The New Love Generation
Nicola Biggerstaff
Last week I participated in a panel for an event at my alma mater on careers in think tanks and research. Alongside some of my fellow alumni, I spoke to the next generation of students about some of the pros and cons of working in the sector, and told them all about the positive experiences I’ve had working for Common Weal.
Of course, we do things a little differently here, and that much became clear as the event went on. I told the students what Common Weal is about, and what sets us apart from other think tanks, namely the grassroots, independent nature of our work which allows us to write, advise, and think freely. My experience getting into the Scottish political sphere has been enlightening, and getting to know the vast wealth of ideas out there on how we can make things better does so often fill me with hope, as they’re often designed to do.
However, I can’t help but feel like I live in two different worlds sometimes. By day I’m engaging with my colleagues and our supporters, exchanging ideas and generating policies which could, in an ideal world, make a real difference.
But ideal is the key word there. By night, I log off my laptop and feel like I’m catapulted back into reality by the onslaught of death and destruction in the news. I try to keep healthy habits, eat well and exercise, but it’s hard to not look around right now and fight off the urge to sit on the couch, hitting the bottle and doomscrolling until long after it would have been advisable to go to sleep.
We’re coming of age into skyrocketing rates of poverty, economic ruin, global conflict and on the brink of ecological catastrophe. And we’re expected to just sit down and take it. Some of the so-called grown-ups in the room even want to bring back conscription to teach us a lesson and bring us all into line. They tell us to just cheer up, that everyone before us had it just as hard or worse and they all turned out fine. But surely wanting us to experience the same and not better, in some sorted of twisted test of our endurance, is a sign of a society scarred? How can we possibly be expected to heal, learn and improve our own lot under these conditions?
The hard truth is, I am exhausted right now. This year marks ten years since I cast my first ever ballot, and it feels like nothing has changed for the better. In fact, I can’t help but feel like everything’s getting worse with no end in sight. Despite being surrounded by messages of hope in my work, it still feels hopeless. Us young people are disconnected, disillusioned, and disappointed. And we’re told that’s just life, get used to it.
Sure, it’s not like that feeling isn’t a familiar one for every generation gap that came before us. But the advances in society that exist now have all but secured our fate. Social media and the internet were supposed to help us unwind but now bombard us with fake news and fake standards that make us feel small and our lives inadequate. It’s our moral duty to stay informed so we don’t repeat the same patterns of injustices from the past, but we should also take breaks for our mental health. We should participate in as much local activism as we can, but politicians don’t listen to us. We’re told to #BeKind to each other while governments who insist they’re acting in our name cause untold death and destruction across the globe.
We’re told our civic participation, our votes, can change all this but it clearly hasn’t worked so far. So when will enough be enough? When will we be listened to, and taken seriously? When will people realise that it will be their children left to clean up the mess they leave behind? To stew on the boiling planet or drown in the floods of their own creation?
My generation has an uphill battle ahead of us in putting the world to rights, and the urge to just give up and stick to the status quo seems to get stronger every time we look at the news. We try to distract ourselves with our hobbies, doing what we can in our own circles to make a positive impact, even when deep down we know it’s all futile.
Maybe that’s the beauty of my generation. Our ability to look at and absorb the horrors of the modern world and still actively choosing to be gentle with ourselves and one another. The fact that we even still write about wanting change, that we still haven’t accepted this fate we’ve been left with, that I’ve still not yet thrown in the towel despite all of the above suggesting otherwise.
Or who knows, maybe I’m just being melodramatic.