When I came to the US I was struck by the anti-wabi-sabi temporal aesthetics here, revealed especially by car insurance principles, where the goal is to restore a car to brand-new looks regardless of severity of accidents. So well-insured things don’t “age” naturally. They merely start to look unfashionable.

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The funny thing is that Americans unconsciously bring this ethos to self-presentation as well. Not just affect and deportment (which reveals a youthfulness fetish) but more worryingly, ethical postures. 

So you get 45-50 year-old people with “mint condition” virtue postures I’d expect to see in an 18-year-old

It’s like after every messy life event they go their “ideological insurance provider” and patch themselves up to mint condition. Instead of aging with a visible history of cracks and dents that would signal a mellowing and learning, you get virtue postures that look new but unfashionable

I think I prefer things to show their age, with a proof-of-scars auditable history of fundamental structure being tested by experience. 

I do not like old things in mint condition. Even in museums I prefer to look at somewhat worn things that reveal how the thing aged in its time.

Mint condition = stupid condition.

Which is not to say everything shows scars in the same way. Scratches and dents are good history records for a car, but not for a re-entry vehicle where they point to catastrophic failure risk. 

Scars = pragmatic patches that preserve the life of a thing but not necessarily original aesthetic integrity

In the US, you rarely see vehicles that have been roughly patched up to functional levels. You either see underinsured vehicles that look entirely neglected including barely street-legal dangerous damage OR things that are over-maintained by insurance and/or owners paying out of pocket with an eye on resale

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India. Where everything used to be endlessly and visibly patched to its last dregs of life. Now a more American attitude is seeing in