27 August

We’re not self-aware, as a culture. Still trapped in the counterculture adolescent protest culture of the 1960s. That’s our culture, just as China is still a post-revolutionary culture, or Russia. It’s just that our revolution was carried out by teenagers. Literally. They’re now elderly, but the tune is still the same and has become the entire culture. Every single new thing attracts a caravan of grievance and outrage, now organised and amplified by social media, where everybody now lives. The giant digital high school, organised by popularity (likes), and where social groups fight each other for status, like groups in a school playground. Not an analogy. A culture that builds nothing. It just complains. It builds individual identity, from that complaining. Just as teenagers do, to form an identity in the adult world. Because teenagers built the culture. The adult culture was removed, and we’re just left with the complaining.