Being Gen-Z feels like showing up to the party 4 hours after everyone left.
The American dream is dead. Trump said that at the RNC when I was like 10 years old and it's gotten worse every year since. It's frustrating because everyone knows it's bad but there's still so little sympathy. It seems like all that's left of America is this vague idea that you have to work yourself to death so you can buy things. That's literally all we have left that unites us. Working and trying to buy groceries.
What is this country without prosperity?
My generation is trying to figure this out and we're not coming up with much inspiring stuff. With the benefit of hindsight, no one likes the direction our ancestors chose to take. The suburbs that gave our great grandparents the dream of homeownership left us isolated and friendless as kids, sealed up behind a TV screen so our parents could feel like we're safe. The constant economic stimulus that kept our economy growing throughout the 20th century is now like a noose around the neck of anyone who has to buy things regularly in order to survive (aka everyone). The cost of living is brutal and probably not going down unless the economy actually shrinks for a while. We've transitioned from a labor economy to an ownership economy as boomers retired and invested their savings in real estate and the stock market. It no longer pays to work. College is useless. Our society is overly bureaucratized and discrimination against white people and men is openly celebrated. Anyone who doesn't fit into DEI HR culture is effectively banned from participating in the mainstream economy.
No one is happy. Liberals aren't happy. Conservatives aren't happy. Men and women are at each other's throats but equally miserable for different reasons. We have no culture, no third spaces to meet people and forge lasting relationships. Most people are single, lonely and completely disgusted by one another. Everyone I know is mentally ill to some degree. It's really bad. I don't think older people fully understand the caliber of people who will inherit this world.
I think the negativity will only stop when the direction of our civilization completely changes. There's no making our current trajectory work, under any circumstances.
CONSTANT GROWTH IS NOT SUSTAINABLE. Constant change, constant agitation is not normal. It's not normal for every generation to die in a world that's completely unrecognizable from the one they were born into. It's not normal that our pattern of life is constantly being messed with for the sake of theoretical progress. It's not normal to feel like you're on the clock 24/7, constantly surveilled, constantly accounted for. The feeling that time is speeding up, that every moment needs to be filled with some meaningless distraction. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. This is not healthy. Our birthrates are falling off because this world is not appropriate for human beings to live in.
Consumerism has to die. Liberalism (in the classical and modern sense) needs to be retired. Even rationality in the sense we know of today has to go. Inefficiency is what makes life home for human beings.
I don't want to hear people call this idealistic nonsense when our culture is visibly dying before our eyes. The status quo and the 20th century frame of reference has been discredited, as hard as that is for some people to accept. Change is our only option and it's inevitable at this point.
Conservatives will have to articulate a vision of our future that goes beyond capitalist consumerism or else we're going to become a third world communist shithole. New ideas are needed. We have to drastically expand our minds beyond what we've been conditioned to believe, or humanity is truly doomed.
Rant over.
Thank you for your post. I'm a bit more than 2.5 times your age, but saw the world a lot like you do when I was your age, so I never boarded that last train to prosperity. Now, for you, it's much worse. The worst thing about my experience is seeing the contrast between now and when I was part of the last cohort to grow up free to play outside unsupervised, ride bikes everywhere, unrestricted until having to be home for dinner, listening to my grandfather tell stories about growing up on a farm. Seeing all that go away for those who came after has been a source of deep sorrow (I have 18 nieces and nephews, who all grew up in the same area I did).
I don't see much understanding in most of the comments here. Most of them get reduced down to some version of either "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" or "don't worry, things are bound to get better." But the opportunities have, in fact, dried up. The general mental/emotional state is abysmal. I work in front of the public every day, and I see the same thing you are. It is incomprehensible, like you say, to think just what low caliber the people are at who will inherit this world. You showed up at the part in Pinocchio where Pleasure Island has been trashed, and all the boys are being turned into donkeys and sold to the salt mines. I came onto the scene when the party was raging, just about to reach its climax. I walked away from it because it was so obvious what it would lead to, and it was so shallow and disgusting that there was little enjoyment to be gained by participating in it anyway.
I've spent the last 20 years of my life looking for people who want to base the value of their life on real, substantive human connection and experiencing life as free from the corruption of modernity as possible. I've met a few along the way. Not many. I can't say I understand much about your generation. I haven't had a lot of exposure to people your age, outside of my own family. Is it possible that you and people like you might be a natural reaction to how bad things have gotten? Is it possible there are more individuals in your generation than in mine looking for and tuned into things at the level you are? If so, then that may be your greatest consolation. You are very well-spoken. You seem like you may be able to seek out and attract those few who are looking for what you are, if they exist. I didn't run across many people who wanted to live a life of real meaning. But like I said, my generation was the last to grow up before the bubble burst.
Just know that you are not crazy. In fact, what you understand already at your age I didn't see as clearly as you until I was in my 30's. What you're going through is not your fault. The world abandoned your future before you even arrived. It does not mean that there is nothing left to live for. It just means that most people have long since abandoned what makes life worth living. Finding others to share real value with will be difficult. When you find them, hold on to them and make them your top priority!
I don't know if you belong to a church. I do not. But looking for those who might make common cause is important for keeping your head above water, even if they're not exactly your type. Though I am not a believer, I find myself more and more sharing a lot in my world outlook with traditional Catholics. They have a communitarian ethos coupled with wholesome traditions of family, human dignity, local connections and a reverence for the created order. You well understand our failing modern civilization. But take some time to look into what it was pre-modernity. You will find what a rich and beautiful inheritance was squandered, but still available for those who care to rediscover it. Before the rise of modernity and its basis in materialism and the rise of the capitalist mercantile class, much of our civilization was based on something now called the Aristotelian-Thomist synthesis. It was basically the merging of the classical and Christian traditions. Europe before the Reformation was reformulating Christianity according to the native European spirit, attempting to fuse a belief in the objectivity of nature with the need for a transcendent, purposeful view of life. The Reformation was actually a reaction against this development, but that's another conversation. Not that I'm expecting a re-creation of the pre-modern era, but we can derive a lot of insight from that epoch for thinking about what a post-liberal era will look like (classical and modern liberalism, as you mentioned). I read not too long ago Patrick Deneen's book "Why Liberalism Failed", and it was one of the most revelatory things I've ever read. It's a powerful way of explaining the liberal paradigm we've been hypnotized by over the past 500 years. It can be a great relief to find those who are like-minded, seeking the descriptions and explanations that help us see up from down and why we are in the mess we are in. Also, if you've never encountered Richard Weaver, I recommend you read his book "Ideas Have Consequences". That is among the greatest books supporting a sane world outlook, and a very powerful and intelligent rant against our modern, degenerate mode of life. At the very least, a cathartic experience.
I wish I could run into more youth like you. It would make the coming years hopeful.
Take care.
I'm so glad you mentioned Richard Weaver! I actually read Ideas Have Consequences and it's probably my favorite book ever written by an American author.