Punkrocker

Bear with me, as I colour-coded some related ideas them for you, and placed them in ascending order of complexity

The song by Sandi Thom probably describes it best:

Oh I wish I was a punkrocker with flowers in my hair
in '77 and '69 revolution was in the air
I was born too late into a world that doesn't care
Oh I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

There is an opinion on truegrit, a blog I accidentally found:

"...the video of the Bangladesh Benefit concert. Remember that? With George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, Leon Russell, and Bob Dylan? That was when there was still a bit of idealistic humanitarianism remaining after the sixties love revolution had shown its decayed underbelly.
When I listened to this song it rang of truth, still. But its voice got lost on the wind, the words are changed for everyone now, as the ideology has coalesced into lumpish stereotype figures
and crass polarizations.

Then, there is Nicole Kraus again: "What is literature, really? Boiled down to a single sentence, I'd say it's this: a endless conversation about what it means to be human. And to read literature is to engage in that conversation. There seems to be a growing tendency among people to disengage: with the ideas, with the world around them, with other people, with their own feelings. To say whatever, because it's easier than actually caring."

Some more criticism of the zeitgeist can be found in Thomas Moore's (Dark nights of the soul) discussion of how the word "cool" is indicative of this era.

Here is me: in the middle of another round of quarter-life crisis, in the middle of musings on how life moves too fast, how years fly by and how I wish I could be a student and protest in the streets, I realized I had never actually observed protests in the streets. I missed any sort of assemblage of people with opinions, rebellions and criticism of the way things are.

There are pockets of mini-resistance. I found a group of philosophers in Amsterdam, who are looking to publish their ideas and carry out some actions in response to a society that values money over mind. I found a group of clowns, who elect to express their criticism from behind the veil of the traditional character of a joker. The French are notoriously skilled in protest, as can be told from the recent emcampment of clochards. I am not giving up on the Zeitgeist just yet.