12 April

Healthy older societies prioritised both the young, as the coming generation, and the old, as the repository of wisdom, in ‘elders’. If you want to see how we’ve transformed that into one permanent adolescence, we no longer have enough children to even replace ourselves, and those we do have we infect repeatedly with Class 3 biohazards, so our own lifestyles aren’t disrupted. Our old are either on permanent adolescent gap years from reality in lifestyle retirements, travelling the globe on vast tax-free annuities, or clogging up ERs waiting for aged care beds that don’t exist. You don’t want to be young or old today. Only the healthy ‘lifestyle’ adult is prioritised, living a permanent present decoupled from custom and tradition. Travelling and eating out, mostly, ‘living their best lives’. The eternal teenager, living that permanent gap year from reality.