Here’s what we can learn from Generation Z

At the beginning of the story it’s just me, sitting on the couch with my 13-year-old child next to me, insisting that I watch “this amazing series” about an anarchist-justice-driven pirate with a huge heart and a ridiculous hat. Convinced I’m about to watch a cartoon for kids, I suddenly find myself immersed in a world shaped by ideals of radical friendship, anti-authoritarian justice, solidarity among outsiders, and spontaneous equality.

I watch my child laugh, get emotional, and cheer for the crew of rebels who challenge corrupt empires and unjust systems, and I realize this Generation Z is growing up with new values: natural inclusion, rejection of rigid hierarchies, awareness of global impact, and a surprisingly refined emotional and social intelligence.

A few weeks later I’m scrolling through social media and I see it again—not on the screen in my living room, but in the protests in Indonesia, in student strikes in Europe, in digital movements in South Korea and Latin America. Always the same: the Straw Hat Jolly Roger.

I look deeper and understand: Generation Z isn’t “playing pirate.” They’re embodying a global archetype of just rebellion. They do it with remarkable clarity: none of the self-destructive tendencies of part of ’68, no escape into heroin, no temptation toward armed struggle like the RAF or Red Brigades. A rebellion, yes—but one oriented toward transformation, not destruction.

Who is Generation Z ? A clear and current definition

When we talk about Generation Z, we refer to people born between the mid-1990s and the early 2010s, those who are now between 14 and 28 years old. It’s a generation that has grown up immersed in the digital world from childhood, exposed to unprecedented global complexity, and naturally involved in planetary movements.

One particularly significant feature is the quarter-life crisis, a phase between 20 and 25 that blends social pressure, precarity, and planetary awareness, producing disorientation, anxiety, and an urgent need for authenticity.

To this we must add something deeper: the feeling of meaninglessness often arises because the values inherited from previous generations—traditional ones based on conformity, forced stability, rigid roles, or materialistic-individualistic ones based on success, productivity, and performance—no longer match the emotional and cognitive structure of Generation Z.

These are the values of the fathers, which, though historically understandable, become ineffective or even oppressive in today’s global context. Young people experience them as clothes that are far too tight: ways of living that no longer allow breathing, creating an inner void.

When this crisis is supported with maturity, it becomes a powerful evolutionary engine; when ignored, it risks turning into anger or nihilism.

Use of the symbol, origin, and contexts

The pirate symbol from One Piece has established itself as a universal language: we see it in mobilizations against corruption, anti-censorship campaigns, student strikes, and climate protests.

It is a non-violent symbol, instantly recognizable and not bound to any national ideology—a true transnational “political meme.”

At the same time, its interpretation varies from country to country: in some contexts authorities view it as provocative or “against national unity,” as also reported by The Guardian.

Its pop nature creates a dual effect:

• on one hand it opens the space for an emotional and inclusive political identity

• on the other hand it can make the message less defined, suspended in a call for change that does not always articulate the details

Yet this very vagueness prevents the symbol from being captured by old ideologies or outdated parties.

The opposite risk is that it becomes hollow and reduced to pure design; but it is precisely this global aesthetic that allows Generation Z to recognize itself in a shared and accessible language.

Transcultural skills and why they matter for survival

Generation Z masters a key competence: transcultural thinking.

They move through different cultural codes, understand the logic of complex systems, and use global symbols to express ideas that transcend national borders.

In a world where climate crises, migrations, AI, pandemics, and the economy are intrinsically global phenomena, this ability becomes essential for survival.

The Jolly Roger becomes a kind of planetary flag of empathy, a way of saying, “we are together, even if we come from different worlds.”

Psychological level: the pirate as the just rebel

In the Bodymind model, the pirate-rebel represents the ethical rebel, the person who feels injustice in the body and transforms it into conscious action.

For Generation Z this figure appears at the core of the quarter-life crisis, where the search for meaning and the disillusionment toward the fathers’ values generate a need for radical authenticity.

For adults, instead, the inner pirate reappears during the mid-life crisis, the moment when many suddenly discover that the values they built their lives upon—efficiency, career, competition, “you must push through,” “happiness comes later”—no longer guarantee happiness, and in fact erode it.

Adult unhappiness often arises from the gap between what one was taught to desire and what the body, finally freed from illusions, truly asks for.

From a Bodymind perspective, the mid-life crisis is not regression but an evolutionary process that exposes the inadequacy of previous values and invites the restoration of deep authenticity and creativity.

Sociological-geopolitical level and integration of the archetype

Sociologically, the pirate-rebel symbolizes network-based, decentralized movements and a planetary ethic that transcends nationalism and closed ideologies.

Supporting Generation Z does not mean imitating them superficially, but choosing instead to be regulated adults who offre containment, vision, and structure.

The risk of “toxic green” is the dissolution of boundaries, the childish version of inclusion. The task of adults is to accompany this evolution without suffocating it.

The transition from materialistic-individualistic values to humanitarian-egalitarian values

The heart of the change lies in the transition from the materialistic-individualistic values of Orange—focused on success, merit, and rationality—to the humanitarian-egalitarian values of Green, centered on empathy, inclusion, and sustainability.

Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory describes this process as an evolution of consciousness, a shift from modern to post-modern models.

Generation Z is the first to live this shift fully—not only intellectually but emotionally and politically—because they feel in their skin how insufficient past values have become in providing meaning to the present.

Bodymind: the pirate-rebel as an evolved variation of the Jester

In Bodymind language, the pirate-rebel is an evolved form of the positive Jester, the figure who exposes hypocrisy, ridicules dogma, and frees what has been imprisoned.

Among young people it manifests as creative rebellion;

in the quarter-life crisis it becomes a search for identity;

in mature adults, when the mid-life crisis forces a revision of the unkept promises of inherited values, the Jester returns as the capacity for profound renewal.

The pirate-Jester of Generation Z is therefore the evolutionary version of Green: cooperative, relational, and anti-authoritarian.

And the fact that its planetary symbol is a pirate reminds us that true evolution does not consist in destroying the world, but in transforming it from within—with creativity, irony, and planetary consciousness.