Youth Movements

Bunk

-- What does a bunker do?
-- He boozes.
-- Yeah. And what does he do then?
-- I don't know...
-- He pukes!
Arne Anka

In a age where one's parents grew up with heavy metal it takes a lot to shock -- bunk does it by going back to the basics. Bunk rock is about the basic visceral needs and drives of the body. It has no message other than drinking, feeding, fighting, fucking and shitting, no higher ambitions than enjoying oneself here and now as directly as possible. To care about anything else is to be a "priv". The music is LOUD, with a very strong and simple characteristic bass rhythm the musicians try to make as penetrating and infrasonic as possible -- it must be impossible to ignore even with earplugs; ideally it should be felt in the bones several blocks away. Loud and basic is the overall style of bunk -- bunkers try to be seen, heard and smelt a long way, flaunting society's conventions about the body and properly civilized behavior. Rationality and planning is out, nihilism and primal urges in.

Neoliberals

Just say NO to death and taxes!
The Extropians

Another form of youth rebellion is neoliberalism. Adolescents shock their parents and society by proclaiming themselves libertarians, wearing Hayek shirts, spreading subversive slogans about freedom, property rights and drug legalization. The movement isn't entirely unlike the socialist period of their grandparents 40 years back -- many do not really understand or care about ideology, the central thing is a sense of belonging, the parties and the chance to shock society.

The neoliberal movement is divided into lots of groups and submovements, occasionally with vicious infighting and competition. The central theme is freedom; freedom from the demands of a gerontocratic society that wants the young to grow up into taxpayers, freedom from the well-meaning restrictions of FOG, freedom from the suffocating past. While most neoliberals never go beyond this, the movement is a prime recruiting ground for the TU and can often act as a convenient cover.

The Changelings

The Changelings are one of the many activist youth subcultures that have sprung up in the first years of the 21st century. It started in the U.S.A. and has spread to Europe. The Changelings renounce industrialized society in favor of medievalism. All members say that they are part of a community of fairies left on Earth. These fairies have a medieval society, complete with feudalism and different races of fairies that occupy different places in the society. The group is quite anti-social and detests the world of grown-ups, which they call banal. They are particularly adverse against reason and rely on their feelings instead. Whenever they can, they escape the "cold", "mechanistic" cities that they have been taught to hate, in order to become addicts of restless "rambling"- roaming the countryside in groups, hiking, camping, singing folk songs, visiting ruins, etc. They dismiss the faculty of reason, instead they seek to experience a certain kind of feeling ("warm", "vital", "spontaneous"), the kind of feeling, they say, which could be found in medieval society. The feeling can be found today if one gives up one's individuality and merges with his "social class and fairy race" in Changeling society. Such merger, the Changelings add, requires the leadership of the "nobles". The Changeling movement is a bit old (it has been around for about ten years or so) therefore some older members have returned to common society. Since they were often academic graduates they are beginning to reach higher positions in society. Their "feelings" about being fairies left on Earth may be gone, but not their feelings about absolute political leadership, often viewing the FOG as too "cold" and "mechanistic", secretly dreaming about a new nobility.