Birthdays parties are weird. They are humanity’s manipulation of a natural biological process into a social event. Birthdays are also a bit narcissistic—a day dedicated to the celebration of one’s emergence and existence. Its a completely arbitrary, man made invention which i guess is designed to make us feel worthy and admired. They're used to mark another year of age, which is yet another form of manipulation. Aging is another biological process of which we mediate with numbers. Socially, people are constantly judged and defined by the number of years they have been on this earth. We use age as an indicator of ability by having laws restricting people of certain ages from driving, voting, drinking, etc. Age, however, is truly just a number of which society manipulates us to think of as a defining characteristic. This also relates to time in general of which we discussed is actually meaningless. These indicators of age and time still seem to be necessary for society’s progress. It normalizes the billions of people on earth, giving them a common scale to base their lives around. There are stages people must be in at certain ages which adds up to a sort of formula for an average humans life: childhood, school, college, work, family, the end. Even though these scales of time are manmade and manipulative, they force people to think of time and lives linearly, which instills a sort of pressure for progress, ultimately driving the force of civilization.
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