To be silent as the last guerrilla
To be silent as the last guerrilla
There is a subtle feeling of heaviness in the present time. As if it were too dramatic, too quick to catch, to stop, to slow down, just a bit. Every succeeding generation is born with a degrading sense of self-control. Us millennials are a tough crowd to please; we are direct heirs of the digital world, we are the lovers of aesthetics in everything we surround ourselves with and yet we loose daily battles with credible arguments of our forefathers. We are the generation of individuals, a children of principles and of the astute character, that will not give. Period. We are the variable and that is our sole constant.
photography: Osman Rana, edit: Mateja Pezdirc
Being a renegade is cool
That is not a viewpoint of a lost adolescent. We are at war, yet our battlefield is not at Thermopile or in the remote Afghan valleys, even the enemy at hand is often unknown. The prime battle is the battle of time. The timely fourth dimension does differentiate, as time really does fly and takes no one into the consideration.
Millennials rebel. Why? We are the guerrilla outfit. We wish to speak out. Loud. And yet we are so seldom at quiet when we truly should keep our mouth shut. We do not lack the ability to appraise the given situation with reason and objective distance, yet more because we feel. It feels good having a complete and supreme set of emotions.
If you cannot beat them, join them.
Millennials are not last knights of the digital guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla demands individuals of principles that lead to character, a specific skill set, that our generation acutely accumulates, foremost on the internet. Guerrilla is an elite, without the condescending undertone, hand-picked of quality. Guerrilla holds firm grip on its territory, has its laws and its limitations. Guerrilla believes in its cause, yet sometimes it deliberately turns a blind eye. And sometimes it goes full monty.
photography: Ryoji Iwata, edit: Mateja Pezdirc
Guerrila exists in the jungle.
Millennials’ world is a jungle, a jungle of bits, informations, clicks and scrolls. A world that changes exponentially on a daily basis, a world where time rules absolute, a world where change may truly be the sole constant. In such a world a millennial is one’s own career maker, because it is unique, original, because it does not give into forced ideas of others. Millennial is a guerrilla of principles that sees through the bullshit the minute it is served cold.
Paradigm shift
The anthropological paradigm of the digital era is ever-demanding. We live and yelp in front of screens. But the digital paradigm takes no human victims, it takes only time and makes tired eyes. In the digital paradigm we can be everything and better yet, anybody. If you look close enough, one can see that in the digital daffodils flower all year long, not solely in February and March.
We type, all the time. Somewhere something worth reading, most of the time just plain rubbish. We type and write, because one does not need to look into someone’s eyes when a harsh word or two are spoken. To deliberately avoid the contribution to falsified caring culture of likes and to simply keep the mouth and mind shut, may be the most challenging attitude to pull off in the era of constant overflow of information and (fake) news. That is the supreme signature of millennials’ digital guerrilla warfare.
Reading between the lines
Guerrilla is a mindset. One does not join the guerrilla because it is a mainstream, yet because it is demanding and it builds character. One does join because you share a common cause, or at least the enemy. You cannot see guerrilla, you feel it. Guerrilla is an RSVP club only, and the generic mind envies you the resolve to persevere.
Millennial guerrilla is a tough fight club. It is a training for the mind and the body alike. Millennial guerrilla rebels against the l’art pour l’art on social platforms, and scrutinizes the content with high-levels of critique, everywhere.
Guerrilla knows that the real fight is out there in the realm of reality, so it goes for a walk in the afternoon – with a dog, perhaps with a cat, sometimes its body and mind are severely hungover, but at least it gets some sunshine.
The generic millennial shall never live the life of our parents. Not because it is impossible, we just do not like their legacy. And we are proud to say that out loud, or maybe we just type it in. Yet we are never literal, we read between the lines. Because we know that emojies are easier to read, and type.
There is one thing that we have not mastered yet – to be silent like the last guerrilla.
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Text: Mateja Pezdirc
photography: Felipe Dias, edit: Mateja Pezdirc