20 October

Throughout history the old had the role of guiding a society, with their life experience. The kidult culture doubters take note. In our culture the old do what many teenagers do when they finish school. They go on a (permanent) gap year. In a culture defined by high school life, retirement is now when you leave school. They travel the world, over and over, using the wealth we now concentrate in the hands of the same old, rather than in the working lives of those raising families and doing the work of the nation. It should be obvious what a perverse cultural practice this is. But it isn’t, because our own (kidult) culture is as invisible to us as water is to fish. ‘New people and new places are what keep me alive’, yuck. Turning other cultures into theme parks to pursue some zombie state of eternal youth.