I am 21 years old, and it feels like I am growing up in the ruins of a world that began collapsing long before I even had the chance to live in it. People keep saying the world is in crisis, but crisis means something temporary, something you eventually recover from. What we are living in does not feel temporary. It feels like collapse disguised as normal life. Every system we were told to trust already feels broken, and sometimes it seems like it was built this way on purpose.
Governments no longer really govern. They perform. They hold press conferences, post rehearsed statements, talk about “values”, and then do nothing while people struggle to survive. It feels like politics have become theatre, where the goal is not to solve anything but to look like you care just enough to keep your job. The entire idea of leadership has become about performance, not protection. We are ruled by people who mistake speeches for change and empathy for weakness.
Amnesty International/Website
Economies that once promised stability now revolve around survival. The purpose of work is no longer to build a future; it is to stay afloat. The rich keep multiplying their wealth while most of us calculate how to afford rent, groceries, or an education that might never pay off. Housing has become an investment game instead of a human right. Education feels like a debt sentence. Healthcare is something you buy if you are lucky enough to have money. Everything that should belong to humanity has been turned into something to be bought, sold, or withheld.
Even success feels different now. It is not about fulfillment; it is about exhaustion. We are told to grind, to hustle, to be grateful for overwork because that is how you “make it”. But make it to what? We chase stability like it is a prize, only to find that stability is just another illusion sold to us by people who already have it.
And while we try to make sense of that, the world keeps breaking in ways that should not be possible. Gaza, even after the so-called ceasefire, is still being bombed. Families are living under rubble. Hospitals run on empty. Journalists risk their lives just to show the truth. The world watches, debates the right language to use, and calls it complicated. But it is not complicated. It is human beings being killed while others look away.
It is not just Gaza. Russia invades Ukraine and calls it liberation. China keeps Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps, sterilizing women and silencing entire communities, while the rest of the world whispers around the edges. India’s ruling party spreads hate against its own minorities while branding itself as the largest democracy. Saudi Arabia bombs Yemen and hosts luxury sports tournaments in the same breath. Refugees drown in the Mediterranean while politicians argue about quotas. Sudan bleeds in silence. It feels like almost every powerful country is guilty, either through what they do or what they allow.
This is not a failure of leadership. It is the design of leadership. Fascism is no longer something far away. It wears suits now. It tweets about peace while funding war. It builds walls, not only around borders, but around empathy. People who try to make change are not just ignored; they are criminalized, ridiculed, or erased. The people who protect capital are called “strong”, while the ones who protect people are called “radical”.
The moment someone tries to prioritize humanity over profit, they are told it does not work. Yet countries like Sweden, Norway, and Finland have already proven that it can. They provide healthcare, education, housing, and dignity as part of daily life. It is not impossible. It is just inconvenient for those who benefit from inequality.
Meanwhile, the planet itself is being burned alive. Forests turn to ash. Cities flood. Coastlines sink. Every year feels like a new record of something terrible. Oil companies celebrate record profits while politicians gather at climate conferences sponsored by the same corporations destroying the planet. They smile for cameras and talk about progress while quietly deciding how much suffering they can accept.
And still, people keep pretending that it is fine. They post green infographics and hashtags, but real change gets buried under profit margins and PR. It feels like we are living inside a contradiction: everyone agrees things are bad, but no one in power wants to stop the things making them worse.
For people my age, the future does not feel like a destination anymore. It feels like a survival challenge. We are told to stay positive, to dream big, to work harder, but it feels like there is no finish line. What are we supposed to be chasing? Houses we will never afford? Jobs that will disappear into algorithms? Air and water that belong to whoever pays most?
Reuters
We scroll through disasters every morning before brushing our teeth. Wars, floods, fires, shootings. We see it all, every day, and we are expected to keep functioning like it is normal. People call us numb, but I do not think we are numb. I think we are tired of caring about things we have no power to stop. We are told to be grateful that we have access to information, but sometimes knowledge feels like a punishment.
We are told to manage our time, practice mindfulness, and “be grateful”, as if personal attitude could fix systemic failure. But it is not a lack of gratitude that makes people anxious; it is the constant feeling that the world we were promised is gone and no one in charge is trying to rebuild it.
Despair is not weakness. It is what happens when you care deeply in a time that rewards indifference. It is the most human reaction to an inhumane world.
And yes, there are still people who care. Doctors who stay in war zones. Journalists who keep reporting even when it costs them everything. Students who organize protests. Artists who keep creating when everything feels empty. Ordinary people still show up. But caring without power feels like screaming into a void. Compassion alone cannot rebuild what corruption keeps breaking.
Hope, at least the way we are told to believe in it, feels overrated. It is used to keep people quiet, to make despair look like impatience. We are told to “stay hopeful” as if that’s the same thing as change. But hope without power is decoration. Hope without accountability is denial.
The truth is that the people who can make a difference often do not want to. Governments choose profit over people. Corporations buy silence. The rest of us are left recycling and reposting, trying to fix a world we did not break.
So maybe the problem is not that hope is gone. Maybe it has simply been handed to people who have the means to act but the comfort not to. Maybe what we need is not more hope, but more disruption. More refusal. More people willing to stop pretending that this is normal.
Because at this point, believing blindly in hope feels like denial. The only real hope left is the kind that demands action. Not someday, but now.
