Updated Work in Progress: Chronology is an arbitrary basis on which to discriminate

It is an established pattern in my earliest memories. Defining people basic on chronological age, that is.

It starts when the youngest of children "wait-listed for the best pre-schools," sometimes before they are even born.

Toddlers are wheeled into day care classes or church nurseries where they are segregated from siblings and other children based on age, without regard to any other factor.

Six years old? You must begin first grade with all the other six year-olds, or you'll be left behind.
Once you start school, you must progress in lock step through each year with success defined by whether you excel or play catch up when measured against the age-based "scholastic norm," all so you can "complete" an education by 18.

The penalty for marching to a different beat is harsh. If you don't start reading when you are 5, you could be handicapped when it comes to taking SAT's and other tests when you are 15 or so.

Likewise with sports. If you don't start tennis lessons when you are five, you'll never play your best in high school, or get a college scholarship let alone play professionally.

Once you are conceived, it's all a race. If you don't select a speciality and start early, you'll just never excel.

These chronological imperatives are tools for the lazy to stereotype. Stereotyping takes less time. It may allow decision-makers to classify large groups in a hurry and predict to some degree those predisposed to perform certain tasks, but it also supports the wrong-headed ideas of racism, sexism, ageism and other isms that should never have been part of anyone's way of thinking.


And it doesn't stop with the completion of your education, rather it goes on and on through life.

Are you twenty-one? Welcome to the drinking imperative. The call of jello-shots and beer pong often start long before the legal age, and the peer pressure to join in and let your recreational activity be dominated thusly, with others in that same age bracket is difficult to resist.

Twenty-five. You better be established in a decent career or be able to explain in ten persuasive words or less what you've been doing with your time. And, if you're not in some form of graduate school, it's easy to define your universe at this age with what is needed to get ahead in your work and populate it with people who are similarly situated and motivated.

Twenty-eight and not married? ARRRRG!! That biological clock is ticking, and again, your universe gets populated with other frantic singles who share, if unchecked by someone older who can see the bigger picture, your distorted, myopic view of the world.

Thirty, and no million dollars yet--what's wrong? More work. More workaholics as your friends.

These and other chronological milestones lead us to limit our interests and segregate people by chronology, thus losing out on the benefits of associating and identifying with people across the chronological spectrum.


more coming