An Open Letter To Millennials

[Part Three in my recent series skewering the latest generation of young adults in the U.S. Millennials are no exception to the rule that every generation thinks way too much of itself, and as such, need to be talked down off the ledge before they hurt themselves.]

Millennials, you scare me. You have taken self-aggrandizing to heights never before seen in history.

Over the course of the past few years, reports have been rolling in from college professors across America that they can no longer challenge the ideas of their students without endangering their jobs. College campuses, once a place where you as a young student wanted to go in order to learn more about the world now go to college with the expectation that any and all of your beliefs will be confirmed because they are true and not because a college simply wants your money. Meanwhile, professional companies are reporting that when you enter the workforce, you as entry level employees, are expecting exorbitant salaries, corner offices and to come and go as you please simply because you bothered to show up for work in the first place. Granted, you fight for social justice will the zeal common to all young ideologues, but you only do so as long as you don’t actually risk anything such as bodily harm, your source of income or alienating your friends. This last point is most disturbing of all.

Certainly, you have raised your voice and won some important battles such as the right for gays and lesbians to marry. But as I said, you haven’t risked a whole lot in doing so, not unless you yourself are gay or lesbian. While I believe you are right that such an issue is an important one to fight for, there are other issues – non-social, global issues – that need attention that you have not unexpectedly turned a blind eye to such as climate change and the alarming and rise of militant Islam. With that in mind, imagine if you will that your generation has been transported back in time to 1939 to the onset of World War II; how well would you handle a fascist bent on talking over Europe while an Emperor stalked Asia and the Pacific? How well would you handle the entire world being on the brink of war? Would you tweet Hitler out of power or share on Facebook “epic responses” to Japanese propagandists? Or would you dare enter the trenches and provide the enemy with the largest and easiest targets they’ve ever seen? (And would you complain to your commander about the amount of aggression levied at you by the enemy? Your generation cannot even seem to handle even the most innocuous insult much less be asked to physically exert themselves.) I could forgive you for abstaining from violence, electing to stay home and protest a lion killer from the comfort of a café with free wi-fi because like me you have given basically up on humanity, but your tenacity regarding social issues indicates you are not as misanthropic as I am. Maybe you would simply turn over the world to Germany and Japan, alleging that all cultures are equally worthwhile. Maybe then it will dawn on you that these ‘equal’ cultures have no respect for your opinions about social justice when you are incarcerated for dissent (if not summarily executed by your new overseers).

[*Name here withheld because I hurt this poor, young man's feelings], a Millennial who writes for the Millennialist website Mic.com, defends you by writing, “Young people these days are pigeonholed with all kinds of negative stereotypes: They're lazy. They're unskilled. They're entitled and narcissistic. None of these labels are actually true but they remain conventional wisdom the country over nonetheless.” Leave it to someone who was hand-held throughout their ‘education’ to miss why stereotypes become stereotypes in the first place. Much like any given person anywhere in the world, you tend not to take responsibility for your shortcomings. Or, like any given person anywhere in the world, when you do admit to any shortcomings, you feel as though this admission absolves you of any criticism or worse, you drum up the nerve to play the victim card as if you had endured ten years as a child prostitute in Thailand. I realize this is tough to hear, that you are typical of any given person anywhere in the world, but it’s true. Your Gen X parents may have told you you’re special, possibly due to their own lack of education that allowed for the misinterpretation of the word ‘special,’ but I assure you that your parents are kicking themselves now because they can’t get five minutes of your time before you turn away to coddle a device that you are so dependent on, you literally cannot function without it. Driven to dismiss these nagging faults about yourself you band together and communicating as one, at least when you can tear yourself away from news about a socialite who contributes nothing worthwhile to society other than her very presence.

Maybe someone, possibly a Millennial but more likely a comedian, said that you’re special because you grew up to survive the Great Recession. Do you think this is anything like growing up during WWII, the Vietnam conflict or even the Cold War? If you’re going to complain about, say, the Silent Generation (ask Siri) for feeling entitled to a program such as Social Security, think for a moment the degree to which that generation worked for it. Men went to war and women took over physically demanding factory jobs. Today, you seem to think that perfecting the art of the latte deserves more respect than it is given. As with any generation, you are bound to contribute the occasional genius or two, but I have heard of no genius arising from the slums of Starbucks. Yet you as a generation expect so much while contributing so little. While I agree in part with your overriding principle that life is better spent having fun instead of working, this doesn’t mean that when you are asked to work, you should put as little effort or skill into working as you can. One day your parents might die and leave you with nothing (since Gen X’ers were the first generation to stop saving money), meaning you might have to – gasp! – get a job you don’t like for a little while and be expected to be good at it in order to pay for that little rectangle piece of plastic and metal that serves as your brain. You might also want to consider the necessity of buying food before paying for a tattoo.

If you still think you are at all special, you may be right, but in the negative sense of the word. A special person (that is, intelligent person) would never come to the conclusion that the beliefs they hold are beyond reproach simply because they hold the belief. A ‘special’ person would, perhaps because your parents didn’t give you the tools to prevent mere words from causing you lasting psychological harm. You, as a ‘special’ person, supports socialism and sometimes Communism, though you are usually unable to describe socialism (without the use of a smart phone) or understand that Communism doesn’t work in real life. You, as a ‘special’ person also seem to think that being socially liberal means you are liberal, period, despite data that indicates the more money you make, the more fiscally conservative you become. And although you are rejecting the notion of God en masse, you are also rejecting science. Unfortunately we cannot vaccinate against stupidity.

Lastly, if you’ll notice, no self-respecting minority who doesn’t have a lot of white friends dares to identify themselves as a Millennial. (This should serve as a red flag and make you reconsider some of the things you believe about yourselves.) No minorities identify themselves as Millennials because while you as a white person can talk about injustice ad nauseam, minorities have to actually suffer it. Of course, this is the part where you bemoan the fact that you are white and call for the extermination of Caucasians, so long as it’s not yourself because you’re on the side of the disenfranchised. You don’t seem to realize that it was Renaissance ideals, brought to you by a few boat loads of white people, that allowed for social justice in the U.S. to ever take place. Do not think for a second that if the shoe were on the other foot, any other foot, that another ethnicity in power would think to build into their country’s constitution the idea of social equality. Today, the U.S. Constitution, written by a bunch of old dudes in funny hats – some of whom owned slaves – is what many foreign progressive wish their own countries would model their governments upon. Understandably, you dare not acknowledge this as it would undermine your belief in cultural relativism.

I’m sorry, Millennials, but you’re not quite as special as you think. IOW, omg ur not spcl rofl. You do have the opportunity to prove otherwise, but as a generation unique to the U.S. you come with all the trappings particular to Americans, meaning, you’re not number one in a whole slew of categories. One of those areas is reading comprehension: “Special - Better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual.” So, are you special? And if all of you are special, wouldn’t that mean none of you are special? No, no, don’t ponder that for a moment. I don’t want to end up in jail for making you feel a little bit bad about yourself.

My Beef With Boghossian

Does religion make people behave maliciously? Does religion make people evil? Do we need to rid the world of religion because it makes people malicious and evil? The answer to these questions is a resounding “yes,” or at least that is the answer rather strongly implied by the work of Portland State University’s Dr. Peter Boghossian. Boghossian’s new book, A Manual for Creating Atheists, is a rallying cry to what Boghossian calls “street epistemology;” basically atheist evangelicalism that seeks to divorce theists from their supernatural beliefs by attacking a theist’s theory of knowledge. In being a rational person, Boghossian says that there should not only be evidence to support beliefs but a proper chain of reasoning to come to certain conclusions. I certainly agree with Boghossian that faith is a failure of epistemology and I agree that the more outrageous a belief claim the more extraordinary evidence is required to make certain inferences. The problem is that if there should be evidence to support beliefs, whatever they may be, then Boghossian and his merry band of followers do not appear to be playing by their own rules. 

[Before going any further, I must disclose that I have never met, taken a class with, or otherwise talked to Dr. Boghossian. So, I cannot say how much of his beliefs or the beliefs of the presumably rational atheist community that I will now discredit they have personally examined or what rationalizing – different from rationale – they have used to come to certain conclusions.]

First, we have to understand what motivates the Boghossian and the current nu-atheist movement. (Hint: It’s the same as the old motivation.) What motivates a pseudo-militant atheist* like Boghossian is their belief that the world suffers, and has suffered throughout history, from the theistic beliefs that are rampant in almost every culture on Earth. Boghossian and his followers believe that if only people could be cured of their “faith virus” and turned towards atheism (which by-golly must be, by default, rational) the world would be a much better place. I know this is the premise these presumably rational atheists are working from because I used to think exactly the same thing a few years ago. And then I grew up.

[*A pseudo-militant atheist seeks to engage you in conversation with a measure of compassion but has an ulterior motive. But, hey, theists do the same thing, so why not?]

As a true, bona-fide philosopher who is not a Scotsman – philosophical humor; move along – I had a belief that was open to revision. (All beliefs must be so, according to Boghossian, or you’re not rational; agreed.) I found that the more people I met throughout life, I would come to categorize an individual as a good person by about a 4-to-1 margin regardless of whether they were theistic or atheistic. [Meaning, for every 4 good theists or atheists I met, there was 1 bad theist or atheist. Certainly, we could argue over my criteria for what makes for a good or bad person, but let’s focus on the subject at hand right now.] I found that in dealing with people, religion or lack thereof seemingly had no bearing on whether or not someone was nice to me. Of course, my personal experiences with people are anecdotal evidence that religion plays no part in what makes a human moral, and anecdotal evidence is generally frowned upon in philosophy. (Nevermind that it is often admissible in a court of law, but, whatever.) So, in order to tear down the premise from which presumably rational atheists are working from, perhaps we should examine history.

The presumably rational atheist works from the premise that historically speaking, religion has been the spark for untold amounts of suffering. Problem is, is that if we examine, say, the deaths caused by religion throughout recorded history, what presumably rational atheists say about religion simply isn’t true. For example, noted historian and chronicler of atrocities, Matthew White, concludes in his latest book The Great Big Book of Horrible Things that of the worst 100 atrocities in recorded history, only 13 of them are the direct result of (or assumed to be the direct result of) one religious ideology pitted against another. If we do the math, that leaves 87 atrocities in which religion played a secondary or little to no role in armed conflict. Obviously then, the presumably rational atheist is wrong about religion in terms of the amount of violence theists inflict upon others due to their theistic beliefs, so what do they mean when they say religion is the cause of untold amounts of suffering? (More on that in a moment.) Quickly, a question arises: Why aren’t presumably rational atheists examining the evidence for their own beliefs? A lack of evidence is the point Boghossian is hammering theists on, but why isn’t he applying his methodology to the beliefs of the members of his own community? Isn’t the premise presumably rational atheists are working from “something they are pretending to know,” as Boghossian would put it?

It may be the case that the presumably rational atheist senses there is an amount of harm done by religion that is psychological. Although they rarely cite this as the meaning behind their basic assumption about religion, they still have no evidence that the psychological manipulations perpetrated by theists upon other people (shaming, for example) is caused by the theist’s religious beliefs as opposed to, say, Nietzsche’s Will to Power. Is there perhaps a biological imperative that drives people to try and control others through any means available? Where is the evidence pointing one way or the other? Despite the lack of evidence – which is required to rationally believe something – the presumably rational atheist typically clings to the premise they began with, that religion is bad and that a world full of rational atheists would be better. Even if this were true, look what happens when we take the second part of their premise to its logical conclusion.

Let’s imagine for a moment that the presumably rational atheist is right (because there is supporting evidence) and the world would be better if it were full of rational people, given that rational people are less violent and not quite the psychological terrorist theists are. If it is concluded that rational people are morally superior, might there be sub-categories of rational people who are less violent and less psychologically manipulative than the group as a whole? Woman are often regarded as less violent than men and rightly so because that’s what all available evidence indicates. Moreover, evidence indicates that homosexuals as a group are less violent than women. If we take the presumably rational atheist’s original premise to its logical conclusion, the world would be a whole lot better off not under the direction of rational people, but under the direction of rational, atheistic lesbians. But you’ll never hear the presumably rational atheist come to such a conclusion because they haven’t looked at the evidence. They haven’t played by their own rules. 

Nor do they apparently want to. I cannot relate to you how many times I walked the halls of Portland State University as a student and saw flyers for the latest meeting extoling the virtues of Communism. This, despite the fact that all historical evidence indicates that Communism is a complete failure in practice.

This is not so much an attack on Boghossian as it is an attack on the beliefs of the latest, growing crop of atheists in general. After all, although I noticed the failure of theistic epistemology over two decades ago, Boghossian has pointed out this flaw in theism with more wit and flair than I ever could. And I would fully support his endeavor to de-convert people from their faith if only the evidence indicated that religion corrupts individuals and has been a detriment throughout history. But the evidence isn’t there. And therein lies my beef; don’t require of others evidence for their beliefs if you’re not going to apply the same standards to your own.

I'd like to believe that no one likes a hypocrite. Unfortunately, the evidence suggests otherwise.