The present time has revolutionized relationships between the different ages of life. The present and future belong to the young. People of the past are intruders. Youth must be extended as long as possible, by whatever means possible. This compression eliminates maturity, the age of fullness. What are the consequences?

«What weakens is the flow of time, the passage of phases and their passing, the end of one season and its mutation into the beginning of another… What we unlearn is how to prepare for old age, how to welcome it from the first signs to the obvious trials and its acceptance. We choose to remain the same as we imagine ourselves to be… But the real result of all this is the disappearance of the middle age, the transition phase, the passage of maturity, adulthood. ... The last nexus that is broken, between young and old, is thus between fathers and sons, the most sacred one, the one that turns successive age classes into generations. We are in front of the unprecedented. And here, the jurist Zagrebelsky cannot fail to raise the boldest and now indispensable issue, that of the rights of future generations. To the historical selfishness of the living, we must oppose the right of those to come, the right to succeed us. We are evidently before the prefiguration of pre-civilized and pre-political rights: simply human, indeed we should say pre-human, because they concern the future inhabitants of the Earth. The right to exist, even before the right of the living. The zero point of law». Ezio Mauri, La Repubblica