The Best is the Least We Can Do

The Best is the Least We Can Do is a collection of short stories that explore the unique challenges and anxieties that young people face as they grow up in this tumultuous moment in history. The generation in question is not Gen Z at large, but rather a particular subset ranging from late high school to recent college graduates. This is the group that has spent the last 5-10 years, their most formative, amidst the chaos of recent world events including war, pandemic, and unrest. These events shaped this demographic just as they shaped these stories. The five stories in this collection take on specific aspects of life in the modern day, experimenting with different forms and voices to communicate how these experiences are lived.
"Report" is a story in the form of a business report, exploring the dehumanization of people by profit-maximizing corporations. "The Best is the Least We Can Do" metaphorically represents the economic challenges that young people face as it shifts perspectives between a father and son. "Static" centers on contemporary women by demonstrating, solely through the use of dialogue, how behaviors and discourses around hookup culture benefit men but harm women. "See and Be Seen" takes the reader inside the mind of a young man whose chronic internet use has ruined his self-image and imparted twisted ideas of social dynamics. "The Bear" encapsulates the feeling of current existence: a constant undercurrent of anxiety caused by unseen fears.
The goal of this thesis is to illuminate the modern circumstances of young people through the lens of fiction, achieving synthesis between current events and contemporary writing. These stories have the power to serve as a resource and touchstone for people of any age who seek to understand these experiences. As the generation in question is poised to inherit responsibility in the world, it is imperative to fully understand the pressures they are facing and how those pressures are affecting them.