Why Young People Will Not Be Joining Us

Having participated in groups like Collapse Club and Death Cafe, and having run my own group Planet Titanic Human Extinction Café, it’s hard not to notice how few people under the age of 30 join us in these forums. After all, like us, many if not most of them are aware of the societal collapse and human extinction which are close at hand. Though some measure the proximity of these catastrophes in years, while others do so in decades, the urgency of these matters is undeniable. So, why don’t the young join us in these dystopian times? I believe there are several reasons.

1. Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30

Most who attend our meetings are well into middle or, like myself, old age. There’s a natural tendency for the young to mistrust the old, and for good reason. After all, our generations are the ones who either perpetrated or instigated things like “Manifest Destiny,” “Get your kicks on Route 66,” “There’s no scientific proof that smoking causes lung cancer,” and “Better Living Through Chemistry.” We have neither earned nor deserve their trust, and they rightly blame us for the toxic world they are inheriting. Yes, there were James Hansens, Michael Dowds, and Guy McPhersons among us, but they were too little and too late for future generations to rally around.

2. Shock and Sound Bite

While we grew up during the dawn of the internet, globalization, and relaxed borders, today’s youth are seeing a planetary regression towards fake news, nationalism, and immigration barriers. Higher learning has been hijacked from the pursuit of knowledge to the pursuit of political gain. Where we had decades to develop an in-depth understanding of climate change, overpopulation, habitat destruction, and petrochemicals, younger people must try to interpret daily newsfeed bombardments of un-validated six-second sound clips. So, where we developed coherent knowledge bases over decades, they are floundering in a flood of confusing and disconnected instantaneous disinformation.

3. Reaction, not action

We are acting, but the young are reacting. We are preparing for the inevitable, while the young are still trying to comprehend the big-picture. We are aware and accepting, while the young are waging yet another “Battle in Seattle.” We had the privilege of time, while the young were cheated of it. We seek calm and peace for as long as possible, while they go to war. We choose life quality over quantity, while they will die trying. We got into the lifeboats first, so they must now learn how to swim in frozen water.

So, rather than join us, the young will flee from us, feeling forsaken, betrayed, and doomed – with good reason. As for our groups of older people, they will not grow, but will slowly shrink as, one-by-one, we fade away by time or our own hands. The generations may not come together, but will diverge upon mutually exclusive paths. And we will have the option of first exit, while they will go down with the ship. Until then, I still hope to see you all where and when we can, for misery loves company, and there’s plenty of that to go around.