and I didn’t demand safe spaces, or whatever that is. If you didn’t cut it, you failed.

4b634312c0f377c3179ef4529c387d2c.jpg


At the CNE I spoke to the CAF recruiters about what it’s like to get young folks to join the military. And the gristled, older (mid 40s) guy told me it’s really tough, since in the military your individuality is erased and irrelevant. No one cares about new recruit’s special feelings or emotional needs, instead you’re part of your unit and its larger unit. Certainly they’re working on PTSD and mental health for veterans, but recruits....no they have no time for snowflake culture.

Anyway, that’s my rant. Sorry. That https://safepod.ca/ BS, dare I say in modern parlance, triggered me. But what the hell has happened to our young adults? When did we change to everyone is special, in their specialness? How did we get by before without safe spaces?
 
Last edited:
And I know, I know..... I’m speaking from an old timer’s perspective and what’s in millennial-speak referred to as privilege, being white, male, English as first language, UK-born, heterosexual, (infrequent) church-going, married over 20 years to the mother of my children, university educated, home-owning, car driving, beer-drinking (I hate cider, fizzy apple juice), office-working, with a low six figure family income. I’m essentially, yesterday’s Canadian, out of tune with today’s culture.

In many ways, I’m glad to see change. When I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s there were no openly gay students, whatsoever. The homophobic and racist names we used to call each other, you’d find yourself in front of the HRC today. Whilst today, half of my friends and closest neighbours seem to be. So, I’m not suggesting times were better, but did in embracing our differences did we have to become what seems so spineless and weepy?
 
I agree with the sentiment. But I don't feel this safe space culture exists outside of the media and bureaucracy for the most part. I regularly interact across various age groups and aside to the odd person, I never see any of this safe space/victim culture in real life. Ask your kids what they say about it. Are their friends reflective of safe space culture or just a bunch of kids like you would have thought?
 
I’m inclined to agree that the cultural revolution is probably mostly confined to government, the media, and parts of academia like the humanities, social sciences and education. Or “Communications Studies” - whatever that is - at WLU if the Lindsay Shepherd case is any indication. My two twenty-something kids did engineering and commerce. In the former, university was only about mastering really difficult technical material. There was a bit of SJW insanity in the commerce program, but not a lot. They both work in the private sector which consists of, you know, actually working and not denouncing thoughtcrime or banning books. I suspect their experience isn’t that unusual.
 
I'm a millennial and I hate the snowflake culture I endured at a major Toronto university. Most of my professors were far left in their views. They had no qualms about pushing these views on students. The student union and university administration were also uniformly far left.

It's ironic because this indoctrination was counterproductive. Many of my peers and I came into university as a fairly left leaning. We left the left because we were disgusted with the contemporary incarnation of gender, race and grievance identity politics. Not to mention the constant micro aggressions against my white and male identity (I hate leftist buzz words, but see how easily one can play divisive identity politics?) Now I consider myself a classical liberal with some traditional left and right views - moderately socially and fiscally liberal.

Jonathan Haidt from NYU has done a great job tracing the origins of snowflake culture. I highly recommend his work. In a nutshell, he argues that parents of the 70s and 80s were overprotective in large part because smaller family sizes and fewer kids raised the relative "value" of each kid. Then these coddled kids became liberal arts students and adults demanding their civic institutions coddle them like their parents did.

As a result, we see enormous disfunction and far left bias in academia, education, media and public institutions. This is because these organizations are the most common destinations for far left liberal arts grads. Based on this, I would argue it's much wider spread than pman says. It's gone to the point where STEM fields are implementing 50-50 male female equality of outcome quotas. And anyone who's worked in the business world knows it's chock full of leftist identity politics and buzz words coming from HR usually (another common job for liberal arts grads).
 
I read an article in The Star the other day about how school boards are , in my few, expecting teachers to be hyper-sensitive to the impact of everything they teach and every word they speak. Apparently, mispronouncing a student's name is now micro aggression. Who knew. I've had my surname mispronounced and misspelled most of my life - it's Scottish. I want my settlement money!
 
Neutrino said:
I'm a millennial and I hate the snowflake culture I endured at a major Toronto university. Most of my professors were far left in their views.
Click to expand...
I don't agree that snowflake culture needs to be seen as far left. You can be a far right racist and nationalist and still meet Wikipedia's definition....

"Snowflake is a 2010s derogatory slang term for a person, implying that they have an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or are overly-emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions. "
 
^Agreed, but that term has been used to refer to the lefty side to the point where that's the commonly accepted meaning.
 
Not just the right, but also many on the moderate left to mock the extreme identity politics left. There's a lot of infighting on the left. Not sure what it's like on the right. But I get what you're saying.
 
Admiral Beez said:
And I know, I know..... I’m speaking from an old timer’s perspective and what’s in millennial-speak referred to as privilege, being white, male, English as first language, UK-born, heterosexual, (infrequent) church-going, married over 20 years to the mother of my children, university educated, home-owning, car driving, beer-drinking (I hate cider, fizzy apple juice), office-working, with a low six figure family income. I’m essentially, yesterday’s Canadian, out of tune with today’s culture.
Click to expand...
Well, as a 55-year-old gay, left-wing, atheist French Canadian whose family has been here since the 1660s :) I'm just as puzzled as you are about the cause of this strange vulnerability among young people that is so often reported. Having no kids myself, I lack personal experience obviously. I wasn't exposed to homophobia or racism in high school or in my family, and I don't think having demeaning experiences is required to develop into a strong person, but seeking to isolate oneself from negative situations cannot have a good result.
 
Johnny Au said:
@Admiral Beez

I really like to know what are your thoughts about video games.

In 2014, there was this controversy known as GamerGate whose supporters tend to be on the right. Me, I believe that video games should broaden its demographics.
Click to expand...
As a lad I had an Atari 2600, then a ColecoVision, followed by a Commodore 128, then a PC 386 desktop, 486 laptop (the first gen b/w IBM ThinkPad), then a Pentium II desktop, followed by Dell and iMac desktops. When I was growing up gaming was done either by yourself or with a friend who was in the room with you, at least until I tossed the Commodore. And gaming wasn't just for boys, since the games, like Carmen Santiago, Pacman, etc. appealed to everyone. I played some games on my Intel/Mac machines in the 1990s onwards, such as Sim City, and naval simulator games, but stopped gaming once the best games moved from pc to consols (which I didn’t have) like a PlayStation or Nintendo. I've never liked the violent console games (GTA, Call of Duty, etc) and never took to the online gaming against other folks.

The culture of man-childs in their parents basement addicted to online gaming never appealed to me.

Study Confirms Millennial Men are Still Playing Video Games in Their Parents’ Basements

My focus as a young adult was always to get out of my parent's place asap, build my career, start my own family and hopefully see the world. Here's my map so far..... India, ANZ and LATAM are still on the list. Better than gaming anyday.

204770
 
Last edited:
Neutrino said:
I'm a millennial and I hate the snowflake culture I endured at a major Toronto university. Most of my professors were far left in their views. They had no qualms about pushing these views on students. The student union and university administration were also uniformly far left.

It's ironic because this indoctrination was counterproductive. Many of my peers and I came into university as a fairly left leaning. We left the left because we were disgusted with the contemporary incarnation of gender, race and grievance identity politics. Not to mention the constant micro aggressions against my white and male identity (I hate leftist buzz words, but see how easily one can play divisive identity politics?) Now I consider myself a classical liberal with some traditional left and right views - moderately socially and fiscally liberal.
Click to expand...
I could have written these two paragraphs myself. Well said, and exactly aligning with my own experiences.

The identity politics in particular is something that I find personally grating, as it stands in such stark contrast to the inherently liberal ethics that I was taught and ingrained as Canadian values throughout elementary and middle school. You know, that everyone deserves to be treated equally and with respect, to not judge others based on race/ethnicity/sex/creed, that all Canadians deserve equal access to opportunity, enjoyment of their charter rights and freedoms, etc. This value was best espoused by Justin Trudeau's "a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian" line.

In my university experience the narrative has been twisted into an us vs them style politics that no longer seems very liberal to me. I'm not sure what they teach in elementary and middle school anymore, if it was still the same liberal message as I received in the early-mid 2000s, or if it has changed into the same sort of pro(re-?)gressive thinking that I was exposed to in university. According to some, it has and shouldn't be surprising given the types of degrees and educations that produce most teachers, along with institutional pressures from government and activists.

But there is hope to be found for the younger generation going through primary and secondary school. If there is an intergenerational culture change that has occurred, it is that the younger generation is very very adept at deciphering bullshit from truth and should not be underestimated. Perhaps thanks to the internet, traditional advertisement and marketing doesn't work on them as it does for older generations, and neither does the parochial political rhetoric of either contemporary conservativism or the progressive left - they see right through the lies and ideological dogma. My bus route to work passes by two high schools. The kids have no qualms about making their opinions on the validity of say, non-binary genders and safe-spaces, known. That said, I suppose that could also lead to increased political apathy in the younger generation...
 
Well, I guess I'm doing something right, because all my woefully game-obsessed pothead friends all have their own places and decent jobs.

They're still man-childs though....I let them know all the time. That's love.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top