28 July

Noah’s distinction here between horizontal and vertical communities is the most crucial defining feature of our lives today. When the two collide you can get real hostility. A lot of what passes for ‘local’ issues, like the current opposition for wind farms, isn’t that at all, but rather a symptom of a vertical community at work. Vertical communities are also kidult culture, because by definition adolescent culture is decoupled from the physical infrastructure of adult life. I know many assume ‘kidult’ is an insult, but it’s a purely descriptive term, of an adult living in an adolescent culture.