Why won't titles and credentials impress the next generation?
By Rabbi Shalom Landau.
Rabbi Landau answers that the next generation “will only value valued values, not pretender values.” Generation Alpha and Generation Beta “won't be impressed by titles, followers, or polished images. They will ask one question: What real value do you create?”
The reason, he explains, is that the old basis for authority is disappearing. For thousands of years, authority came from scarcity: few people could read, knew the law or knew medicine. AI destroys that scarcity. When anyone can access information instantly, titles and credentials become less convincing on their own.
So authority has to find a new foundation, and Rabbi Landau says real value becomes that foundation. A world flooded with information can still be starving for truth, and people will look for those who actually provide it.
Related concepts: Truth · Technology
In A Soul at Peace: Hungry for Hashem’s Word in an Age of Endless Information
Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level
Surface claim
Future generations will ask one question: what real value do you create?
What may be behind it
In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that the crisis of outer authority pushes people to ask, “What real value is being created here?” instead of “How many degrees does he have?”
Deepest human truth
Real value becomes the new authority.
More questions from this teaching
More answers: Technology, Noise, and Human Identity · All questions · Questions about Rabbi Landau and Rivnitz