free state project

Let’s be clear: Gen X wasn’t supposed to save the world. We were raised feral, fed cynicism and TV dinners, and told to amuse ourselves under fluorescent lights while both our parents worked and worked (and drank and drank). But guess what? Against all odds—and mostly because we never fully bought into any of it—we’re going to save the damn place anyway.

We’re the last analog generation, the bridge between The Digital Before and After. We remember busy signals and dirty ashtrays. Polaroids and slide shows against the living room wall. We played in the street, unsupervised, until the streetlights flicked on. We learned conflict resolution the old-fashioned way: dodgeballs to the face and detention slips. We didn’t grow up safe, exactly–at 10pm TV ads needed to remind parents they HAD children–we grew up resilient. We didn’t get participation trophies. We got sarcasm, Reaganomics, and MTV back when it was good.

We didn’t ask for a cause, but now we’re the last generation with the muscle memory of true freedom before it got digitized and deep-faked out of existence.

We remember a pre-Nineteen-Eighty-Four world. And now we know: knowing shit now matters.

We remember when technology felt like liberation: the Sony Walkmans, the an-ti-ci-pation of dial-ups, the first oh-so-heavy laptops. We were early internet cowboys, digital pirates before everything got Googled and gated and gamified. We’re the OG hackers, the ones who understood the web as synapses firing, a network, connected yet decentralized, not this emerging panopticon, permanently observed.

While the Boomers debate which gated community to die in and the Millennials debate whether they’ll ever own property, we’ve slipped into middle age quietly, warily. As Jon Stewart said walking out on stage at a show in Boston a few years ago: “Yeah, you got old too.”

Now, with our earned crows’ feet and graying temples, we’ve realized the world needs saving. But here’s the rub, we also believe: No One is Coming to Save You. Huh?

Hold up: You need to adjust your mindset. Gen X still remembers how to say “no.” No to authority, no to manipulation, no to the subtle gaslighting of a world that says freedom is selfish and submission is virtue. We see the con. We smell the bullshit. We survived the Satanic Panic and D.A.R.E. without becoming devils or addicts. We’ve learned suffering is real and bureaucrats can’t save you. In the past five years, we’ve learned bureaucrats lie and people die.

And you need to know it too.

We were raised by television and nihilism, and yet, miraculously, we still care. Not in the earnest, overcommitted way of the Millennials. Not in the detached, absurdist memes of Gen Z. We care strategically. We care because we know what’s at stake if no one does. And because we’ve seen what happens when you let Boomers run things too long. (Hint: it ends in debt, war, and a sad cruise.)

We’re the dark horses. The “middle children.” The “whatever” generation that never really got a defining moment—so we’ll make one. Quietly, competently, stubbornly, while everyone else argues on the internet.

Here in the Free State of New Hampshire, we’re building parallel systems. Homesteads. Homeschools. A homeland. We’re working on encrypted channels and local barter/crypto networks. We’re expanding nuclear power, creating a Bitcoin Reserve, and we’ve even legalized flying cars. We’re walking away from broken institutions and planting trees we know we might not sit under, because that’s what grownups do. Real grownups man up, and after Covidmania, the world needs us.

We don’t need your hashtags. We have real memories.

We remember childhoods before screens. We remember liberty before lockdowns. We remember speech before censorship. We remember when saying racist shit was frowned upon and applied equally to all. We remember when you could disagree with someone without trying to destroy them. And we remember fun—before every joy came with a PSA.

Yes, we watched The Breakfast Club. We absorbed its lessons: that people aren’t their labels, that authority can be wrong, that honest vulnerability fosters connection. Rebellion isn’t rage, it’s truth-telling. It’s authenticity. The system can’t contain us because we never bought into it to begin with.

We’re Gen X, and we stand outside looking in. We want you to look at the world like we do. Like you are free.

We’re Gen X, and we have the mixed tapes, wild dreams, and scars to prove it. We’re the last generation to know things independent of the internet, and you better start listening. We’re Gen X, and we’re here to save the world. You’re welcome. 🙂