The Time Person of the Year for 2019 was Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old ‘activist’ whose main (and only) accomplishment is reciting her scripted speeches in as melodramatic fashion as possible.

Finland has a new prime minister, a 34-year-old who became “the world’s youngest serving state leader”, and for that alone was lauded and applauded by people all over the world: people who never followed her political career, people who know nothing about her, people who did not even know of her existence before reading a tweet about her election. Austria went ahead and one-upped the Finns by electing a 33-year-old as Chancellor this month.

There clearly is a trend: everyone who is young is de facto worthy of whatever, and agencies, organisations, newspapers, magazines, television stations and even countries seek to employ, elect, praise and promote ever younger people. I wouldn’t be surprised if a country chose a pre-schooler for president.

It matters not a jot what that young person has objectively accomplished, and what her credentials and experience in a particular field are. We go by age, these days, and the younger, the better.

I remember a time when the opposite was true: experience was king, and employers followed this mantra religiously and fanatically. It was always the case that when things are observed religiously and fanatically, ironic incongruences arose.

During many of the interviews my young self attended, I was asked for “relevant experience” and was made to wonder how I could ever be able to provide a satisfactory answer, given that I was presented with a clear chicken or egg scenario: how could I gain the necessary experience if the only way to gain that experience required having that experience in the first place?

As is often the case, our society has gone from one extreme to the other.

Now it seems that experience is not that important: one can talk about stuff even when clearly out of one’s depth, and one can even lead a country as long as one has the zeal for it, is energetic enough and determined and ambitious and all the silly humbug everybody puts in their CV to make it stand out.

Gone is the notion of having elders: those are only relegated to film and lore. Who has time to listen to the mumblings of Yoda? You may find the wise elders in the Lord of the Rings, but it’s this new ring of “young leaders” who dictate the “best way forward” nowadays.

Young is the measure we use to decide who’s right, with parents constantly asking their own children what the latter should eat, do, and wear.

This idea that children can decide on their own at very early years is reinforced by many: one “counsellor” bragged about how he never disciplined his children.

Our society has gone from one extreme to the other. Now it seems that experience is not that important

And so we have spoilt children thinking they know more than they actually do (for they do not possess the experience to realise that, in fact, they do not).

That’s not to say that the young have nothing to contribute: Marin’s support for a six-hour, four-day workweek makes sense – and is something I have been advocating for years.

But I am not Finnish, or a woman, and, now, not young enough – and it is harder for people to disagree, not least because they would be disagreeing with a young, female leader: that would be neither cool nor trendy.

The fact is, however, that one must prove one’s worth – and the worth of their arguments – through logic and reason, and not appeals to emotion, gender, age or race. There is a reason why we don’t let the child who beautifully recites the Christmas sermon to dictate traffic laws.

We must be able to discern between real messages born of intellectual activity and acting (though clearly, most aren’t able to): one can see online how Thunberg’s answers to impromptu questions are not as convincing, to put it mildly, as her rehearsed performances.

Humility, and its sad loss and replacement by misguided confidence, has a lot to do with the current state of affairs. I recall how I never felt truly adequate to voice my opinion, and despite doing so out of rebellion, I always retained doubt as my teacher, for the only thing I was sure of was that I had not read enough.

Indeed, it is never enough when it comes to reading about a subject, and so I always thought I needed to know more, but the more knowledge I gained the more I realised I didn’t know enough: that is the paradox with gaining true knowledge.

At least I could ‘cheat’ by standing on the shoulders of giants, and so I devoured the teachings of the wise and dead, fully aware that not even the sum knowledge of a thousand lifetimes would paint a full picture of the complexities of life.

It seems there is no need to dedicate years and decades to learning – acting now, yesterday even, is all that matters.

Sure, there may have been negative consequences which could have been avoided had we listened to our elders, but then we would not be acting, we would be thinking, and it is important to just act and produce and start projects and come up with initiatives and do this over and over, without wasting all that time in planning and all that unnecessary and trivial researching and studying.

Who cares what old, boring scientists have to say about climate change? All they have done this past decade was research the facts, and we all know facts are very much passé. Let us listen to  an overly-emotional diatribe by a truant kid instead.

Let us let the children address the adults at the highest institutions (and in the most patronising tone possible) and catapult them to undeserved worldwide fame. The 16-year-olds have a lot to teach before they learn, and if that doesn’t make any sense you need not worry, for sense is also overrated.

And so the wise advice of humanity’s elders is ignored and forgotten.

This is reflected in the way a society is organised and what it values: you can earn a lot if you’re a software developer (a young industry), but who needs philosophy?

What could that possibly teach us about life which would be worth knowing, except perhaps how to live a better life and understand it better?

Which, as we all know, is entirely useless: there is no need to contemplate life, one just lives it – when it comes to living, just do it, and don’t think twice. Yolo, you know.

What could possibly go wrong by adopting such an attitude?

Cicero believed that in order to know the true worth of one’s writing, one should read it eight years later. But what did Cicero know, that old fart.

Young people today know better, and have replaced such outdated ideas with wonderful bite-sized tweets which are bereft of any information and, in most cases, any grammar.

Just share whatever comes to mind without any second thought, and quickly move on to the next issue, to be dealt with succinctly and immediately: one cannot remain young forever, after all.