Let’s give children another option than to either blindly submit or to tap out early, and instead inspire them to think different. Different from the overwhelming manmade mediocrity we impose on them.
Wake Up
I vividly remember kids throwing themselves in front of the train on a specific railroad crossing in my 17-year home-town of Palo Alto, a town known for harboring the most affluent beneficiaries of the sky-rocketing valuations of technology companies.
In no small way did those saddening occurrences, with me passing over that railroad crossing every day, dropping my daughter off at school, affect my change of focus towards promoting how we must and can change the world for the better (see my other blogs). For as a parent I feel responsible for the excellence of the systems we leave behind for our children, even though I created none of those systems.
Unaccepting
I can not idly stand by and submit to manmade mediocrity, nor would I want my daughter to. The reason why she does not appear to be depressed, in my view precisely because I discuss manmade mediocrity with her on numerous occasions. As an analytical mind calibrated to reality is the only significant source of real positivity we can all hang our hat on.
But not all kids are lucky enough to have parents who pay them any real mind, and it is disheartening to see our manmade systems offer our kids no better safe-haven, the sheer volume of manmade stupidity and mind-numbing submission bound to make any embryonic brain cell shrivel up in fear.
Dumbness
Let me pretend I am driving you to school:
- We are told to brake to a full-stop at virtually every intersection when we drive our cars, even when we can see no cars or pedestrians are coming. How dumb are we to submit to manmade systems of behavior that assume we cannot think or judge for ourselves? Thinking for yourself removed from the outset of human development. The last thing kids want to become are creatures of habits, like us.
- Our constitution which mentions the rights to freedom never actually defines the term nor specifies its implementation. Why then are we surprised none of our systems adhere to the most basic principles of fairness and liberty we can conjure up? As a result, our kids are instead automatically submitted to unfair advantages maintained by cunning coagulating money-grubbers our kids are then advised to become. Who cares we suffocate oceans with plastics from the ignorance of a rat-race for profit margins? Kids will remember us for this ignorance.
- Technology companies overwhelmingly create totalitarian monisms for the world, no different than the kinds of systems the Nazis and the Roman Empire have unsuccessfully attempted to deploy. The brutality of fascism merely shifted from physical abuse to mental imprisonment with technology. Do we need to drag our kids through another enslavement era to recognize once more no totalitarian system for the world manages to encapsulate the ingenuity of human plurality? Kids enjoy a shiny new technology toy as much as they like sugar, addiction to dumb technology will do them serious harm.
- We describe the pursuit of money as the American Dream because only money will produce the “fuck you money” to gain your independence and freedom. Wait, did I mention freedom? The freedom we describe as the hallmark of our societal systems and the rest of the world has blindly embraced? The freedom that can only be achieved by gaining a financial advantage over another? Is that really what constitutes freedom? No wonder kids prefer surfing as a more enriching lifestyle.
- We emphasize the need for groundbreaking innovation by private companies we arbitrate through the boundless fundraising by venture capital, using a financial system that under the veil of “freedom” subsequently violates the very principles public companies are bound by, an arbitrage of overwhelming collusion by design numbing the ability to spot outliers who may change the world for the better. Case in point, venture capital, failed to recognize Tesla as the most crucial game-changer of our lifetime. Now, they desperately hang on to Tesla, as success claims many fathers who need to raise another fund. Broken systems of finance, now to the tune of eleven times the size of production as the debilitating theory of arbitrage that determines much of what humanity and its children can discover (Einstein).
- We deploy health insurance only to people currently employed, never mind those who have been working all of their lives, we can charge them extra. With illegal immigrants paying about ten times less for the same service. And then we allow health insurance companies to pick apart the body parts to which such insurance is applied. As if dental and vision are not crucial to the health of the rest of your body. An indignant way to defer the cost and risk of runaway health back to the “insured.” Like home insurance excluding the fireplace. Do not sell your children false guarantees of life.
- Our implementation of capitalism violates the most fundamental principles of freedom, ignoring the very relativity of freedom that represents the plurality of humanity. And thus by its current monism engages only those willing and able to submit to such monism. A narrow skill set is not appealing and not supportive of kids with the propensity to expand the fractal of humanity. Do not underestimate your child’s ability to comprehend before they can communicate.
- We talk about free-markets as if they are animate objects with magical powers, forgetting they are unchallenged inanimate manmade manacles not unlike our belief in Santa Claus. Neither are they free, for the simple fact, they inevitably deploy supply or demand side restrictions inducing severe limitations to freedom. So, free-markets are a blatant lie by any reasonable proxy of freedom. Our manipulations of public-stock exchanges proliferate the grandiosity of those lies. Kids will someday find out our bets are rooted in the confidence of our myths.
- We teach the practice of economics with the fervent of a religion, omitting blissfully that a study of consequence is not quite as useful as a study of cause. The difference between cause and consequence equal to the difference between astrology and astronomy. The preachings of consequence inducing widespread depravity of reason (Nietzsche) as the manmade stupidity our leaders use to project the future of human performance. When will we stop suggesting the extrapolation of hindsight, derived from consequence, is an accurate prognosticator of foresight to break the norm and stop lying to our children?
Question Authority
Our children have every right and reason to question the rules set before them, and we must allow them. Otherwise, they are bound to become a mere passenger on a ride of why the most intelligent species on our planet is on an evolutionary trajectory to live the shortest.
“Nobody really knows what they are talking about” — John Cleese
Just do not lie to your children about it. Our children need to be encouraged to think different, for it will inspire them not to tap out all too soon.
And tomorrow will be a different ride.
