What Love We Speak Of (Cont.)

Within all historic civilizations there existed a transmission of the present culture invested toward the youth generation and the potential in them they had to continue to live as a community. This is biological. It is an evolutionary investment in civilization we inevitably bestow onto our youngest, and it occurred as a deeply social ritual. Little of this exists today in western culture that has not been demonized and vilified by complexity--having turned into an impersonal industry or qualified service delivery. Where people have been replaced by paper, and love replaced by industry, we have gone astray.

In past history, the former generation entrusted the future survival of the race onto the boy, as he left the realm of the home, dominated by the female, and came onto the realm of the hunt, the realm of the protector. It was at this stage alone that the boy was taught and trained to be a future hunter or scribe, whether it was studying war, or interpreting sacred texts, or the arts, the occupation itself differing according to talent and proficiency. More importantly, it was the place in which he became a man. It was a place in which he was allowed to be human, to learn and develop his natural aggression in ways he could use it to be useful. All through this process into healthy adulthood, his own talents were guided and observed by non-parental men who taught and helped the boy discover himself. It was the men of the society who made the decision that a boy had achieved the honorable title of being a contributing member of society--not an artificial line in the sand age limit.

There are many similarities within the home. An extended kinship-based network of older women taught girls. They were taught all the inner necessities of preparation for the hearth, maintenance of the living space, the garden, the nursery, and the proper raising of the young. Modern society has made very little honor out of such important tasks as these, by a period of male chauvinism, ultimately dismissing them as menial or unimportant, followed by a more feminist inspired detestation toward these important tasks, and an understandable eventual break from them all together. These days, and rightly, boys and girls are free to explore paths to adulthood that don't hinge on biological assignment.

However, due to this, political correctness has raised few with a healthy interest in the positive upbringing of children, so that the desire to do so overwhelms their life by that same evolutionary force that summoned non-parents to guide children. No doubt adults who are already parents feel this. Nonetheless, how many have an inherent interest in the benefit of children as a purpose to live before they personally bring the child into the world? Is it no wonder so many parents abort, neglect, abandon, orphan, or abuse their child in some way due to this obvious disinterest in raising one in the modern world? Child abuse has always existed and will always exist, it is the glue that holds society together, but never was it done as much out of disinterest as it was out of necessity. The modern world no longer finds it necessary to abuse children for their own good, it simply continues to do so out of a disinterest in the so-called menial task of raising them.

There are a group of people, who may or may not have children of their own, but have a continued a healthy interest in befriending and helping a child grow in a world were raising a child is considered the most demeaning responsibility a person can commit themselves to. Perhaps this could serve as a testament to the overall degradation of youth that occurs within the modern society, destroying the optimism that once was so prevalent in the adolescence of that primordial past.