Legal Childhood

“Childhood” as we know it is a fairly recent invention. Not long ago, many kids would die before the age of five or six and were treated as favored pets. By the age of seven they were often used as near-slaves doing chores for the tribe, family farm, or industry. After twelve or so they were considered fully functioning adults _ married, working, or grittily apprenticed to a future career .

As the European industrial revolution progressed, “childhood” became redefined. Age definitions were gradually raised, partly because of horrendous working conditions, partly from increased middle class wealth and health, partly from a desire to keep youth out of the competitive workforce. The teenager was invented .

Now the plain fact is that in historical terms, “teenager” is a crazy concept. Most 13-year-olds have always been young adults. Our legal conception of teenagers as children is indefensible. 

Admittedly, teenagers and young adults are confused, have a lot to learn, and are not wise (so unlike older adults.) But we should remember that throughout the tens of thousands of years of the existence of our species, the average lifespan was 40 or less. A 16-year-old was in the prime of life .

We should adjust. As all parents have learned, treating a teenager as a “child” is doomed to failure.  Laws which attempt to do the same are not merely wrong, but also immoral.

A Little Knowledge

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. You think you are an expert, but you are not. A very easy trap to fall into, since we tend to overestimate ourselves .

Obviously this is hardly a new condition, but it has certainly been more and more aggravated by media and global electronic connections. We are “aware” of an awful lot of stuff. Unfortunately, that awareness is often shallow, scattered, wrong and only leads to worry about things over which we have no influence. And about which we may have entirely inappropriate background information and deep understanding .

At one time, we left most issues to “experts”. They might have been right or wrong, but it took our minds off such things and – since we rarely are directly impacted by distant stuff – did no harm. But now the internet is flooded with “facts”, stories, and anecdotes that falsely claim to deepen our knowledge about anything and make experts irrelevant .

As we believe we know it all, each of our worries becomes somehow more real and our own responsibility. We MUST do something. We must change things. We think we are fully aware. 

We are wrong. About most of the vast ineffable universe of things, individuals, and society we each know very little except what we directly encounter and we often misinterpret that. The only 

true cure is a bit more humility .

Expected

People are almost infinitely socially adaptable. Almost any condition can be tolerated. We happily navigate through societies where everyone is honest, nobody is honest, haggling is required, bribes are necessary, and even when contacts with certain ideas or groups are prohibited .

Over time, we can adjust, of course. If formerly honest people turn dishonest and so on. But we feel somewhat secure as long as the rules remain more or less as expected. And security, often more than wealth, is what a lot of us desire most. Know what will happen if we do certain things.

Dystopias, such as depicted in “1984”, are often nightmares because expectations constantly shatter. “Interesting times” when the world goes topsy-turvy are rarely happy. When we don’t know if the police are going to save us or destroy us. Even tiny things in our life like whether a food will make us sick or not .

Civilization right now has an odd combination of solid old traditions – meeting expectations – and completely new challenges making every plan fragile. It’s probably not a lot different than living through plague times in an ancient wealthy city .

What never helps is when authority itself becomes irrationally chaotic, so that each day presents new laws and declarations making the old laws obsolete or themselves illegal.

Even when change is what is expected, we may worry nervously .

Influences

Angry white folks are upset that Horatio Alger is no longer taught in public school. He was, of course, a fictional character, fake even in his own time way over a century ago, as unreal as Sir Lancelot .

Alger represented an ideal that anyone could succeed with luck and pluck. Like Caesar, Washington, Napoleon. More to the point Carnegie, Edison, and Ford. In more modern times Gates, Jobs, Musk. Ruthless, lucky, smart and very hard working to achieve great things from their own effort .

Implication in my tender years was that anyone could do this, just by working hard. Only later did we realize that most of those heroes came from backgrounds of wealth, social status, or unusual training. Even Jobs, now lionized, had a technically employed father who brought home computer stuff when most people had never heard of it .

Influences, contacts – whatever. I am not saying that these paragons did not work hard, did not deserve success. They did. But “merit” as a fairy tale of rags to riches is rarely any more true than any other apology for the wealthy and powerful .

The playing field was never level. Maybe even less so now. 

Abundance

Not that long ago, it was assumed that “India could never feed itself”. The “population bomb” would kill us all in malthusian cataclysm. Popular psychology decided that humans always want more than they have .

At least in many places, industrial “abundance” has arrived, and gives every indication of continuing and providing more – ignoring for the moment Black Swan catastrophic events – as automation and technology continue to increase .

What does an era of “abundance” mean? Surely some people are already satiated with food, clothing, shelter and even ”non-essential” stuff like status and entertainment. Their feeling of being “poor” is essentially only a comparison to others of whom they are envious. An outlook that could easily change with cultural shift .

The wealthy, of course, play games and insist that enough is never enough, as they feast on peacock tongues and build mountains of pseudo gold to awe their peers. The wealthy also want to be superior, and spend much time worrying that the poor can no longer be kept in their place. Food, clothing, shelter – my God who will ever work? Lazy bums !

I won’t live long enough to see it play out, but an abundant future, should it arrive, would certainly be interesting .

Progress

We cherish an ideal of progress. “Practice makes perfect”. The human world obviously runs on learned accomplishment. It does not matter if you are an athlete, a mathematician, or a parent. There’s always something to learn, some way to improve .

My art hobby has reached a point when it has stalled. At least in the sense of progressing to something better. Partly it’s a matter of accepting limitations. More truly, it’s a realization that choosing among various and often contradictory goals is not easy .

I don’t, for example, wish to become more realistic like a camera. Don’t want to head into absolute abstraction. Don’t want to be like any other style. Don’t actually want much of an audience .

I’ve settled for a realization that progress in this is, for me, a blending of the journey with the goal. I’m gratified to wake up enthused, to not be intimidated by a blank page, to not be discouraged if something does not work out. Like my walks, art activity is simply fun, meditative, instructive, and inspiring .

Long ago when I grew up many ordinary activities were like that. Sports, community, home, family, even work. Not improvement ad infinitum, little progress, just a happy sense of doing well and taking advantage of each moment .