A LOST GENERATION? THOUGHTS FROM THE EYE OF THE STORM Daniel Kamaluddin (Year 12) reflects on being a member of Gen Z: a generation whose coming of age coincides with troubled times
A mong the many strange experiences I have had in recent years, few stand out more in my memory than a rock concert at which I watched a fully grown man drop and do 20 press-ups before a great bee- hive grid of screens blazing with images of current and former prime ministers. He then proceeded to devour a raw steak, before clambering inside one of those tele- screens in front of a cheering crowd of 20,000. Experi- ences of this sort have caused me to wonder what the essential approach of my generation is. Perhaps I will find it easier to gauge the nature of my generation once our culture has been condensed into neat ‘Greatest Hits’ playlists and history textbook highlights It is hard to get a perspective on such things when you’re in the eye of the storm. Perhaps I will find it easier to gauge the nature of my generation with the benefit of hindsight, once our culture has been condensed into neat ‘Greatest Hits’ playlists and history textbook highlights. I sense that it is also difficult to see the picture clearly when dealing with one’s own subjective feelings – like trying to nail down a cloud to a pinboard. Then there is the challenge of trying to distinguish between what might be my generation’s genuinely new perspective, prompted by unprecedented dangers and anxieties, and my own natural teenage desire to challenge the received wisdom of previous generations. Lastly, there is the temptation to take one’s own experiences and then claim that they are the experiences of a whole generation.
If you asked someone to describe my generation, now in our teens, many words beginning with ‘dis’ might spring to mind. Disillusionment. Disenchantment. Discontent. In many ways this is not new. Dissatisfaction with so- cial orthodoxy is a staple of the teenage experience. A little research reveals similar anxieties voiced by earlier generations, not least in the popular culture of the 1990s (think The Verve’s Urban Hymns and Radiohead’s OK Computer ). In the early decades of the 20th century, modernists like T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf voiced their concerns about the disconnection of modern life. How- ever, this perennial anxiety, perhaps felt most strongly by young people, is even more pronounced in the current generation. We are faced with the palpable uncertainties of the future: climate change, spiralling wealth inequality, and political extremism which threatens to destabilise democracy itself. Moreover, children grow up into a world where youth culture is incredibly fragmented, offering a plethora of different options for self-identification. Myriad individual sub-cultures and outlooks are offered up, fed by the finely tuned algorithms of social media, each with their own unique references, often incomprehensible to the uninitiated. This is in many ways wonderful, as it al- lows each young individual great freedom to develop their interests. However, it also leads to increasingly polarised world views. Perhaps, I reflect, the prevailing mood of this genera- tion is one of uncertainty. In the last century, it might be argued, every grand attempt to carve up the world into neat categories failed: religion went into decline; Marxism collapsed into catastrophe; the Keynesian promise fell short; and neoliberalism tore the heart out of community after community in search of prosperity. I think there is a
an office, doing a job that bores you numb, in order to pay your mortgage and save up for the few breaks that offer only passing respite. Why would we want a life spent, essentially, in the future, treading a path that feels uniform and uninviting? In the words of Richard Ashcroft, lead singer of The Verve, ‘you’re a slave to money then you die’. Perhaps this is the reason for the burgeoning ‘quiet quitting’ movement, where people only work as much as they must, prioritising instead their own interests.
great deal of honesty in uncertainty. Ideology is a sort of mask we affix to pre-determine our response; we become so enveloped in maintaining our views that nuance and complication are effaced. With the decline of grand nar- ratives, we might usefully re-focus on those things which are of fundamental value: our relationships with others, and our connection with the planet. We would do well to recognise the plurality of experience, while admitting the limitations of our individual perspectives. Teenagers have always questioned that which their par- ents take for granted, but I think my generation is particu- larly discontented with the status quo. There is a feeling that there must be something more to life than climbing up corporate ladders, whiling away your precious hours in
Teenagers have always questioned that which their parents take for granted
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