American Culture's Childish Denial of Time
A "new" study from the Journal of Neurobiology of Aging suggests that old age starts at twenty-seven. Our memory and pattern-detection powers decline after twenty-two years.
Yikes! If old age begins at twenty-seven, then I'm old, my mother is really old, Trump is really, really old, and Biden already has two feet in the grave.
This study isn't new. It is a resurfacing of a 2009 report that arrived at the same conclusion. But why is it making headlines now? People are starting to reexamine our broken society and how we got here.
Our modern liberal consensus tells us to ignore the concept of time. Rutgers University professor Brittney Cooper tells us that time is white and, therefore, time is racist. Popular culture and society at large encourage us to deny the reality of getting older. And there is a long list of music executives, corporations, politicians, and scientists to capitalize from a childish liberal culture.
The late R&B songstress Aaliyah released her debut album in 1994, "Age Ain't Nothing but a Number." The album featured a chart-topping single of the same name. R. Kelly was the album's executive producer. There is a darker and more sexually explicit interpretation of the title that I will not touch on here.
"Age ain't nothing but a number" implicitly tells audiences they do not have to mature as they age. Time and age are mere constructs that define a person into a proverbial box. Act as you want, do what you want, whenever you want. If you are a single, childless forty-year-old with a house full of Legos and video games, it's okay. Forty is just a number.
With age comes many triumphs, failures, and experiences from which to draw wisdom and pass on to the next generation. Now, I detest the statement, "With age comes wisdom." Better said, with age can come wisdom. People do not automatically become wiser as they age. There are plenty of people who are sixty going on sixteen.
Just as wisdom can be passed down to the next generation, so can immaturity. Aaliyah's 1994 song was the gateway to Jay-Z's 2006 song "30 Something," where the then-38-year-old rapper proclaimed, "30's the new 20...I'm so hot still." Jay-Z's song was the gateway to Drake's YOLO movement in 2011, which stands for You Only Live Once. YOLO subscribes to an atheistic chase of childlike pleasures and experiences.
Each generation is telling the next one to avoid growing up. It's how we get modern terms like adulting, which turns adult from a noun to a verb. Adulting is described as behaving in a responsible manner, which should be characteristic of adults. An adult is something you are, not something you do.
Describing adulthood as something that can be turned on and off allows corporations to childishly manipulate patrons. McDonald's ran a campaign selling adult Happy Meals, with smaller portions of food and toys, that was a rousing success. Television airwaves are chockfull of animated ads, including 3D lizards selling insurance, cartoon bears promoting toilet paper, animated rabbits banging a drum advertising batteries, and animated ads selling men's underwear. Children are not buying insurance, toilet paper, batteries, or men's underwear.
Hollywood celebrities are some of society's biggest children. Seth Rogan and Chelsea Handler both refuse to start families because they'd rather smoke weed, masturbate, and play with their dogs (which they treat like children). Flava Flav, a founding member of the rap group Public Emeny, is sixty-five years old and dresses like he is in high school. (He also talks like he is in high school, but I digress.) That immaturity spreads throughout the culture, resulting in fashion and art shows resembling a fourth-grade art class.
Tourist hot spots like Las Vegas hypnotically conjure childhood whimsies with themes of circuses, animated creatures, and live cartoon replicas. Scholars call it the "Disneyfication" of the West.
In some ways, Washington, D.C., is a lot like Disney World. Ambitious politicians and influencers monetize off the childishness of patrons through legislation. Many of today's speech laws are symbolic pacifiers. "No, no, no! You can't say that word. That word is racist." "Go stand in the corner. You are on time out. That phrase is anti-semitic."
It's easy to chuckle at the infantile mindset. Sadly, that simplistic allure becomes irresistible when society is in turmoil, and America is objectively in turmoil. Infantile behavior does not lead down the path of wisdom. America is a democratic republic. Democratic republics require deep thought and critical thinking. The weighing of different perspectives, planning for what's ahead, and crafting laws that make sense. There's a reason children are not able to vote. The young are not wise.
A medical procedure that is growing in popularity is young blood transfusions. This process involves taking blood from a younger person and transferring it to an older person. In some specific cases, there are immediate and long-term benefits, especially in athletics. However, some are using the process as a fountain of youth to try to cheat Father Time.
I understand being youthful at heart. 2 Corinthians 4:16, "Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day." A youthful curiosity goes a long way, especially when it comes to legislation and world events. But being young at heart is vastly different from acting like a child and denying time.
Our liberal institutions incentivize adolescent behavior. So much money and power can be gained from a society that tells everyone to give in to their childish inhibitions. Tyrannies thrive on it.
Time to stop living in denial, America.
