I was thinking about the many posts I have written about cultural trends and realized that someone coming to the topic without any background, reading one of my more brief posts without knowing about the earlier posts could imagine I was some cranky old man who is denouncing our "youth obsession" simply because he doesn't understand the young. It is an incorrect perception, especially the idea that age made me either cranky or critical of our culture. After a year or so of idiotic faith in communo-anarchy most of my youth was spent as an orthodox Objectivist. My behavior may not have matched my philosophy (what youth's does?), but my philosophy in my youth was, if anything, less tolerant than it is now. So it is not age which led me to my current beliefs. And as for crankiness, well ask anyone who knew me and you will find I have a record of being a curmudgeon that goes back well into my high school years.

But rather than simply assert that I am not rejecting our cultural tendencies out of some emotional reaction, allow me to make the case once again. So I can avoid littering this post with link after link, I will include all my earlier writing on this topic in the postscript. I am certain this article will repeat the contents of a lot of those earlier essays, so it may not be that beneficial to follow the links, but I would still recommend doing so if you are interested, as many of my older posts cover specific aspects in more detail than I will be able to do in this single essay.

There are many specific aspects of our culture which one can criticize, so saying I will explain my complaints about our culture is a bit of an over-statement. What I plan to do is to explain what I think is the root of many of our cultural problems, the inversion of the traditional model of youth and adulthood, and the consequences of the same. It is not the sole explanation of our problems, but it plays a part in most of them. Nor would fixing this problem cure all our ills, as many predate the changes in our culture, but it certainly would make it harder for the other problems to have the impact they do.

Before explaining why I think it is a problem, let me explain in very basic terms what I am denouncing. In our culture, and most cultures worldwide, the established pattern of youth was based on "sowing one's wild oats." Regardless of how repressed, how traditionalist, it seems every culture embraces some variant of this philosophy. Basically, the idea is that youth are young, inexperienced, and full of energy,  and so it is expected they will make bad choices and do foolish things. And so it is also to be expected that youth will be a time of "pushing the envelope" when one will rebel against the values of the adults and do things which would be unacceptable if done by one's elders. The role of adults, on the other hand, is to attempt to keep the young from taking this rebellion too far, and, over time, to gradually bring them back into the fold, so after a while they become responsible adults, embrace the traditional values of the culture, and in time raise their own families. It is a system designed to maintain a continuity between generations, establish a consistent culture, and yet also to allow children an opportunity to expend the energy of youth.

Our current culture differs in only one regard, but it is one so significant that it completely destroys the system I just described. It can be found in the literal meaning of the word "venerate". Venerate means to treat with respect, but its root word is the same as for venerable, meaning ancient, and that is the major factor in the system I described, it venerates the old. It assumed the received culture is worth preserving, that changes should come slowly and from the adults, those mature enough to know what is and is not worth preserving. It also assumes that youth is a time of foolishness, that the young may be energetic, but they are lacking in wisdom. What they value is likely flashy and without substance, and the decisions they make are more than likely ill-considered. And so these traditional system tend to favor tradition, age and experience over novelty, youth and "passion".

And there you can see how our culture has changed this pattern. Many complain that advertisers only care about the "18-25 demographic" or some other youth-oriented group, but that simply means advertisers share the focus of the rest of our culture. For the past several decades, much of our culture, far from revering the aged, have come to adore the young. If you doubt me, watch a movie from the 1940's and one form today. Odds are good twenty years separate the two leading men or leading ladies. Our culture today sees value in nothing but youth. How else to explain movies and television where an expert surgeon is played by a 25 year old, when the actresses playing mothers are only 5 years older than their daughters. How else to explain a culture where mothers buy the clothes worn by their daughters, where men in their forties try to imitate children in their teens? Our culture has inverted the pattern and placed youth on a pedestal, decided that what is valued by the young is important, has made of "novelty" a value judgment, offered a general blanket dismissal of all tradition as stodgy and without value and generally done everything it can to reject the past way of doing things.

I will go into more detail about the consequences in my discussion of the specific problems with this philosophy, but, in general it has changed the course of our culture. The old pattern was one of oscillation, in childhood one followed his parents, he then would rebel in youth, reach a peak, and slowly return to the beliefs of his parents, eventually rearing his own children to do the same. It was a pattern that could be maintained forever. The new pattern is unstable. As youth rebel against their parents, the parents, embracing the values of youth, adopt those rebellious values, and the youth, not wanting to be accepted by their parents, rebel against their previous rebellion, pushing the envelope ever wider. When they eventually become the adults, and have children of their own, those children must then rebel against the permissive standards of their parents. In the end, each generation must rebel against an ever more permissive standard, leading eventually to a culture devoid of all standards, as there is no other logical consequence.

But, as I said, perhaps it would be best to go through the consequences as I discuss my three objections to this philosophy. And so let us begin.

My first objection, and the most important, is precisely what I mentioned above, the fact that the adoption of the values of youth by adults leads inexorably to a culture which rejects all values. As I said, the pattern is created in which youth reject the values of their parents, parents then adopt, to some degree, the values embraced by youth. seeing their parents adopting their values, youth feel the need to rebel again, and so push farther, and the adults respond by embracing some part of the new rebellion. This continues within a single generation, and in generation after generation, until such a time as it becomes impossible to rebel as the permissive standards simply allow no more rejection.

Actually, there is one value which both the young and old seem to agree on embracing, and that is novelty. We see it in our fascination with change for the sake of change, as well as the inordinate value we place on something being "new", being the latest, the most recent, the first and so on. Because tradition is denigrated by those embracing youth as a value, the same people must also embrace novelty as having worth in itself. In fact, novelty is the one value against which the young never rebel. While rejecting everything else about their parents, they agree with them in embracing novelty as a measure of worth.

But that is itself a destruction of values. As I said in another essay, if we judged paintings only on how blue they were, eventually you would end up without any paintings, just blue canvasses. Similarly, when we value nothing but novelty, then we have no way of judging the value of anything, and must move from idea to idea, action to action, based solely on how recent it is. It ends up effectively depriving us of the ability to judge any values.

Of course, in practice no one consistently holds to novelty as the measure of all values, nor do they consistently reject all of their parents' values. But as I wrote elsewhere, when a principle is held by all, those who implement it most consistently tend to control the course of events. So though many might no consistently hold to the destruction of all values, those who press farthest, who destroy the most values, those who act with the most license, they will win. And so, though some may act with more practicality, they are the inconsistent ones, and those who are most extreme in holding to these beliefs will have the most impact on events.

In short, though it may not be the desire of most, the logic of this belief results in the embrace of absolute license, whether we want it or not.

But that inevitable decline into license, the brutal destruction of all received virtues and the abandonment of all standards of behavior is not the only problem. It may be the most destructive consequence in the long run, but it also takes time, and likely long before it runs its course the culture which embraces the love of youth will have been destroyed, either collapsing from within or being overcome by a less self destructive culture. And so, when we consider the consequences, we have to consider the other problems, as in the process of collapsing in on itself, doubtless the culture will take enough time for all of the negative consequences to be felt.

First, there is the problem of rejecting received tradition. I know moderns tend to view tradition with suspicion, and to imagine those who uphold tradition as hidebound traditionalists who would hold back the brilliant free spirit. But this "Teenage Caveman" view of reality tends to get things backwards. While Hollywood and popular literature, all those institutions which embraced the Romantic inversion of values, might believe anyone who "follows his heart" is likely to come up with a brilliant insight, the truth is, and a moment's thought will confirm this, most inspirations are bad ideas. And more importantly, most such bad ideas have been tried before. That is why tradition is so valuable.

Let us just consider what tradition means. We stand at the end of a long line of ancestors. in their lifetimes, many, many ideas have been tried. Some worked, most did not. And as they saw the successes and failures, they took the best and rejected the others, creating what we see as received tradition. No, received traditions are not perfect. Like all human creations, they may contain mistakes, they may value things incorrectly, and new knowledge may make them obsolete, but they are important for one reason, they represent centuries of experience, more than we could ever hope to gain in one lifetime. So long as you agree that your ancestors were at least of average intelligence, it makes little sense to reject this body of tradition wholesale, as it that is simply refusing to use the accumulated experience of thousands or millions who learned over centuries.

And yet that is precisely what this philosophy does. By embracing novelty as a value, and refusing to accept any tradition as valuable, it forces us to reject a huge body of wisdom, and instead forces us to learn it all over once more, effectively reducing us to the level of perpetual children, never able to benefit from the experience of others. Or, even worse, in some forms, not only does it demand we reject tradition, but that we actively act against tradition. That is even more damaging, as much of tradition is correct, for the reasons I have stated, and so to act against it is to condemn oneself to either failure, or to intentional harm. And that is very foolish.

Now, before anyone says I am giving too much credence to tradition, I admit there is always room to improve, and tradition can be wrong just like any other experience. However, tradition has much to argue for it. And so any rejection of a piece of tradition must have a strong argument in its favor. And even then, the change must be made slowly, and carefully, so we can both see that it improves our results, and so we can change back should we prove wrong in our change. Finally, any change to tradition should not be made based on the impetuous whim of a youth with too little experience, but on the basis of consideration by those with enough experience to evaluate the impact. Yes, youth might have a sudden insight which proves right, but in judging that insight, we need the sage evaluation of more than the one youth. Our society as a whole needs to evaluate that decision.

Of course, in cultural matters, individuals are free to do as they wish, and so some may follow a new idea even when most of the culture rejects it, and over time they may prove right. That is the benefit of freedom, that we can have more than one answer. However, I still stand by my principle for each of those members of society. When they choose how to behave, it is best for them to not reject tradition on a whim, but to do so only after careful consideration.

Which brings me to the other shortcoming. Besides eliminating the benefits of tradition (and destroying all values and eventually society itself), the embrace of youth eliminates predictability form our culture. And without predictability, most of the benefits of living in a group are lost.

Predictability is essential to a society, but is one of those concepts which is very rarely mentioned. However, predictability is both one of the main reasons we benefit from a shared culture, and one of those concepts which provide us with many benefits which few recognize. First, predictability makes interaction simple, much more so than it would be without predictability. Recall if you can a time you were caught in an unfamiliar environment, maybe another country, and people reacted to your actions in ways you did not expect. Perhaps taking offense when none was intended, or becoming hostile without reason.

That is what happens constantly when we lack predictability. We cannot anticipate how others will react to our actions. We end up spending much time and energy on preventing others from taking the wrong meaning, or protecting ourselves from unanticipated reactions. However, once we have a shared culture, with predictable responses, we can omit all those safeguards, and act based on our ability to anticipate the way others will react. Not only that, but thanks to many shared cultural shorthands, be they simple verbal or physical cues, shared cultural myths and fables, or a host of other ways to use condensed knowledge, we can communicate even more swiftly, making complex statements in a few words.

However, when our love of youth rejects tradition, tells us to forget about our common experience, and instead to embrace the new and the impulsive, we lose all this benefit. When the young, and later the elders who embrace the values of the young, begin to adopt alternate cultures, or create their own, or even simply act in intentionally unpredictable ways, they short circuit our attempts to predict and we are back to the situation described at the beginning. In fact, even worse, as the young find no value in those shared myths and cultural shorthand, we also lose their advantages as well, and the young are reduced to stating everything at great length, giving their speech and writing an intellectual poverty that is absent when there is a vibrant shared culture. (If you doubt this, look at our pop culture. Rather than referring to the complexities of Homer and Virgil, or even the works of Voltaire, they make reference to the Silver Surfer and the Facts of Life and think it clever.  What this cleverness forgets is there was worthless, disposable pop culture in the distant past as well, yet speakers chose to develop communication based on the best of what had been written, not the ephemera of worthless dreck. Or, to put it more simply, who is more profound? Shakespeare who stole shamelessly from Ovid? Or Tarrantino stealing shameless from Italian exploitation cinema, kung fu films and comic books?)

But there is another benefit to predictability, and its loss is even more damaging.

Much of what we do in life is based on our ability to plan. It is one of the biggest reasons we join into societies. The mutual protection of rights, coupled with civil courts, gives us the ability to plan long into the future because we have predictability. The ability to know what comes next,t o know that if we do something it will have a predictable outcome, and, most significantly, to know that this will hold true for years to come, that makes us capable of enacting long term plans. And the longer we can plan, the farther ahead the future is predictable, the more wealthy we become. Without predictability, no one would invest in the distant future, no one would risk capital on plans taking years to come to fruition.

And that is precisely the problem with the worship of youth and novelty. Because it reject tradition, and embraces nothing but change, it makes likely senseless alterations. Worse, because it rejects values and embraces anything that is new, it makes likely political chaos which is harmful to any sort of long range planning. And we have seen this in the US, the cultural upheaval of the sixties resulted in political changes which are still having unpredictable effects. Once the bulk of society assumes that novelty imparts worth, there is no way to anticipate what political philosophies will become current, what bad ideas will be accepted, and it becomes difficult, if not impossible to plan with any certainty more than a short time into the future. And, as a result, we are reduced to short term thinking, to plans which allow for only brief investments and then are cashed out. In short, what we see in our economy today.

(To be fair, I cannot blame all of this on our culture. Part of the tendency to cash out quickly is due tot he damage brought about by inflation. On the other hand, the impermanent, "apres nous le deluge" attitude brought about by our youth orientation makes fighting inflation difficult, and so it plays a part in that factor as well.)

The list of problems could certainly be extended, but for the most part any additional problems would simply be combinations of the three already mentioned, or the outcomes of them. In any case, I think the three I listed are more than enough to make my case. The way we have decided to organize our culture, the value we place upon youth, is, in the long run, more harmful than anyone seems to recognize. And worse, those who complain are dismissed as stodgy and irrelevant. Sadly, even many conservatives are unwilling to stand up for these traditional values, or those who do manage to turn off potential allies by tying them to not just religious beliefs, but a very narrowly defined set of religious beliefs. However, whether they have religious support or not, traditions are important, and we do not need faith to prove that. As I have shown, there is a very rational reason to maintain our traditions and reject the iconoclasm and value inversions that come from idolizing the young. And once we realize that, and begin to act upon it, we will have made quite a bit of progress toward repairing many of the ills of our culture.

POSTSCRIPT

As I said there are several cultural issues beyond the one I discussed which are to blame for our many problems, allow me to elaborate. Even before we embraced the worship of youth individuals were willing to accept political philosophies based upon universal incompetence, surrendering control over the idiotic masses to the "experts". It is a problem I  am in the process of describing in "Liberalism, It Origins and Consequences" (see "Liberalism, Its Origins and Consequences - Preface" and subsequent posts). This problem is independent of our growing immaturity, though immaturity tends to make it easier to sell the appeals to arrogance upon which this rests. So, even were we to resolve our love of youth, we could still be plagued by a belief in the incompetence of others. Similarly, our willingness to accept philosophies based on envy does not require youth fixation.The openness with which we embrace this philosophy ("Self-Serving Cynicism and Our Cultural Immaturity", "Deadly Cynicism") can be blamed on that immaturity, but it can exist without youth fixation, just not as openly. However, if our culture were to eliminate youth worship, and establish the principle of the competence of others, envy would be largely rendered ineffective as a political force, so, in this case, though not a consequence of our adoration of the young, resolving other problems will make this issue go away.

POSTSCRIPT II

As promised above, here is a list of all my writing on our adoration of youth:

Frightened for our Future
The Adoration of Youth
I Blame the Romantics
Revisiting an Old Topic
The Sky Is Falling! Again! Really! We Mean It This Time!
Tired and Annoying Theme
IMDB Makes My Case
A Thought On the Watchmen
Graphic Novels, Comic Books and Cultural Barometers
An Interesting Article"
In Defense of Standards
Addenda to "In Defense of Standards"
Changing Incentives
Juvenile Intellectuals
Bad Economics Part 9
How Fast Things Change
Deadly Cynicism
Self-Serving Cynicism and Our Cultural Immaturity
All Life in a Day, or, How Our Mistaken View of History Distorts Our Understanding of Events
Hoist By Your Own Petard
The Fascination with Change
An Interesting Insight
Trophy Spouses

There are other posts which mention the problem, maybe even elaborate on it to a degree, but I think these are sufficient o provide a full understanding.

POSTSCRIPT III

In my criticism above of those who insist on tying the value of tradition to religion, I do not mean to malign the religious. I am religious myself. However, I have to admit, many who write with a religious perspective have a tendency to become more divisive than helpful, as they not only limit religion to Christianity, but to their own special perspective. Many is the time I saw an argument with which I agreed only to end up arguing with an author who insists that everyone must embrace his specific definition of grace or else be condemned. And, in this particular case, it is especially annoying, as there is no need for such religious argument. As I showed, one can argue in favor of tradition without a word about G-d in the whole thing, and yet the few conservatives who make that argument almost inevitably turn it into a theological debate which does much to drive away those who otherwise might be open to the argument.

Of course, on the other hand, I think libertarian types suffer from the opposite problem.Partly from a desire to keep distant from the religious arguments I mentioned, and partly for fear that readers will believe they are suggesting the government should solve social problems, libertarians tend to avoid social and cultural issues entirely. However, culture is part of the problem, whether they like it or not. Politics does not exist in a vacuum, and our culture creates our politics. And so I think the libertarians, by avoiding cultural issues, tend to set up an argument they are destined to lose, as they hope to win political struggles by entirely political means. The problem being, politics rests on philosophical and cultural assumptions, and so their many eloquent arguments for freedom fall on deaf ears if those they debate do not share their cultural beliefs. Only when they argue with others about those underlying beliefs, manage to convince their audience to embrace the necessary preconditions for freedom, can they win. But since they avoid arguing over anything but politics, many libertarians set themselves up for failure. (See "Trophy Spouses")