If you want to know what today’s teenagers think about gender and artificial intelligence, you might treat yourself to this 30-minute podcast.
Wait. Hold on. If you want to know what THREE TEENAGERS think, treat yourself to this podcast. When I talked with Dylan, Nika, and Wyatt on the radio last week, I learned that not all teenagers think the same. To judge, “all teenagers love their phones,” or “all teenagers love AI,” or “all teenagers are naïve;” it’s just wrong.
I know why we do it; why we put people in categories and apply labels. Because it simplifies a crazy complicated world. Baby boomers are _______. Millennials are _______. Gen Alphas are _______. Easy peasy.
The number of judgements we’re pushed to make hour-by-hour is staggering. So we make the judgements manageable by making broad categories: old people are irrelevant, young people are ignorant, brown people are criminal, trans people are unstable, church people are brainwashed, gun people are mean. If I carry around such categorical judgements it’s easy for me when I come across a trans person: I don’t have to get to know who they really are. I take a small dose of pride and move on; because I already know.
The podcast is really interesting. It reveals how SOME teenagers think about SOME issues. Listening is an investment in getting to know teenagers better; at least how these three think about the world around them. Listen here.
I get the need to make sweeping generalizations about classes of people. It’s a way to simplify the world and ease my mind. But there’s another way. It’s three simple words: “I don’t know.”
Instead of making categorical judgements to help me move on, why not accept ambiguity as a way of life? And move on. Imagine if I could lose my obsession with needing to make sense of every encounter? Imagine if I could be okay without having to categorize every person I meet, and simply wonder who they might be without needing answers? Sounds pretty peaceful to me. Sounds like live and let live. Sounds like minding my own business.
In the podcast conversation we were talking about how labels can be useful yet also hurtful. “Well the key to that,” said one of the teens, “is to label yourself and no one else.” In other words: my job is to make sense of me. I don’t have to make sense of you. The way to make sense of diversity is to let go of trying.
Life on Earth IS diverse. It IS colorful; not black and white. Sometimes I try so hard to make things either black or white that my world view becomes, you know, black and white. And pretty darn boring. And just plain wrong. And exhausting.
The path to peace is letting go.
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A special thanks to Kristina Egan and Tom Bell for inviting me host the radio show, and to my guests: Wyatt Clegg, Nika Norris, and Dylan Ginn. Thanks also to Cam the sound engineer and all the folks at WMPG, 90.9.
Listen to the recording here. There’s a transcript too.
