Generational equity:
Freedoms in turmoil.
Unlike the experience of older generations, particularly those born after WWII and during the Cold War, newer generations, those that came after the fall of the USSR, are living in a much more chaotic world situation. This is due, in particular, to the establishment of the new world order, with the West emerging victorious and the liberal model imposing itself on the fragile and inefficient socialist and authoritarian models. This victory, although paradoxical, is creating a much more unstable geopolitical, cultural, and economic world. Let’s consider only few of extraordinary events that have occurred since 2001 until today: the 9/11 attack, NATO’s invasions in the Middle East, civil war in Libya and Syria, 2008 crisis, a general crisis of the democratic system, the rebirth of chinese imperialism, rose of extremism and reactionarism, russian expansionism in Ukraine, Islamic terrorism, Covid crisis, rise of internet and social medias and many more phenomena that are influencing our ways of perceiving our surrounding world.
But what are the effects on new generations and why is it endangering our values and previous achievements?
First we have to take an historic path, understanding why the Cold War between the western bloc and the soviet bloc played a crucial role in making the period from 1945 to the nineties, generally more stable.
The presence of an enemy and a purpose. Let’s be clear, conflict leads to changes, in every way and form, competition in particular is always a form of conflict, and when there isn’t competition there is authoritarianism, this both in economic terms but also in geopolitical terms. This means that without a real enemy the western world started to be portrayed as the dictator of the world by his enemies, transforming our geopolitical environment from a multipolar system with NATO, USSR and China all competing with each other, creating some sort of perceived partition of resources and political influence, to the full dominion of the Western Bloc over the majority of the world.
As the USSR fell so did the main competitor of the western model, which in fact became the role model of the whole world economy, with also China adapting and applying the capitalistic economic model with the reforms started in the 90's.
Now that we have a little history context. we can talk about what this political revolution led to, in fact is it true that the west came out victorious from the Cold War, but as mentioned earlier, this led to the polarization of antagonistic opinions towards the western model, both from external player, like the muslim extremist world (Incentivated by the western disruptive approach to the middle eastern political context), or the new birth of Russian authoritarian state, just to cite a couple. The others players are internal, social and political factors influencing the democratic health of countries, like lobbization influencing and damaging our economic system, and also the spreading of anti-democratic and anti-establishment models, with the rose of new and old far-right and far-left movements, which both consider the liberal democratic model a failure, and they belive in
authoritarian systems like Russia and China, often believing that removing freedoms and increasing control, there will be a more stabilized future.
We can see the effects of these factors directly on our everyday society, with negative effects, like the growth of mental illness in younger generations, the disbelief in politics and on classical working conditions. In addition to the challenges, there have also been positive effects, such as major interest in civil rights movements, also due to the fact that these movements are now threatened by the advancements of reactionary and authoritarian ideas.
Together with civil and human rights there is also a new major interest for welfare state and general well-being, with demand from new generations for new sustainable working conditions and innovative economic systems in order to contrast the climate crisis that is also influencing the way young generations perceive their future.
Generation equity is important also in the context of policy making and cultural relevance, when the average age of the European countries is day by day higher and the average fertility rate is 1.46 child per woman, indicating also how the economic well-being and sense of instability is affecting the way younger generations perceive the future.
In conclusion, why is freedom so endangered?
As stated earlier the ever-growing instability feeling is leading people into more anti-democratic and oppressive ideas, some of these limitations are reasonable and natural in periods of crisis, while other are just repressive and unreasonable oppressive measures and beliefs that believe in authoritarianism and often conservatorism, damaging the idea of liberaldemocratic society which believe that innovation and liberty are fundamental in democratic countries, thus affecting mainly new generations, which are more inclined to trust in these values and to rely on them, for example enhancing the social ladder, which is proven to be more dynamic in open and free systems, at the end, younger generations are those more damaged by instability, becoming indirectly one of the targets oppressed by authoritarianism and reactionism.
