I used to have a lot to say to during graduation season. I have less today. Considering the stack of culture, economics, and technology that young people face, I’d consider my past disposition regarding their fortunes to be optimistic, but today, it’s more mixed. Some will do exceedingly well; the other half will have a very difficult time, and I think there will be less in the middle. The proverbial – ‘I have some good news and bad news’ – will define which set prospers and which set languishes.
The bad news first.
The young are terminally and so deeply addicted to consumer tech, entertainment, gaming and cell devices, that their entire world outlook, social permeability, learning ability, brain function, and human connectedness are fundamentally altered for the worse. They are owned, enslaved, and surrendered to a 3 x 5 inch screen and that process is quickly creeping even into the grade school years. College has become a far more dubious proposition. Community and skill focused colleges are still good and essential, but name brand choices could be a ticket to a secure future or to a ruinous, even lifetime marring debt trap. Jobs, careers, even whole industries are altering or even disappearing within the same timeframe as a college education, making some career choices a moving target crap shoot. AI is rendering moot, hundreds of thousands of higher-level jobs. Inequities between the sexes, cultural shifts especially among women, and questionable economic prospects render courtship, marriage, home, and children either unattainable or undesirable for a significant number of this generation. Millions of Gen Z fret about phantom disasters like ‘global warming’, and intense manufactured grievances or politicized victimizations so as to be artificially stricken with a pervasive dysphoria. They were sold these distresses as fact to coerce them to give up their own fulfilling life for the grievances and hate of others. Despite being the most digitally connected generation in history, many have no functional skills or experience interacting face to face with adults of any generation. While some were taught and mentored, others have received zero guidance from the families that reared them. The need for remedial instruction in ‘adulting’ points to the significant and ever-increasing deficiency from those that were chartered with equipping them into productive adulthood.
Good news
In spite of all the bad news, the present class of Gen Z has already shown signs of casting off and reversing some of the worst deficiencies of their elders and educators. Against all odds, they are rediscovering faith, some with evangelical roots and some with Catholic and Orthodox foundations. Both have prospered nations by providing a moral foundation. This is also reflected in a sudden and significant turn toward conservatism and a rejection of progressive dogmas that totally dominated their education. Of course, the haves and have nots of these restorations are distinct and sharply divided between the enclaves of the blue coastal elites and the rest of the country, but population favors the conservative. While their economic prospects at this point look dim, even dire for some, certain factors will turn the tide in a relatively short span of time. Baby Boomers are sitting in $78 trillion dollars in accumulated wealth or equal to about 50% of the nation’s wealth. Within twenty years, most of that wealth will filter down to the young including some to Gen Z. This will not all be as hoarded wealth just with a new names slapped on it. Many trillions will reenter the economy as liquid assets and will become the basis for new wealth from those that enter business. As has always been the case, suitable young men and women will not waste their youth on schemes for ‘self-fulfillment’ or political hate and will marry, bear children, work hard, obtain wealth, and will prosper. For any that have not relegated themselves to failure, there will be unprecedented opportunity as they grasp hold of fulfilling lives.
There will be a lot of winners and a lot of losers and the characteristics of each may be more stark than prior generations. The predominant cause between each camp is whether they have engaged parents, extended family, and a wider net of mentors and loose associations. The ‘haves’ will have that foundation and the ‘have nots’ will not.
There are always wildcards like war and natural disasters but the one unique challenge that will cut both ways starting within the next 25 years, is population decline. Apart from isolated civilizations going extinct, there has never been a modern contraction in global population. The present generation of young will grow up to be the transitional one between an old growing past and a shrinking future. When they reach their peak years of maturity, they will have to make decisions unlike any other group before them. One of those will be a choice to embrace humanness or to become transhumanist machines with digitally enhanced minds and medically and mechanically altered bodies. I predict that one branch of humanity will go one way and the other a different path, setting up a dichotomy for a two quasi-species future. The kids alive today will see this in their distant or maybe not so distant future.
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