Greta Thunberg and the Children’s Crusade

I want you to panic—Greta Thunberg age 16.

Sixteen is a very precious age. It is the age of our maximum heightened sensuality and openness to the world, of volatility and grace—there is a divine glint of promise in the sixteen-year-old — a terrible beauty that you can find even in the most sullen and lacklustre teenager if you look hard enough. This explains the cultural tendency for the adulation of the teenager, that began in America and spread to the rest of the world—and also the media embrace of Greta Thunberg. The teenager is a symbol of potential, sensual power, the possibility of a utopian future.

There is something of a religious response to the earnest pleas of the baby-faced and pigtailed teenager named Greta. She has the feel of a Joan of Arc archetype, a youth saviour. Greta—the avatar perhaps more than the person—represents a powerful meme. What can be questioned however is the Hollywood star-making machinery behind her. Slick promotional videos of orchestrated doom are the backdrop to her small, still, and powerful voice: the dramatic film score, the hungry babies, scenes of Sodom and Gomorrah, all tell us that the end of the world is nigh.

In today’s news—which is indistinguishable from marketing—we are so often carried away by crass emotionality and melodrama, swept into polarised views of this or that…