Coming of Age

"In the suburbs I learned to drive, and you told me we'd never survive." 

It is only a matter of time before all living things come of age, and it is no different for human civilization itself. Civilization is a living thing played out over the course of generations. Just as an organism is a collection of cells that duplicate, exist, and deteriorate over a course of the organism's lifetime, so too are individuals within civilization. It was only a matter of time then before the same uncertainty of directionless ambition befell civilization as it does to individual human beings, when they become conscious of the need for self preservation in the face of a seeming non-existent reason to be doing such. This is to say that in coming of age, our reason to continue on both as individuals and as a species comes from our own directive, rather than by the guiding intervention of higher authorities.

It is now up to us to go to the doctors when we are sick, go to the movies when we desire entertainment, or go to pray when we desire some direction, and we accepted this new found responsibility with unsteady enthusiasm, slowly learning how to possess it but never truly understanding fully how or why we must. Why must we grow, go to school, go to college, go to work, get married, buy a house, have children, raise children, grow old, and die--always in that order? Where is this cycle of our existence taking us, these technological advances, the growth of cities, the automobile, the spread of suburban sprawl, the instance of communication? Does any adult know where their life is headed? The only inevitability is death. Does the certainty of death mean we need to fill the brevity of life with something rather than nothing in order to make use of time? Is our civilization destined to die too?

The ages of mankind are testaments to the fact that civilizations rise and fall, that there are periods of life and periods of death, where even in death there is life in relative limbo. The only constant over the spans of centuries is change, a change of relative societal place from one time to another with the same human nature dictating our choices. There was no more certainty we were making the right choice all the time, as when it was dictated to us absolutely, so there spread only fear that we were constantly making the wrong one. The 20th century was so ruled by uncertainty that it inspired more visceral demagoguery than any other era. Any study of parenting advice in the media, for instance, would unearth a world where everyone had their own certainties in the absence of one universal one.

The internet has magnified this phenomenon. For evidence, all one needs to do is conduct a simple search for the words "your kids" or "your children," and you'll inevitably find many diverse things preceding those words: how to do X for your kids? how to keep X away from your kids, what does X mean for your kids?, and other abstractions, all reinforcing the notion that all things invariably pertain to your kids just because yours are the ones being addressed all the time, every day. Coming of age in a culture that has itself come of age means accepting enslavement to the will of the consensus. Where certainty creates ignorance, uncertainty produces anxiety. We live in the age of anxiety, and it's a crippling force on civilization.