Outside The Box

“Sometimes the very young do not do as they’re told.” -Anteaus of the Nox

When you reach an uncertain age, you begin to realize that your parents were right about many things. This will occur sooner or later, like it or not, depending on how well you have been paying attention to your own life. When it does happen you may even feel the urge to pass along the knowledge yourself, but most will not listen, and those who do may not hear. You didn’t either.

The ancients had an explanation for this impediment. As they saw it, there are three levels of intelligence. At the highest level, one hears the truth, recognizes it as truth and acts on it. At the next level, one hears the truth, disregards it and learns through experience. Unfortunately a great many people fall into the lowest level of intelligence. They hear the truth, disregard it, fail to learn from the experience that results, and repeat the lesson.

Your humble servant is not prepared to admit how many remedial lessons he has been required to repeat, but if he could pass on to the very young a few of the things his parents were right about, and some unexpected lessons driven home along the way, the following would be among them:

You can waste a lot of precious time and energy, a lifetime, comparing your life to other people’s images of success. You are the only person who must decide what success looks like for you, and if you can learn early how to prioritize wanting what you have over getting what you want, success will come easier. Never discount happiness and peace of mind as an indication of what success should look like.

Nothing comes without a cost. This can be an unpleasant truth in a culture that traffics in addiction, particularly the addiction to instant gratification. If your goal is to become financially independent, observe financially successful people. Unless they inherited their wealth, every single one was able at some point in their life to set aside short term wants for long term goals.

Your generations are plagued by depression and anxiety, anger and suicidal thoughts. You’re not the first, nor will you be the last. What is different this time is that there is a technological common denominator to much of your suffering. Social media in all its forms can be a powerful tool for communication. It can also be the cannula through which you feed on other people’s lives, and that is not a healthy diet for mind, body and spirit.

Social media can enable, focus and replicate the worst of human behavior. In that realm people think there are no consequences for their actions, but the results cry out from too many young people pushed to despair. Some of you have realized this already, and the old fashioned flip-phone, devoid of all but the most basic functions, is becoming popular again.

Every generation since the beginning has been obsessed with sex. Civilization has always struggled to contain the impulses that can create life and, unbridled, annihilate it. Marriages, friendships, careers, health and life itself have been destroyed over and over in the attempt to satiate the carnal desires.

Yet no civilization in the history of humanity has allowed the narrative around that basic instinct as expressed through gender to become so conflicted and confused as the daily drama media injects into the national consciousness. Your generations are the leading edge of this drama. To be clear, most of us, the overwhelmingly vast majority, are not confused, but the issue has been hijacked, warped, and amplified beyond reason for political purposes and social engineering.

Most people care only about the quality of your character. Truly. As far as those of us minding our own business and trying to make a living are concerned, you can insist you’re a stalk of celery if you like. In fact, you’ve had that legal right for decades, long before it became the latest issue to engage the national pixel addiction.

Just remember two things: First, Nature always bats last, and second, when you insist that everyone around you agrees that you’re a stalk of celery or be punished for their contrary opinion, and demand to be accommodated in the produce section, you’ve gone too far, and people who would otherwise prefer to live and let live will push back.

Walking hand in hand with gender ideology are those three letters of immense concern to youngers and also to some who conflate liberalism with Marxism: D.E.I., which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. These are fine ideals at face value. You did not invent these concepts.

For generations the US was known as the great melting pot, where peoples from all corners of the globe, with every possible combination of belief and cultural heritage, came together to forge a society uniquely American. We know about diversity. Been there; done that; still doing it better than anywhere else in the world.

The problem with your version of diversity is that it seeks to attach itself to equity and eliminate merit from the equation. When you prioritize diversity and equity over merit, you get mediocrity. With mediocrity, bridges fall and planes crash. The US economy and infrastructure is a complex “system of systems.” Most people have no idea of the vast number of systems that have to function properly for you to be able to hop in the car, drive to the market and buy a loaf of bread. Mediocrity is already threatening the delicate balance of our vital systems, as demonstrated by the rotten core of many large cities.

As stated, you did not invent these ideas. Equity has long been at the core of New Testament truth, and for generations the diverse denominations of Christianity as well as other religious beliefs have taught that God is no respecter of persons, and shows no favoritism or partiality. However, what many of you call “equity” and “inclusion,” when those goals include universal income and equal outcomes no matter the level of effort or competency – is actually closer to Marxism.

There is nothing diabolical or special about Marxism. It actually contains some laudable ideals. It’s just that it has always failed as an economic system, and is doomed to fail because it misunderstands human nature.

Forty thousand years of experience have programmed humanity to compete as much as cooperate. Give us a boundary and we will test it, push against it, and create a new boundary. That is the primary occupation of youth, and you are carrying on that tradition just like all your ancestors did.

Those of us with more mistakes under our belts are concerned that this time around may be different for you, however. There are uncomfortable echoes of the past in the rhetoric, and in the methodology of those who influence you. You are being herded, as all humanity is subject to endure from time to time, into a future of coerced conformity.

Right now you think that’s exactly what you want because the images are decorated with ideals that resonate. Inevitably you will realize that you have been deceived, and you will rebel. Like the generations before you who learned but somehow failed to pass along this vital lesson, you may discover the heavy cost of freedom.

Some of you will understand, and you will be the builders, or rebuilders, of tomorrow. Keep these tools handy, because there is every indication our foundations are weakening. There will be hard times ahead, but hard times create strong men and women, and they in turn create better times.