millenial malaisin
"I think sometimes of the Voyager Golden Records, spinning endlessly into eternity, a cry into the void that features a selection of carefully curated human experiences in an attempt to communicate the vastness of Earth’s history and culture to other beings. The offerings, selected by a committee led by Carl Sagan, include a photograph of a woman in a grocery store, the sound of footsteps, a sampling from The Magic Flute, an image of an astronaut in space, a human heartbeat. The process of picking and choosing what to include must have been agonizing and fraught, limited not just by storage considerations but politics, pressure, and cultural hegemony. The result is a highly fragmented, erratic, selective view of what it means to be human, more a testimony of our limitations than of our potential, a reminder that archival work is not neutral, and a powerful case for diversifying the way we preserve information. "
Most generations have significant social crises with which to contend, and that helped to shape their worldview. Ours was no different. We were a generation coming of age in the aftermath of 9/11 and the return to endless wars abroad. Climate change increasingly loomed over our future like the most ghoulish apocalypse film ever conceived, and then
... See moreSatya Doyle Byock • Quarterlife
a child, I grew up with strong feelings
Deep feelings of who I am and what is important in life
I felt one with the world
Living and caring was one
As I became older, culture took over
The stories I heard began to color my life
I went to school
I learned that adults and experts know—not children
I learned that knowledge is external—not internal
Kicked out
Christine Wamsler • What the Mind Has to Do With the Climate Crisis
a personal parenthesis
at 23 i left home, not just the house i lived in but the country i lived in, to pursue an abstract "better life".
i wasn't sure what it would look like, but a new job gave me a ticket out and i took it with the full confidence that in about 5 years i would know what was actually next in my life. a stepping stone into a five yea
... See moreThose responsible for the worst treatment of the world and its human occupants continue to do so because we don’t make things hard enough for them: a little hardship and directed hostility toward the rich is long, long overdue. At the same time, though, we know very well why such a mass uprising and tidal shift remains difficult. Those who most fee
... See moreEvan Calder Williams • Combined and Uneven Apocalypse
the darker implication of the malaise is the reality that it is all by design. a few hundred years ago certain powers aligned against the people. overloading from birth to the point that it is a luxury, a privilege, to even consider the state of the world. in thinking about all of this i can't help but drown in a kind of survivor's guilt mixed with impostor syndrome— i can(t help but) think about these things when, outside my window, there's someone that's negotiating with themselves on whether to feed themselves now or pay bill later. and somewhere, someone even more educated and in an even more privileged position considers the same for me.
but at some point up that ladder i want to hope someone with some weight will think about the rest of us all the way down and throw a wrench in the system that stacked us in a vertical maze to begin with.
As awful as these events have been, I am no longer struck by their horror. They all seem to be the near-inevitable, direct effects of how we are running our political economies. I am more struck by our slow ability to react.
Spencer R. Scott • End the Horror, Let the Crisis Change You
It is an old compulsion to try to impose a narrative on our lives, especially when looking for meaning in our existence. But life does have a natural progression, a natural flow that Millennials ought to have simply participated in, and many feel it’s not flowing as it should.
Many felt there were certain things that should have fallen into place by... See more
Many felt there were certain things that should have fallen into place by... See more
Bride Jabour • ‘A late blooming into misery’: why Millennials are unhappy
amongst the reasons i've theorised, the ubiquity of media (specifically, nostalgia-driven and self-referential media), where no one seems to age or "mature”(whatever that means). the other side of the theory involves, of course, capitalism. the oppressive conditions that might lead us to turn inward, seek distraction and perform a "simpler” time perpetually— to willingly blind ourselves to the crippling realization that we grew into a world much more hostile than any previous generation had to face. i miss vine, btw. dab and all that.
We’re not the first cohort to experience a crisis. To experience the passing of time. And by passing of time, I mean the dawning realisation that time is finite, and we might have already wasted a lot. We used to have time to burn. But it was a late blooming into misery.
While Gen Xers and Baby Boomers before us had these realisations by 25, for Mil... See more
While Gen Xers and Baby Boomers before us had these realisations by 25, for Mil... See more
Bride Jabour • ‘A late blooming into misery’: why Millennials are unhappy
been thinking a bunch about the delayed/extended adolescence that all of us millenials seem to be stuck in, even as we blow past a quarterlife crisis. even as we're on the wrong side of 30.
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