House of Eratosthenes

I suppose I didn’t realize it at the time, even though I was contributing to it, but there must have been a baby boom going on two decades ago give-or-take. Today, a lot of the households I know are coping with coming-of-age stuff. Stepping out, first “room of my own,” graduation, enlistment, et al. At the same time, the nation as a whole is trying to figure out, When did it become acceptable for an open and avowed socialist to run for President of the United States? And why has our society become so fractured, and contentious? When did that happen?

And a thought occurs to me: I tend to get into trouble when I point out things that everybody else already knows, but have made some silent, collective decision not to discuss openly. I have noticed this gets people all HowDareYou-ey, no matter who’s breaking the silence, as if the guy who broke the silence was actually around when “everyone” took a pledge to remain silent and is now breaking that pledge. When, of course, that is not the case and could not have been the case. Well…here I go again, I suppose…

Before reading further, one has to face an unpleasant truth, since we’re talking about people. People, a lot of the time, make no damn sense. And people, a lot of the time, really hate reading or listening to ideas that have to do with the fact that our species often makes no damn sense. Oh sure, we have no problem acknowledging that about the other guy. But, we seem to have this ego-alarm that reminds us, even when we don’t want to admit it, that “people” means everybody, a real everybody, not just the everybody-of-convenience we like to define moment to moment, as in “everybody is making a big mess” or “everybody needs to work harder and do their part.” And the idea here has to do with what “everybody” does when they’re at this age. Which seems to sound the alarm — “Hey, I was once that age, that asshole’s talking about me!”

Well…yeah. So with that said, let’s plunge into the darkness. The big idea is that people, when they are teetering on the brink of adulthood, are somehow compelled to approach life with a challenge, as if it were ever their place to do so. I’m not sure why this is. Possibly, this is the age at which life starts to challenge them, and they figure if they can turn the tables on it then that will sort of make everything good & right. But “they” means, of course, “we” — best I can figure, everyone’s done this, whether they realize it or not. It’s as common as a heartbeat.

The challenge goes like this. “Okay life, I’ll give you six months to a year for you to tell me what you’re all about. After that, you’ve had your shot and I’ll just make a decision without you.” Life, then, like Linus during a Charlie Brown Christmas Special, is supposed to drop what it’s doing, explain itself, and intone “There, person, that’s what I’m all about.”

Which it isn’t gonna do, because it’s got bigger fish to fry. There’s a lot more wrong with this than a preposition at the end of a sentence. Nevertheless, we do it. And whatever answer we get back at that age, we tend to keep around for a very long time. “Life,” meanwhile, has a tendency to speak to us much more loudly at the later stages. The challenge then becomes one of shedding this leaving-the-nest answer we think we got previously, in whole or in part, and replacing it with the answer we get later that’s better informed. We, as a species, aren’t too good at doing this. The impression we get at the close of the teenage years, we tend to keep for awhile; default tendency it to lug it around, all the way, into the coffin.

At age eighteen or so, if the answer life gives back is “live to the end of this war, and see to it your buddies do likewise” — then, that is how that person is going to see life. If the answer is “get these crops harvested in the fall so that we all don’t starve to death,” then that is how that person sees life. If the answer is “bullshit people so that they do what you want,” then ditto. Soldier, farmer, politician.

It really makes no sense at all, when you think about it. But it’s in our wiring, in our DNA: Eighteen years, plus a few months, at the very latest and that’s when we’re supposed to jab a finger in the air and declare Ah ha! Now I have it all figured out! Again, ending a sentence with a preposition is not the most-wrong thing about this; there are many others. Ah, the ego. “My evaluation is complete! How could it not be? I’ve seen everything!”

These days, without some clear and forceful reason why they should not be headed elsewhere, the default presumption is that they should all go into college. And then become liberals, since all the professors are engaged in a grand conspiracy of sorts to make them that way. Well you know, perhaps the professors really are; but allow me to stand up and offer a defense on their behalf, since no such conspiracy is needed. And if there’s a point to this Big Idea, that, surely, is it — we could harvest a whole generation of these lefty-leaning millennials, even if our colleges campuses were all solid-red Republican. There are other factors at work.

Parenthood has a way of setting one’s priorities. Get nothing else done, see to it at least that your kids have what they need. It’s an easy trap for us, a lot of parents fall into it. It’s hard to break out of it. But if we don’t, then after that leaving-nest-span, eighteen years, seventeen, sixteen, or twenty — there we are. Kid’s bellowing into the wind, demanding life explain to him what it’s all about, and life is remaining silent because the kid has always had everything he needed. So now, after life’s continued to remain silent after this little grace period he’s offered it, he has to do that highly irrational thing we all seem to be doing, and crystallize his “educated” finding, his decision.

Liberals are winning, right now, because they own a lot of “real estate” here. They own the man-child teetering on the brink of adulthood, who has concluded: “It isn’t about anything, it’s all futile.” That’s today’s liberal. The liberal who reached majority age yesterday, concluded: “It’s about avoiding this pooling-up of luxuries, so that very few of us have all the wealth, while everyone else starves…equality, man.” And with some, it has been: “Burn this bitch to the ground, no justice no peace.” Before that, it was: “Peace, make love, not war.” And before that — oh, yeah. Live long enough to go home. Or, avenge Pearl Harbor, if that’s your drift. At any rate, there’s a generational split for you.

So we wonder why the kids are starting to lean left. Or, lean nowhere, become smug little nihilists. We should be wondering why we’re wondering. You’ve heard that saying, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey”? So have I. I loathe it. But, there’s a truth to it; there is a reason we tend to keep saying it. Show me the journey a man takes, and I will show you the man. The journey has that sort of impact on people, the destination does not. What journeys do our children take, right before they become grown-ups? What ones are they compelled to take? What ones must they take? Answer that, and you’ve answered the more pressing question of what they will become. Even if the answer to that is a nullity; that, then, is what they will become.

But of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s really up to the person to decide if he wants to become a something, or remain a nothing. And he can decide that anytime he wants. The fact that so few people manage to do it in adulthood, means absolutely nothing. The options are open all the way.

Man, I loved this post! Lots to chew on here.

My 2 cents regarding Millennials is that they’ve been conditioned to what Behaviorists used to call “learned helplessness.” Their lives are all mapped out for them, starting in the cradle, and it all leads to… nothing. No job, no marriage, nothing but shiny blinky noisy iCrap that almost, but not quite, hides the fact that they’re working twice as hard for half the standard of living.

But, as you say, liberals have convinced a lot of people — starting with themselves, of course — that smug nihilism in the face of all this is actually the “smart take.” As if going through life with a Jon Stewart smirk is sufficient armor against all life’s travails. And when that doesn’t work, they just… turtle up, and wait for someone or something to bail them out.

And that’s why I say we’re headed to a very scary place. The need for a Big Idea, a Cause, a Meaning doesn’t go away. For every Campus Che and Trust Fund Trotsky out there, thinking he’s Making a Difference(tm) with #hashtags, there are five or ten or twenty young folks out there who want real action, any action… if only to punch the Jon Stewart smirks right off the #hashtaggers’ prissy little mugs.

One could build a very large movement that way, very quickly. If one were so inclined.
- Severian | 09/04/2015 @ 09:50
“And when that doesn’t work, they just… turtle up, and wait for someone or something to bail them out. ” And that someone, or in most cases, CROWDS of someones, are other liberals, spewing the same brainwashed clichés, thereby reinforcing the sad target’s liberal precepts, bringing them out of their funk if only by the virtue of a group “rage against the machine” nihilism.
Oh, if only we had a modern Joseph McCarthy. While the witch-hunt that liberals and socialists fear got carried away on a sea of fervor, ol’ Joe at least KNEW what he was doing. The Venona papers proved that HIS targets at least were accurate…hate filled communists and socialists conspiring to take our country down.
Of course, nowadays we’d have to lock up 20% of the country.
- P_Ang | 09/05/2015 @ 06:26
MF…anything you can do to add an “edit” button? If not for those of us who are perfectionists, then at least so those of us who are stuck in moderation limbo can edit our posts to misspell “lie-beryl”.
- P_Ang | 09/05/2015 @ 06:29
I’ll add it to my list of things to do. 🙂
- mkfreeberg | 09/05/2015 @ 06:48

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Coming of AgeFriday, September 4th, 2015

Coming of Age
Friday, September 4th, 2015