21 May

William Mulready's The Seven Ages of Man, depicting Shakespeare's 'All the world's a stage', from As You Like it. The idea that humans go through seven life stages. It's this idea of stages that has now collapsed, into what I call eternal high school. Adolescent culture is now extended across the entire lifespan. Social media entrenched the shift. The way we see, feel and understand the world is through the lenses of an adolescent culture we acquire in schooling. It goes well beyond the sort of activities we like to do (gigs, permanent travel etc.) There's an underlying 'shit happens' fatalism to crises (classic teenage thinking). "It is what it is", an epidemic of that phrase. No sense of differentiated responsibilities and roles as humans age. Just permanent 'living your best life'. A rejection of ageing, even the old don't object to the mass slaughter of other old people in aged care by Covid, because to make a fuss would be to admit they too are old. Botox and fillers and 'natural' anti-ageing rampant. Rock stars are older than my grandparents lived to be. Etc.