Empresario

[degringolade]

 
 Impressionism / Maxime Maufra/ The Port of La Rochelle at Twilight

I tend to hunker down in December and January.  Being this far north puts me in a dark tunnel for too much time in the day and my body reacts by thinking that, since it is dark, I should haul my ass to bed and go to sleep.  Last night I read in bed for a bit before dozing off.  It was 7:30.

I am coming to believe that my favorite day of the year is the winter solstice.  That way the days are getting longer not shorter.

Screed

I think that the main problem in raising children is the realization that they come out with their own souls.  I think that the problem in this arena is especially evident in

1. ) the boomers
2. ) and especially the boomer top 20% who feel themselves the pinnacle of all goodness and correctness.

So, let me run this down for you, all you can do is keep them between the lines.  they have to decide for themselves how long the race is and how hard they want to run it.  When the kids come out, they are 100% yours.  Every year you let them take back about five percent.  That way by the time they hit eighteen, they are themselves, not reflections of what you think that they should be.

What is see in the boomers and their larvae is the need to perpetuate a way of life and a way of thinking that is anathema to any kind of healthy adult relationship.  Boomers bought into the world that was handed to them.  You know, the fifties, the American Dream, See the USA in your Chevrolet.  Now granted, we knew about the game long ago.  When you look at the amount of effort spent in discrediting the theories of the Club of Rome,the wholesale abandonment of the appropriate technology movement, and terror engendered by the idea of living with less, you can see the nature of the beast.  Children are not there to adapt to the changing vagaries of life, but are there as trophies, upholding your position in the structure and validating your choices because they turned out just like you.

But good old Chuck Darwin had a say about this.  Darwin was all about adaptation.  Darwin was all about the contingency of life, not the maintenance of structure. 

I really think that the world is heading for a change in the none-too-distant future.  The physical constraints of an over-exploited resource base and the environmental changes wrought by the party that was the twentieth century are just now starting to get traction.  So the world and our society will need to change significantly in order to be able to adapt. 

So, tying this all together, I come up with the following:  I think that a lot of the unhappiness between generations today is promulgated by my generations belief in a failing system, and the expectation that the generations to follow will follow on the dead-end path that is the culture/civilization of today.  Children are seen as trophies, supporting one's beliefs and status, not as the independent being that will need to create a different world with the ability to adapt to the different conditions of tomorrow.