I’m sure you’ve bumped into the phrase “youth is wasted on the young.” It was supposed to be a disguised lament, or a gentle way of distancing yourself from the normal immaturity of the young. But nowadays, it’s taken more literally.

When you hit your thirties, you actually begin to see the benefit of maturity. The most recent neurological studies of the aging brain show that its neuronal connections shrink in number, starting at the age of thirty-five or so, but the connections remaining grow stronger. What this translates into in terms of behavior is a more rote-bound pattern of thought and behavior – and a corresponding gain in seeing nuance in what is taken literally or naïvely by the young.

To put it in more simple language, the mature man or woman is more reliable. I’m sure you can guess what primal task you need that reliability for.

This used to be expressed socially through the means of shaming and shunning. Any supposedly mature man or woman that insisted upon acting teenagerish beyond their twenties was called many names, all of which translated into “undependable.” If a chronologically mature man wanted to stay in teenager mode, he had to face teenagers as a peer, not as an authority figure.

For most adults, this would be seen as degrading. At the very least, seeing people you grew up with – your age-peers – succeeding in life while you are stuck on the margins would provide sufficient embarrassment to encourage you to stay on the mature path. Reinforced by ‘social cruelty’ this might be, but this kind of community pressure does favor reliability at the expense of irresponsibility. And we’re all warned long in advance that such pressure will exert itself when we’re ‘unlucky’ enough to hit our thirties.

The above makes a lot of sense, as it jibes with the biological rhythm of life. So how did society get so out of skew?

One of the reasons can be found in the entertainment industry. There, it is possible for the young to achieve the kind of wealth and notoriety, and even fame, traditionally reserved for the old. Thanks to normal human acquisitiveness, we’re primed to admire and emulate success, or at least identify with it. Seeing (say) Avril Lavigne enjoying a bully- pulpit power comparable to that of the First Lady, or seeing a quartet of lovable gadabouts making their elders cower simply through the successful use of the word-label “wannabe,” triggers the dream that it’s possible to be both immature and very influential at the same time.

This unprecedented power enjoyed by youthful entertainers is really symptomatic of the immaturity of our times, as entertainers that don’t stay attuned to the pulse of public feeling don’t become popular. Had society been more mature, then respect for the way of the elders would have been part of the acts, both on- and offstage: just look at the behavior of Elvis Presley in his prime. To put it more simply: “don’t shoot the piano player; he’s playing your request.”

Also: the average musician has spent a lot of time practicing, which actually makes that “piano player” a cut above the supposedly mature person who spends his or her life in a candy-floss world where everything is handed to them provided they complain enough.

The above explains one of the ways in which the traditional respect for age broke down. In order to win the respect that is normally due to the mature, you have to behave in a mature way, which includes taking responsibilities that the young can slough off without any real punishment falling on their heads. As long as there are a bunch of chronologically agèd men and women who stay in a state of childish dependency on ‘society’ without being made to grow up, then a twenty-year-old ruffian with tattoos on his arms, menace in his eyes, and years of self- imposed practice on the guitar (keyboard, drums, voice, dancing, etc.) behind him will command real respect.

And the more cynical in the field know this cold.

There’s another social force impelling this supposedly inverted hierarchy too. What if a young man or woman in their early twenties shows a maturity to the degree that it puts their chronological elders to shame? What is to be done with a reproach such as this?

It wouldn’t be throwing them out into the periphery, now would it? What kind of person is there to meet them and their “insider’s knowledge” of what regular society is really like?

None other than the normal teenager, whose only interest in life is to acquire a cool whose source is disdain for social authority. Rallying around a youth who’s more responsible than the average middle-aged bumf is a perfect way to acquire that cool.

In fact, this kind of cool is so potent that many of the oldsters will rally around such a cachet-dispenser themselves! Hence the spectacle of a bunch of ‘suits’ trying somewhat clumsily to act as if they were still living the wild teenage life.

For a quick guide showing what this implies, let me list briefly what I considered to be ‘cool’ around the age of sixteen or so, but have given up as I’ve aged. Just ask yourself how far these habits will get you in the office:

1. Faking my way through the beer store to get alcohol underage.
2. Showing up at school drunk (a brush with the vice-principal cured me of this forever.)
3. Gunning a car down a quiet residential street and coming to a legal stop at the end of the strip, and then bragging about how fast I got up to.
4. Seeing new stop signs sprout up on that same street and laughing.
5. Altering excuse notes already written by my parents to lengthen the time I got out of school (which jibed with #2.)
6. Doing the minimum amount of schoolwork required and throwing it aside for the sake of the TV.
7. Brief experiments with mind-altering substances.
8. Taking advantage of loopholes in the school rules.
9. Seeing a stop sign (from another street) which an acquaintance of mine knocked down as being governed by the salvage laws prevailing on the seas.
10. Keeping my mouth fastened tight when a mature man would call the authorities or the police.

I was actually mature in some ways for my age back then, which occasionally led to serious trouble. Such trouble made me grow up more quickly, in some ways.

But that isn’t the point of the above list. What I’m driving at is this: Bragging about these scrapes might be charming when coming from a sixteen-year-old, but what if a thirty-five-year old man – with access to the privileges accorded to that age – finds such teenagerish irresponsibility admirable?

And one more point. Because I’m male, my previous kind of immaturity is more immediately threatening, unlike the more subtle mischief that a female teenager is very capable of...