Progress

I saw a TikTok of a teacher talking about how far behind Gen Alpha students are in school. I usually react by writing it off as alarmist anxiety. One of the comments on the post said “Well why should they care, the illusion of working hard in school, and going to college, guaranteeing to lead to a better life, is gone”. I think this person is right in some ways. When I was younger, in middle and high school I was never inundated with cynical ideas of my economic future and I was allowed optimism. I think the absence of optimism could go two ways with the development of Gen Alpha. It could go the way of radicalism, where these kids never feed into the propaganda of the capitalist system and are actually able to change the system and the world we live in. They have the capability to not be inhibited by the shackles of familiarity that the majority of us have with the current system. Or, it could go the other way. This absence could lead to an apathetic immorality; these kids have the potential to go down a path of misplaced anarchism, of just saying “fuck it, it doesn’t matter anyway”. A world-denying thought structure that, once it sets in, can be very challenging to get out of.

The notion that “progress” as the only way to feel content with the life we are given is being dismantled. The need for progress has been imbued within our cultural lifeblood since the Industrial Revolution and reached its apex in the 50’s in America. Nowadays, though, many people, including myself see progress in opposition to the survival and happiness of the world and those that inhabit it. I have a friend who has family in rural, rust-belt PA, they are in two separate towns. Both towns, on paper, are in nearly identical situations; coal is gone, trains are gone. One of them has inhabited that reality as though it is a death sentence. Most people are hooked on opiates and the main employer is the dollar tree. The other, however, has taken reality as a chance to change and adapt. They have gone back to a more agrarian lifestyle, not burdened by this mental prison of “progress” and then hopelessness when “progress” is not achieved. Economic prosperity is no longer a hallmark of quality of life for them. They are content with what they have.

I, myself, am drawn to a lifestyle of maintenance rather than a progress lifestyle, not in the alt-right, keep the fluoride out of my water kind of way, but in the preservation of my own peace of mind kind of way. Living in cities has given me the gift of finding myself that I would not have been able to find anywhere else. But that self now wants to fuck off to the middle of nowhere. I work my fake-ass ice cream job where corporate millennials think they're the coolest people ever because they are coming to the "hip" place. I am in a community of artist types, who are amazing, but it can feel like none of us are actually engaged in reality. I've been able to disengage from reality, and that time is done. 

Maybe this is just the manifestation of a recent breakup, hookups that didn't make me feel too good about myself, or it could be my insatiable need for a sense of purpose, but I'm going to rural New England to work on a farm. It still feels like a part of my "play-time life" I have constructed for myself, but at least it'll be hard work. That always vindicates me.