The Angry Generation

Do you have any goals? What are you striving towards? Are you working hard in school to get into a good university to get a well-paid job? Are you looking for sex and romance and marriage and children? Do you want to be famous, or do you want to see the world, or are you simply counting down the days to retirement? Are you saving for that new phone or new car? Do you even set goals? Or do you just go with the flow, speak when spoken to, sign on the dotted lines, and wonder what happened? What do you want? Why do you want it?

Did you ever consider why you need to go university? Or why being well paid is important? Or why we are forced to work to survive? Have you ever questioned your last big purchase? Or wondered how you spent so much time online? How often do you think about climate change and nuclear war? When was the last time you did something to prevent either? What world do you want to live in? What world do you want to leave behind when you’re gone?

Often, when I feel unmotivated to pursue my goals, I like to consider the start and the end. We are all born, and we all die. There are an infinite number of ways we can get from A to B. We are everything that has ever happened to us and so we will continue to be everything that ever happens to us. We are not free to change our path from birth to the point we now find ourselves at, but we are always free to influence our onwards journey towards death. With every decision we make, we alter the range of possible journeys and outcomes that lie before us. There always exist a best and worst life that we can live in this range of possibilities that remain ahead of us. As you get closer to the end, you have less agency over your final destination. The range of possible outcomes diminishes until, when you die, your journey is determined exactly. But beyond those final seconds of breath, we all have the power to shift our trajectory up and up to the highest achievable echelons. Will you choose to be an NPC just along for the ride, or will you try, and fail, and try again to keep being as good as you can be?

You might ask what exactly determines a successful life. The definition is yours alone to make. One way is monetarily: how much money did you make? Perhaps you want to be the next Genghis Khan, in that sense how large was your empire and how many children did you have? Or maybe your definition of success is your high score on flappy bird. Will MacAskill, an Oxford professor of philosophy, and his team at 80,000 hours have spent more time than we could imagine asking this question. Their definition is outlined in 80,000 hours and What We Owe the Future, books I cannot recommend highly enough [1], [2]. Success, in their eyes, is making the world a better place to live for us and the potentially innumerable generations of humans to come.

Like our own lives, humanity started with the first human and will end with the last. There is no such thing as forever, even the universe appears to have a start point and will eventually fade into mere nothingness. But just as our lives can be scored at the end, so too can the fate of humanity like in a game of Civilisation. We should always strive to get the best possible score. However, things are going wrong in the world. There is, as Noam Chomsky likes to say, the continued “destruction of organised human life on Earth” i.e the climate catastrophe, and war in Europe that brings the threat of nuclear evisceration ever closer, as well as growing inequality in the West rendering young people’s futures less prosperous than their parents [3]. We are faced with the confusing truth that statistically, it’s the best time to be alive, making it feel wrong, selfish even, to complain [4]. But it doesn’t feel like the best time to be alive. And just because it’s never been better, shouldn’t mean this is the best it gets.

With everything that is going on it’s so easy to feel helpless. We have a constant stream of depressing information swarming from our phones at every glance. They serve as an omnipresent reminder that there’s too much to care about, with each issue distracting from the last. It’s arguably necessary for our own self-preservation and sanity to become apathetic.  It’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we can’t.  

I believe that if what was going on today occurred in previous generations, there would be outrage and anger leading to protests, riots, and rebellions. Just because the revolutions of the past, like the French, the American, the Russian, and the Chinese, happened in the past shouldn’t confine, if necessary, revolution to the past. Our devices, which inform us of the horrors of the world are the perfect tool to communicate en masse and organise. And yet, I honestly feel more distracted, confused, and isolated when I use mine, pacified as it were. We have protested and we have, in some instances, even rioted. Millions demonstrated during the climate change marches of 2019, but the only thing that kept changing since then has been our climate. We should be the angry generation, but I don’t see any pitchforks or torches.

Legally, I’m not calling for revolution. The aim of this series is to inspire thoughtful conversation amongst our generation so that we may evaluate the hand with which previous generations have dealt us. My aim is to help foster and nurture the necessary environment so that we can recognise our strength as the socially aware, caring generation which can change the world for the better if we cooperate en masse. We are a sleeping giant, a behemoth. Is it any wonder that Republicans in the USA are currently trying to raise the voting age [5]? They are scared, because they have recognised our power. It’s time that we did too.

I will end with a short bit on me and what has inspired this project. Most episodes won’t revolve around me, because this project isn’t about me, but I think it is useful to understand my motivations in order to frame future episodes.

I currently find myself in a classroom setting as a teacher. It’s only temporary as I don’t plan on teaching long-term. One of my main goals for this period of teaching was to inspire my students to grapple with large ideas that are currently affecting them, and that will continue to affect their future. My hope was to have a positive influence on them and their future impact in the world. I realised two things very quickly. As a teacher, I am constrained by the syllabus and pressure to perform well in exams. As such, the scope of my responsibilities is limited meaning that having an outsized impact on the students is difficult, not that I don’t try. The second thing I realised was more of an epiphany. If I really was serious about steering the direction of this generation to positively influence the future, why should I limit myself to one school when the internet gives me access to thousands if not millions of eager ears. So here I am.

My next inspiration comes from my own cautionary experience. When I was 16, not too long ago, I was very curious to the ways of the world, and I did what any curious 16 year old would do, I watched YouTube. As I didn’t know exactly what I was curious in, I was helpfully directed by the recommendations of the algorithm. I insatiably consumed the content I was fed and I quickly became an avid listener of Joe Rogan. He frequently (or at least used to when I watched) admits to knowing nothing about the world, but whether actively or not, alongside the algorithm, he taught me about the world. I was exposed to the likes of Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Milo Yiannopolis, Jordan Peterson, and Alex Jones. My curious self spent an embarrassing amount of time absorbing their doctrine. For a period, I embodied the counter-cultural troll spirit, highlighting at every available moment the supposed hypocrisy of quote unquote “woke” feminism. Eventually, I saw the light and realised the foolishness of some of my attempts at devil’s advocacy. Fortunately, Joe Rogan was never nefarious, and he also exposed me to the likes of Sam Harris, Will MacAskill, Matthew Walker, Jonathan Haidt, Bernie Sanders, and Andrew Yang. (I acknowledge both lists are all-male, as Joe’s guests are exceedingly male). I was able to branch out and no longer rely on the algorithm or Joe for people worth listening to. But now I wish I was exposed to the Chomskys of the world from the start rather than have to wade through toxic alt-right internet culture to find them. My contrarian flame could have been better fed and would burn brighter today had that been the case. Whilst Joe has his flaws, the wide spectrum of guest enabled me to find those worth listening to. I fear had I been born slightly later, I would have had to combat a more powerful YouTube algorithm as well as that of Tiktok meaning I could have fallen down the rabbit hole of someone like Andrew Tate instead. The final aim of this project is to be an alternative place for curious minds that will signpost them to more qualified thinkers wherever possible.

In this series, I will attempt to synthesise and simplify issues that I believe we should be angry about. Most of the content will revolve around how the design of systems surrounding these issues can lead to locked in behaviours that exacerbate the problems that we currently face. I don’t claim to be an expert and will instead reference all the people who I have found useful when I was formulating my viewpoint so that you, too, may listen to them.

Ciao

[1] 80,000 Hours https://80000hours.org/

[2] “What We Owe The Future”, Will MacAskill, https://whatweowethefuture.com/

[3] “Illegitimate Authority”, Noam Chomsky and C. J. Polychroniou, https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/454861/illegitimate-authority-facing-the-challenges-of-our-time-by-polychroniou-noam-chomsky-and-c-j/9780241629949

[4] “Enlightenment Now”, Steven Pinker, https://stevenpinker.com/publications/enlightenment-now-case-reason-science-humanism-and-progress

alternatively, watch Hans Rosling’s Ted Talk, “The best stats you’ve ever seen”

Both describe how life on Earth has improved dramatically in the last couple of centuries.

[5] “Ramaswamy proposes raising voting age to 25, unless people serve in military or pass a test”, AP News, https://apnews.com/article/vivek-ramaswamy-voting-age-2024-president-ea1429836e8f809fbf301b7b027f4ab9