Společnost věčného mládí – Keller Jan (2021)

This book examines the consequences of one of the major sociocultural changes of the second half of the twentieth century: the unprecedented rise of adolescents as a new social category. Jan Keller analyses the mentality of people in this transitional stage of life, marked by unresolved choices, and traces how this category grew in both size and importance after the Second World War, during a period when society itself was moving from an industrial to a post-industrial form. He explores the emergence of the cult of eternal youth, centred on unlimited desire, the rejection of authority and the illusion of unrestricted individual choice, and shows how this cult influenced so-called postmodern thought. The book also examines how this way of thinking persists as the outlines of a hypermodern society emerge from the late 1970s and early 1980s. Keller argues that the carefully cultivated cult of youth distorts real social relationships and conceals the fact that qualities attributed to the younger generation are actually demands imposed from outside by the operating logic of companies, politics and the media. This artificially maintained cult drives people of all generations towards greater performance, primarily in the interests of large companies and financial markets, while distracting attention from the real problems faced by new generations.