The Age of Common Sense
On our collective obsession with youth and what it says about us as a species and as a culture.
My father recently went to a school reunion. Everyone there, like him, was in their seventies. Some had back problems, some had their joints giving up, some had diabetes ruining their meals and some had had multiple heart attacks. Everyone was dying.
But everyone also had full heads of nice black hair. Everyone was dyeing.
Some time ago, a somewhat unoriginal young man tried to goad me into a "debate" with him on his tiny and rather vile YouTube channel, presumably in pursuit of social capital. One of the things he managed to come up with to anger me into playing his game was a joke about my "receding hairline". Turns out, he was rather fond of the phrase and tried to stick it on another long-haired YouTuber later that month. I guess he didn't want all the mental labour he had put into creating that joke (I'm sure it took a lot out of him) to waste. I can appreciate the hustle, feeble as it may be.
My hairline has been receding for the better part of a decade now. I have been as bothered about it as I am about the population of Nicaragua. I have tried to colour neither my hair nor my beard, which has been turning a bright shade of silver for about just as long. I simply do not care. And I actually like looking older.
Attempts to make the appearance of youth a flashpoint in online conflict therefore serve only to demonstrate our commitment to the ideal of youth. We know people do this. What we probably don't think about often is why people do this.
My view is that despite the often religiously-motivated notions of human exceptionalism, somewhere deep down, we still think we are just animals. And we treat ourselves as such.
Evolution doesn't care about civilisation or culture or art or commerce. It only serves to prioritise those among us who can survive long enough to produce offspring. And that can mostly only happen safely during a specific age bracket. It has a beginning and an end. This period, more or less, is youth.
I therefore find it amusing to see people from religious camps, who never tire of saying that the evolutionary worldview lessens us and devalues our humanity, use ageist insults against those whose attention they are desperate for. When a young person levels such an insult against someone older, are they also not reducing themselves to a reproductive unit? Hardly spiritual, no?
Of course, they are not the only ones who do this. Youth is held up as an ideal across the board. Children try to look older, old people try to look younger, and those who are still within the youth bracket appear terrified of the inevitability that is ahead of them. Entire industries exist to help prevent ageing, and even to reverse ageing.
Historically, population control is a rather recent thing. For most of human history, through conflict and peace, our primary concern has been increasing population. Fertile women were deified and virile men were held up as examples. During wars, even as the men were killed or enslaved, women were taken by conquering tribes to help increase their numbers. For most of history, we have been treating each other, and ourselves, as animals whose only value lies in our ability to reproduce.
The thrust of progress has mostly been about seeing human beings as more than simple reproductive units. Children, youth, adults, and the old, all are assumed to have value as equal human beings. Their survival doesn't need to be justified in terms of their utility to the tribe's numerical strength. It stands on its own, a self-evident truth.
As I write this, days away from my 42nd birthday, I realise that in asserting my joy at getting older, I am also standing up for the humanity of all the young men who think calling someone old is an insult.
It's not, boys! As I hope you will find out some day soon.