Youth as the Significant Market Product

Carl Truemann, on Reformation 21 has a great article concerning the reality of aging and our culture's desire to glorify youth. In it he says:

Consumerism is often criticized for the way in which it exalts individual choice at the expense of all else, with the result that value becomes simply a function of the marketplace. Yet I would argue that it is not only the fact that consumerism has led to an exaltation of choices in themselves which makes it responsible for the reductionist notion of value; it is the fact that consumerism has actually made the wrong choice. In its identification of youth as the significant market product, it has backed immaturity over age, foolishness over wisdom, know-it-all arrogance over humble acknowledgment of limitations and mortality. And those societies – be they economic states or even local churches – which choose to build themselves on consumerism need to realize sooner rather than later that the easy-credit and self-centredness which lie at the heart of their philosophical project can only manifest themselves in childishness. Childish rhetoric, childish ambitions, childish achievements.

Read the whole thing here.