It's said that every generation must learn the rules of life for itself. And that is true. But we used to have the past to guide us. History -- how things worked out when this or that had been tried -- and religion, guidance about "sins" and the bad that followed them. Literature, too. Yes, fiction, but fiction often based on closely observed reality.
Today's "youth" -- in quotes because the years here included in the phrase go way beyond just the young and inexperienced, but include all the uneducated and overprotected who never learned that actions have consequences -- has none of those advantages. No, nor for many the positive models of actual doers. Not personally, nor as in the examples of larger-than-life myths and fables.
This began with my generation -- so so-called boomers. Our teachers started watering down the truths, our ministers and rabbis to soften and justify what was once called "sin."
But they couldn't -- they just didn't have the power -- to eliminate or change the results that naturally followed. So instead they buried them or attached them to other causes. "Inequality." "Systemic racism."
I was a rock n roller back then. I watched as all this was happening. The "if it feels good do it" nonsense, the start of the drug craze, the rejection of what now, and often with mocking disdain, are called "family values."
I saw lives of people I truly cared for and about -- fellow musicians -- throw away the value of their gifts, and even of their own labor, chasing chimeras. Some paid with total dissolution, other found their way back. A few paid with their lives.
And now I/we see the same thing happening with entire large segments of our population. Cities reeling and nearing their breaking point. And unlike my friends back then -- people who had been reared with exposure to the ancient truths and understandings, and thus who had those to fall back upon when the errors of their ways -- life's hard realities that had led men to the past wisdom -- today we see people and entire communities totally lost.
Is it too late for them? Perhaps not if enough of us who know and remember are willing to speak. And if -- big if! -- they are willing to listen.
Ignorance, like drugs, is self-perpetuating. Easier to fall into than to climb out of. Especially when the media is equivalent to a drug dealer selling freely on the street.
If there is hope it lies with we who know. To pass along those hard earned truths -- the things that make up both history and religion.
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