The Age of Unthinking: How a Generation Learned to Chant Without Knowing

Slogans have replaced sentences, feelings have replaced facts. Only formation — moral, intellectual, and spiritual — can restore truth.

A new illiteracy
On London’s streets, the most common chant at pro-Palestinian marches is “From the river to the sea.” Yet ask many young demonstrators which river and which sea, or what political arrangement they are demanding, and the answers dissolve into confusion.¹ Street interviews from recent London protests reveal participants unable to identify the Jordan River or the Mediterranean, some admitting they “don’t actually know.” They believe themselves to be shouting for freedom; in fact, they echo a phrase historically linked to the eradication of Israel and the destruction of its people.

What the slogan actually signals
Reuters and the Associated Press both confirm the phrase’s geographic scope — from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea — and note that critics interpret it as a call for Israel’s annihilation, while some supporters claim it merely expresses solidarity with Palestinians.² That very ambiguity is what makes it dangerous: extremists exploit the emotive appeal of liberation to conceal the political meaning of extermination. The result is moral camouflage — a genocidal idea wrapped in the rhetoric of justice.

Emotion without formation
Today’s young activists are not hardened ideologues; they are sentimental idealists formed by social media. The Ofcom News Consumption in the UK 2024 report found that 82 percent of Britons aged 16–24 get their news primarily from social platforms.³ A corresponding Pew Research study records similar trends internationally: over half of adults — and an even greater proportion of under-30s — rely on algorithmic feeds for information.⁴ These digital catechisms supply outrage, not education; they teach that the strength of feeling substitutes for the strength of reason.

The consequence is activism without understanding, compassion without clarity, and moral certainty without moral knowledge. Young people have been schooled to feel strongly rather than think deeply, and to regard emotion as virtue. The resulting culture is not of empathy but of impulsive indignation.

The tyranny of slogans
Every era has its banners, but ours has reduced politics to hashtags and chants. “From the river to the sea.” “Love is love.” “No borders, no binaries.” Each phrase has an emotional surface and a metaphysical abyss. The pro-Palestinian chant conceals a call for annihilation; the slogan of “love” conceals the denial of moral law; the cry for “no borders” collapses nations, nature, and meaning itself. These are not propositions but passwords. They demand recitation, not reflection. To question them is to risk social excommunication.

The cost of uncritical compassion
Behind the chants for freedom and inclusion lie realities too grave for slogans to bear. The same young voices that denounce genocide abroad will often, with equal fervour, defend ideologies at home that sanction the destruction of life or the mutilation of the body. The irony passes unnoticed because the habit of thinking has been replaced by the habit of feeling. When compassion is unmoored from truth, it becomes complicity in cruelty.

A recent example lies in the debate over gender medicine. The Cass Review, an independent investigation commissioned by NHS England, found the evidence for puberty-blockers in adolescents to be “remarkably weak.”⁵ The government has since confirmed an indefinite ban on their routine prescription outside of clinical trials.⁶ Yet for years such interventions were promoted as unquestionable acts of compassion — a “freedom” for young people to change their sex. Few of those chanting for “trans rights” understood that the slogan meant irreversible sterility, chemical dependency, and surgical mutilation. The rhetoric of affirmation concealed a new form of violence against the body.

A march that became a movement
The same dynamic fuels political protest. London has hosted repeated weekend marches since late 2023, drawing tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, with organisers announcing fresh “National March for Palestine” events well into 2024.⁷ Police documentation shows sustained operational strain and widespread rest-day cancellations, indicating that such protests have become a ritualised phenomenon — moral theatre replacing moral reasoning.

Ignorance with consequences
Ignorance does not excuse injustice. The very slogans that many young people parrot as expressions of empathy are heard by others — especially Jewish communities — as calls for their destruction. Intent does not nullify impact. As Reuters notes, the slogan’s ambiguity allows it to function as both a badge of identity and a banner of hate.² This fusion of moral emotion with historical illiteracy makes for a potent, destructive force: an ideology without intellect.

The wider crisis of formation
Such confusion does not arise spontaneously. Families no longer catechise; schools no longer teach the foundations of civilisation; universities no longer form minds but affirm identities. The youth have inherited the instruments of communication without the wisdom of discernment. They can amplify messages across continents, yet cannot define the words they repeat. This is not stupidity; it is the deliberate manufacture of ignorance — a culture that prefers conformity to comprehension.

The return of the mob
The digital mob is both connected and alone, inflamed and directionless. Outrage is its oxygen; meaning, its casualty. Every cause becomes a performance, and every protest a rehearsal for the next one. Those who march are not always malicious — many seek purpose, belonging, transcendence. But in the absence of truth, passion curdles into hysteria. The modern mob chants because it no longer prays.

The Christian answer
The only remedy for this epidemic of ignorance is formation — moral, intellectual, and spiritual. Christianity teaches that love must be governed by truth, and that compassion severed from reality becomes cruelty. To love rightly is to know rightly. The Church’s task is to rebuild minds capable of moral reasoning, to teach that conviction must follow comprehension, and that emotion must serve truth rather than replace it.

Catechesis, rightly understood, is counter-revolutionary. It teaches that goodness is not discovered by intuition but formed by discipline; that slogans are no substitute for the Gospel; and that the only real liberation is liberation from falsehood.

Conclusion
The young are not wicked — they are unformed. They inherit slogans instead of sentences, passions instead of principles. They are what a society without truth inevitably produces: citizens of noise. If Britain wishes to recover its soul, it must begin not by silencing the young but by teaching them. For as the prophet warns, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

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Footnotes
¹ TalkTV street interviews at London pro-Palestine march, 2025.
² Reuters, “Fact Check: What does ‘From the river to the sea’ mean?”; Associated Press, “Explainer: ‘From the river to the sea’ — why the chant divides opinion,” 2024.
³ Ofcom, News Consumption in the UK 2024, statistical report.
⁴ Pew Research Center, Social Media and News 2024.
⁵ Reuters, “Cass Review finds evidence base for puberty blockers ‘remarkably weak,’” 2024.
⁶ The Guardian, “UK government confirms indefinite ban on puberty blockers,” 2024.
⁷ Reuters, “Tens of thousands join London’s latest weekend Palestine march,” 25 Nov 2023; Metropolitan Police FOI reports on rest-day cancellations, 2024.