Like every generation that reaches their teen years, the questioning of one’s purpose always lines the forefront of the transition into adulthood. Yet, in the modern 20th century, with the increasing globalization and diverse ideas promulgated through the internet, the overload of information, and prominent figures in pop culture and media, the newest generation of zoomers that are looking to tackle this issue of meaning are confronted with significant challenges in trying to find a purpose for their existence to begin with.
Dissolution of Objectivity in a New Age
However, over the course of the 20th century, the concept of objective truth slowly began slipping away. Influenced by the greater focus of subjectivity that was carried out in the romantic era before it, modernism came to delve even deeper into subjectivity as the modernist era would be marred with devastating wars, the rise of machinery, and the true questioning of the human condition. However, hope still remained that science and rationality could act as reasonable foundations for understanding the world.
However, over the course of the 20th century, the concept of objective truth slowly began slipping away. Influenced by the greater focus of subjectivity that was carried out in the romantic era before it, modernism came to delve even deeper into subjectivity as the modernist era would be marred with devastating wars, the rise of machinery, and the true questioning of the human condition. However, hope still remained that science and rationality could act as reasonable foundations for understanding the world.
Yet in the late 1900s, the rise of postmodernism as both an artistic and societal era became fully established as skepticism of objectivity came to a head. Science in fact did not have the answers necessary to see the world, and the look inward towards one’s own perspectives and truths lies at the heart of postmodern skepticism.
I won’t go too much into postmodernism itself, as describing this era could be an article on its own. But I will leave you with this: at this day and age, the concept of an objective truth is all but forgotten. With the collisions of numerous cultures, ideologies, and experiences, the current society we live in is the most conflicted it has ever been in trying to reach a consensus about what it means to live a meaningful life.
Living Through a Pixelated World
Zoomers are the first generation that have been born with access to the internet. From early childhood to the transition to adulthood, every zoomer becomes accustomed to the digital era as media becomes even more accessible and consumable. We don’t like to often admit it, but media plays a significant role in influencing how we perceive the world. After all, its so effective that entire governments have been able to steer the public opinion and perspective through careful manufacturing of propaganda.
Although media has existed since practically the dawn of human civilization, the ability for people to now gain instant access to the experiences of others and the narratives that others seek to portray means that there is a nauseating amount of information that zoomers have to take in. It’s no wonder the average attention span of children has decreased, as its a necessity to quickly interpret and categorize the mountains of information flung at us every second.
This inherently isn’t an issue, but the internet is all based on appearances. You can only see what people project, and the information portrayed through media is often distilled, in order to both capture people’s attention and so that they can gain some benefit, creating a world that is slowly losing depth as the internet revolves around creating idealized personas and fabricated experiences that sacrifices exploring meaning with pleasant ignorance.
Concepts of status and hierarchy are often the major influences on people that dictate how they seek to live their lives. Even if they are negative or come to enforce injustice, it is an inevitable part of how people perceive the world being. In the modern internet age, the concept of influence has become a major issue, with practically everyone and everything vying for the attention and possibility to influence the younger generation. Corporate advertisements, radicalized individuals, and “hip” trends all play a major part in shaping people’s perspectives and lives.
Concepts of status and hierarchy are often the major influences on people that dictate how they seek to live their lives. Even if they are negative or come to enforce injustice, it is an inevitable part of how people perceive the world being. In the modern internet age, the concept of influence has become a major issue, with practically everyone and everything vying for the attention and possibility to influence the younger generation. Corporate advertisements, radicalized individuals, and “hip” trends all play a major part in shaping people’s perspectives and lives.
Defining success has changed throughout human history, but at this moment in time, the idea of success inherently ties itself with wealth and marginal fame and notoriety. If I want you to think of someone successful, I think a vast majority of you would point to a celebrity — some big name influencer that is indeed making an influence on millions. Although there are definitely good role models out there, the attention economy of the modern internet age that forms around these influencers has shifted the concept of success to utterly vacuous and materialistic virtues that deny individual responsibility in finding meaning.
One field of study that I think sheds significant light on this issue is the area of semiotics, which studies how signs (basically anything) points to a signifier (meaning). Semiotics can be understood as a much more fundamental study of communication, and how information becomes abstracted and then interpreted in order to allow for collective understanding.
Stories and myths have been the primordial way we have communicated values and lessons throughout time immemorial, but as we’ve developed technologies and newer things, the ways we communicate information and meaning have changed.
One quick example I can point to is the symbol of the telephone. If I wanted to ask you to act like you were talking on the phone, what would you do? I think most of us would stick out our thumbs and pinky, making it look like we are talking into a phone from a telephone booth. But with the newer generation (Gen Alpha) born into a time where mobile phones are increasingly more common, children now extend their fingers like an oven mitt and hold onto an imaginary cellular phone when trying to do the same exact thing. This is one of many small things that show how changes in our environment shape how we determine meaning.
But if we want to analyze the signs and signifiers of the modern world, it is almost nauseating just how hard it is to extract meaning and value. In part resulting from just how technologically advanced our generation is compared to the previous generations, and also due to how signs and signifiers build upon each other, this ambiguity in meaning and value comes to make a large influence on how people see the world.
As I alluded to earlier, success is one of these signifiers that has become marred with confusion and seemingly ubiquitous signs of wealth, fame, and influence. Yet, a key issue is that these signs create not only significant pressures on zoomers but also give a false perspective to what it means to live meaningfully.
Materialism has had its wide range of critics, and its no doubt that I do have my own critiques as well. In the context of dissolving meaning, the focus on accruing wealth dismisses the need for developing purpose and drives that lie beyond the external world. I believe that this is the primary mode in which meaning has been further dissolved in the postmodern era, with our values lying in objects that themselves lack any signifiers.
Meaning and purpose have to be crafted through thoughtful reflection, experiences, and also a nuanced vision of oneself and one’s future. Yet, when confronted with the pressures to maintain one’s outward appearance, the internal journey necessary towards finding meaning and purpose are being lost. Furthermore, the increasingly narrow and disheartening world that people are coming to embody as zoomers further shapes the sense of hopeless abandon as one transitions from childhood into adulthood in the real world.
Meaningless Paradise
Education and schooling has been a value that has been increasingly more stressed as a traditional path towards fulfilling success. This can be seen especially through the increasingly competitive college admissions process and the higher rate of education over the past few years.
However, having such a fixation on intellect through a rigid school system has had major consequences on how much experience teens have with the real world. Few can deny that school provides important education, but it also closes off the world, distilling it to abstract concepts that are rarely fully experienced or understood at their fullest capacity. Thus, teens are reliant on their own experiences outside of school and minor interactions with the real world depending on their circumstances.
By and large, school is like a playpen, shepherding students into being prepared for higher education and jobs while limiting their interactions with the outside world. This is often done since children can’t handle the real world on their own, but when they are, it is often too late. Once zoomers are off to the real world or continue to pursue higher education, their perspectives are often too rigid to change.
Moreover, in the education system, students are not forced to fully begin forging the essence of meanings or purposes. Interests and hobbies often take center stage, but little is left for internal reflection in truly evaluating one’s map of meaning as the primary goal of finding success is the primary function of attending academic institutions.
Comprising practically all of one’s teenage years, school restricts the experiences of students in the name of protecting and educating. Yet, by having such rigid systems in place that places meaning and weight on arbitrary and inherently purposeless grading systems, zoomers and students come to spend time worrying about grades and repetitive classes rather than trying to gain experiences to truly forge individual purposes on their own.
Standardizing students and distilling them into statistics and interests is a major flaw that has plagued education as so many individuals have to be properly accessed in such a short amount of time. College applications, grading systems, and standardized tests all play a role in generally devaluing individuality in zoomers, making them relying on comparisons with others and looking outward rather than being able to evaluate their own selves.
Comparisons are often the most fundamental way in which a person is able to gauge and see themselves. By referring to others they deem as similar, whether it be at school or online, people are able to properly envision their own shapes and form. Yet, this human instinct comes to be severely hijacked with the advent of the internet and the “age of appearances.”
Comparisons are often the most fundamental way in which a person is able to gauge and see themselves. By referring to others they deem as similar, whether it be at school or online, people are able to properly envision their own shapes and form. Yet, this human instinct comes to be severely hijacked with the advent of the internet and the “age of appearances.”
Rather than being brought up around healthy perspectives of what it means to be normal, kids have been oversaturated with unrealistic standards of what it means to be human. This has sparked an entirely new wave of generational loneliness, mental illness, and cynicism.
After all, how can you feel adequate when every other post on your social media feed is of a bikini model or a shredded superhero? How can you feel satisfied with your success when you hear about child prodigies accomplishing impossible tasks at ridiculous ages? How can you feel fulfilled when society pushes you towards attaining the vacuous concept of success?
Cynicism about the future state of the world is also the other factor that plays into this hopelessness. With so many problems going on in the world, and with these issues becoming all the more documented and explored, a vast swath of zoomers aren’t expecting anything to change. “The world will always suck and no matter how much I try, it is impossible to change anything.”
Cynicism about the future state of the world is also the other factor that plays into this hopelessness. With so many problems going on in the world, and with these issues becoming all the more documented and explored, a vast swath of zoomers aren’t expecting anything to change. “The world will always suck and no matter how much I try, it is impossible to change anything.”
Although there are indeed those paving paths towards improving and innovating on the world’s problems, the larger majority of the younger generation spend little effort in truly enacting any change, as the acceptance of mediocrity and injustice has already been internalized.
Moreover, this lack of effort also is spilled into themselves as people are unable to feel ordered and satisfied with their own identities. Tying identities to meaningless labels and concepts has meant that even those with interests or defining characteristics arrive at dead ends when trying to forge a semblance of purpose.
As modern society values the external shell of one’s persona, the incentives to build upon one’s own internal meaning is less important. Society itself has already fabricated vacuous meaning, and in order to achieve so-called “success,” one must spend more time doing rather than reflecting. After all, there is less and less time to truly look inward as entertainment and moments of respite often represent escapes from the world rather than ways of mitigating its shortcomings.
Even though I’ve painted a relatively dark picture of the future and the meaning in the world, I do believe that there is still hope in finding ways to leverage the greater freedoms we are provided in order to truly find authentic meaning that comes from within. This journey and quest to find one’s meaning is not just as simple as proclaiming it, nor is it a passive or one-time idea. Requiring continual change, accrual of experience, and discomfort of challenging oneself, finding meaning is as elusive as mining for opals. But it is still necessary.
Even though I’ve painted a relatively dark picture of the future and the meaning in the world, I do believe that there is still hope in finding ways to leverage the greater freedoms we are provided in order to truly find authentic meaning that comes from within. This journey and quest to find one’s meaning is not just as simple as proclaiming it, nor is it a passive or one-time idea. Requiring continual change, accrual of experience, and discomfort of challenging oneself, finding meaning is as elusive as mining for opals. But it is still necessary.
Acceptance movements are becoming a lot more widespread, and though I do find them to be a good part in uplifting the spirits of people and grounding them more into reality and what is “normal,” this can quickly turn into complacency and disastrous egoism if given enough time to fester. Incel culture is one such example in which the extreme views and dissatisfaction with dating has led to complete complacency and an acceptance of one’s flaws as being an inherent part of the world. To incels, their involuntary celibacy is not their fault and instead a result of the unfairness of society and in their genetics. Rather than being able to accept who they are while striving to do better, they distill their shortcomings to be subjective injustices of society.
I could give many other examples of this, but they all end in the same idea: accepting oneself entirely and giving up on a semblance of free will creates unhealthy perceptions of meaning. Clearly, acceptance is not the only step one has to take in order to create purpose.
Often times, people say that you will somehow “find” your calling or even that your purpose may come to find you. While this may be the case for some people who by sheer randomness are able to find something meaningful, it’s more reliant on people truly taking an active step towards exploring and seeking out their meaning. After all, if you only stay couped up in your room scrolling through the internet, how do you expect for your situation to change?
Nowadays, it seems almost impossible for change to happen. But really, everyone has the possibility to make small minute changes to their lives. And this is the first step towards embarking on a true voyage for meaning.
Zoomers are often told that by achieving success and by “trusting the process,” that they will make progress in life. Whether its through following the path of education, or bowing down to traditional paths, it is something that they need to just have faith in. As a zoomer myself, the necessary belief that life will figure itself out or that there is some order to the world, no matter how bad, is a false belief that’s only stirred up hopeless desperation when challenged.
Even if the world seems doomed and your life seems to be in disrepair, it is up to you to take your best action. Even if the world looks like it is crumbling, it is up to you to proclaim yourself and realize your own uniqueness. Even if there is no meaning to be found outside, meaning and the proclivity for change lies within.
Pessimism and other negative perspectives of the world are all to easy to embody and act as a pathway towards fueling hopelessness. Yet, these negative urges about the state of the world are a signs that people still care and are willing to see change. Such dissatisfaction with the state of the world is also a fuel, a burning urge that itself crafts avenues of meaning.
For this reason, I still have hope. The world needs changing, and it is clear that this newest generation is most armed and ready to begin that process. Meaning may be something that appears so grandiose and ornate, but zoomers have meaning within them that appears so simple and innate that they are unable to see it. Change exists within every one of us, and it is up to you to make it happen.
After a year long haitus, I am glad to say that I am back and I have lots more articles to write about!
“Don’t accept the world as it appears to be. See it for what it could be.” — Dr. Harold Winston
