The Kids will Save Us
Like everything in the 2020s, age is upside down
A generation (or more) ago, a popular phrase was “Don’t trust anyone over thirty”.
Young people in the 2020s know that in their bones. They just might have a different number in mind.
Back then, there were age minimums to work, to drive, to vote, to make adult decisions – like signing contracts and being legally responsible.
As young people know all too well, those “of a certain age” have not lived up to their side of the bargain.
It might be time to reverse those age requirements; instead of minimums, maybe we should have maximums.
Instead of the minimum age (to work, vote and more), an age maximum, like a “sell date” would be better.
Why should, after all, a boss, or politician – or president – expect to be at their best after age eighty? Or even seventy?
Don’t they have better things to be doing?
And shouldn’t we expect – even demand – the best of our leaders?
Look at the doddering, sleepy, even diaper-wearing oldsters who can barely keep their eyes open as they discuss obliterating civilizations and do their best to recreate some gilded, mythical golden age?
The leaders in many countries, are not just “out of touch” or even “clueless” – they are deluded and dangerous.
They might “pass” a cognitive test (one would hope so), but their grasp on a multitude of complex, inter-connected issues is fragile and vaporous at best.
Some express their delusions – of phobias, fantasies and fears – and are, with assistance, able to put them into laws, beliefs and policies.
Now we know which force we’d rather face; a howling, thrashing toddler, a moody hormone-convulsed, petulant teen or a cursing, vindictive, palpitating old man with his hands on a nuclear arsenal.
Only one, by any standard, the worst, most volatile and dangerous, is actually qualified (by age, if nothing else) to hold official office.
The age restriction is, of course, a minimum – not a maximum.
He was not elected in a vacuum of course; he embodied the fantasies, fears and obsessions – and end times scenarios – and most favored feuds and vendettas – of previous generations.
Even his (and their) actual lived feuds, fantasies and rantings weren’t enough; they needed to add demons, UFOs, communists and viruses (physical and digital) to their fear mongering stew.
Old people, if nothing else, live in a swirl of their accumulated habits, routines and biases.
By those criteria alone, younger people should rule. They have not yet embraced and taken as “normal”, even instinctual, their worst impulses and greatest and controlling fears.
Young people are, presumably, more easily influenced. Does that mean that they tend to be more willing to listen to alternative – even corrective – voices?
You might assume that “older” presumes “wiser” and perhaps more reasonable and reflective. As we have seen in the 2020s, that is not necessarily true.
Toddlers, we have learned recently, do not have a monopoly on pouting, finger pointing and temper tantrums.
Being unduly influenced by advisors is an intriguing critique. As I write this piece, the president of the USA has, as one of his primary characteristics, the absorption of the position of the most recent person he spoke to. That is not exactly a key characteristic of leadership.
Young people may not have the presumed insights and reflection of lived experience, but some are aware of that deficit and are willing, even eager to learn. That is not, as we have seen, a characteristic that we often see among our current, much older, office holders.
If there is anything young people (if not all of us) have learned in the 2020s, it is that age is no indicator of prudence, competence or capability. Age is, for some, just the accumulation of years; wisdom, self-control and insight are, we have learned, optional.
Thomas Jefferson famously insisted that no generation should live under the laws, values and policies of a previous generation.
From drug laws to marriage policies to environmental standards and far more, laws and policies impact far more than the generation who pass or authorize them.
It would be easy to make the argument that the vast majority of laws impact following generations far more than the generation that lobbied for – and passed them.
From voting regulations to literally every Constitutional Right, what was of searing importance to one generation, may not be so important to the next. Or it may need to be qualified or fine-tuned to meet the needs and demands of a new era.
Some of us like the idea of a permanently defined, universal set of rights.
For better or worse, laws, rules and policies – and generations – do not last forever.
Thomas Jefferson was thirty-three in 1776. He was, in many ways, the perfect age for the roles history thrust upon him.
Among many other things, Jefferson said, “God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion”. He was expressing his belief in the idea that “liberties are ensured by the spirit of resistance”. Complicity, comfort and inertia will never “ensure” or protect any rights.
The Founders of the USA envisioned many potential threats to any new and vulnerable, democratic republic. They feared monarchies and corruption, but probably never imagined that the USA would find itself in, in the 2020s; paralyzed by cowardice, complicity and nepotism – and of course, by a generation that refuses to let go, tells itself that it knows everything and, as an added bonus, is convinced that its destiny is to lead America, if not the world, into an irreversible, apocalyptic cataclysm.
This is a toddler theology; wrecking the game it doesn’t know how to play. And it has many cheerleaders and advocates. They love to destroy and demolish.
They love the idea of a collective tantrum. For years they have been talking about burning down the system, destroying it all.
Most of us thought it was a metaphor. We were convinced that there was a master plan.
There was no plan – just ashes and ruin in their sights.
When someone tells us who they are, we should believe them.
We thought older people, mostly men of course, would care for the law, for tradition, for us.
But now we know. All he ever cared about was his name across history, the name that set the world on fire.
No such thing as bad publicity was his first principle. Most of us had no idea how “bad”, bad could be.
But to him it doesn’t matter. We will never forget him.
And, for better or worse, the kids will inherit it all.
Maybe they will get it right this time…