That is the real dividing line between the generations

Kurier: In your new book, Generation Z is criticized from front to back. What do you have against the youngsters?

Bernhard Heinzlmaier: Nothing at all. It’s about the system. They are as they were brought up, how the environment made them. They are grapped, overlooked by helicopter parents. This means that they are anxious, reserved and risk avers. This also has to do with their media consumption. They are conflict -shy and adaptable because they have not learned to deal with people.

But why is this generation so scared? They even call them “fear system” literally.

Because in the vulnerable age between the ages of five and 15, they spend too much time before digital media and in the internet world and therefore cannot have any experience with their peers. And also do not learn to carry conflicts. They have development deficits and great deficits in terms of social. Everything is male and insensitive on the Internet. They are also overloaded with multiple crises: migration, corona, Ukraine, energy, climate – they have intercepted everything and see the world only as a problem. And yourself as a victim.

They locate a complete noise between the generations. Hence your title: Babyboomer against Gen Z.

The dispute, the separation line of the generations, is Wokeness. The generational conflicts happen today between Woke and Non-Woke. This dividing line is about 40 years, there is the big break. Generation Z and Y against X and baby boomer. Some, the boys, think wokeness have no problem with many sexes, migration and asylum. The others cannot understand all of this at all. You believe our culture goes down. Here the conflicts ignite, in the companies and in the family.

But generations are always in conflict. The harmonious coexistence is a fairy tale

In my time everything was always full of conflicts. It was about hair lengths, fashion and music. Today a harmony is played for purely pragmatic reasons. The boys do what the old people say because they promise advantages and financial attention. But that starts to crumble now.

Why is the wokeness so big in the young generation?

This is an identity question. Wokeness is at the center of the self -image of this generation. The boys go through training and universities, where this is the most important topic. There are the queer groups, the Green Party. This is an entire cultural area where Wokeness is the central topic.

Generation Z is now slowly beginning to take important positions in business and politics. What is to be expected here?

You will carry your ideas in. An example: Tchibo then makes a campaign that is “diverse”. But who are Tchibo’s customers? These are the baby boomers and they say they don’t want it that way. So the campaign is withdrawn. This shows the conflicts: ideas are carried into the corporations by the boys, but this results in huge conflicts with customers and the orientation in the company.

They locate breaks throughout society.

We are faced with massive tasting samples. This will soon crash because there is no longer an issue that can be communicated. Everyone walls and stay under themselves. Throw each other with dirt without any discourse culture. There is great primitization because nobody thinks anymore and you can only be guided by emotion and pictures. There is only good and bad, God and devil. There are no more similarities.

A depressing picture.

I don’t think. You have to look in the eyes. The book is also an attempt to say, give your safe spaces. All are bunkered, the right and the left, the wokes and non-woken. Everyone is sitting in their rooms and nobody is allowed in there.