From Private Concerns to Public Acts of Resistance

People look at younger generations filled with either admiration or confusion, as if they represent a collective peculiarity. A lost generation, drifting under the sway of modern technology. Instead of entertaining the idea they might have some insight to provide, people look with a perspective reminiscing the past. The values that younger generations at times embody — like rest, autonomy, meaning, and sustainability — are not only put away as unrealistic, but also as a disruption. As if they disrupt the carefully oiled work processes of the ‘adult world’. Today's youth bring private interests into the public sphere. But why is that happening? We live in times of increasing misinformation and fragmentation of knowledge, where echo chambers and political polarization fuel widespread disagreement and doubt. Therein we find a widespread belief in the contingency of information, ethics, and the political. It is getting increasingly more difficult to talk about a shared and hegemonic ethos in society, either positively or negatively. Consequently, efficient, collective action feels like a distant dream. We are left with growing dissatisfaction — or worse, apathy — toward the way things are, and a powerlessness in changing it. We have only become more private and individualistic in our approach. There is a growing focus on the self, coupled with a distrust in traditional epistemic authorities. These shifts place greater emphasis on the use of technologies such as social media, which are no longer just a space for voicing private concerns, but are increasingly viewed as the place where public transformation occurs. However, the same technology is also shaped and influenced by economic and political interests. Through finding inspiration in the diverse philosophies of Henry David Thoreau, Michel Foucault, and Soren Kierkegaard, I aim to make way for a type of resistance. I aim to answer the question of how can one navigate an ethics, or else foster an ethos, within modern society, a place of fragmentation, apathy, and private affairs. A resistance, I argue, that seeks its place outside the system’s boundaries.