You grew up in the most prosperous era in a safe environment. Welfare was growing immensely in the years around your birth. God was declared dead and politics are since settled around marginal topics and percentile budgets. The world claimed it got through its adolescence and judged itself a responsible adult. A better future for everybody was on the way.
Yet these were the years that your own adolescence started. The world had already grown up and you were just starting to absorb all that is out there. You were taught in high school that a regulated form of capitalism generates most wealth, that the Cold War had ended, that technology will produce the solutions and that more education would lead to a better society. You grew up to be optimistic.
You saw inequality and relative poverty in your country from a young age. During your studies you traveled abroad and saw absolute poverty. You deeply felt the injustice of both. You pledged to yourself that you will never be (relatively) poor and cried out for the poor. You started to donate to some charity or made development part of your studies or ambition. In the meantime you learned about the concept of merit and embraced this. ‘You can make it if you try’ was the mantra on the whole political spectrum. If inequality rose from a difference in capabilities or work ethos this inequality was fair, or even desirable. And you remembered your high school economics teacher saying that a rising tide lifts all boats.
You read that god is dead yet you couldn’t find the best void. A variety of religions has taken the space, for instance some point at climate activists as religious while others point at the rise of half gods in the form of entrepreneurial billionaires. Yet that was mostly the religion of others and for you religion was truly dead. You became a nihilist and tried finding purpose by giving meaning to your life. Life precedes essence. Or maybe that became your image because the internalization of the void was too harsh. With this image you found it your responsibility to find meaning in life and to fulfill that purpose. And you are ambitious and your purpose feeds into the collective and not solely your individual life.
You were raised and told that you could become anything. Multiple mentors told you ‘the world is at your feet, you just have to take it’. You had access to all the knowledge ever produced. You went to a good university and studied something relevant. You built trusting and empowering relations with your peers, friends and family. You realized that you are one of the most privileged persons that ever lived. By now you have had more than 20 years to just focus on developing yourself with all the tools available. You feel the pressure to return a favor to society.
As you go through your twenties your learn that substantial parts of what you have been taught is not true anymore. You have a decent job, or might even be an (aspiring) eco-entrepreneur yet you do see that the true impact you have is very limited. You learned the term bullshit job but you have found a (decent?) defense against that antagonistic attack. You see your democracy struggling by electing questionable leaders. You feel that your younger self and the optimism have been naive. Your life is comfortable (and a bit boring) yet you see that the promise of a better future for everybody is vanishing. Hell, you’re even quite sure that your future will be (relatively) worse.
You want to do more. You want to improve the world. You feel that especially you, with all that privilege, should substantially contribute to a better future for many. You seek ways to play your part. You become active in a political party only to be disappointed at the futility of first the organization and second the topics. Politics have indeed evolved to a system of negotiation of percentile points of our economy. The government even admitted that it can’t fulfill a lot of changes that the democracy wants. You recognize a failed system when you see one. This is not a fully matured society, yet it is unwilling to learn. In that sense the system of society is still in its puberty, thinking that we know it all yet obviously oblivious to the most basic stuff.
You’re sitting in a plane, for which you feel a climate of shame, and feel lonely as you seem to be the only one who is reading a book. You walk in a park and see massive groups working out to make their bellies slightly more superficial while you contemplate what the world would look like if they put the same dedication in their thinking. You learn that most of your friends barely manage to read a book a year. For god’s sake, you realize that you might not even read more than a book a year every year. Your positivity and ambition for the collective turn slowly sour.
How do you move forward? Do you give up on the responsibility you feel for the collective? Do you redefine your purpose on an individual level? How could you revitalize your compassion for the other and your ambition for the collective?
You are in your thirties now. The easy way is to narrow your scope and responsibility to yourself. Focusing on yourself and making sure that you, in spite of all the turmoil, will continue that comfortable life and redeeming your collective responsibility. However this would cause dissonance with your values as you, at least like to think so, are not that selfish. Starting a family could give you full purpose and a clear responsibility that is larger than just you. Your adult life would still be in resonance with your former thoughts and ambitions. You see this as a serious escape. Or actually more as a flight as it will keep nagging at you. Why don’t you fight?
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