Title.
We’re kinda spoiled with “all the X we could want, whenever we want”.
Teacher here. Kids want the quick dopamine hit from their phones and their school-supplied chromebooks. They do not want to take the time to try something that might be hard, and they do not want to stretch their brains at all
“Why go for anything other than the low hanging fruit?” - Our monkey brains
But seriously why innovate? Great inventors and innovators are often described as crazy or mad because the risk of failing when creating something new far outways the chance of success. Most people choose to stick with something that works that has a guarantee of some success rather than risk it all on something new.
Innovation isn’t an all or nothing thing, you don’t need to “risk it all on something new”. Unless it’s huge leap in an unknown direction
Some of us have an insatiable need to create stuff and for those of us who are less that great at things like drawing, music, sculpture and more in general art (hehe!) that need ends up channelled into inventing stuff that “ticks”, be it software or gadgets.
The problem is not lack of innovators, the problem is that nowadays you have to somehow monetise innovation because it needs to pay for your life, which in the rentier economy we have nowadays costs a lot (especially because of the ridiculous prices for housing) or you have to spend most of your time working for somebody else to get the money you need to survive, and the work culture in certain areas (like software development) eats more and more of your personal time so there is no personal time or energy left to indulge in scratring your own innovation itch.
(From what I’ve seen the same kind of thing is happenning in the arts side of things: in some places you either accept you have to be poor for the sake of Art, or you give up on the whole thing unless you can come from well-off families who will sustain you “until your career takes off”. For example in the modern UK pretty much no new actor or actrice comes from a social class below the high middle class, which didn’t use to be the case for example when Michael Caine was starting his career).
It’s not lack of boredom that’s killing innovation (including innovative new stuff in the creative arts), it’s lack of time because unless you’re born in the Owner Class, you have to spend most of your time running on the Owner Classe’s treadmills to pay the Owner Class for a place to live and for life’s essentials.
The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
People said that about newspapers, too.
The issue isn’t the device, it’s the lack of restraint the kids were never taught. Of course they want that Dopamine hit. It’s free. Same reason very few people seek the satisfaction of building your table yourself, when you can buy one.
Not to say kids aren’t worse, they are, and it’s awful, but it’s a symptom, not the problem, in my opinion. The problem is they have no goals. Where do they wanna end up? The world is fucked, and most of them talk about the future as if there isn’t one. They won’t own a house, they won’t get enough to live off of with a job, a good job is locked behind ungodly amounts of debt, and the world is literally on fire. Then, the people who should fix it, the people who get elected, are selling them out for money instead of fixing it. There’s no point in doing hard things if there’s nothing to gain from it.
Kids won’t improve until the world does, because they have no reason to put down the devices. The devices offer a hollow life, and that’s more than real life is willing to give them.
Sorry about the rant, I just think it’s important to keep the focus on the problem. Kids engage wherever they get the most reward. It’s our job, not teachers, to make real life better, and it can be. Until then, sorry about the kids. I’m trying to raise mine to value what there is to value, but they definitely suck right now, even if it’s not their fault.
^
You can upvote instead of making an entire comment, FYI
Gee thanks, I didn’t know that
That special is an absolute masterpiece
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/k1BneeJTDcU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Agreed, creativity requires some blank spaces in our day to day that are often sorely lacking
It spills over. I’m bored as fuck all the time and I have lots of musical gear, a gaming pc with a steam library that has 1k games on it, a raspberry pi emulation station with thousands of classic games, a huge kickass TV with 3-4 streaming services at any given time…
I quit reddit like 5 months ago because I was tired of sitting there and bored-scrolling (among bucketloads of other reasons.) Now I bored scroll on YouTube.
It’s like emulation, for example. Your mileage may vary but I know it’s a common issue people have. When you suddenly have every nintendo game to play, it’s not the same. It’s too easy to not be satisfied and think one of the other thousand options can do it. For me it always devolves into jumping from game to game and never having the itch scratched. I think it’s like this across all media.
I feel this so much, it really is the paradox of choice :(
I think we’re just as bored. We may in fact be worse off for having increased our “interest threshold” such that we must seek more and more stimuli in order to stave off boredom.
Doomscrolling is the new boredom.
I remember being bored out if my mine as kid. Pre internet days, and older brothers hogging the Nintendo. When I had nothing to do I’d just feel terrible, I’d mope around the house. I’d take things apart or act out just to get some kind of stimulation. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Let the kids have some entertainment.
