The Transience of Everything

Why people feel unrooted and the reframings needed to change that

“We say our problem is patriarchy and climate change and election results and the cost-of-living crisis but I think there’s something deeper here; a deeper loss and longing that no material changes would solve. We are looking for something we can place our feet on that won’t fall away.”

Freya India

While

Freya India

wrote these words to describe how Gen Z feels; I think this actually applies to other generations, too. In our so-called late stage of capitalism, we’re at a point where everything is becoming transient:

Shein adds 2-10k new individual styles to its app every day, news stories are lucky if they make it till the end of the day, climate breakdown changes weather norms and seasons, our tech gets a new update every week, websites jump on the same new font and design trend every quarter or so, relationships become situationships, another rent increase is probably just around the corner, careers changes are as common as ever, and AI might anyway take (or change) our jobs within the next 5 years or so.

The world has become an infinite scroll of short-lived certainties. And time flicks through them increasingly faster.

And even if something new is on the horizon and feels a bit more like a lasting change, it’s usually something that makes everything else much more brittle, like AI, the climate crisis, or the so-called pre-war era we’re apparently now in.

That things are always changing isn’t exactly the problem; the problem is rather the transience of everything.

Below, we’ll look at:

✔️ Why This Is Happening
✔️ How We Can Change/Reframe Things
✔️ Some Inspiring Examples