Agony aunt blames hormones for npb politics

It might just be possible that the kids of neuro virtue-signallers are becoming neuro virtue-signallers themselves. As ever, the Observer agony aunt is at hand

My daughter is 13 and while she seems like a normal, happy teenager much of the time, she has frequent breakdowns about her future, the future of the planet, politics. It came to a head when she couldn’t stop crying and said: “I hate living. I wish I was born in a world before TV and internet, so I didn’t have to deal with all this stuff.” She went on to say: “What’s the point when we’re all going to die anyway? All we do is wake up and it’s the same thing again and again until we die.”...I’ve talked to her about what we can do, or are doing: being vegetarian, recycling, reducing packaging, but it doesn’t allay her angst [strange that --but she's not seeing it as just symbolic?] ....Half of me wants to say: you’re right. Is it my fault for sharing politics with her?

Mariella writes:

 Maybe you need to mix it up a little bit at breakfast. Put your fears for the planet aside, switch off the Today programme, fold up the Guardian and put on some Abba? Have some fun together... life is still worth living because, even in the worst of times, there is joy to be found. Try changing your morning radio station – Chris Evans brings a welcome blast of irrepressible enthusiasm to the day – and find activities with your 13-year-old that are just for fun

Then an odd bit, suggesting that millenial/Gen Z concerns are just mistaken responses to hormonal disturbance:

Your girl is a teenager, and already likely to be struggling with...hormonal cataclysm...In her elevated emotional state she’s capable of getting herself worked into the same frenzy about global warming as about the injustice of missing a friend’s birthday party....When I see the Bambi-like figure of Greta Thunberg on the world stage, I find myself guilty about the world they’re being fast-forwarded into. The bottom line is that world affairs can be crushing at a time when an unrequited crush on the boy next door is barely survivable

At least the fears and anxieities about Brexit seem to have been shelved -- but there's alway another moral panic in the insatiable drive to find a topic for cultural politics and social distancing. Frostrup admits as much really, underneath a bit of biological determinism -- competititon for status among friends will do just as well as getting all Bambi-like on the world stage.

M Frostrup's own attempts to protect the environment can be seen below in the picture that accompanies her other article on sleep deprivation:

Mariella wears Coco rosehip pyjama set by oliviavonhalle.com; [£420] eyemask on bed by slipsilkpillowcase.co.uk; [£50] and Echo alarm clock by newgateworld.com.[£22]  Makeup by James O’Riley at Premier Hair and Makeup using SUQQU; and hair by John Frieda. Photograph: Kate Martin/The Observer