Thank god, younger generations are finally turning their back on the ridiculous woke agenda

One truth that I hold to be self-evident is that anyone who claims to speak on behalf of their own generation – never mind anyone else’s – is bound to be wrong. Yet more and more people opt for this simplistic analysis. Boomers v Zoomers v Gen Z. But then I belong to “The Blank Generation”, as Richard Hell put it. “I can take it or leave it each time”.

What I certainly can’t take is the incessant labelling and categorising of vastly different groups depending on when they were born. I blame this on advertisers and brand managers who sell focus groups to clueless politicians. We all know that there are as many differences within generations as there are between them.

One simple way of knowing this is, er, having kids. They will say things to shock you and be utterly conformist at the same time. They are working it all out, though I constantly read that all “old” people think a particular way on race and gender and all “young” people think the opposite.

This is patently ridiculous. There is a difference between trying to make people feel comfortable and frothing at the mouth about critical race theory. Being personally sensitive to someone who is very different to oneself is just what I call manners. This strikes me as actually miles away from the current batch of  “sensitivity readers”,  mutant authoritarians in the service of deadening compliance.

Does anyone actually think rewriting Roald Dahl is a bright idea? It is a sign of the further degradation of the publishing industry, the most nepotistic and middle-class clan you could ever meet. This is apparently all being done so as not to offend, a sort of child protection scheme.

Dear god. This is a country where children go hungry in the school holidays for lack of school dinners. Seriously, if we want to protect children, provide some decent mental health services. All this I realise is a little too “real world” for those who want to police language. Which is, of course, policing thought.

This apparently is what millennials all do. Really all of them?  But the generation coming up next is showing signs of reactions to this: Gen Z. I won't generalise, but I do observe in some 20-somethings an ironic take on “wokeness” that is dizzying. Having been force fed it, they regurgitate it in often hilarious TikToks that completely undermine the mantras over pronouns or ethnicity.

I don’t need to “get it” . Let them be. I just know that those that dominate the cultural agenda on this stuff yet claim to speak for the young are pushing 40 and, dare I say it, out of touch. There is inevitable pushback both here and in the US. Arthur Brooks, a professor at Harvard, has spoken about how the urge to shut down opposing viewpoints may have peaked. Students are fed up with not being able to say what they think.

The fear of being cancelled feels a lot like bullying. Because it is bullying. There are a lot of contradictions going on with under-25s, as there are with every generation. In a survey for Channel 4, many thought that cancelling people was fine at the same time of living in fear of this happening for some dumb mistake. It’s a strange place to live. They also thought a strong leader was a good thing without the need to bother with elections or parliament. What?

All of this cuts right across any definition of liberal/illiberal and Right-wing and Left-wing. What seems to be happening is burgeoning tolerance in some parts of young people’s world view, especially around issues of identity, alongside utter intolerance in other parts.

This is a complex notion to get hold of, but in many ways it does not surprise me. As material circumstances become more and more difficult for younger people and the markers of adulthood – leaving home, having kids, getting their own place – get put on hold, marking out their personal identity replaces any form of collective politics.

If cancel culture comes from an urge to protect oneself from any opposing viewpoints then it makes more sense to talk about class and education than it does to talk about generation.

The coming generation of students may turn out to be very different to the current one. I see more young people able to talk about how porn has been harmful whereas, a few years ago, it was not cool to. I see 18-year-olds worried about their younger siblings’ exposure to parts of social media. I see people my age fighting the good fight for free speech or keeling over because they don’t want to appear old-fashioned. This is pathetic.

Complexity and nuance are signs of maturity and they are completely lacking in much public discourse conducted by so-called adults. I have hope that the kids are mixing it all up and may not play the game, or fit the focus-group stereotypes; that they may, in fact, just be their own people.