8 July

Viral trends include our ideas for understanding the world we live in. A current viral idea is that there’s an epidemic of ‘loneliness’, and it gets worse as we age. This to me is another mistaken idea, caused by the kidult culture we live in i.e. our framing of life in an adolescent way. It takes the world of friends (remember there was even a show called that, describing that early post-adolescent time of life), the social framing of life for adolescents, and applies it across the entire lifespan. So old people apparently start to lose friends, and then get lonely. I think that’s not what’s going on at all. We’re social animals. What people are losing is a social ROLE. Their sense of ‘belonging’ to the culture itself. Their active participation in the social processes that keep societies running. As we age now our options are mostly just permanent tourism on endless holidays. If we can afford that. In other cultures, the old play an active role in their societies, reflecting their years of experience. They guide those societies. I see this all the time now, retirees desperate to still have a meaningful role in our everyday lives, often becoming a nuisance when all that’s left for them is to complain about things to the still working part of their societies. Serial FOI pests.