The world is growing up.
Living has a way of creating a set of expectations.
When you are a child, you think you will have your teeth forever.
Then, one day, one of them comes loose, and soon they are all falling out.
Your expectations did not match Reality.
Most of us believe the stories told to us by those in authority over us during our early years, such as our parents and caregivers.
These stories we naturally believe to be true.
Why would our parents lie to us?
An example is that someday, you will have a job.
Most of us get some level of education, and from there, we make choices and pursue a career.
Life sometimes throws us a curveball, and instead of a career with a 9-to-5 job, we end up with an hourly wage at a fast food joint.
When we were told we would grow up to have a career and dream about what that career would be, the difference between Reality and our dream can be strikingly different, can it not?
Right now, you and I are living in a time of change.
We are witnesses to what I'm calling a clash of expectations.
Each of us expected our lives and the world to work one way, only to be confronted with something very different.
That difference is Reality.
This clash of expectations today occurs because, for the first time in history, we can have both the truth and lies delivered into our hands and minds instantly.
Steve Jobs wanted to put the power of the computer into everyone's hands.
He saw it as a way of incorporating, blending, and merging the human race in a specific manner to achieve the harmony of humanity through knowledge.
He helped usher in the communication age.
People like Buckminster Fuller recognized that the desktop computer would be the most revolutionary force to unite all aspects of humanity on a critical path of knowledge.
For the very first time in human history, humanity would be able to know information instantly.
Unfiltered.
Joseph Campbell, on the other hand, saw a canyon opening up in humanity's future.
As Arthur C. Clarke put it, humanity was coming to its own childhood's end.
It was going to lose its baby teeth.
Campbell rightly witnessed the end of humanity's transitional traditions.
When I was a child, I thought like a child, and when I became an adult, I thought like an adult.
Childish things are to be put away when we become adults.
Campbell observed that the world over had lost those cultural traditions that previously told children, 'Now you are no longer a child, now you are an adult.'
Our modern society…
As an adult, you are responsible for the common good of the whole.
Children, conversely, are primarily concerned with their own happiness and welfare and are often selfish.
Previously, in the West, this time of transition from childhood to adulthood was called the age of responsibility.
When a person reached the age of eight or thereabouts, the child was recognized by the adults in the community as being able to understand the difference between right and wrong.
Being aware of that difference meant they could be held responsible for their actions, not only for themselves but for the community.
They realized Joe was old enough to trust that he could take the cows down to the river for a drink and not leave them there to go off and play.
Responsibility…
The individual left behind their childhood and took on the role of the adult to support and defend the common good.
Our modern society has allowed that tenet of humanity, what it means to be a human and an adult, to drift away, much like Wilson the soccer ball did in the film Castaway.
Today, we allow 40-year-old adults to behave in public as if they were toddlers.
Somehow, collectively, we are afraid to tell these adults to put away their toys, clean up their rooms, and behave like adults.
Be responsible for your community welfare.
There is obviously a whole host of issues that these childish expectations from these immature adults can come into conflict with Reality.
I deserve a trophy!
I will marry Prince Charming!
I will have the perfect career!
I'm always right; you're always wrong!
You can't make me!
I'm winning; you're not!
I'm better than you!
It's mine!
Children.
Children.
The Child/Adult can resist growing and being responsible for more than just their selfish interests well into their 80s.
However, one day, they will have to face Reality.
The truth.
We only get one chance at life, and sitting at the children's table, living as a petulant child tyrant, is a sad existence.
A sad existence for the child and the parents.
In America today, we find many people who we have previously elected to Office who demonstrate that they are still children.
These representatives of ours whine, they stomp their feet, they cry out, and these Senators are throwing a tantrum because they refuse to do the chore that they were sent to elected Office to do.
Their expectations of power and prestige as a member of a representational government have come into conflict with the Reality of which is more critical, their self-interests or the Constitution?
They resent having to serve the Constitution and not solely themselves.
The Constitution is written for We the People, not I, the indulged child/adult.
At the head of our government currently sits a particular kind of spoiled brat.
Indulged throughout his life, never told he was wrong by those who served his father; he believes himself to be his own law, his own justice, his own judge.
He has an expectation that his world cannot be challenged.
It's time that the adults in the room introduce this child President to Reality.
It's time to give him a timeout.
Peace
Daniel J Frey aka Toby
