Advice for Younger Generations
Today’s youth throughout the world — those born after the Seventies, or thereabouts — are facing a dire predicament that is unlike that of any prior human generation. All past generations throughout history have had a reasonable expectation that their future would be a continuation (and often an improvement) of their present living conditions — growing up, marrying, creating a livelihood, having children of their own, and, with some luck, dying at a ripe old age, surrounded by grandchildren. And even if hard times struck, through war, tyranny, marauders, penury, pestilence, or famine, or some combination thereof, they reserved the hope that, as in the famous song from West Side Story, “There’s a place for us…somewhere…” That is, they could try to flee the encroaching horrors, whatever they may be, and start anew in another, friendlier place. This was the hope that burned in the hearts of soldiers and prisoners, even those in the hellish trenches of World War I, or in Hitler’s concentration camps, or Stalin’s gulag.
All this has changed, irrevocably. Today, there is nowhere left where we can run, to escape the ongoing chaotic collapse of our civil society and our global market economy into tyranny, poverty, and chaos, nor the progressive and inescapable ravages of global heating on our land, air, and seas, nor the toxic radiation and the sun-blocking, life-snuffing dust clouds that might at any moment be coughed up by a sudden nuclear conflagration. So the chances of young people living out a full span of life with any kind of affluence, much less basic peace and security, grow slimmer every day.
For this reason, the conscious or unconscious disillusionment of youth these days is no surprise. At worst, this manifests as rising rates of suicide and psychopathic violence, such as the epidemic of horrific and senseless mass shootings, particularly in the gun-crazed USA. But at a more common level, it is manifesting in opioid addiction, or absorption in increasingly toxic social media as their alternative reality. When I was recently out canvassing, and I would urge young people to vote in order to have more say over the policy decisions that affect them, I was commonly greeted with a shrug of indifference and skepticism. I had never seen such widespread hopelessness. And yet I understand it. We have, after all, stolen their future, and they feel this, whether they know it or not.
So what can we tell young people today? My short answer is a wonderful refrain from Bob Marley: “Tell the children the truth.” But how?
I think all parents and teachers alike need to start with something akin to a common practice among African American parents, as their children reach adolescence. They call it “the talk.” In their case, of course, it is the need to introduce their children to the grim reality of omnipresent racism in the larger world they inhabit, outside their own immediate neighborhoods and circles of friends; the fact that in this larger world, they will always be regarded by most white people with demeaning attitudes ranging from patronizing or vague suspicion to outright hostility and fear, simply because of the color of their skin.
For the rest of us, however — especially those raised in the affluent, suburban “white” world — “ the talk” needs to address the unnerving fact that the vast majority of young people like themselves will never have a better life than they do right now; that they face an increasingly chaotic, stressed world where things are getting steadily worse and will not get any better; and that they may wish to reconsider, once they come of age, whether to bring any more children into this dying world.
These are tough lessons that are not likely to be received willingly, and are likely to encounter hysterical push-back from friends and relatives, teachers, administrators, and local politicians alike. But — so what? You are telling the children the truth, and that’s all that matters.
But then what? There are four common attitudes toward our global predicament: denial, delusion, despair, and determination. Only the latter is adaptive. Denial is by far the most common attitude, but is only postponing the panic and despair that will follow when our fantasies bump up against hard realities. Delusion is the province of technophiles who continue to imagine that a wholesale conversion of our current global economy from fossil fuels to renewables (solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, nuclear, hydro, etc.) is possible, without the abundant carbon-based dense energy necessary to mine, manufacture, and transport these solar panels, windmills, dams, and modular reactors all over the world. Despair, of course, is utterly useless, self-validating, and poisonous.
But determination, however adaptive, needs a realistic goal. Determination…to do what?
Two things: (1) Embrace impermanence. (2) Cultivate personal and collective resilience.
Let’s look closely at these.
The first, I think, requires some kind of spiritual practice. By “spiritual” I refer not to any particular belief system, but rather to the root form of the word “spirit” which derives from the Latin verb spiro, spirare, meaning “to breathe.” And while in our dualistic Western world, we have lost any association between spirituality and breath, throughout most of the rest of the world, this association still persists. For example, the Greek word pneuma means “breath,” while hagia pneuma means “Holy Spirit.” Ditto for the Hebrew word ruach, the Sanskrit word prana, and the Chinese word chi. All of these concepts can be translated as both “breath” and “spirit” depending on the context.
And so spiritual practice begins by the simple act of breathing, and focusing our attention on our breath. This is the common first instruction of meditation traditions throughout the world, including even secular, therapeutic practices here in the West. And rescue workers are commonly taught that the first and best instruction they can give to a traumatized victim of an accident or disaster is to “breathe…”
So likewise, if young people feel traumatized by the latest horrible headlines, we can teach them to restore equanimity by simply following their breath. And from there, they can pursue whatever therapeutic and/or spiritual practice fits best with their own inherited or acquired belief systems. Christians and Jews, for example, can chant a simple mantra like “Thy Will be Done.” Muslims can find many analogous practices in the Qu’ran; Hindus can chant “Om”; whatever. And those without any allegiance to an inherited belief system can simply try a mantra like “Breathe…Observe…Let Go…Abide” (or whatever else works for them).
With a calmed mind, young people will then be more able to embrace impermanence — the fact that, as Shakespeare puts it, “all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.” And that goes not only for each of us as individuals, but also for our communities, our nation, and our life-sustaining planet.
A regular spiritual (i.e. “breathing”) practice of this sort, with or without relying on a religious tradition, has been repeatedly shown to make people more calm and focused, even in times of high stress, and can thus prepare the foundation for the practice of cultivating personal and collective resilience. There are many different approaches to this, depending on one’s interests and aspirations, but my own approach is summed up as follows:
Grow gardens; grow community; grow awareness. By growing gardens, young people will directly connect with the living Earth as the source of their life; by growing community, they will teach others the knowledge and skills they have learned, and learn new knowledge and skills from others, and by growing awareness — of the beneficial or detrimental effects of their gardening practices, and of their interactions with others, and of the larger social and environmental conditions of their existence, they will more easily step out of their internet-based neurotic solipsism, and engage with others in cultivating collective resilience in the face of ongoing global collapse. Such practices as these will steadily nurture the health, competence, and resilience of our youth throughout the world. May it be so.