On the Ambiguity of the Ambiguous Generation Z

By Phoebe Kelly, UNIQ+ Research Intern 

“Men of today seem to feel more acutely than ever the paradox of their condition”, wrote Simone de Beauvoir in her seminal work The Ethics of Ambiguity, published in 1947 [Beauvoir 1945: 8-9]. I would argue the acuteness of this sense of paradox Beauvoir discusses, only continued to intensify, until the ambiguity of life itself has become the shaky foundation of the stage we as humans live out our everyday lives. Upon this stage we cry to an audience we hope is listening intently, whether this be a god, a sage, or some kind of hero who shall call back the answer, whatever that may be. Beauvoir promulgated and subscribed to Existentialism, writing of its ability to be a doctrine of action, where no soteriology is claimed—there is nothing to save us—therefore we must utilise our freedom to bring about a purpose, a meaning, for which we live for. Within The Ethics of Ambiguity, upon this plane of existential pondering, I wish to cast our attention to its relevance for understanding Generation Z, and to who each member of it, cries out to.

        The ambiguity expounded upon by Beauvoir maps onto a prescribed existential uncertain landscape which we can see growing in the age that Generation Z are growing up within. This of course has many consequences for the growth and shaping of their personality, identity, religious beliefs, and, for Beauvoir, the way that they express and realise their freedom through these entities. Beauvoir states that, in fact, “…salvation is only possible if, despite the obstacles and failures, a man preserves the disposal of his future, if the situation opens up more possibilities to him” [Beauvoir 1975: 30]. With shifting and altering reverence to figures both in, and outside of, the religious sphere, there remains the human tendency to create that future we live through in imitation of others, or in reverence towards them, for we are relational beings. This then can be expanded out into the general existential claim that we must project ourselves forward into the future, for if we remain in the past, trapped in nostalgia and longing, there is no change of salvation—whether this end point be in a heaven, a hell, escape from samsara or simply appreciation of the now. Salvation, then, has many different faces, and is offered by the words and doctrines of a multitude of different people, to whom, each individual will listen or ignore and attempt to understand what it is that pushes them towards such—a definite cyclical structure. For Beauvoir, this is a reflection on exactly how that “the drama of original choice is that it goes on moment by moment for an entire lifetime, that it occurs without reason, that freedom is there as if it were present only in the form of contingency”, which emphasises once again the need for salvation to drive us towards the future to save us from becoming lost within a false-sense of childhood, or a façade of nihilism crying out that nothing matters, dispelling existing as their own reason for existence [Beauvoir 1975: 40].

        What can be said, then, of why this existential landscape arises? Beauvoir offers an answer which I believe can be claimed of Generation Z: we are afraid of permanence, for we know we can never be truly permanent, so in order “to avoid the anguish of…permanent choice, one may attempt to flee into the object itself, to engulf one’s own presence in it. In the servitude of the serious, the original spontaneity strives to deny itself”, of which, “it strives in vain, and meanwhile it then fails to fulfil itself as moral freedom” [Beauvoir 1975: 26]. Here then, stands the entry point to which the likes of moral exemplars, religious figures, and internet influencers become primary to the teenager—as well as a throng of alternating obsessions, styles, personality types and moods—distractions to exert our freedom by which our inability to be permanent denies us to feel free. I am not claiming that within these focuses there is not a truth, or a wholeness, that is authentic, but, in the Kierkegaardian sense, and as highlighted by Beauvoir, that life is an ever-ongoing project in which we centre and revolve around changing beliefs, people and environments, in the hope and attempt to find that which provides the best conditions to exert and realise our freedom—that which sticks. Some may never find this, others do, but it appears then that the the plight of the teenager is that they subconsciously become everything that they are not, to find who they are. Indeed, youth is often regarded as freedom from adulthood, and it is, in its way. But throughout youth there is a sense of pervading fear, for we know we cannot remain this way eternally—so we scorn the old as they scorn us. We dance around each other, until the music ends. This is our lot, as they say, this is life. Beauvoir describes the child to be “metaphysically privileged”, for they are able to escape the conscious understanding of the weight that freedom brings, and instead “…his whims and his faults concern only him…they do not weigh upon the earth” [Beauvoir 1975: 36]. However, on reaching adolescence, where parents and other adults no longer are looked up to as Gods, and now lose their heavenly crown and are mortal in the child’s eyes, who do they look to? Who is there to trust and follow with an infinite projection of trust—inherently trusting their freedom within a person or entity (or giving it up)? Some adolescents will build the appetite for life in terms of being devoid of any feeling towards it, others will find a new god to guide their way, as “one does not offer an ethics to a god; making a god the perfect exemplar to follow, for they are not flawed like us humans, they do not feel existential doubt, and thus the human cannot critique it [Beauvoir 1975: 10]. In this way, a God lacks the subjective freedom we possess, as a god carries an objective omniscience. Perhaps, then, in the ambiguous themselves words of Heidegger, “only a God can save us”, but then, again, who this God is, is differing for all human beings, or does not exist at all [The Spiegel Interview 1966].

         To conclude, Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity provides a poignant and useful map of the progression towards something, that something that we all search for, after leaving the house on the hill of safety and seemingly infinite nature of childhood. For Generation Z, in a throng of fast-moving technology, political dynamics, and the ability for all to have a platform in which to cast their freedom towards (through social media), navigating who to look up towards, or to call God, only furthers a sense of existential unrest. Under duress, then, we find an identity, a set of values, a sense of our morality, as, at the very least, we know that “at each moment freedom is confirmed through all creation” [Beauvoir 1975: 28]. Whether this freedom is confirmed more positively or negatively at different points, it is as if, to a chorus of an infinite number of voices calling our name, the world changes with our differing purposes for existing—into the next era we march, but we do not yet know what land we march on, or what land, or salvation, we march towards.

References

Beauvoir, de. B (1975). The ethics of ambiguity. Translated from the French by Bernard Frechtman. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press.

The Spiegel Interview 1966.