In his Washington Post column George Will considers a subject which I think has much broader implications. The subject is modern parenthood and here is his peroration:
Contemporary America is a bubbling cauldron of acidic judgmentalism, a stew of status anxieties, of preening about lifestyle fads and of nasty habits learned from government: Brooks seems to understand that “the criminalization of parenthood†occurs “within the confines of an oppressive and infantilizing nanny state.†The ever-metastasizing administrative state’s rage to regulate bleeds into a pandemic urge to criminalize more and more of life, and to excoriate and shame those whose behaviors cannot (yet) be formally punished.
It is not unrelated that whenever a third-rate comedian or an adjunct professor of gender studies at a third-tier college says something politically idiotic or — which is much the same thing — culturally “insensitive,†Internet hordes who are happy only when unhappy become ecstatically enraged: A brain map might show their pleasure receptors ablaze, as if stimulated by another controlling addiction, cocaine.
Modern American life brings many stresses beyond those of judgmentalism, “status anxieties”, lifestyle fads, and nasty habits. There is always social pressure to “do the right thing”. I don’t think there has ever been a time at which it has been so difficult even to know what the right thing is and the perception of what the right thing is changes with rapidity too fast to follow.
As we have recently been reminded, what you did as an adolescent and even what you are accused of doing as an adolescent can blight your life forever.
Income and job insecurity are tremendous stresses. We have gone from being a country in which 5% of the people were foreign-born to one in which 14% of the people are, the highest in our history. In some American cities two-thirds of the people are native speakers of a language other than English, the first time in our history in which that has been the case. That alone is a source of stress, as the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel tells us.
Our politicians are sources of stress. Our news media have apparently decided their job is to keep us in a permanent state of anxiety. A president predisposed to lash out on Twitter is not a stress-reliever.
Liquid water does not become ice gradually. It happens suddenly. That’s called a “change of state”. As stresses mount we should not assume that they may be adjusted to incrementally. Reactions can come suddenly and without warning.
“Reactions can come suddenly and without warning.”
The money line.
From my perspective Will downplays this (pp2) at his own peril. Look at the sudden wave of pet rock-like hysteria over a set of hopelessly ill thought out socialist schemes advocated by some politicians in select geographies and demos. Or the sudden willingness on the part of some to all but suspend due process in the name of the MeToo movement. It looks like the Dems may have stepped on a rake here, but the public discourse of on the verge of madness.
And people more than before lie to pollsters. People voted Trump though they know he’s an ogre. And people will vote Socialist though they know it would mean disaster. It’s a protest vote born of anger, damn the consequences.
For the young, medical insurance costs and student loan debt are albatrosses that leave them devoid of hope. without hope comes despair, then anger. In their shoes I’d feel the same way.
High school grads who should never have gone to a four year college were led by government funded shills, (Upward bound), (TRIO), who used sales techniques like timeshare salesmen to take on unrealistic levels of debt for three or four semesters, (or worse,graduated), then took jobs sacking groceries at nine dollars an hour. Facing debts as big as mortgages for pie in the sky college dreams, It must seem like a prison sentence. Since we didn’t do it when they were 17, maybe now we can preach to them about the virtues of capitalism. Sure, capitalism is great, but not when you’re on the outside, looking in.
As a parent of three kids, things are certainly much different than when I was growing up. You are forced to helicopter in many cases or risk a visit from child welfare services. So much more is structured now, determined by academic “experts” and forced upon high.
A bit of a tangent, but here’s one example:
I’m fortunate that I’ve now settled in an area where this tendency is much less than the many other places I’ve lived. At my youngest son’s previous elementary school in Florida, they had one 15 minute recess a day for first grade and homework every single day. Lunch was 20 minutes. My son struggled to sit there all day and then he was expected to come home and sit some more to complete a stupid worksheet. He got so antsy in class the school counselor told us he had ADD and we should take him to a doctor an get meds.
For 2nd grade we homeschooled while traveling and he did very well.
Now he’s in 3rd grade at an elementary school more like what I grew up in. There are three recesses each day and zero homework. He is happy and thriving and learning. He’s not antsy or distracted or distracting in class.
There is an ADD crisis in schools and it’s mostly self-inflicted thanks to our own stupid policies.
Andy: Wish i knew how to raise kids, I’d’ve done a better job. I think you are right about grade schoolers learning in bursts, short attention span. But by high school that needs to change, or the’ll be left behind.
I doubt many people are truly stressed by politicians. We live in a country where ridiculous busywork is encouraged as a test of faith. Look at Amazon and the expectation that it’s totally fine to weep at your desk. At a certain level, training children by avoiding recess and forcing them to do endless assignments is perfect training for dealing with repetitive middle-management tasks or working in an Amazon warehouse and or in checking your email in the evening or throughout the weekends instead of being with your family.
Immigrants who speak no English at home and English only poorly are a hell of a lot more fun than a Donald Trump who speaks English poorly wherever he goes.