Among the powerful, there is open talk of defeating aging. Stopping the clock to reinforce established hierarchies and living as if life itself had no biological limits. The will to exist in capital letters, to never leave, the self taken to the extreme that defies even death. This is the context. The conversation between Xi and Putin, captured in Tiananmen Square by an open microphone, in which they were encouraged to live forever, or at least one hundred and fifty years, through organ transplants. Reality increasingly resembles a dystopian B-movie. But the megalomania associated with longevity—a euphemism often used to avoid saying immortalityLongevity is not exclusive to autocrats, but a distinctive status symbol that is beginning to outweigh money among the rich and powerful everywhere. This longevity is clearly not purchased to make selfless contributions to society, but rather, in most cases, serves to continue enjoying the adrenaline rush of power, fame, and victory over all others. sine die at the top of the pyramid.
Here, then, is another perverse consequence of the prevailing presentism, which eliminates the historical nature of the present and ends up not only erasing the past, but also undermining the possibility of envisioning an alternative future, distinct from this present governed by a totalizing, immediate, insatiable competition that dares to deny even what makes us all equal: death. It is the profoundly anti-humanist will to power of an individualism that defies all limits. A framework of thought that denies old age as a biological fact, and that also denies old age as a social responsibility to be protected in the name of the common good, advocating for a downward reform of pensions.
I'm referring to the discourse of some young people influencers Ultraliberals accuse pensioners of being "selfish and unproductive, living off other people's money." This is an extremely dangerous discourse because, beyond fueling the old neoliberal dream of privatizing pensions, it denies the elderly the right to live protected from the dynamics of contemporary capitalism, thus showing contempt not only for older people but also for the possibility of having, in the name of the common good, lives protected from this totalizing Darwinism. It is not surprising, then, that the influencers Those who defend this anti-pensioner ageism worship the diplodocus of power that they want to live forever.
They are two sides of the same coin: bros Juniors and seniors who embrace a primal, patriarchal megalomania that has the audacity to disguise itself as progress. One progress Led by messianic leaders who, in many cases, have already written off planet Earth. Reactionaries who don't believe in democracy but in ruling corporate castes, and who, rather than guiding us toward the future, are dragging us back into a pre-modern obscurantism that is both messianic and authoritarian. new ageOlder gentlemen rebelling against biology with sheer guts and Viagra if necessary, with incredibly expensive rejuvenation treatments, withwellness and Ozempic wide. And the bros Young people who want to emulate them fuel generational conflicts, further eroding the common good while simultaneously obscuring the real causes of growing generational inequality. These causes have nothing to do with the existence of pensions, but rather with the increasing importance of speculative capital and the progressive destruction of a productive economy increasingly less structured around collective bargaining agreements. In other words, it is no longer wages, but property ownership, that marks the difference between precariousness and existential stability. This precariousness obviously affects young people more, who suffer both from precarious contracts and from difficulties accessing housing.
This inequality and lack of future prospects generates a logical generational rage that some exploit to further unravel the social fabric, also seeking internal enemies and blaming them for the moral decay they themselves create. They claim that social disintegration has nothing to do with the destruction of the common good, but rather with a supposed leftist, woke-bond-feminist conspiracy of spoiled, lunatic youths who are destroying traditional values, and with immigrants who aspire to replace our culture with their own. It's about identifying internal enemies, pitting generations against each other, so that the powerful can continue to call the shots, searching for the elixir of immortality, and above all, doing whatever they please—because that's what freedom is for.
