A diagnostic of the psychological landscape of "younger" generations: Sam Vaknin

mkrnhr

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According to Sam Vaknin, whose views and "expertise" ought to be taken with a grain of salt (see Sam Vaknin - Narcissist or "I, Psychopath"?)
People under age 35 are walking dead who live in a dystopian hell:
No higher functions.
No intellectual life.
No interests or hobbies.
No conversation (“flat speech”): dismissive one-liners with no depth or background.
As dull as drying paint.

Basically, they live in a narcissitic bubble of nihilism and absence of meaning:


There might be something worth the consideration to some observations despite the incomprehensible babbling towards the end of the video.

Edit: name of author corrected.
 
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Wow, thank you so much for sharing this video @mkrnhr . It is visible all around us. I watch it with horror and wonder what meaning these young people find in their lives. Sam Varkin gets to the heart of the matter. And he sounds quite desperate.
When he says at the beginning that they have no emotions, yes, they mimic emotions, but they are not real, like empty shells.... doesn't that remind us of something? We have a whole generation of them here.... It's frightening to watch.
 
Interesting ! Not to forget though : Since at least the times of Plato more than two thousand years ago, every old generation more or less described the younger generation as being worst than before, lazy, crazy, dumb, you name it.
Now, I know a lot of young adults who are quite different from Sam Varking's descriptions, who might be right in a general point of view...
 
Now, I know a lot of young adults who are quite different from Sam Varking's descriptions, who might be right in a general point of view..
Fortunately, I also know some other young people, for example my daughter and some friends of hers. But in my opinion, the majority of the young generation unfortunately already strives for the values he describes in the video. Many strive for glamour, possessions, money and beauty. And I think they are being led there by the mainstream. On top of that, parents don't have time any more, because most of them both have to work and it's easier to put the children in front of a computer or TV. It's like a vicious circle, I think... but it's still sad to watch.
 
Wow!
Firstly, it might be an accent issue, but I sensed a lot the venting mood. Yes, Granpa is upset and he shows it. I hope it worked for him. Personally I would not have posted it in this version.
Secondly he is mentioning his sources in the begining and he mentions that his research is for preparing a syllabus. It is not a study ’of’ otherwise he should have explained methodology and his theoretical assumptions. He touched on that briefly just to qualify them as inapplicable.
Thirdly, since there are no theories applicable for explaining the Young Generation ‘phenomenon’, are his conclusions not commensurably erroneous? I found his presentation only as a collection of arguments explaining the same thing, that there is a major generational gap in understanding? Yes, I have noticed myself the way youngsters communicate. I also agree that communication skills lose definition by limited application. However, one cannot generalise without a proper study on a longer period of time. That is what brought us to having the Psychology discipline which in my opinion is nothing but a collection of apriori rules put together to navigate the complexity of humans from the ‘functionality’ perspective and to create normatives and generate mental illness categories that require meds from eary ages. Personally, I think he is just engulfed by his own conclusions.
 
The generational gap argument has become a cliché. Yes it has always existed but it was more of a age gap that was mainly cyclical. A father would complain that his son is immature but when that son matures, he becomes his father and will issue the same complaint about his son, fogetting how he was at that age. A funny illustration of this is in the movie Back to the Future: The protagonist's mother at the beginning of the movie criticizes his girlfriend saying that in her time, a girl would never chase a boy. And then later in the movie he discovers that his mother, when young, was doing just like that.
That cyclical dynamic between the young and the old has been recently broken with the modern atomization of the family (and society at large), hedonism and the relativization of morality in favour of moralism, scientism, infantilization, entitlement, snowflake culture, and the promotion of narcissism as a viable or even an adaptive way of being and so on and so on. The cycle is being broken because everything has been put in place to hinder emotional and intellectual maturation. Of course it doesn't concern ALL young people because that would be idiotic, but it is increasingly clear that there is an increase in the proliferation of empty shells of emptiness.
The sophistication of the full spectrum psychological arsenal at the hands of the PTB is effective, and libtardism and arrested developpement/maturation are only a few manifestations of the outcome. Those will a strong core and a strong family/community/network milieu can resist, but how many will succomb?
 
The generational gap argument has become a cliché. Yes it has always existed but it was more of a age gap that was mainly cyclical. A father would complain that his son is immature but when that son matures, he becomes his father and will issue the same complaint about his son, fogetting how he was at that age.

You're right, I haven't seen it from that side yet. Of course I notice it more now than before because I was still young. And in the past, there weren't all these social media apps and services that young people could have used to distract themselves. People were much more likely to pick up a book or go out into the fresh air with their friends. This is very interesting for me right now, thank you very much for getting me off the wrong track. :whistle:
 
This is very interesting for me right now, thank you very much for getting me off the wrong track. :whistle:
I don't know if there a tracks that are completely wrong. We can all sense that there is something that's wrong in the buildup of today's society and where it seems to be heading towards, and the problem manifests at very different levels: psychological, ideological, social, intellectual, philosophical, metaphysical, etc.. To reduce the phenomenon to a single level of analysis or to ascribe the cause to a single effect would be missing the point IMHO. As the C's remarked, the programming is complete (which can be understood as completed in in the time dimension, but also at some level as complete in its breadth as in encompassing many aspects or enrly all of them), and day by day we keep observing how deep and pervasive that programming is. OSIT
 
The generational gap argument has become a cliché. Yes it has always existed but it was more of a age gap that was mainly cyclical. A father would complain that his son is immature but when that son matures, he becomes his father and will issue the same complaint about his son, fogetting how he was at that age. A funny illustration of this is in the movie Back to the Future: The protagonist's mother at the beginning of the movie criticizes his girlfriend saying that in her time, a girl would never chase a boy. And then later in the movie he discovers that his mother, when young, was doing just like that.
That cyclical dynamic between the young and the old has been recently broken with the modern atomization of the family (and society at large), hedonism and the relativization of morality in favour of moralism, scientism, infantilization, entitlement, snowflake culture, and the promotion of narcissism as a viable or even an adaptive way of being and so on and so on. The cycle is being broken because everything has been put in place to hinder emotional and intellectual maturation. Of course it doesn't concern ALL young people because that would be idiotic, but it is increasingly clear that there is an increase in the proliferation of empty shells of emptiness.
The sophistication of the full spectrum psychological arsenal at the hands of the PTB is effective, and libtardism and arrested developpement/maturation are only a few manifestations of the outcome. Those will a strong core and a strong family/community/network milieu can resist, but how many will succomb?

For me it is a little weird that I've been thinking a little along the lines of the the title of the post of late. Working with a lot of young people between the ages of 16 to 25 for the last 8 years, I have seen a marked decrease of people with depth. Many of the reasons I have learned about have been from here and I am thankful to know that there are many varied outside influences because it was just too depressing to think that it was a purely natural event.

I have been able to remember what it was like at those ages and the intensity of emotions depending on the situations and understand a work environment is not the place to vent those emotions but I also see too many barely going through the motions at work, using anything excuse not to work. The staring at phones is the most important thing they do most often and I rarely see anyone have any reactions that involve more than a shrug but all to often it's just a blank stare.

Being almost 50 I am nearly invisible to these young people that don't work directly with me and in the breakroom, there is very little lively conversation going on. It saddens me that it seems like that is a thing of the past. Some of them turn inward, but others just seem so out of touch with anything, it's like they are almost as invisible as I am.
 
There are many constructs that are applied to people. Statistical groups, political and social dnominations and generalizations. Relationships are formed by and through direct contact. Judging anyone without having at least tried to start to know the person starts with accepting generalizations.
Human spirit always prevails same as life always finds a way.
 
Broad brush generalization. Sort of true. My hypothesis is that of a kind of crystallization. The extremes of suppressed youth who are caving into the fear narrative and asleep Or just hiding is greater but those trying to awaken are still there as well. Same as it ever was. To damn a whole age group is treading on thin ice. Many have inner doubts about things but they are playing the game and going along. How is that different from just getting pop corn and watching the show? As a child of the 60’s era I could think that the youth of The world should be rising up like the Prague spring (which most under 35’s are unaware of, btw), but.... we all saw how that turned out. Was Sam V any different in his youth? No way to tell. I get that he is trying to make a difference but hand-wringing and accusations never brings out much positive reaction from the youth or anyone.
 
This guy, even though he was, in my opinion, mostly correct in his assessment, gave off a weird vibe to me. I felt like he liked the sound of his own voice too much and became incredibly repetitive from around halfway through the video.
I went to check him out and he’s an interesting character to say the least. A psycho grifter would be an apt category for him.

He’s a diagnosed psychopath and a convicted white collar criminal. ow he’s a professor at some Russian and Nigerian university.
The wikipedia entry is a very conflicted piece of reporting.
That aside, I think he’s mostly right.
The smartphone, social media generation is completely lost. They have never had a chance to develop social and life skills and are entirely informed by the church of mainstream. I’m looking at my nephew’s generation. 15 year olds, all of them cringingly socially awkward, no interests beyond the instant gratification of consumerism and video games. Even if they take something up, it gets put back down in a flash to be replaced by more video games. I’m 32 and I was also into video games when his age, but video games were something you did on a rainy day. I was interested in girls, football, music and history. I haven’t even seen him talk to a girl yet and he’s a tall and handsome dude who girls actually like. So weird. Now, what’s even worse is that generations up to 45-50 years old are also increasingly like this, obsessed with social media and nurturing their narcissism. One needs to get divorced at 40 and get out there again to fuel their ego. It’s become like a normal life progression these days.
One of the things he said really hit home and that’s his comment about how we’re doomed if this is the next generation of adults to walk the earth.
I guess that’s the apocalypse. The revelation of the infantile state of humanity. All our progress was just to mask the reality of our state of immaturity. Now we’ve come to a point where we can actually survive without growing up and our true colors shine again.
 
He reminds me of that guy, I forget his name, who’s a self-proclaimed expert in psychopathy precisely because he’s a psychopath himself. I’m sure others will remember his name here. He’s been mentioned quite a few time on the forum.
 
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