How Does It Feel?

It feels like a suitably peculiar idea. Management gurus and other assorted executive coaches have hailed the advent of artificial intelligence. Being as what we used to call intelligence is in short supply, especially in the case of the younger Gen Z generation, gurus have suggested that the future will belong to those who have the right feelings. Intelligence is for machines. Human beings feel.

It’s an excrescence from therapy culture, where the question is: How does it feel? Or How does that make you feel? The better question is: What do you think? Or else, What do you think you should do?

I have occasionally suggested that the glorification of feelings follows naturally for a culture that is rapidly being feminized. Nicholas Giordano does not mention the sexual political aspect of the issue, but clearly our educational establishments have been working hard to produce more feminine graduates.

That means, to put a finer point on it, that it has devalued the skills required to function in the marketplace and has overvalued the skills required to make a home or to conduct a romance.

Giordano shows what happens in the workplace when young people only know feminine values. So, for the young generation, critical thinking and problem solving are out. How do you feel? is in.

Giordano summarizes what he sees in college students:

Emotions have supplanted academic standards and intellectual inquiry at colleges throughout the country. The results have been catastrophic – a generation filled with people who have a sense of entitlement despite the fact they lack genuine knowledge, interpersonal skills, and a strong work ethic.

It begins with elementary and high school education. As we have noted on several occasions, the products of this system are in serious trouble.

America’s failed education system has routinely lowered standards from kindergarten through college. Just 37% of 12th graders are academically prepared for college, which is evident by the 54% of college students who have to take at least one remedial course for material they should have already learned.

Nicholas Kristof echoed the thought in the New York Times:

… only 32 percent of America’s fourth graders are proficient at reading, according to a national test referred to as “the nation’s report card.”

Likewise, American children’s math skills are dismal by global standards. In the PISA international math test for 15-year-olds, American students rank far behind the leaders (Singapore, Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea) and also well behind peer countries like Canada, the Netherlands, Britain and Poland.

As for the root of the problem, Kristof lists school closures along with the administrative efforts to impose equity and diversity. But, surely, the teachers’ unions deserve some considerable portion of blame here.

The effort to undermine masculine values, those involving merit and competition, has been ongoing for quite some time now. As Kristof remarks, it does not make our future look very bright.

Colleges no longer value merit. 

Now, Ivy League colleges like Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania have decided to stop publishing the Dean’s List – a recognition of those students who worked hard to achieve academic excellence – to reduce “stress and competition.”

The result, Giordano explains, is that young people who have never had their work evaluated objectively think that they are entitled to success. And they believe that businesses should adapt to their bad habits, and not vice versa.

This pattern has led to a cultural shift amongst younger millennials and Gen Z’ers who have an inflated sense of ego where they falsely believe that they are entitled to success without genuine effort. …

It is not about doing the job. It is not about functioning on a team and contributing to the corporate bottom line. Gen Zers now believe that it suffices that they have the right feelings.

Many in the Gen Z cohort believe that as long as they have the ‘right’ feelings, they deserve opportunities regardless of their contributions or capabilities. Consequently, they struggle in entry-level jobs that do not coddle them. In a recent survey, 63% of small business owners said that recent college graduates have “unrealistic expectations.” 62% said that graduates have a difficult time adjusting to the hours of work required for the job, and 50% stated that they “have wrong expectations about the difficulty of work to be performed.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that young people are filling up hospital emergency rooms. Mental health professionals cannot keep up. Surely, one reason for this appalling situation lies in the fact that young people do not know how to get along with each other, or with their elders. They do not know how to function in groups or to sustain relationships.

Giordano explains:

This is a generation that has limited human interactions, went through a failed education system, and has been raised by screens. They have difficulty maintaining eye contact, holding a conversation, and talking on the phone.

They are in touch with their feelings but do not know how to function in groups, or even to sustain relationships. Giordano is surely correct about this:

Interpersonal skills are essential to success, but so are critical thinking and a strong foundation of knowledge. We cannot continue to maintain a dumbed-down education system, and it is why we must prioritize competency, merit, and strong interpersonal skills. We must restore rigorous academic standards, instill the value of hard work, and produce functional individuals. While AI will impact the labor market, it is incapable of a balanced approach that human beings possess where intellect, emotion, and creativity drive innovation and productivity.