Gen Z isn’t mourning the past – we’re trying to redeem it

‘Far from being escapist, Gen Z’s interest in the past is much more about the lessons that can be gleaned from it – both the good and the bad.’ Kate Bush performs Running up that Hill in 1985. Photograph: United Archives/Alamy

I’m Gen Z and I don’t understand what older generations want from us. We’re either the laziest generation ever, and need to learn how to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, or objects of pity as we soak ourselves in nostalgia for the “simpler times” they enjoyed, staring down a wasteland of a future. Oh, and we’re also way too PC.

For whatever reason, it’s the pity more than the scorn that’s gotten my back up of late. With Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill back on our airwaves and the mainstreaming of the mullet, the amount of hot takes on young people’s apparent infatuation with the past is peaking.