In bygone eras, children would read adventure tales full of struggle and triumph and imagine what it would be like. Then they would go out and live for them, what was “just life”: learning, growing, exploring; taking risk, being hurt, healing etc.
Now I tell my tales of “just life” when I was a kid, and today’s kids think that these are the most amazing “adventure stories” that they struggle to imagine. And I wonder how my boring old “just life” . . . became “high adventure”?
So what happens to the next generation of today’s children who are raised mostly indoors, swaddled in bubble-wrap and anointed with hand-sanitizers and ego-pampering “education”, playing their video games?
Will future generations look back at their daring adventures of “Building a Treehouse — the Video Game”, or hear about how deftly they fingered their controllers to land a cyber-ollie on their digital skateboard . . . and think this is the most amazing adventure story of daring and triumph they have ever heard??
© 2026 – SoulSequel
55 responses to “Generational Cycles”
I remember a fantasy book that I read in which the main character had spent much of their time reading books before the adventure. One of the things that the main character commented on is that the books always glossed over the potential problems and the amount of hurt the heroes experienced in favor of showing it to be something fun, something laudable, something exciting… when the reality of the situation is that it’s anything but. You go camping and forgot something, you do without it until you return home. But if you’re swept into a situation without something vital… you may do without it the entire duration of the “adventure”… and the lack of it could mean the difference between doing things easily… OR coming back so scarred that you don’t WANT another adventure ever again in real life.
@Jear77
Our society currently has what can only be called a fear of living so strong that addiction to the illusion of safety seems to be the only response. So much so, that we spend most of our lives in a shuffling state of near-death and need the fix — the jolt — of vicarious emotions from “”safe”” entertainment to convince us we are alive.
But now we’re learning that living life like this may bring dangers of its own!
It’s interesting how the greatest adventures I’ve had . . . involved some aspect of challenge! (Which many initiates in adventuring mistake for “just misery”!) The trips where nothing challenging — or even dangerous — happened, fade into obscurity.
Sort of like most people shuffling the streets will — or the Aboriginies fear they will without “a dream” or various other cultures fear they will if they have no story, no “song to sing”.
Everything handed to us, with no challenge, makes the most boring kind of mush imaginable — the kind that’s not even worth mentioning.
And maybe that’s why so many cultures that may prove far more enduring than our own, encouraged their young people out on that first quest, that first walkabout, that first adventure?
It sure beats the hell out of locking them up indoors, swaddling them in bubble-wrap, nuking all the germs in their vicinity, removing their challenges, and doing all their “homework” for them in some misguided attempt to prove we love them!
@griz while the idea of safety might be an illusion, it sure beats getting in over our heads by tackling something that is going to get us directly or indirectly injured or killed!
@Jear77
Fear is there for a reason; namely to keep us safe.
But it is not there to own us. At almost every critical milestone in our advancement as a species, people have had to overcome fear — and those who came later benefited from their choice, their bravery, their challenge, their pain and suffering, and their overcoming it.
Have we perhaps seen the last generation, that will give this gift to those to come? Have we perhaps come far enough, and now is the time to cower back?
@griz
What is fear? ALWAYS
False
Evidence
Appearing
Real
That’s the crux of the Christian viewpoint. In essence “i am afraid of nonexistence, this belief in god asuages those fears, therefore god exists.”
Or maybe “I feel that there’s a unique relationship between god and i, a relationship that i would be utterly and completely crushed if it did not exist, therefore god exists.”
@Jear77
That is the crux of ALL religion — whether Christian, Atheism, Hedonism or Scientism.
ALL of them are the child of fear. And out of fear, none of them can ever “grow up”.
@griz if there is nothing, wasting one’s time on trying to have a relationship with such is pretty pointless. And since my time is worth money, i know for a fact that I’m not getting reimbursement for such… unless I steal from the offering plate. And not even I am that desperate for money.
And I don’t need to worry about the fear of something beyond death, as I’ll take such circumstances as or if they come. Isn’t that a better way of doing things than forcing one’s paradigm into seeing things that aren’t able to be used in one’s daily life? If it could be, that’d be a different situation altogether. For instance people going around healing everyone from all their ills/ raising the dead, duplication of foodstuffs, etc… And everyone would have those abilities. But such is simply not true.
@Jear77
A relationship with religion. I whole heartedly agree.
But I am a witness that fellowship with the Spirit of Life has for myself and many others, had drastic positive effect in daily life.
And there remains a vital difference between becoming a part of something for the long haul . . . and just looking to milk something for short-term gain for self.
@griz but you are so blind to the fact that even your witness is entirely suspect, because you can’t truly know what’s going on in your brain. What you feel literally could be the result of brain chemistry, the more primitive aspects of the brain at work, and things going your way – i.e life circumstances.
@Jear77
An aspect of freedom is to respect that some choose to be fearful of all things. Even things they cannot/do not know they should be afraid of!
I cannot know know exactly how everything works in a car. But I can know when it’s working wonderfully, when there is something to suspect, and when it’s not working correctly.
Re-visit what I offered just moments ago in another thread about fearing that we’re not fearing enough things that we don’t know we should be fearing!
@griz where is the fear in pointing out that what you experience is entirely within your own brain? A witness that can’t escape your brain is not only totally garbage, but in another time, another place, in another setting people who expressed the exact same thing would be locked away because they would be seen as a danger to themselves and society at large… and the only reason why it’s socially acceptable to indulge in such delusions… is simply because it’s the myth seems reasonably harmless. So what separates you from the person in the asylum who thinks they’re god? Nothing.
@Jear77
Even a masterful conductor needs to participate with the world beyond the tip of his own nose. Otherwise he’s just a fool standing on the podium waving a stick.
Our Judicial System sees witness as far more than just garbage. Especially if it’s corroborated by many.
And there remains a huge difference between someone witnessing for something that does work; and someone witnessing to all the things that have not worked.
Even science reserves a special place for clinical evidence.
@griz but there’s a point… you can’t bring the ULTIMATE witness to the stand – god / christ and at day’s end irrespective of the witness(es) present, there’s nothing (on the whole) that makes the christian’s life better in terms of measurable benefits. Furthermore, everyone dies. That fact negates every single one of those witnesses.
@Jear77
So do we anguish that we can’t control God?
Or live in joy and peace in what is?
Mostly it is the uncontrolled ego that laments we cannot be God over God.
And in learning to control it, unimaginable worlds of possibility and promise open up.
Or we can spend our best efforts manufacturing gripes.
It’s our choice.
@griz The point is that if the god of the bible exists, he knew what was going to happen and did nothing to change things. The results of this inaction has caused everything else. All the pain of every single person. All the death.. EVERYTHING. Why should I be filled with joy and peace knowing this, knowing all I am in the grand scheme of things is a pawn to do nothing but use and at day’s end, no matter how faithful be caused to die, and everyone else I see to suffer the exact same fate?
@Jear77
You are full of either life or death. This is your choice, and yours alone.
A child experiences a lot of pain from their perspective. The pain of having to wash, brush their teeth, go to bed early, do their homework do, their chores, be inoculated, go to the dentist, have surgery . .
All of these could be “lifted” from them by their parents. But they all will benefit the child in the long run.
The child not seeing this in the moment, does not negate it.
And there are always those who rebel against it by threatening to hurt themselves even more.
@griz actually not really. Show me a single person (save those people who commit suicide) who wanted to die? Show me a person who wouldn’t want to live forever at the height of the best they could be.
@Jear77
To reject life more abundantly In this moment, is to embrace the processes of death taking more and more of this moment.
Choice.
And boohoo that it may take some effort, involve some sacrifice or increase the challenge level.
I’ll show you that person if you walk over to the mirror. There is the possibility of something even better than this. And you keep manufacturing excuses exclusions!
YOU don’t want it; unless it jumps through all the hoops that you set before it.
@griz ask a person who’s starving if they are capable of having life in the full. Or a person who is homeless (either temporarily or permanently). Consider those people with a disease where their body is rotting away. Or those whose entire livelihoods were snatched away from them in an instant. And the world is filled with christians who experience just this. And at day’s end, no matter how faithful, no matter how loyal to the cause, no matter how much of themselves they give, they still die. To me that is the ultimate failure, a cause in which promises life, but delivers only death.
@Jear77
Are we back to riding into war against Life on the backs of misfortunate hypotheticals?
A short surf around the internet could find the testimonies of actual people, like pows who were both starved and tortured, yet still found such an abundance of life in them that they could praise Life.
So that level of gift in the here-and-now is possible. Take the right steps and it’s probable. Promised even.
But you want to manufacture excuse and exclusion; and gripe that you cannot have 100% full fore-knowledge of what the final gift may open up to be.
Take a close look in that mirror my friend.
Neither of us is going to completely solve the pain and suffering equation. But I’m a few gifts ahead of you in the unwrapping of answers, understanding and just plain cool stuff!
So stop jumping up and down on the assembled gifts placed before you and start opening a few!
@griz Once again, for every POW who came out victoriously you have 1,000,000,000 people throughout history who had shattered, pain filled, problematic, drama filled lives. When you compare the ruined lives to the those living “life to the full” you don’t even muster to the placebo effect… which is what, once again? 72%.
@Jear77
The point is it can be done.
So do you choose to do it or not? Do you work to develop the assets to do it or not?
Do you brush your teeth or not? Eat well or not? Exercise regularly or not?
There are far more people who choose “or not”; and then put incredible energies into vindications and excuses.
And not everyone succeeds outrageously against all odds. But the one to do are something special.
I choose to be one of them and will gladly pay the associated cost. (As Yoda said, “Try not! Do, or do not” — an exercise in conviction and not self- sabotaging)
So why do you choose to not be one of them, and persist in sabotaging the process by imagining costs that aren’t there?
@griz did you realize how the number I wrote was read? Seriously? That number is read billion. Do you know the current population of the earth? It’s estimated to be 7.442 billion (as of 2016). Not very impressive.
@Jear77
And you are in no way exaggerating that figure to serve your bias, right!
Consider how little our species would have amounted to without those who were not afraid to “do”.
(With honorable mention to those who at least tried. And nothing to those who just made excuses; because they are a-penny-a-million!)
@griz I’m simply stating that there are many that came before who suffered tragedy, hardship, pain, many who died in childbirth (both mother and child), many who never even got to the point of being children because they were aborted. So yes, I stand by POWs coming out victoriously vs, all the other tragic circumstances billions is an appropriate number.
@Jear77
Just as it is a statement of fact that many have overcome overwhelming odds.
So put these two statements of fact together; and ask which you your self would choose to be.
Because choice is common to both. Choice of how they will play the hand that has been dealt them.
@griz No, it is not. If it were, I would have named my destiny to be wealthy enough so that I would not have to work a day doing anything I did not want to do a long time ago and had it in hand. Any reality that the choice of my choosing doesn’t allow for this, I’m not interested in.
@Jear77
Maybe you used to be wiser, knowing that such a path would bring its own share of troubles and not very much personal growth.
Because we are currently finite, silliness and angst lie in the wish that our choices be infinite.
Like it or not we lived in a certain frame. All children of loving parents do; for their own protection. And often the children will crab and bitch. (Though not constantly! You do have a “gift” for it!)
@griz once again, I have not found any problems in the world (save for death) that cannot be solved (ultimately, and with enough time) by money.
And even if that money was in a trust fund… by law I would have access to it once I turned either 18 or 21, as that’s what the law has decided are the age(s) of adulthood.
Even if it were like this movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster%27s_Millions_(1985_film) I could handle it. EASILY
@Jear77
There is ample and unending testimony thru History from people with more than enough money, saying that it is not the answer. And to say they just mismanaged it is to feint ignorance on too many counts to maintain credibility.
Few addicts intended the outcome they now live. But they all began with the assertion “I can handle this, easily”.
We can rarely manage “things” wisely, until we first learn to manage ourselves wisely.
@griz I’m the type of a person who researches things carefully. Heck, if I was near warren buffet’s wealth level, I could hobnob with him and get advice for free!
@Jear77
He probably didn’t get rich by giving things out for free!
I too like to research things ahead of time. But one can read volumes about the specifications and abilities of say, a powerful sports car.
But find an entirely different reality than they expected and prepared for . . . when the rubber hits the road.
@griz Street knowledge vs book knowledge.
@Jear77
And at no time should we confuse the knowledge we have . . . with the knowledge we just THINK we have!
(Which would incorporate aspects of “wisdom” and “humility”)
i think this is why so many parents find it important to seek balance. yes, there are more screens. but i dont think the majority of kids at least in the city i live in spend All their time hooked in. sure, more of it. or with more options. we spent plenty of winter days glued to the nintendo and whatever crap show was on local cable, but not every day, and from the amount of kids who come out for the free neighbourhood soccer clubs, or who i see on their scooters on the paths, with or with out parents, or who take part in the neighbourhood activities, or who swarm the ball nets or parks, i dont think kids are All or Always indoors. they still go to camps, play sports, adventure. just we dont like them to ruin all their shorts climbing fences these days :D half of my neighbourhood are sent outside while their moms make dinner.
of course that being said i do wish we lived out of the city so he could be More Free to be outdoors, i certainly would prefer to see more wildlife than the squirrels in the parking lot :D but as long as we encourage a taste for fresh air and real basket balls, i think its good. its about balance. and about staying connected with them in person. no he hasnt gotten scars from falling out of too tall trees like i do, but he can ride a skate board and i cant :D
im not belittling what you are saying at all. i do think it takes more and more effort to get kids outdoors. but its not hopeless yet!
@BelleMadre
I’m more noting a trend than passing sentence. A trend that we seem to be rushing into without anyone paying it more than just lip service.
I travel daily not just through cities, but small towns and countryside.
And other than the Menonite children, one just doesn’t see children out on the land anymore. One doesn’t hear their play and laughter on the streets. You never have to stop and wait for them to move their hockey net out of the way (maybe that’s just a Canadian thing?!). And their awareness of/reaction to even the most basic of natural phenomenon or process . . . ranges from indifference to terror!
There is still hope. But it fades with each generation that rushes headlong into the current cycle without trying to do something about it.
@griz it is definitely important to realize and make the effort! and you are right. we are letting kids check out with screens so much. too much , i agree to an extent. but i do see the balance. here is hoping!
Sheeesh, another “…..kids these days” one…
Well sure,… Canadian kids….
Go to a skatepark here in the land of the free* & see what the kids there think.
Go to the woods where there’s ATV trails and crazy ass bike jumps, and tell those kids about how back in your day you had more fun with a decent bmx costing parents 2-4 weeks pay & only available at niche stores.
I live around people with children, & the kids are outside all of the time. They play football(soccer) as much as we played two-hand-touch-helmetball(football). There’s kids shooting hoops everyday the block over in their alley. On the other side of the block was a little kid’s pool party all summer. The little town I work in is just yard after yard of kids playing outside on weekends to where the whole town sounds like driving by a school during recess.
It’s the parents who’re playing the video games.
*not free
@luftballooneyegouge
It’s less “kids these days” as “do we see where we’re headed?”.
Yes, there’s still areas like this, and I’m glad for them. But as someone who perhaps sees more of the land than most, they’re becoming fewer and farther between.
We’ve never before had the ability to see these trends.
And it seems we’e never before had such an ability to dismiss and down-play these trends!
@griz said
“But as someone who perhaps sees more of the land than most, they’re becoming fewer and farther between.”
The things I mention aren’t too visible from the interstate so…….
You need to keep that truck on the main roads & out of small town roads, ravines, & out of the skatepark. GET THAT RIG OUT OF THE HALF PIPE!!!
@luftballooneyegouge
I’ve had my truck stuck in some interesting places off the beaten path.
Because a lot of shippers and destinations are off the beaten path; and not always designed for modern Highway tractors!
You must be thinking of regional inter-city truckers!
@griz
You misspelled strippers.
I have no fond childhood memories of high adventure. Picking up rocks and shoveling dirt, hauling same in a wheelbarrow to build roads, tell me where is the adventure in that?
@immortal_pirate But, but, but, remember that you moved all that dynamite in the wagon? WOO!!! What an explosion!!!
And the road you built as a child can still be seen today on Google Earth!!!
@immortal_pirate
That’s sad: the not having [fond] memories of them. I’ve heard stories of children in POW camps still finding moments to play, and seeing the dump-children of South America still “being kids”. I have a friend who bore even worse signs of physical abuse at home, would would find every reason to not go home at night . . . who can still reminisce with me about the mischief we got in together.
I’m not saying that you might not be the exception, being an alien an all
. But most children have fond adventures of some sort — times when they are just children despite whatever atrocities might be going on around them.
I find that aside from the very few actual “grand adventures” I went on, hindsight has revealed a plethora of others that I didn’t identify as adventures at the time. I find my current mindset of gratitude (necessary for tanscendence), has re-framed a number of them.
For example, I don’t have a lot of “fond adventure memories” from the time I almost died from a missed diagnoses on a ruptured appendix — or the months it took to recover. But those who were there at the time remind me of just how adventurous I was despite being one desperately sick little boy. And in exploring this, I find that despite all that was going on, I was tackling the long road to recovery as an adventure.
Are then any hopes you might be able to re-examine and re-frame some of your experiences? I acknowledge that it can be very hard, especially if a lot of unresolved traumatic childhood memories are still there waiting to ambush.
I was part of a long gone era. I watched The Lone Ranger and Sky King the flying Cowboy. I watched Zorro, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Poncho and Cisco, The Little Rascals and The Eastside Kids called the Bowery Boys. I watched The Shadow and Intersanctom for suspense. For comedy, I liked Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, My Little Margie, Make Room For Daddy, The Nelsons, Dobie Gillis, The Mickey Mouse Club, and every day there was American Bandstand with Dick Clark.
I sent in cereal box tops from Cheerios and a few dollars and bought myself a Red Ryder BB gun when I was 10 years old. I still have it today. With my BB gun, I played “Army” with my friends and Cowboys and Indians. We went out target shooting. I had a cap gun that I must have bought on my own — because Mom would only buy me useless girl toys, like dolls. I loved that cap gun. Sometimes we girls would squat in our pretty dresses on the sidewalk and hit whole rolls of caps with a hammer. We loved the loud bang, but the explosion would sting our bare thighs.
I can remember a day at Grandma’s house when I sat on the porch steps and told my cousin that there was , “Nothin to play with” at Grandma’s. Suddenly we found large sheets of plywood and boards and we built a playhouse and then it became a Fort and we had slingshots to shoot pebbles at the chickens, ducks, and the big geese. We had tree swings that would swing us higher than any playground swing would.
After Christmas, we could find all kinds of boxes and with a roll of masking tape, we built box forts and playhouses. A few of my more feminine cousins would construct furniture out of the boxes, but that was girl-stuff and the chairs would smash under the weight of my ass.
30 kids in a gang on bicycles rode for miles and miles on road trip adventures. We left in the early morning and did not come home until the street lights came on after dusk.
We could climb on the fences around the vegetable fields and watch the bi-planes spray the fields with DDT and we would get wet with the DDT spray. It was all fun. Behind the factories there was a slew and all the chemicals drained into it. It glowed in the dark and us kids would swim in it. Only two of those 30 kids are alive today. Most of them got cancer and died.
There was so much to do and adventures to have. If we had been kept inside and made to stare at a screen and type at a keyboard and move a joystick, we would have thought we were being punished.
@ladybarbara
The nature of manifest childhood changes with each generation.
But though it all, the inner nature of the child has remained the same.
And different times, have different “hero”s — and a different kind of “craved fame”?
So what is the “fame” in the news right now, that any child can avail themselves of? Doing something violent and horrendous at school or the cinema?
Who are the “heros”? Violent criminals who “get away with it”; or vile-chanting rappers who advocate escalating acts of disrespect? People who are good at pushing buttons or programming computers to better enslave us? People who sell their souls for material gain?
The easiest path remains to find “doom and gloom” in this. It’s a harder path to get people to see this and take the more challenging path of doing something about it.
In themselves. In the young people they have influence with.
One of the reasons I had such success with so many kids at the camp . . . is that I taught them to make learning and positive change . . . an adventure!
And I have yet to meet too many kids who don’t crave “the adventure”. (The few that don’t, have been hurt by reckless adults and have withdrawn. But “adventure” has coaxed many of them back out of their shells).
@griz My adventures were tomboyish because my Mom was pushing me to be ultra fem and I hated the ruffle dresses and shiny patent leather Mary Jane shoes. I hated my tap shoes, too. Mom was a stage mother and she was always trying to get me on TV shows, where I was supposed to be well behaved, and polite, then have a personality at the same time. I was on Engineer Bill’s Show, Sheriff John’s Lunch Bergade, Tom Hattan’s cartoon show, but the worst was Art Linkletter’s House Party. I was ushered back stage to a gloomy paper mache set, when I stood there terrified, looking for spiders in dark corners of the backside of a set that looked like a castle door from the camera’s side, suddenly the doors open and the lights blinded me. But I was supposed to open my eyes up — real big and innocent — as the music sounded “Oh What Beautiful Big Eyes !”. I was scripted to be polite, but I forgot everything in my terror of the moment. I squinted in the lights. “I can’t see!” Art Linkletter asked me how many fingers he was holding up. I said, “How many does it feel like?” I forget what Art Linkletter said in answer to that, but they cut to a commercial and Mom was angry at me. I was supposed to be cute and girly. That is why I was tomboyish at home. Frilly monkey girl in tap shoes was not who I was inside.
I never looked at those days as adventures, but I remember that I had a big stick-on rubber nose in my cute little purse. Mom was talking me up to some producer guy and while she was not looking at me, I stuck a big rubber nose on my face. I got in trouble for antics like that. ——- nowadays, I am that person. I was always finding humor and laughter in my life and not letting on that I was being abused by a pushy stage Mom. I still find humor and light. Life itself is an adventure. I never stopped having adventures.
I brought my own kids up to know that when things go wrong, it is an adventure to get things back to normal. When the car broke down 60 miles from home, I took my boys home on a big bus adventure. We took 3 buses to get home, but it was an adventure with a good restaurant dinner on the way home. Life is too short to not have fun adventures. My sons remember it as “The Big Bus Adventure”.
I am sure that your life as a trucker is full of adventures. Inside you, that boy is still alive and can find wonderment in each road trip.
@ladybarbara
I still can’t believe I get paid to do this. And paid well to boot.
And if the cost is sore muscles and some joints worn out, it’s worth it!
Not exploring your capabilities seems like the worst kind of lingering slow motion death.
Oh but there is adventure in trying to find what device can run Doom.
@2Thrash
Let me know if you find any windoze 10 tricks to make it run! That was a personal favorite.
There were so many excellent games from back in the Win 95 days, that just don’t have modern equivalents.
Another favorite was M.A.X (Mobile Assault and Exploration). It was like a precursor to the various “Age of Empires” games . . . but you had more freedom to explore and play without being in a life-or-death race where you would be overrun by your neighbors if you missed a beat!
Which sort of comes back to the question, of what we are “grooming” our children to be with the current spate of “popular entertainment”?
(Yes, I know Doom was ultra-violent — but framed in a way where “preying upon our own species” was not nearly so blatant!)
@griz You hooligan, you played video games? Cool. No doubt the popular entertainment has a wider range today as a result of more exposure by way of technology. I can’t say that it won’t have an affect on some people.
@2Thrash
Like the way auto theft increased coinciding with the popularity of games like “Grand Theft Auto”?!
Yea, you couldn’t pry me away from the games on my Commodore 64. They were still games that required a lot of imagination and willing suspension of disbelief on your part. And then the Win 95 games did more and more of the work of imagining for you.
And then things changed. I became more addicted to Life and less addicted to the digital mockeries of it.
(But with time on my hands and the frustrations of driving big rig in traffic all day, perhaps a nice Doom shoot-em-up could find a place in my day-off-on-the-road routine!)
I think I agree with belle Madre. I think wise parents try to bring balance to their kids life. My guy has a six year old. He does have a couple of video games in the house, but there is only one tv that they play and watch movies on, and it is not in the child’s room. The tv has no cable. This little boy loves books, and writes his own adventure series at six years old, he is a bit of a prodigy. He calls the adventure books, “Jack and Annie”. In the Summer, this child went to creek stompers camp and played baseball. Presently, he is in cross country running. I attended his last meet and thought I was going to be run over by the stampede of children coming my way.
Personally, I have never gotten into video games, but as I understand them many if them are much like the heros journey, which has been a theme in our culture for thousands of years. For the kids that want to play a healthy amount of video games, I say leave them to their play and to their imaginative worlds, they come up with strategies to beat the villains and the monsters, and maybe in some way, this builds character, too.
To be unconditionally loving means to love it all as all being part of the god consciousness. Lots of times this means starting where the person is in life and not where we *think they should be.
@Scarlett
A thoughtful and ‘balanced’ reply!
What I’m hoping will come, is more awareness of just what we are “grooming” our children to be.
The various forms of electronic entertainment (whether TV, games, the internet, the news) have their proper place. But that “proper place” is not raising our children according to society’s whims, fears and urges.
Those who bring children into the world, need to take on the responsibility of raising those children so they succeed despite the failings of all the robotic, half-dead lemming-humans who are content to run head-long over the cliff they didn’t see coming.
The little cartoon I shared above has one lemming with a parachute, and I think it’s both cute and poignant. But it doesn’t show those few enlightened lemmings . . . who got out of the push of the crowd before the cliff loomed!
It touches on that ancient Chinese proverb that says “A clever person gets out of a predicament. A wise person avoids it”.