According to Osho, today’s youth appear rebellious because education and scientific training make the old establishment look absurd and invite disciplined doubt; globalization uproots local traditions; and nuclear-age urgency collapses the future into the present. Much of the ‘rebellion’ is the old resisting the new. He sees this as a healthy transition toward a world culture and a living faith that welcomes doubt.
Kids rebel because they’re taught to think and doubt, see many choices, feel the old ways don’t fit a connected, risky world, and the fight is mostly the old order pushing back.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why are young people so rebellious nowadays?
There are many factors. One is universal education: for the first time the youth of the world are well-educated. And to the educated mind the old establishment looks absurd and out of date -- rooted in the past, of course, but with no future. Secondly, the scientific progress of the world and the scientific training of the young basically presupposes a training in doubt. Since all the old cultures and civilizations are based on faith, there is a gap. The young are trained for doubt and all religions and cultures require faith, so it becomes impossible. The young are now really in search of a faith which can be scientific, a faith which is so alive that it can allow doubt, a faith that is unafraid of doubt. Life is complex, and everything exists with its polar opposite. A scientist begins with doubt and ends in faith while a religious…
Osho, if we proceed on the basis of your own argument, then today in America, after sociological analysis, they have concluded that despite so much affluence, among twenty-one- and twenty-two-year-old youth a restlessness, derangement, and despair toward society has arisen—what...
I understand; let me tell you. The restlessness in the hearts of American youth is the beginning of a religious era. Such a thing has never happened in the world before. Such restlessness did occur, but only in a few households. People like Buddha or Mahavira felt this kind of restlessness. They had everything. The most beautiful women were gathered around them. As many beautiful women as could be found in Bihar were confined within a single household. All the beautiful girls were there, all the wealth, all the splendor. When all this is attained, a restlessness arises—Now what? A difficulty arises—Now what shall we do? This used to happen now and then to a few great families. America has reached the point where millions of families are in the condition once experienced by the families of Buddha and Mahavira. For the first time an entire society has become affluent.…
What factors do you attribute the western youth revolt to, and why are so many young people from the west now becoming interested in eastern religion and philosophy?
The whole attitude of modern youth is one of boredom with an empty affluence. The youth are leaving the society, and they will go on leaving it unless the whole society becomes poor. Then they will not be able to leave. This leaving, this renunciation, can exist only in an affluent society. If it is taken to an extreme, the society will decline. Then technology will not progress, and if this continues the West will become like the East is today. In the East they are turning to the other extreme. They will create a society just like that of the West. The East is turning to the West and the West is turning to the East, but the disease remains the same. As I see it, the disease is the imbalance, the acceptance of one thing and the denial of the other. We have never allowed the human mind…
This discourse was given before students under the title: Youth and Rebellion. I am pleased at the prospect of speaking to the youth and the students. The first thing about the youth that comes to my mind is what today I would like to say to you in detail. For the old the past exists; that is already gone, and their whole world is behind them. Children imagine about and desire for the future; old people think and worry about the past. For the youth, there is neither past nor future; for them there is only the present. If you are young, you can really be so only through your ability to live in the present. If in your mind there are thoughts about the past, you have begun to grow old. If imagination about the future still goes on in your mind, you are still a child.
Question: BELOVED MASTER, DOES THE REBEL BELONG TO ANY CATEGORY? It is not a small matter that the best thinkers of this age are finding that man's most essential need today is how to get out of this boredom. It is becoming heavier and heavier, like a black cloud, and destroying all joy; making life meaningless, creating a situation in which it seems that to be born is a curse, not a blessing. The philosophers are saying that life is a curse, a meaningless boredom, an unending anguish which serves no purpose at all. You suffer so much, you sacrifice so much, and the end result is simply nothing. The politicians have brought the nations into a state of continuous war -- sometimes cold, sometimes hot but the war continues; and scientists have provided the means to destroy this earth at least seven hundred times.