Young PC Cultists, especially Gen-Zrs, may not be actually different from older Americans, but may be suffering from what was formerly an extremely rare adolescent form of dementia, much as autism was once extremely rare but is now showing up frequently.
The classic signs of elderly dementia are many and varied. These include inability to count numbers or add simple figures; a tendency to forget recent events; inability to process basic facts and place them in memory; inability to state where one lives; inability to pay bills or manage finances; an abnormally short attention span; constant mental fatigue; inability to think abstractly or clearly; dependence on stimulants to perform daily functions; chronic irritability with a tendency to lash out impulsively in anger or frustration, even violently; nervous twitching; drastic changes in one’s former personality that do not reverse but become more extreme; inability to write legibly, especially longhand, sometimes with progressively shrinking handwriting; difficulty sleeping; frequently losing things or forgetting where one puts things; arms not swinging normally when one walks but walking zombie-like with heavy arms; inability to dress oneself properly; exhibiting poor judgment like walking in traffic; constantly forgetting common words; not recognizing people who one formerly knew well, even loved ones; getting lost until someone else guides them back to familiar settings; inability to tell time; uttering random words that have little or no meaning; inability to focus; sitting or standing still or staring into space for extended periods of time without realizing it.
These are all symptoms of declined brain function. Could an entire younger generation display symptoms of brain impairment formerly seen almost exclusively in the elderly? I am not a physician and claim no special training or insight into the condition of dementia. But I do not live under a rock and the traits displayed today by the youngest cohort of adolescent youth can hardly be missed by anyone who turns on a communications device these days, even momentarily.
Gen-Zrs I have met seem entirely unable to count numbers or add simple figures, to a degree that many high schools no longer require these simple skills to graduate. As a former community college instructor and middle school substitute teacher I saw first-hand how poorly prepared today’s students are in the technical skills of knowing simple math and composing coherent English sentences. I can only conclude that this is one of the main reasons why some of today’s colleges no longer require standardized admissions tests from prospective students. They cannot pass them.
Among the more surprising traits I have seen with Gen-Zrs is a lack of awareness of the simplest facts. For example, not knowing what day of the week it is, or knowing the months, or knowing what year this is. Not knowing what continent they live in, not knowing north from south, not knowing who the President is, not knowing what countries fought in any war that the US has ever fought in, in fact, not knowing what a “country” is, or knowing that the US is a country. Not knowing recent history, like who fought in the Civil War, or WW2, or being able to identify JFK, FDR, or that Washington was the first President, or even knowing what country he or Lincoln were Presidents of, or what a “President” is.
One might say that these are abstractions and that dementia deals more with personal matters like forgetting appointments. But inability to focus and think abstractly and recall what one just recently learned in a classroom seem to me to be among the symptoms of dementia. These fall into inability to process basic facts and place them into memory, as is also the inability to state where one lives. Inability to locate oneself on a mental map is just one step away from becoming lost and unable to return home without outside assistance.
Dependence on stimulants for daily function is widespread among Gen-Zrs, including not just the obvious coffee, tea, and nicotine, but also illegal drugs and THC, which itself, even where legal, tends to be fortified with opiates, fentanyl, and other powerful addictive additives.
Gen-Zrs tend to be impulsive with violent episodes. This is related to their inability to focus, their chronically short attention span, and inability to handle finances, the most obvious of which is choosing to go deeply into debt in order to attend college. Again, while this is not necessarily on the level of personal confusion, this still indicates unawareness of the ramifications of taking on such debt and inability to think abstractly. This writer left a graduate program once precisely because to continue would have required taking on an extravagant level of debt. I could see what the future held had I taken on such debt so I left the program n found one that was less expensive. Why can’t Gen-Zrs? I suspect because they cannot abstract into the future. One would not hold a child to a contract that he signs putting him into debt, or an elderly person with dementia; why hold an adolescent with dementia to such a contract?
Nervous twitching, permanent changes in personality resulting in chronic irritability and a tendency to lash out with violence–all these are common traits of today’s young adult cohort. One only has to turn on a TV to see mobs of them fighting others and each other with non-stop expressions of hatred and anger. The mobs of youth wandering in streets blocking traffic reads more like an inability to calculate the possible consequences than it does of political action.
Inability to perceive humor is another trait. Gen-Zrs are known for their complete lack of humor and tendency to respond to comedy, satire, n parody with violence n anger. This has gone so far that comedy has almost vanished from popular culture, beginning with Millennials n expanded by Gen-Zrs to the point that violent street demonstrations are often their response to the least effort at lightheartedness. This accords with an inability to think critically or individually but to unthinkingly default to a mob mentality, a virtual ‘hivemind’ as has often been observed among Gen-Zrs.
Inability to write legibly in long-hand is also typical today as is inability to tell time via a clock. Few it seems can any longer calculate time duration from a circular clock-face. Just as Gen-Zrs seem not to be able to dress appropriately for public appearance but omit essential clothing items and pierce their skin in bizarre random ways and tattoo themselves in ways that are clearly antisocial.
Gen-Zrs seem not to recollect any words but ‘like’, ‘ya know’, and ‘racist’, and often recite random words that have no meaning to anyone but them, for example, inventing new permutations of gender and sexuality to which they apply incomprehensible labels, or inventing new nouns and pronouns to describe themselves such as identifying as animals or inanimate objects n expecting others to comply with these delusions. Commonly known words and commonly known facts, however, are often totally forgotten or never successfully entered their memory banks in the first place–yet another classic trait of dementia.
Then there is the phenomenon of breaking ties with former friends and family once the Gen-Zr becomes politicized by the ‘Woke’ PC Cult. Perhaps this is more than a religious conversion but in fact indicates a faulty memory where the young person literally forgets those former associates, first their names, then their faces. This is classic dementia.
Sitting or standing still for extended periods of time without thinking is often seen when these persons ‘take the knee’ in their cultic religious pose of worshiping melanin. Or after consuming THC-containing stimulants. Or ‘binge-watching’ TV shows. Perhaps even marathon online game-playing falls into this category–elders with dementia are known to be capable of lengthy engagement in activities that they formerly used to do, for example playing musical instruments. Perhaps young persons taking intoxicants and playing online games for long periods of time in an unthinking state are also demonstrating a form of dementia.
Why might this be happening? It is well established that IQs in the US have been declining steadily for decades now that the Flynn Effect has been discredited as a superficial distraction. Lower IQ means lower ability to cope and lower ability to abide by the standards of adult civilized society. Lower IQ brings higher crime, major personality disorders, more sexual perversion, less awareness of oneself and others, and increased hostility and paranoia towards unidentified Others who fail to acknowledge and tolerate eccentric behavior.
IQ certainly plays a role in these social changes, but other factors could also play a role. Failure of schools to require abstract thinking in classrooms means brains literally shrink according to the principle of use it or lose it. If one substitutes impulsive emoting for abstract thought then one’s brain actually shrinks and it becomes more difficult to switch on one’s critical thinking ability later in life, assuming the capacity was there in the first place. This capacity also declines with lower IQ.
Perhaps these changes are due to plastic in our diet. This is a global problem and something entirely new in human history. Or maybe the modern lifestyle of couch potato coupled with massive consumption of corn fructose, sugar, and processed wheat products contribute.
Whatever the cause, the parallels between elderly dementia and the behavior of today’s youth seem more than coincidental.
