To be human is to go through multiple cycles of belief and cynicism throughout your lifetime. To quote the canonic meme guy sitting at a table, debate me.Article continues after advertisement
But I think that people my age have grown up against a historical backdrop that accelerates that cycle. The lives of elder millennials in America have been defined by an even stronger, more frequent swing between belief and cynicism.
There’s something about being promised a lot, then let down, then held to impossible standards, ad infinitum, that can make a person both deeply mistrustful of authority while also easily influenced by groups, belief systems, or even workout classes that promise to fix everything. This phenomenon is something that multiple extremely qualified writers have explored in recent books, including Amanda Montell in The Age of Magical Overthinking and Cultish; Rina Raphael in The Gospel of Wellness; and more recently Liz Bucar in Beyond Wellness.
The things I believed in were school, books, art, and being “good.”
The older I get and the deeper we sink into our uniquely American polycrisis, the more I think about what drives people to cling unquestioningly to beliefs that clearly aren’t true or good for anyone. A lot of it is likely rooted in a combination of desperation, entitlement, insecurity, and a deep craving for stability in historic moments of chaos–you know, like maybe a Great Recession. Hell, I wrote a whole novel about it.
