13 December

A little bit risky to see history through the lens of human development, but is the Western world stuck in a rut of adolescence? Adolescence is a time of ruthless comparison, of defining yourself according to others and where you fit. In adult life that's often called status. It's a necessary phase, but you're supposed to move beyond it. Status is a dominant organising principle in Western lives now. Often through the things we buy and own, whether it's homes, phones, clothes, cars, schools etc. The 'neoliberalism' view of the world makes this inevitable, it strips away all other distinctions in favour of your position in a market. In the process both childhood and old age get neglected or ignored, we refuse to fund or pay much attention to either of them, shunting our kids and elderly off to decrepit institutions to keep them out of our way. All the lessons that the young and the old are supposed to teach us, every day, by having them in our lives, get lost in our focus on status. We're often more interested in getting kids onto the rungs of the status ladder than in understanding them as kids. It's as if the entire society has become one massive high school, with people endlessly jockeying for position.