At both ends of the lifespan now humans are put into ‘care’. Child care and aged care. Societies are social,…

At both ends of the lifespan now humans are put into ‘care’. Child care and aged care. Societies are social, what does this mean? This grandmother calls looking after children ‘abject drudgery’. There’s more to see here. /1 https://t.co/ajfvJ7s5Qv

Also in today’s Herald, a piece on the continuing free fall of birth rates. People ‘can’t afford’ to have children, the cost of living is too high. I want to draw these themes together, as a window into what we are now, socially. /2 https://t.co/iNWCuZ3q4M

The boomer flight from any role except ‘cuddles’ with the grandchildren, and towards recreational retirement reflects a generation that led the charge in the now rampant adolescence of all culture. But at the same time a grandparent role shouldn’t be ‘childcare’ for workers. /3

They’re right to reject that. We put both children and the aged in ‘care’ because only healthy adult life is now legitimate. Workers for the economy. Get everybody else, young and old, out of the way, so people can work. Both parents. /4

This is the collapse of any sense of a circle of life in a society, of the sophisticated interplay of all age groups. Babysit the young and old. Keep them out of the way of the economy. Infect the kids at school and elderly in aged care with Covid for the same reason. /5

Keeping both the young and old healthy requires commitment to a family and home, rather than just a job. An economy can’t allow it. The job is the only social unit of measure that has validity. ‘Jobs, jobs, jobs’ some politicians proudly say. /6

Going back to the plunging birth rates, described as a cost of living crisis. Just think about how arse-end about that framing is. We can only have children as a species, when ‘the economy’ allows it. We can’t ‘afford’ to reproduce. That’s extinction thinking. /7

Life is reproduction, before it’s anything else. It exists to reproduce. If that’s not the centre of any society, it’s a dead society. If your social system makes reproduction dependent on ‘affording’ offspring, again you’re on a fast-track to extinction. /8

This should be reframed every day as ‘we can’t afford to have kids, the economy is broken’. Not ‘when the economy improves, we can have kids again’. ‘The economy’ is econo-babble wrapped around a status quo. The sidelining of complex social life, in favour of a social group. /9

This isn’t to suggest a return to older social models of large families all living under one roof, though interestingly cost of living is forcing that model back upon us anyway. There might be other ways to make the young and old vital social roles again. /10

Rather than dumping them into ‘care’ i.e. getting them out of the way. As I Tweet about often, it was getting kids out of the way in separate high schools that generated our adolescent culture in the first place. Adolescents don’t generally want responsibility. /11

They want to have fun. That’s their stage of life. Except that’s now every stage of life. That’s the social structure ‘the economy’ protects. Not capitalism or MSM or all those other ridiculous pantomime baddies. /end