Characterization of the New Generation^

^Ordinarily, I would hide this footnote away at the bottom of the post in tiny print, but in this case, I think we need a bit of opening throat clearing for this post... I came across this brief fragment by Walter Benjamin as I continue my way through volume 2 of his collected writings, and thought, here is a bite-sized (aka RNJ-sized post) work of his that was unpublished during his life that probably hasn't received too much attention over the years, so maybe I'll re-create it, postulate for postulate and sentence for sentence for a modern audience.  He was on the verge of 40 looking at the new generation of writers coming up, and I am starting out on the back 40 seeing what's next for us, but instead of rephrasing his comments, I found as I started to re-read them that they were in fact quite on point, albeit a little out of context, so instead of rephrasing, just a little reframing was what was called for (my comments).

1.  These people (that's seriously how his starts!) make not the slightest attempt to base their activities on any theoretical foundations whatsoever. (OK, yes, I would say this remains true today, although I'm not sure our contemporary sensibilities know quite what this means.  But I will say it seems a common thread that youth tend to assert, and perhaps, act, without taking much time to consider the underlying basis for all activity that came before).  They are not only deaf to the so-called great questions (YES, this feels even more apt than that last), those of politics or world views (young people - and this is probably Millennials or maybe even starting with my generation, which is the youngest of the Gen Xers, LOVE to say how not in to politics they are, although this is probably a result of our recent conflation of the political with practical politics); they are equally innocent of any fundamental reflection on questions of art (yes, again, although what we mean by this today probably resembles something more like, "they don't even like to watch whole movies anymore, just YouTube clips!").
2. They are uneducated. (Well, no, or yes, depending on what we think education is.  They certainly have a whole hell of a lot more degrees than any previous generations have had, but they are for the most part in specific applied fields - I know a guy, for example, who is a professor in Healthcare Communications, which it seems there is a whole degree in.  Anyway, they are certainly uneducated in the sense of having an accurate understanding of the larger world around them.)  Not just in the sense that their (general) knowledge is very limited, but above all because they are incapable of extending their diminishing knowledge in a systematic manner (again, I think this is exactly right, but is a little hard to parse in a modern context.  I would say this is something like being outraged by all the over-woke causes like personal pronouns and land acknowledgements {which are overall good and decent things}, but failing to bank any outrage whatever at current exploitation of the developing world or the underclass by capitalism).  Never has a generation of writers been so oblivious to the need to understand the techniques of scholarly work as this one (I guess so..?).
3. Although these writers stride blithely on from one work to the next (Tik-Tok), it is impossible to discern any sort of development--and above all any consistency--in their work (also Tik-Tok), except at the level of technique (still Tik-Tok).  Their efforts and their ambition seem to exhaust themselves in the acquisition of a new subject or a grateful theme, and this is enough for them (I think Benjamin wrote #3 all about Tik-Tok somehow).
4. Popular literature has always existed--that is to say, a literature that acknowledges no obligations to the age and the ideas that move it, except perhaps the desirability of presenting such ideas in an agreeable, fashionably packaged form for immediate consumption (is all of the rest of this thing about Tik-Tok?).  Such consumer literature of course has the right to exist; in bourgeois society at least, it has its place and its justification.  But never before, in bourgeois or any other society, has this literature of pure consumption and enjoyment ever been identical with the avant-garde at its technically and artistically most advanced.  This is precisely the pass to which the latest school (i.e. Influencer Culture) has now brought us.
5. Give respect to economic necessity where it is due: it may well force the writer to produce much inferior work (click bait is oh so much more profitable than those good, nuanced Tik-Toks).  The nuances of his writing will then show what stuff he is made of.  However dubious much literary journalism may be, there is hardly anything so bad that it cannot be salvaged from the worst excesses by certain aspects of its content and especially its style.  Where a writer succeeds, he owes it to his grasp of technique; where he fails, it is the moral or substantive foundation that is lacking (yeah, this all may seem a bit out of date and out to lunch...).  What is astonishing is how completely alien to members of the new school the salutary, protecting reservations are--not just the moral ones, but even the linguistic ones too (but THIS is definitely a reference to safe spaces, right?).  And how these new writers absolutely take for granted their right to display an infinitely pampered, narcissistic, unscrupulous--in short, journalistic--ego (this feels definitely on point, the world has gotten these last few years to feel a lot more personal).  And how their writing is imbued to the very last detail with the arriviste (arriviste: a pushy upstart - and isn't that what is good about youth culture in the end, is that no matter how exasperating it may be, it does push us forward, we take the good, and eventually {hopefully} cast off the silly fads, and are better--improved--for it) spirit!