I had the privilege of contributing an article the July 2013 issue of the Freedom’s Phoenix E-Zine.

Generation Ⓐ

by Davi Barker

There is a tension in the liberty movement between those like the activists in the Free State Project who want liberty in our lifetime, and those like the members of the Free Domain Radio community who see liberty as a multi-generational project. But as I strolled the bustling alleys of Agora Valley at PorcFest X this year I couldn’t help but feel like I was seeing both of these strategies coming together simultaneously. Observing the upcoming generation of young people being raised by peaceful parents in nonviolent homes I can already see that Stefan Molyneux is correct when he says that children who are not taught the language of aggression will not speak aggression any more than they’ll speak Mandarin. The language they’ve learned instead is the language of entrepreneurship, and the language of revolution… or perhaps evolution.

There’s no rhyme or reason when it comes to the naming of  generations, of even where the dividing line between them is.

There are some who would say that I am from the last years of Generation X, and others who say that I am from the first years of Generation… whatever it is. Generation Y for the alphabetical, Millennials for the chronological, or Generation Next for the Pepsi loyalists. When I was a teenager we called ourselves Generation Naught, because we were the graduating class of zero and we were intuitive nihilists. But I’ve matured since then, and so I’d like to propose something unprecedented in the naming of generations. Like a fork in the block-chain (ask a teenager), I’d suggest that there are currently two generations, both alike in age, but opposite in temperament. One is the terminal generation of a primitive psychoclass. The aggressors, the Statists, those who have not yet seen that the rituals of the old age are dead, and so they puppeteer the copses of bad idea whose time has passed. The other is the inaugural generation of something completely different than all who came before them. The neophiliacs, the autodidacts, that 1% viable mutation who will inherent the Earth. Homosapien sanguineous, and homosapien libertas. I will call them Generation Z, and Generation A respectively.

Let me tell you what I saw of Generation A at PorcFest X.

Generation A is self determined. They don’t ask for forgiveness or permission. They offer and negotiate. I was selling t-shirts from BitcoinNotBombs.com, and lapel pins from ShinyBadges.com. I was also giving away all kinds of promotional items from MassAppealInc.com. A handful of these Generation A kids approached me and offered to sell them for me for a commission. Some wanted merchandise as compensation, others wanted cash. By the end of the week 20% emerged as a market standard. One girl wanted to sell t-shirts, but an hour later she came back because they weren’t selling. So she grabbed all my free promotional stuff (pens, stickers, flash lights, bottle openers, etc), and proceeded to sell it around the campgrounds. Think of the business acumen involved here? She knew the cut she wanted. She recognized market saturation and independently changed her strategy. She saw a market opportunity and brought the product where the demand was highest. And she set her own prices. I know adults that don’t have the self determination to do that. I offered her a raise if I could have her on retainer for future events.

Generation A recognizes no authority. They transcend status. They transcend age. They transcend expectations. I don’t even want to call them “teenagers” because when I was young that was a term that meant I was too young to be taken seriously and going through a phase where I thought I knew better than my elders. Well, these teenagers probably do know better than their elders. Talking to these teenagers, it’s immediately apparent that they are functioning at an adult level, and above the level of many adults. They make fools of adults who treat them like children. One kid was locked in a heated battle protesting school uniforms and winning, organizing petitions, investigating legal precedents, and running intellectual circles around the school administrators. She is also on her way to being a completely self taught graphic artist. After toying around with some graphics programs for 7 months she’s already producing complex professional level work, including tutorials for other artists. Speaking as a graphic artist myself, she is intuitively developing the same techniques that I struggled with in collage, and she’s not going to wait around for school to tell her what she can learn.

Generation A respects their parents. I’m not talking about some kind of subservient Old Testament “honor thy mother and father.” I’m talking about authentic mutual admiration. The parents of Generation A have earned the respect of their children by raising them with respect. They are treated as full fledged human beings and not as pets that talk, and in return they treat their parents as full fledged human beings and not as meal tickets. Above all else parenting is probably the defining characteristic between Generation A and Generation Z. Parents who treat their children as subjects and slaves to parental authority raise adults who are prepped to live and subjects and slaves to State power. But children who are treated as sovereign individuals grow up to be adults who are ready to be free and independent.

So, maybe liberty is a multi-generational project, but if Generation A is any indication it may still be in our lifetime.