Jean Twenge’s book “Generation Me” did not include religion. From my interpretation of the book, she did this for a good reason. If she had included religion in the book, it would have been completely opposed the point she was making the entire time. The whole time in the book she was making the point about how our generation has too high of goals than we can reach and in reality, almost none of us will reach any of our goals.
There are so many types of religions in the world, with so many different beliefs, but they all have one thing in common: Faith. You have to have faith in yourself and the God (or gods) you believe in. If you want to be an astronaut, you have to have faith you can make it through all the schooling, training, and other specialized things astronauts have to do to become one of the elite few. But if you have faith in yourself you can do anything. If you are religious and have faith in Your Almighty, you would have faith that what you want to be and to happen with your life will happen.
According to Dr. Twenge, our generation is too self centered and too individualistic to accomplish any of our goals. Is that correct? Personally I don’t think so. I believe things are meant to happen because that’s the way God wants them to. Some people think everything is a coincidence, which is totally fine, everyone is entitled to their belief, there just isn’t a lot of faith in a higher power. So if Dr. Twenge really had added religion to her book, she would have had to contradict herself. She couldn’t have said it’s every man for himself in this generation and none of their dreams will come true, because if you have faith, then you don’t think about the things that might not happen, you think of the things that hopefully will. Dr. Twenge has no faith in our generation. Honestly, it sounded to me she thought our generation is a bunch of screw ups that she’ll have to deal with. But hey, I guess that’s her problem.
Taking religion out of the picture was a way to say this generation has to think for themselves and decide for themselves, which is exactly the point she makes throughout the book. So not adding religion into her book really emphasized her point and made it seem legitimate.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
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While I feel that there were solid reasons for Twenge to leave religion out, I'm unsure if this is one of them. If somebody has the idea that their God has a larger plan for them, then they might have excess faith in what God is going to do for them in the grand scheme of things. Narcissism could easily be linked to excess faith in oneself without the works to back it up. She does note that our dreams won't come true- but her point is that we don't realize that. The two ideas there seem mutually exclusive.
ReplyDeleteI like that you bring up the topic of having faith in something and that you also mentioned that whatever is supposed to happen will happen because God wants it to happen. Dr. Twenge believes that Generation Me is too narcissistic to believe that something beyond our power can help us reach our goals. She talks about GenMe in a way that makes us sound like we make our on destiny and then mentions that we will never reach our goals. In reality, those who do practice a religion rely on a supreme being to guide their life and help them make decisions that will help them achieve their goals.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right when you say Jean made it seem like our generation was a bunch of screw ups. To me it seemed like she was bashing our generation and how we are so confident. There is nothing wrong with being confident and wanting to be an individual. However I think she should have included religion. There was something lacking form the text and if she would have included religion it would have created more discussion and thought. Adding religion would allow us to see what others believe and how our views differ from past generations. I agree when you say even though we are individualistic we can still accomplish our goals. Trying our best and wanting to reach our goals is the best thing we can do, it shouldn’t be looked down on.
ReplyDeleteI believe that we had the same views as Jean Twenge did. I believe are generation is very individualistic and shows confidences in what we do like her main point in the book. But I feel even though religion is a very controversial topic, I think it should have been put in the book to make it well-rounded. The lack of religion takes way from different prospective there could be about religions. Our generation maybe confident and different from othergenerations but we are very excepting of other peoples religious view.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Twenge seems to think that our generation is a bunch of screw up who won’t achieve our goals, but I think that that discussing religion would have strengthened her argument, not weakened it. Choosing to be religious or not is an individual choice, so even if someone chooses to follow a certain religion’s beliefs they are making that choice for them, not because they feel they have to. Being religious doesn’t mean you can’t think for yourself, if you don’t think it’s for you then no one’s forcing you do believe.
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