A little over exaggerated, perhaps, but the narrative I have just detailed is a fairly accurate retelling of the lives of the people my age I’m usually surrounded with. Let’s it break it down, shall we?

A day that goes at a breakneck pace, leaving you barely any time for yourself

Constant reminders of all the different ways in which the world’s falling apart casually slipped into your everyday life

Just as constant reminders that you need to excel and push yourself as hard as you can to secure a good future for yourself

Ongoing debates and arguments about issues to the point that it’s exhausting to have an opinion on every single one of them

When it comes to my life, and the lives of those I spend my time with, there are a few simple truths that define almost every aspect of our existence. Firstly, we’re constantly shown a window to a world that seems to be falling apart while at the same time, being trained to survive in a world that no longer exists. Secondly, when it comes to making any sort of positive change, there are a million battles to fight and educate yourself on, and that list keeps increasing. Thirdly, that we’re exhausted.

Again, let’s break this down. We’re so used to making lists and mind maps out of the everyday chaos and textbooks that one more systematically ordered list with bullet points can’t really hurt, can it? Let’s jump in.

A World That’s Falling Apart

The world’s a big place with a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong, and we’re very keenly aware of the deeply-instilled global tendency of heading towards a hurtling train wreck. Whether it’s a growing presence of oppression and tyranny against human beings across the world, global companies destroying millions of lives for profit maximisation, or the omnipresent threat of climate change — it’s loud, it’s in your face, and it’s impossible for anyone to ignore. Unless you’ve buried yourself under the deepest rock, you have no choice but to watch as the leaders of the world drag the planet into a burning dumpster. What’s especially scary is the levels of normalisation that this has reached. You know that Trump is Trump and he’s going to be creating concentration camps — it’s just what he does. You know that corporations will find new ways of exploiting employees systematically every day — it’s just what they do. Every new story that comes up is interspersed absolutely seamlessly into your social media experience. Scrolling through Instagram looks like this: funny meme, political propaganda, a food picture, the Amazon is burning, selfie, police brutality.

I have no authority to speak from a psychological perspective, but I think it’s safe to go out on a limb and say that this can have a fairly prominent impact on your cognitive functioning. There’s just no escaping the horrors of the world around you. Meanwhile, your school continues to prepare you to live a life in a hypothetical world where following bureaucracy and protocol is what brings you success and where, you know, the polar ice caps still exist. It seems as if the adults that are supposed to be looking out for us have created a system that enables absolute blissful ignorance. The individuals teaching us are far from clueless, certainly, but the school system by itself at large seems to thrive on inculcating the completely wrong abilities in students everywhere.

Is it any wonder why we’re frustrated? At this point, you might have someone pointing out the position of privilege I’m speaking from — that for me, so many of the issues I mention are ones that have very little direct impact on my functioning and I can speak about them from such a removed perspective. After all, the crumbling economy and communal violence isn’t going to prevent someone like me from having food on my plate and a roof over my head, is it? Shut up and suck it up, you might say, you’ll be alright.

While I’ll be the first to acknowledge what a bubble I live in, here’s something to consider — if I’m reduced to depression by all these circumstances I’ve mentioned, then imagine just how acute every aspect of this for someone who doesn’t have the same protection as I do. I’m seeking to use the experiences of a life that I’m familiar with to highlight how what’s happening at a global level can affect people of my age, and if my experiences are watered down, then imagine the magnitude to which each issue addressed here is relevant.

That being said, let’s move on.

A Never-Ending War

So now you’ve decided that you want to educate yourself and make a positive change in the world around you. Great, let’s do it! Where does one begin?

And that’s where the question starts and ends. There’s absolutely no end to the list of terrifying ordeals that plague the world today, with each one being a rabbit hole of its own. Let’s say you go down the environmentalist part and decide to focus on raising awareness on climate change. That’s great — climate change is one of the prime candidates for tipping the world into chaos. You start to read up, and you slowly realise just how far back this goes. Scientists have known about global warming for more than fifty years, but what’s really been done to take concrete steps towards its prevention? You guessed it, almost nothing. But hey, at least the leaders of the world can join hands and come together to save the planet, right? Nope! That’s not happening either.

Okay, so maybe climate change was the wrong rabbit hole to go down. Maybe let’s address the rights of minorities — Muslims in India, perhaps? Before you know it, you’ve dragged yourself into a political debate with a few Hindu nationalists, and you’re about to argue with a fiery passion, but you realise that there’s almost no point. Logic doesn’t apply here, volume does. And you just don’t have the energy any longer.

In a world dominated by information and facts that are available for free, facts no longer matter. This is absolutely clear when you see world leaders and politicians lying blatantly with almost no consequences. What’s the point, you wonder, of educating the people around you about why the forests need to be protected when there’s clearly going to be no large-scale (or even small-scale) systematic change in any of the power structures or political bodies that matter? It’s like swimming upstream against a raging current — you know all the techniques and you’re trying your hardest but you’re barely making a splash.

The list goes on and on. Each day, you scroll through at least ten new Instagram stories about what’s happening with the Uyghur Muslims in China, or the Hong Kong protests, or with the Palestinians — it just never ends. Every single new social, political, or whatever -al issue you pick up is a war that never ends, and they don’t stop coming. And after a certain point, it’s near impossible for anyone to keep themselves educated on every new issue that comes up. Each crisis comes in and out of the public eye faster than the rate at which the global economy is crumbling, and if you’re going to try and address even a tenth of these issues in your life in some form — even if it’s just reading about it, or talking about it in class — the despair is going to overtake you very quickly.

We’re all just really tired.

Stop This Train

What’s really left to be said anymore? We’re supposed to be the changemakers of tomorrow, but most of us are beyond disillusioned with the world’s institutions by the time we hit adulthood. It’s so hard to have any sort of faith in the power structures that have led the world to where it is today, but there’s no clearly no replacing them either. There is no battle cry or revolutionary ideal that unites my generation into working together to secure a brighter future for ourselves. All we’ve done, or can do, is heave a collective sigh and return to participating half-heartedly in the school system that will leave us unarmed in the decades to come.

Taking a step back and looking at this desolate and self-pitying portrait I’ve painted, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that I’m stating outright that the world has objectively become a worse place. I don’t believe this to be the case; indeed, I don’t believe I’m in any position to make a judgement on the objective state of the world at all. What I’m seeking to highlight is simply the changed dynamic in the way that me and my generation interacts with the world that leads to the very collective disillusionment that spurred me to write this in the first place. The immediate sense of horror and futility that has emerged as a result of constantly being bombarded with terrifying pieces of information about the world interspersed with our day-to-day lives is an essential part of this.

To conclude, my intention here is not to wax lyrical about the pain and suffering that my we are subject to in regards to the reports of doom and gloom that keep floating back to us, but to establish that the relationship that my generation has with global dynamics is completely unprecedented yet absolutely normalised, and I believe that requires a fair bit of questioning — regardless of how pessimistic an outlook I provide.