My 28 year old son said to me last night that he and his friends have been discussing that his generation could possibly be the first in probably several centuries that possesses no definable, collective Utopian vision for the future, and expressed his very real concern. I must admit that it’s something I’ve thought about myself but not been able to put cohesive words to. They have been raised, in the post-postmodern zeitgeist, to be cynical of everything. Their humor is beyond irreverent and remains devoid of any real shred of hope for the future. They were raised in the collapse of the Utopian visions of older generations. They have listened to people pay lip service to all this progress we’ve supposedly made while watching the abject failure of the ideas behind the words. They’ve watched skyrocketing technological advances consume consciousness while simultaneously witnessing the solidification of gross inequality and the strengthening of the institutions that maintain inequality (economical, racial, etc.). A small number of elites on one side amass more and more wealth, and a permanent underclass grows on the other side.

It speaks to what I’ve mentioned in the last several days of the cyberpunk portrayal of the future: Hi-tech, Low-life.

This was not a conversation I initiated with him so it was odd to see that we are running parallel lines of thought in our separate lives. True I raised him during a period of intellectual development in my own life, journeying through disillusionment with Marxism and disappointment with the progression of social norms which rather than progress, often seem like a collision course with… with something. We’ve not had extensive conversations about any of it though. We just ended up with similar trajectories.

More on this in coming days. I’m very interested in pursuing this with him. If it is true that his generation has no Utopian vision of the future, what direction do they believe it should all take?

Anyway…