As the clock struck midnight on January 1st, 2025 began and, with her, a new generation of human beings: Generation Beta. While it may only now seem that the cultural zeitgeist has begun to be marked by certain peculiarities of Generation Alpha, it is time for humanity to make space for a new epoch of youth culture. Children born in the early years of this new generation will take for granted the possibility of alt-right presidencies, the landscape of artificial intelligence, and a reality where global carbon emission reduction deadlines will have passed by the time of their adulthood. The climate clock, (which estimates the time left to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius1) will have run its course before over half of Generation Beta has even been born. However macabre, the commencement of Generation Beta provides ample room to discuss the normative underpinnings that have contributed to the practical dysfunction of contemporary society. Moreover, it confronts us with conversations on the ideological transformations required for ushering in a new era of environmental, social, and political governance which are necessary to safeguard the rights of future generations. 

Global issues do not exist in a vacuum; rather, they are contingent upon the historical and ongoing decisions people have made. In the increasingly oligarchic and irrevocably industrialized world we live in, they are products of the neoliberal pillars which have come to systemically govern global society. We are here (circumstantially and culturally) for a reason. I here do not intend to claim that the individual decisions of the non-capitalist2 majority have resulted in the systemic incongruency of productive change and market sustenance. Rather, I suggest it could –and should– be understood in a more optimistic spin. The ideologies and value systems which have come to govern society3 are of human design, they are therefore not immanent and hopelessly unchanging: that which has been designed and constructed can be deconstructed, redesigned and reconstructed. In this article, I will attempt the first two steps of this reconstruction. I will begin by analyzing the modes of thought and systemic designs which have come to dominate the international order and will then contrast them with an alternative possibility, taken from Haudenosaunee political thought. 

(Briefly) Introducing Neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus 

Neoliberalism, crudely, is an evolution of the liberal political paradigm, proliferating globally since the release of the Washington Consensus in the 1990s. This consensus refers to the economic principles released by economist John Williamson in 1989, in which he called for market deregulation, limited government economic intervention, privatization of public goods and services, and reduced social subsidies (Williamson, 19894). Following the logic of trickle-down economics5, a neo-liberal theory suggests that economic growth ought to be held as the foremost important goal for nations – a stimulated economy resulting, in theory, in increased prosperity for all people. The neoliberal paradigm thus systematically congeals normative liberal standards with an ultra-capitalist logic, whilst the Washington Consensus formalized this paradigm into tangible fiscal policies. This Consensus would remain anything but contained to the US – it would become globalized through a variety of mechanisms, which led to an unavoidable subordination of most countries to its neoliberal ideals.6 

Structural Adjustment Programs and Problematizing ‘Development’ 

One of the most notable of these mechanisms is the phenomenon of the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). Under these programs, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) would provide loans to nations of the so-called developing world7 as a means of debt relief… with the condition that recipient states structurally adopt neoliberal policies to accelerate economic growth rapidly. In practice, said adoption resulted in a series of negative systemic consequences. Poverty often increased due to extremely limited access to social services and subsidies, which were cut to reduce government spending. Cuts whose effects were worsened by a weakening of local economies resulting from the influx of cheap imported goods emerging from trade liberalization. SAPs were largely coercive, with recipient states essentially having no choice but to accept loans for debt minimization, thus undermining state sovereignty and enforcing a global hierarchy through dependency. This global push for the utmost prioritization of economic growth directly resulted in an increased disregard for environmental protection and human freedom, with growth now being viewed as a prerequisite for any other structural reconfiguration. In the words of Amartya Sen:

“The shift in the focus of attention of pro-market economics from freedom to utility has been achieved at some cost: the neglect of the central value of freedom itself” (Sen, 27-28, 1999).

When the era of ‘sustainable development’8 began, somewhere around 2015, global imagination was so deeply entrenched in neoliberal ideology that the fight against climate change was bound to be an uphill one. Neoliberalism asks individuals to think shortsightedly in its very design – it valorizes economic growth to such an extent that anything getting in the way of growth (investment in environmental protection and divestment in harmful industries) is pushed aside. The prospect of immediate economic proliferation is presented in such a tight time frame that even cold, profit-focused calculations for fostering long-term, sustainable economies go unaddressed. The UN ‘2030 agenda’9 itself is extremely temporally limited, and although emissions obviously10 ought to be reduced as soon as possible, the organization’s lack of meaningfully future-oriented goals mirrors the orientation of immediacy observed in neoliberal thought. 

The Current Incompatibility of ‘Now’ and the Future 

Generation Beta will be born into a world where this logic of ‘immediate results’ has been so entrenched into political, economic, and environmental decision-making that neoliberalism shall not appear as one option among many ideological paradigms, but as the default Earthly reality. When this is considered in conjunction with the immediacy of available information provided by generative artificial intelligence sites and the increasing societal potency of instant gratification via short-form social media content11, it becomes increasingly salient that this mentality has all it needs to become more potent. We are thus left to face the facts and understand that we must enact mentality-changing interventions.

What would such an intervention look like, and how would it be implemented practically? While the answers to these questions are admittedly abstract, there are examples of alternative dogmatic possibilities from historical records, illuminating different perspectives which would take great(er) care for Earth’s future inhabitants. In A Basic Call to Consciousness, John Mohawk evokes the Haudenosaunee ‘seven generations principle’, calling on a population to consider the potential for harm of a given action up to seven generations in the future. Defining a single generation as encapsulating twenty-five years (the generally accepted length of a generation), the adoption of this principle entails looking over one-hundred-seventy-five years into the future in any form of decision-making analysis. 

A Paradigm Shift: Widening our Temporal Horizons 

The normative foundation of this principle is so radically divergent from the neoliberalism of today that it may seem incomprehensible, some motioning even to say that “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism”.12 Neoliberalism, in essence, is late-stage capitalism; its normative underpinnings and tangible function are so devoted to the logic of capitalism that the two are virtually indistinguishable. Based upon a complete trust in capitalism and its growth ideology, above all, Neoliberalism is king. Its value system takes a pure and literal approach to this ideology, favouring economic flourishment over that of any other kind. To ease the sense of hopelessness such incomprehensibility may evoke, let us remember that the systemic confines we currently exist in have only existed since the birth of the Industrial Revolution. The two hundred or so years that have passed since the revolution extend far beyond the temporal scope of the human imagination. Still, the industrial epoch of humanity reflects a fraction of human history so small that it appears our fears of eternal stagnation and of being endlessly trapped in this accelerating loop of production and consumption are far more irrational than maintaining hope for transformative change is. In other words, through logics such as neoliberalism human beings are both socialized to be and are somewhat inherently temporally narrow-minded. In other words, it has not been made intuitive, and certainly not necessary, to us that we ought to seriously and meaningfully rework our conceptions of time and the realities of the future. It, however, is a reality that current trends in human and corporate behaviour irrefutably ought to change, here and now, to protect future generations of humans and the health of the planet. 

Let the onset of Generation Beta justify new and long-term-oriented discussion, not about the inherently ‘doomed’ nature of future generations but about how humanity can safeguard the well-being of people far into the future. Let it also suggest a critical analysis of the Western principles that the Global North has coercively persuaded the world to believe are necessary.

After all, the linguistic implications of the word ‘beta’ are themselves dichotomously twofold. In one perspective ‘beta’ represents inferiority, the gradual downward spiral of humanity; in another, it means something completely different: a new and improved, albeit unfinished and imperfect, update.

Edited by Sofia V. Forlini

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and they do not reflect the position of the McGill Journal of Political Science or the Political Science Students’ Association.

Featured image by Brock University

  1.  Climate clock, https://climateclock.world/  ↩︎
  2.  I here use “capitalist” in the classical Marxist sense, directly referring to those who possess capital and the means of production.  ↩︎
  3.  Neoliberalism, capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, logics of domination and exploitation overall.  ↩︎
  4.  A specific document of the consensus proves to be non existent ↩︎
  5.  Not to be confused with the infamous “Raegan-omics”, an extrapolation of this model. ↩︎
  6.  Prioritization of rapid economic growth, de-prioritization of social services and welfare, a proverbial bowing down to the free market.  ↩︎
  7.  I say so-called because while the language of “developed/ developing countries” is certain a ‘step-up’ from the language of “first/second/third word countries”, it remains a regressive and inadequate way of addressing impoverished nations, dominantly in the Global South, who are largely experiencing lingering effects of extractive colonialism. Nevertheless, we ought to reckon with the hegemonic language of our times.  ↩︎
  8.  “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainable development calls for concerted efforts towards building an inclusive, sustainable and resilient future for people and planet.” (from the UN Sustainable Development Agenda) ↩︎
  9.  Adopted by the UN in 2015 to achieve a set of 17 goals dedicated towards sustainable development, to be achieved by 2030. These include: Ending poverty and hunger, Achieving gender equality, Protecting the planet and its natural resources, Ensuring access to quality education and health care, Promoting sustainable economic growth, and Taking action on climate change. ↩︎
  10. “If yearly emissions continue to increase rapidly, as they have since 2000, models project that by the end of this century, global temperature will be at least 5 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 1901-1960 average, and possibly as much as 10.2 degrees warmer. If annual emissions increase more slowly and begin to decline significantly by 2050,  models project temperatures would still be at least 2.4 degrees warmer than the first half of the 20th century, and possibly up to 5.9 degrees warmer” (Lindsey, Dahlman, 2024) ↩︎
  11.  E.g. Tik Tok, Reels, Youtube Shorts. ↩︎
  12.  This quote is attributed to both Frederic Jameson and Slavoj Žižek ↩︎

References:

Akwesasne Notes. (Ed.). (1999). A basic call to consciousness: The Ethic of Traditional Native Philosophies. North Atlantic Books.

Climate Clock. (n.d.). https://climateclock.world/   

Lindsey, R., & Dahlman, L. (2024, January 18). Climate change: Global temperature. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. https://dev-04-drupal-climate.woc.noaa.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature  

Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. Alfred A. Knopf. 

United Nations. (n.d.). United Nations Sustainable Development. United Nations. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/