Loneliness
We are a generation marked by powerlessness, shaped by hopelessness, and resigned to waiting for the inevitable end. Whether crises or systematic problems of oppression, the individual person seems powerless and alone. We have been thrown into this world and become part of systems that we did not create, but inevitably support and sustain by our mere existence. We accept the paradigms given to us and bend reality around them to not feel uncomfortable in our privilege.
Facing challenges that seem unsolvable, we are left alone in complete powerlessness.
Collectivity
Contesting for our future in a performance oriented society makes us feel alone. The normalized parameters of success and “correct” opinions leave us afraid of deviating from common paths. We are scared of irritating an imaginary audience, thereby complicating our own future. Coupled with the multitude of surface-level paths we may take in life, we are left feeling impotent and overwhelmed. Fighting generational loneliness through collective structures and discourse is key to impacting our future.
It is impossible to fight against this powerlessness alone, because at its core lies generational loneliness.
Self-Preservation
The path of least resistance in our society leads primarily to established structures and professions that support the status-quo. Structures like these, which assure their own preservation, must be regularly challenged. Because these structures are inherently exclusionary they do not allow for contesting opinions to be included.
We want to redirect the path of least resistance towards empathy and away from self preservation.
Fear
Our privilege and wealth provides us with a sense of comfort and uncritically reproduces the social patterns of previous generations. This creates a lack of accountability and renders politics to the domain of extremists, populists and careerists. Left are those living in fear of losing their status and position in society, thus prevented from representing shared values and standing up for the rights of others.
Fear of losing our prosperity hinders us from representing our values.
Interdisciplinarity
Understanding our unequal world and its issues as part of a global matrix of power requires insights that consider a plurality of opinions, sciences, fields, thus opening our westernized production of knowledge to different paradigms. An interdisciplinary and multi-central discourse is therefore central to reading social and political issues and their underlying causes accurately and accurately solving them.
Knowledge production must consider different opinions, fields and sciences.
Solution
“Ohnmacht” is a magazine bringing together a group of young people from a generation marked by their powerlessness. By coming together to write, share and discuss, our generational “Ohnmacht” (Germ. powerlessness), becomes recognizable and surmountable in the long term. We strive to be new and bold in both form and substance in order to consider new avenues of thought that can only be discovered by an interdisciplinary perspective.
Ohnmacht is a magazine fighting generational powerlessness with creativity, empathy and courage.