I’m a recent college graduate with a degree in Geography and this is reflective of my experience - the entry-level planning and GIS positions which I had banked upon appear to be increasingly non-existent, especially given Trump’s cuts to the funding streams necessary to finance environmental studies and public works projects. I’m not completely giving up hope, but it seems increasingly likely that I’ll be stuck in a part-time position unrelated to my major for far longer than I might’ve expected to be. There’s always the prospect of moving (lots of jobs in places like Columbus, Ohio or Denton, Texas) but for those consigned to particular region of the country, it is beginning to feel impossible.
A tangential point here is that most of Gen Z is too young to have seen Metropolis (1927), a film where class division is stark, and salvation comes in the form of a messianic figure only to reveal itself as manipulation. The film’s resolution is less Christian than Gnostic, the idea that we build our own prison, and only through divine knowledge can we escape it.
Teter Phiel, by contrast, has likely seen Megalopolis, where a visionary architect clashes with a political class desperate to preserve its power. He doesn’t want to build a casino, he wants to rebuild the city in a new image. In adjacent tech Twitter circles, you must grind your way out of labor, biology, even mortality. Phiel doesn’t seek to bridge heaven and earth, he wants to flee both through code, space, or seasteading. It’s an attempt to ascend, but not to redeem.
Half of Gen Z seems ready to ascend at any cost. The other half still holds to Judeo-Christian values, believing we receive God not through conquest, but through humility, suffering, and love. The question lies in if the world is a prison, or can it be healed? Do we need to build a perfect system, or do we accept our limits and build a world rooted in solidarity rather than spectacle?
I’m a recent college graduate with a degree in Geography and this is reflective of my experience - the entry-level planning and GIS positions which I had banked upon appear to be increasingly non-existent, especially given Trump’s cuts to the funding streams necessary to finance environmental studies and public works projects. I’m not completely giving up hope, but it seems increasingly likely that I’ll be stuck in a part-time position unrelated to my major for far longer than I might’ve expected to be. There’s always the prospect of moving (lots of jobs in places like Columbus, Ohio or Denton, Texas) but for those consigned to particular region of the country, it is beginning to feel impossible.
A compounding explanation for the lines on that unemployment rate graph is that the value of a US undergraduate degree is approaching zero.
A tangential point here is that most of Gen Z is too young to have seen Metropolis (1927), a film where class division is stark, and salvation comes in the form of a messianic figure only to reveal itself as manipulation. The film’s resolution is less Christian than Gnostic, the idea that we build our own prison, and only through divine knowledge can we escape it.
Teter Phiel, by contrast, has likely seen Megalopolis, where a visionary architect clashes with a political class desperate to preserve its power. He doesn’t want to build a casino, he wants to rebuild the city in a new image. In adjacent tech Twitter circles, you must grind your way out of labor, biology, even mortality. Phiel doesn’t seek to bridge heaven and earth, he wants to flee both through code, space, or seasteading. It’s an attempt to ascend, but not to redeem.
Half of Gen Z seems ready to ascend at any cost. The other half still holds to Judeo-Christian values, believing we receive God not through conquest, but through humility, suffering, and love. The question lies in if the world is a prison, or can it be healed? Do we need to build a perfect system, or do we accept our limits and build a world rooted in solidarity rather than spectacle?