User:Facetia Soubrette/Neonarchy

A Neonarchy is a hypothetical form of oligarchical rule in which power and hegemony would rest with an increasingly youthful segment of society. A Neonarchy is to distinguished from a Neocracy, ie., a government by inexperienced hands or amateurs. The word neonarchy is from the Greek words for "young" (νέος) and "rule" (ἀρχή arkhē). Such a state would be achieved by the logical and cultural evolutionary result of popular psychological neoteny, through which delayed maturity might be a consequence of later parenthood, itself possibly caused by more prolonged formal education.

Neonarchy vs. Gerontocracy
A Neonarchy would theoretically structure itself around an ever-renewable corps of youthful, or youthful-appearing leaders. As modern culture is increasingly characterized by a rapid and accelerating pace of change, it demands an ever-higher degree of cognitive flexibility and neuroplasticity, which, hypothetically, could lead to a sociological and cultural tendency to gravitate towards younger leaders rather than to the more traditional political elevation of the aged and wizened as one would have in a gerontocracy. Ageism would likely become a far worse societal problem as the cut-off for what could logically be considered youthful would shift increasingly to an ever-younger demographic. Demonstrable neuroplasticity and increasingly paedomorphic attractiveness and characteristics would likely become the most recognizable markers of privilege within a neonarchic society. Jeunism, a form of discrimination against the elderly and in favor of the young, which is already a mainstay of current popular culture, dictates that the vivacity and beauty of youth is to be worshipped over the ostensibly greater moral and intellectual rigor of maturity. In a Jeunist worldview, the necessities of coping with rapid change would render the decreased faculties of the aged a considerable handicap in providing effective leadership. This cultural conditioning, left unchecked, could likely extend to the age-biased skewing of political candidacy and the helming of commercial enterprise, and could possibly even result in a highly dystopian future in which the elderly, then considered to be of a lower social class, would be regarded as dispensable, and possibly even disposable. The malleability of immature minds also presents an opportunity for those who would attain an intellectual sophistication sooner than their chronological peers, rendering them able to more easily manipulate the consituents of such a society. A youth-based and protean political structure, however, presents anything but a potentially stable state of affairs, given its concurrent obsession with novelty.

Examples of fictional Neonarchies or Neocracies
Some examples in fiction include Logan's Run by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World,