Agreeing to Disagree?

People tell me I fail to agree to disagree, and I tell them it's because I have principles--not to my own point of view, but to the truth, whatever it may be. I have too much respect for the truth to accept that I'm right when I could be wrong, or that others are right when they are wrong. Agreeing to disagree only creates an impasse in a social dialogue. It shuts down all communication, and ends all progress towards the truth. It is an excuse to leave the room when one's ego can not submit itself. But a line must be drawn between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong, on any social issue of disagreement, and if there is no one solution, progress towards one is all that is needed. Without progress, we are merely in perpetual disagreement.

Agreeing to disagree, as a solution, is motivated by the supposition that warfare and hatred are avoided only when parties agree that everyone is wrong, and right, as if coming away with a mutual misunderstanding of each other is the only preferable solution. It's an excuse to give up the quest for understanding when the terrain gets difficult, to give up at the precise moment that we really ought to be convinced if we are wrong or convincing the opposition if we are right. A stalemate is not a win for either side, it just means that both sides have delayed losing until another date. It is a prolonged lack of progress, because no one is right when everyone is right.

Only when someone is convinced of something can progress resume, otherwise, it's a perpetual stall. Disagreement is acceptable only because it is unavoidable, but we have to recognize that perpetual disagreement is a stalemate, and not a win. We can't accept perpetual disagreement as a solution in and of itself, or else we fall victim to apathy. If the fate of the world rested in the balance, an agreement to disagree about a problem or solution offers no solution and no progress towards one, and only gives us a good feeling about our lack of ability to admit where we are wrong. There are always things, even small things, we can agree on, and when we agree to disagree, we kill off our opportunity to agree on anything else but that.

Someone is always right, at least in part, and someone is always wrong, at least in part. There is no convincing me that we are "both right" when one of us is clearly wrong. Let history be our dialectic and rationality be our tool. If I am wrong, I will accept it, no matter how much it hurts, no matter what I have to give up, and you may go glory in yourself in your victory. You have my permission to do so, just as I would expect you to accept it where you are wrong, at least in part. This is preferable, because agreeing to disagree is more about maintaining ego than arriving at an approximation of the truth, whether one exists or not. Ego is an impediment to rationality, not an impetus of it. Ego is the impetus of ambition, and when tested by reason, the result is progress.

The Child In Distress

Parents and professionals who continue to fall prey to cheap tabloid journalism have learned nothing from the childhood tale of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." In the "child in distress" narrative perpetuated in our culture, children are constantly prey to whatever new scary apparition appears on the horizon, and everything must be sacrificed to keep them safe from the next "flying inevitable". One can scarcely go through ten minutes of media without being bombarded by a child in distress. This repetitive narrative of the child in distress, however, only drives the same psychological niche for adults as the "damsel in distress" once did for the chauvenist culture, and is just as flimsy a vehicle.

Being concerned about the actual hazards a child may immediately encounter is crucial to human survival, but we seem to think being afraid of the foretold but non-existent "wolves in the fold" has something to do with it as well. It doesn't. It's a justification we created for ourselves. In general, those who are in their own minds powerful like to perpetuate fantasies of their own usefulness, stemming from arrogance. It doesn't matter who that powerful source is or whether that usefulness is needed, natural, or man-made. For adults, that fantasy manifests itself when we make ourselves feel useful for slaying the demons in our own heads out to possess our children (which probably don't pose any immediate threat to justify such a reaction), regardless of whether such a crusade is actually useful. 

It is hardly a revelation, as Nietzsche and Rousseau described the arrogant fantasy of the powerful in terms of social class in the 19th century, and Mill and Wollstonecraft in terms of indefensible sexism in the 19th and 18th century respectively. But I equivocate it now toward all adults who still maintain this ideology of superiority over all age groups below them despite hundreds of years of evolution on the "dignity of difference" between class, race, and sex. Why the feminists in particular ignored the similarity between the "child" and "damsel" "distress narratives" when they hurled criticism at the old self-serving male fantasy only speaks volumes about the limits of feminist critique. After all, women are adults too, and are served by the repetition of the "child in distress" narrative just as much as men are, if not more.

Instead, the myth of some "age determinism" of superiority and inferiority continues without reproach, with the justification that children ought to aspire to the adult example and adults ought to aspire to the child's. It is just assumed, by adults first and then by children, that this is a beneficial co-dependence between the age groups and that it is necessary, but it is neither. It's not instinct. It's in fact a self-serving ideology on behalf of those who created it--the powerful, the adults. It is created out of adult-centric culture. 

It's easy to see how superiority theories like this breed only inter-group contempt. While aspiring to the adult example as they are expected, children are taught to despise their childish nature, and while aspiring to the child's "innocence" as they are expected, adults are taught to despise their "adultish" nature. Neither is expected to appreciate who and what they are at either end of the developmental timeline, and they take their induced self-loathing out on the other group, be them perceived as superior or inferior. Sentimental sloganeering is constantly depicting children as "wide eyed" and "innocent," and proposing that if only adults could be like that, all our world dilemmas could be solved. While this is hardly convincing, it is pervasive, because adults and children alike will naturally seek out the positive traits of the other for their own sake, and condemn the negative traits of their opponent for their opponent's sake.

So I don't like to ever say one group is better than another group, because typically the group that assumes it is better is only better because it alone set the standard by which "betterness" is tested. Adults have always been powerful. They've always set the standards by which betterness is tested, so by their might alone, they are superior. And what have they done with their power? They've declared that only they are capable of using the power they've granted to themselves, and they remind themselves of this by reproducing the child in distress narrative.

But does not assuming that children are capable threaten to become an even worse imposition on children than assuming that they are incapable? After all, children and adults are different, you say, and wouldn't imposing the adult world onto children be just as bad as imposing the will of adults over them onto them? That kind of thinking, while overtly condemning ageist imposition, further establishes systemic ageist inequality. It is like dropping a weight down on one of two otherwise "conceptually" equal scales. To justify legitimate differences, the two must be given two different narratives? That only works when you can be sure you're not inadvertently disenfranchising one's differences and advantaging the other's in your distress narrative. 

Educator John Holt, in Escape From Childhood, wrote on how the assumption of capability in children only opens the doors for those who can, and does nothing to impose on those who can't or won't, so long as the initiative is voluntarily entered into. Right now, children are automatically involuntarily entered into the narrative as pawns in the adult's innocence game, and are thus stripped of their dignity as women once were, and rendered involuntarily defenseless despite their abilities. What in the chauvinist narrative, as it existed, advantaged a woman's dignity? And if you can't answer, ask yourself, what in the adult narrative of the "child in distress," as it exists now, advantages children? The answer is nothing at worse, or a negligible advantage at best, as perhaps one could argue that the "child in distress" narrative "motivates" adults to care about children. But the assumption of their inability affects every child through repression by its involuntary imposition still, while the assumption of a child's potential only affects those who rise to the occasion through voluntary inclusion, and in doing such, is not repression.

Because the adult narrative often disenfranchises youth and solely advantages adults (as it exists for their benefit), it shouldn't be tolerated as the sole paradigm. The narrative should only be justified when the inequalities between the age groups, or gender groups, or race groups, don't "consistently" manifest themselves along traditional power differentials. If the child is "always" the disenfranchised one, the meek one, the one being saved, when positioned in the distress narrative, and the adult is always the one in control, always the one doing the saving, then it is unjust inequality being represented. Likewise it would also would be unjust inequality if, all things being equal, it was assumed that only black children did poorly in school and had to be rescued by whites, or if it was assumed that only women become jeopardized and need to be rescued by men.

Unjust inequality is the imbalance between groups that exists due to human assumption rather than natural occurrence. It is one thing for natural inequalities to present themselves--for a black child to do poorly, for a girl to do poorly, or for a child to be controlled by an adult--but if any of those are the only paradigm ever shown, then one group is being unfairly advantaged while another group is being disenfranchised consistently. Individual variation is a good measure of natural inequality. If individuals vary from person to person, then all are equally being served and all are varying in their response. If a whole swath of people aren't being served to begin with, then there is no variation, just one group advantaging while another group is disenfranchised. That is not an acceptable "difference."

But adults have more self control, you say, and better cognitive skills, and superior strength. Should not adults take the initiative to rescue the weaklings? Of course they should, but only because it is intuitive that those who are strong look out for and protect those who are weak, and not simply because they are adults. If a child or young person happens to be strong and capable enough to take the initiative, why deny them only for not being old enough? To continue to misrepresent strong and capable young people as meek and defenseless only implies that one favors infantilizing them, and all the repercussions that causes, over empowering them, and all the benefits of that.

After all, it's not about believing one group is better than another group, it's about recognizing the differences between the two and affording them respective to their individual ability. The weakness of the adult narrative is that it ignores the possibility that capability is a human trait that everyone possesses to some degree, and instead tries to claim "capability" as its own entirely, and therefore the term "humanity" as well. There is nothing wrong with an adult taking initiative for a child in distress, so long as we recognize that there's also nothing wrong with a child taking responsibility for another child in distress, or an adult in distress, if they are capable of doing so, and we should depict all scenarios accordingly.

The question becomes whether or not children benefit from the adult narrative of "the child in distress," or if they are just the recipients of neutral, natural circumstances. Perhaps adults are inspired in some way from the repetition of the narrative to nurture their children, but even still, this isn't a satisfactory motivation. The best display of the adult's weakness is their need to justify their position of unquestionable authority (their so-called "maturity") by fantasizing about distressed and endangered children. If adults were truly matured, they would feel the requirement and responsibility to nurture the young the young people's sake, without having to resort to storytelling cliches that serve only their personal sense of pride, and ego.

The Tethered Master

If only the mature people could see how incredibly childish they are. In the back of an adult's mind, they seem to know it implicitly, but always defer to the cultural expectation of the authority placed on them. The expectation they use as a catch-all justification for all age-iniquity is that the adult is limited by their responsibility, tethered by their professionalism, constrained by their worry, and tied down to the standards of conduct and pretense, and that for some reason, are and should continue to be, the masters of this planet solely by virtue of this fact.

They are slavish masters, it would seem, if that makes any sense. The one who is the most tethered, the most constrained, the most limited, is the one who grants him or herself the most unconditional respect. How much ego does it take to crown oneself master of a planet and then call children "egotistical" for claiming ownership of every toy they see? It takes the full maturity of a person's faculties to even know how to stretch logic and justification so far that even carrying a self-applied burden can somehow now become a "virtue," and yet it's what adults do every day. They anoint themselves "masters" to make themselves feel good about being slaves. It's childish human nature through and through.

They envy childhood and demean children. They go from believing fairy stories to looking down on the creatures who do, and instead grow up to indulge themselves in their own fairy stories--fairy stories of the child molester behind the face of every man, fairy stories about the constant hidden menace to their young in the world, fairy stories about the hazards of the air, the sunlight, the water, the ground below their feet, the sky above their heads, and the immanent destruction of what they love in that space. They'd sooner take their child out of that space if they were told by their cable news parents that "air" was deadly.

They're pacified by their parent media, like children, are told when to feel good, when to feel sad, and when to feel outraged at all the right parts in the fairy story, by musical cue, by expert editing--close faces, black and white, blurry images--and it works on them. They gasp, they panic, they clutch their children close and push others away at the behest of an invisible force, and all when they are told to, and all for the sake of saving themselves from the tedium of being "adult," to justify such a malignant position of authority because they know without it they would have no reason to do so.

They dread their quickening decay, their inevitable death, and in so doing decide to deny life to the young to spare them of any and all fate the same. They manufacture inhuman hardship for children in the effort to maximize their little one's comfort, convince themselves they are in the right, and then pat themselves on the back for their so-called selfless ingenuity in fleeing from the fear and guilt that rides their lives for doing it. That is the modern human adult at play--a child having his way when he's wrong.

Adults set the standards by which they judge themselves and others, and by that fact alone, are powerful. It is arrogance, but it is human. Being tethered to responsibility does not equate to virtue, as the Sword of Damocles teaches us, but an arrogant human mind in seeking to justify its doomed and slavish position of personal limitation, will ascribe to it "virtue" to save itself. Likewise, being carefree as children are said to be (which also is not the case, children are far from "care free") does not equate to its own assigned virtue. Once again, an arrogant human mind in seeking to justify the deprivation of rights and dignity to children, will ascribe to childhood the virtue of innocence, and the lack of virtue when comparing it to that of an adult's.

That is to say, an adult looks at a child's reality by way of distance and when in comparison, assigns their own reality to virtue by deeds (for them, a superior method of human appraisal, because children are supposedly deemed incapable of willful deeds), and assigns a child's to virtue by its mere existence--as one subservient, humble, and incapable of willful deeds (ie. innocence). These are not truths about either reality, but arrogant presumptions made by adult psychology. They are human, and therefore childish, things to presume. They are a part of human nature, but they are not justifiable.

Who's Watching the Watchers?

Because of what the adult brain loses as it develops from adolescence, adulthood is not great. It is not qualitatively better or greater than adolescence by experience than adolescence is greater by innocence, or ignorance (as it were). The adolescent brain is simply fighting to express itself in a world governed by unbridled adult expression, for better and worse. By contrast, the adult brain is fighting itself in a world governed by its own self-imposed inhibitions, those learned by experience, and also for better and worse. So where do adults get the idea that they are qualified to judge the young?

The adolescent calculates the why not while the adult simply contents itself with knowing the why not. The adolescent tests its limits while the adult lives comfortably within them. The adolescent strives for a costly adventure as the adult settles for safe and clean complacency. The adolescent seizes life regardless of the consequences while the adult lives in a world of consequences and denies life. The teenage mind defies expectation while the adult mind defines it. When the teen mind defies life to its detriment, the adult mind defines it to the same extent. The adult is superior though for its longevity while the teen is superior for its aspiration--both have what the other lacks.

If you're an adult, and you find this characterization limiting, then you are experiencing the same effects of decadence (which is to say vanity) that limit the youth perspective. Characterizations of people on the basis of age are naturally limiting. The only difference of course is that these characterizations draw a line of equivocation between adults and adolescents (and children), while most adult heuristics in regards to young people do nothing but reinforce the so-called superiority of adults (in the active realms) and children (in the passive ones). All the truth in the world adds up to adults thinking in adult ways and framing non-adult situations with adult-centric perspectives. That's all there is to it. Truth is a function of power, and because adults are in power, their truth prevails. And yet, their truth about humility still applies to everyone.

In the name of humility, the justice system is often considered to be the sociological "parent" for adults. It's supposed to be the high-holy thing that judges adult behavior and punishes indiscretions in the rational world. It is however formed and created by adults, so one is left to wonder, who is watching the watchers? Who is judging adults in the manner in which adults judge the young (other than the young people themselves?)? Adults are given unbridled expression because they exist free of judgement half the time, and when they are being judged, they not only participate in, but create the system for which they are to be judged by. What child has that much authority over the judgement system when he or she is facing the scorn of adults? If only children could set the terms by which they could be judged by, because then they would have the same free terms that adults reserve for themselves. As it stands, adults are policing both themselves and children, so adult judgements go unchallenged in either case. 

It is entirely human for an adult to be taken by the decadence that is bestowed on them by culture, and there isn't one alive that doesn't think, in some way, that they are superior to young people. Adults don't need to be derided for their egotism any more than kids do for theirs, they simply need to be awakened and cut down to size so they may see themselves as the increasingly decrepit apes they are. None are so high and mighty that they should be beyond reproach, whether adults (in active realms) or children (in passive ones). Chances are, in the grandiosity of the cosmos, nothing an adult human says makes any real difference or carries any more universal a truth than the children who were once told "not to speak unless spoken to." Whoever said the adults could talk?

So-Called Adulthood

We don't become adults out of biological inevitability, but on the basis of social expectation. In order to get around in society, we're expected to assume the qualities and characteristics of adulthood--the seriousness, the possessions, the decadence, the so-called sophistication. I say "so-called" because everything in adulthood can be prefaced by "so-called," as there is no law of biology stating that because one has become sexually mature, one must adopt an air of "sophistication" and suddenly be standing around at cocktail parties and sipping liquor out of tiny glasses, or whatever adults consider to be fun. Just like childhood, "adult" is a heuristic invented by adults, a product of culture that is informed by culture. It an illusion, and believing adulthood is intrinsically better than childhood is delusional.

Adults exist so that they can parade around their excesses and decadence as they desire. For instance, why should an adult prefer to stand around drinking liquor out of a tiny glass at a party? What purpose does it serve? It's not going to get them drunk, nor refresh them, nor even taste good. They are only drinking it so they can prop it at certain angles in their hands, feel the "ting ting" of the smooth glass (something so fragile in such capable adult hands, no less), and sip it so elegantly for something known to be so bitter (adults love irony like that), and all to project the image of some hallowed "experience." The projection of "life experience" accounts for nearly everything an adult does in the world, from the miniscule reflexes such as this to the creation of life itself. This projection becomes decadent when done in self-aggrandizing revelry beside a child, who is meant to be deprived of it.

To picture an adult expressing their self-aggrandizing decadence before a child is to see the non-verbal expression of the childish--particularly the taunt, the old "I know something you don't know!" or "I can do what you can't do!"  It is when an adult gets an ego boost or a feeling of superiority simply for being as nature made them to be, so that they may engage in certain behaviors to show off their superiority. During their self-aggrandizing revelry, they begin feeling superlative simply for being older--not for any particular reason (such as a special accomplishment), but simply for the fact of being older than someone else, as if that were its own accomplishment. If being older is a virtue, what other routine bodily functions we all share equally besides "growing up" can we make hallowed then? Breathing maybe? The point being, there is no such thing as emotional maturity, simply larger means of expressing the same old childish "one-up" behaviors.

Adults implicitly know this, or are at some level cognizant that they present the same behaviors as children, just with increasing intricacy. This is taken as granted, considering the writer of this piece is an adult and has concluded these things. Much of art and philosophy is an expression of mankind from a larger and more transcendental vantage, and the conclusion drawn most often is that mankind's own hallowed perspective is merely childish in comparison to this universe and the laws that fill it, or don't fill it. If adults are cognizant of the fallibility of their reasoning, on some level, and adult thoughts and behaviors are merely "larger" representations of  childhood ones, then we should expect that children are also cognizant about their own fallibility to a certain degree appropriate to their developmental capability. Nevertheless, both children and adults, including this one, fall prey to making inaccurate assumptions about this universe as if they were universal truths.

Just as a child may create and maintain fanciful scenarios to describe the workings of nature even as they are schooled in the sciences, that superstitious behavior does not stop at the artificial threshold of childhood. One inaccurate assumption is that adulthood is superior to childhood due to its experience, and childhood is superior to adulthood due to its innocence. This is pervasive, but that doesn't make it true.

Saving Isn't Helping

There's going to be a cultural war between the members of the millennial generation --between those who are rational and skeptical, and those who are influenced by the visceral and sensational. This is to say, it will be waged between those who accept reality and the unshakable flaws and powers of human nature, and those who want to save the world with uncompromising ideology. And how can someone like myself know this outcome with such certainty? It is probably because there is nothing new about it.

There will always be those who want to save the world and those who want to help the world. Those who have endeavored to save the world have failed, and those who have worked to help it, have succeeded only so long as they are permitted to do so by those who are trying to save it. Helping is a selfless act to assist another when it is needed and asked for, whereas saving is a selfish act meant to make one appear like a savior when the assistance is neither required or asked for. Those who help try to accept the failures of human nature and persevere in spite of them. Those who play savior try to eliminate the failings of human nature so that they may supersede it with an ideal. There is nothing new about cult behavior though. We must be weary of it, but not fearful of it or destructive towards it. Ideology seeks out enemies to destroy, and creates new ones by doing so. Rationality speaks truth to power, and finds friends with all those who seek justice without destruction.

The same is true for how we respond to our children. There are those who want to help children and those who want to save the children. Those who help children are able to see their fallible human nature, and find ways to work around it with them. Those who want to save children either want to pretend that children are infallible (Indigo children), or try to eliminate the fallible qualities of a child's human nature completely so that they may match with the cultural standards of children as infallible. The mechanism by which the adult saves children appears to be by subverting their humanity, whereby the mechanism the adult helps children is through recognizing and empowering it (by overcoming faults). What is true for how we raise children, is true for society.

Human nature has a variety of expression, but it is a finite expression that is then malleable by culture and economics. Anyone who attempts to posit that it is entirely a creation of culture and circumstance (the Marxists), or posits that it is entirely innate, is preceding from false assumptions. Anyone who thinks they can invent some ideology to "wake the world up" from its sleepwalk into doomsday by convincing the people that their governments and corporations have created human nature in its entirety, is selling a contradiction. On the one hand, they say human nature is being exploited in order to propagate an ideology, and on the other, that human nature is a mere creation and doesn't exist naturally. How can human beings be as we picture children--mindless drones one minute when in the hands of the group the onlooker despises, and the next, intentional beings once fallen under the spell of that onlooker? The onlooker exploits their human nature by telling them their nature is a creation.

There has become such a thing as an anti-ideology ideology. It proposes that people are becoming sedated by the ideologies they absorb on a daily basis in their information-rich contexts--leaving out of course that the "ideology of ideological sedation" is itself part of that information bombardment. So we have people panicked over how children will grow up with impairments due to exposure to certain ideologies, not realizing that restricting them from ideology is itself an ideology that they are inadvertently exposing their children to. This is not to say that we ought to be anxious that anti-ideologies are still ideologies, falling prey to an endless loop of paranoia about the effects of anti-ideology ideologies--if that is confusing, good, because it's irrational. Instead, what is meant by this is simply that we ought to accept that reality, accept that things we may not like exist and will always exist, and then do our best to recognize them and step around them when we see them.

Children are human beings, they are not lifelong slaves to the ideology they heard when they were three years old. They can break out of the system if we work with them to teach them about the system. They can not break free if we shut them off to that critical information or neglect to teach it in fear that they will "fall prey to it." There is no reason to concern ourselves so much with what is going into them, because when we do that we fail to attend to what is coming out. When we focus our attention on covering their ears so that information we don't like can't seep in, we forget to listen to what is coming out of their mouths. When we spend our time blocking their eyes so that they can't see something, we blind ourselves to what is coming out in their physical movements. For every inch we think we gain on their ability to understand the world, we give up our understanding of them.

Now this should not be a worrisome trend, seeing as what will happen will happen--intervention only stops what we imagine from happening, it doesn't stop what we can't imagine. In all likelihood, what we can't imagine is what is probably going to happen. We have no control over outcomes, just the social devices we choose to get there. Discussion and education is what informs a human being's choices, and a child's outcomes, not mere exposure to certain ideas. What is true for children is true for society.

Adult Sitcom Tropes

Adults use children in drama as props, sensitive props upon which to pair off the so-called complexities of adult affairs. How many tender scenes depicting two adults engaged in so-called painful dialogue are intercepted by some child of theirs, seemingly catapulted out of nowhere and who's arrival signals the complete closure of the "dirty" "dark" "depressing" adult-talk? Suddenly the adults in these fictionalized portrayals decide to go all-smiles at the sight of the child with the subtlety of a painted clown face. What's worse is how the child is to remain oblivious to the crying clowns--which is what these adults are--and skip along merrily as if to fulfill every wish an adult could have about a child.

Children are perceptive. They are not as perceptive as they are often made out to be when adults wish to showcase their perceptiveness, but they are not the "runaround dunces" they are commonly depicted as in the sitcom world of adult wish fulfillment. As perceptive as they are capable of being, even adults eventually have to concede that as they grow, children do develop more direct ways to express their ability to decode the so-called "sophistication" of adult affairs. These are called "teenagers" in this same sitcom universe, and because adults have to accept that teenagers are no longer runaround dunces and have powers of perception, they choose to recast them as the enemy.

Runaround dunces are no threat to the adult's self-inflated perception of their importance, so they are more or less depicted as inconvenient playthings. However, teenagers, being also under the adults' power but capable of usurping them, are rendered as the enemy. The teenager has to be shown as an impetuous brat willing to call insurrection without warning if the adults so much as suggest anything to them. They must put themselves in jeopardy (they can never be depicted as right), and the adults must swoop on in and heroically rescue them from their own undoing. They usually finish out with a talk as if the teen has learned some valuable lesson in self-reliance. Such a thing is there to please the adult's conscience--it's really just a cover for the fact that the teen has come full circle and is now in complete deference to the adult's authority. The curtain closes. This is the only way these events can unfold on television, never in reverse.

Watching adult-centered fictional television is literally like watching one age group's self-serving skewed view of reality. All the other perspectives--the perspective of the runaround dunces and the perspective of the impetuous no-nothing brats are not considered. At the end of the day, only the adults must be satisfied, and the children, just satisfied that the adults are satisfied.

It is similar to the old television trope where each character is called upon to give an account of something, and we get to see each character's skewed recollection of events that cast them as the heroes and everyone else as the villains. In this case, adults love to cast themselves as the heroes, even as misunderstood heroes, and everyone younger than them (or older as the case may be) as the "enemy." Adult television, and all of it's assorted tropes, are propaganda for the 25 to 50-year-old demographic, and more importantly, their inflated opinion of themselves. To be egotistical is to be human. Adults just have the means to televise theirs non-stop, 24/7.

Adult Irony

The most deplorable thing about the adult is their love of all things ironic. It's the adult equivalent to a small child's egotism in its annoyance and almost as ubiquitous. Television is littered with examples. Adults love an unexpected pairing or an incongruous situation, and one of the most prevalent is the pairing of a child in a context that adults have reserved for themselves. There's the classic example of a child stumbling onto his parents making love (where a child is supposed to represent "innocence" and "ignorance," and the sex act is supposed to represent the "dirty little secret" that only adults know). Adults love to revel in their so-called advanced experience with the world, and parade it in front of children's ignorance as if gloating the old "I know something you don't know."

Arguably, this phenomenon can be tied to the same egotism that causes the child to believe that every object of their desire is ultimately theirs, even under circumstances where it is in the obvious possession of a peer. Adults want to feel important, as is human, and because they have the power to do whatever they want, they have the ability to exert these desires in larger social domains (like television for instance). The problem is, just as it is with children, the broad majority lack the insight into why they enjoy feeling better and smarter than children. This makes them as childish.

In the same way that a toy doesn't belong to our proverbial child simply because they want it, the truth about the world (and all those dirty little secrets) doesn't "belong to adults" simply because they will it to be. Adults don't know anything a child should be kept from knowing just to preserve the little "smarter than you" game. Everything should be on the table because everything is on the table. We need honesty, not irony.

Sweet By and By

For all that is made about the "insufferable" childishness of children, adults can be quite childish themselves. At least it is appropriate for a child to act childish, according to the adult perspective, but in reality, the same should be true for adults. Because what is childishness? It is the inappropriate actions of a child who has not grown snug into the customs of his or her surroundings limited by the circumstance. In short words, it's the temper tantrum when they can't get what they want, the egotism, the pre-conventional understanding of morality. Essentially, it is the expression of a developmental mindset at odds with the requirements of the universe it finds itself in. This is true of kids, but it is also true of human beings.

Could it be said that any adult has worn the universe so snug around them that they haven't acted like just another sentient ape running around, throwing tantrums and basking in self importance on this spec of dust in the limitless chaos? Of course not. Human beings are not gods, but because they are not gods, are these inappropriate actions then, given the circumstance they find themselves in? If we can determine a child's childishness, how do we determine what is appropriate for humankind in the grand scheme of the cosmos if all we are is human beings?

If religion and spirituality does anything, it renders the adult mind as they would prefer to keep a child's, it's the only thing stopping an adult from assigning even more self-importance to themselves than they already do. It forces them to look out at the world with the same humility and subservience that they expect and demand from their offspring. It reminds them of how truly childish they are, as they sit around on earth gloating about their so-called importance just for being adults. Perhaps Christ himself was onto something:

Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.

When we speak of childishness, what we're really talking about is the overly expressive human ego. It doesn't stop expressing itself simply because a child has matured into adulthood, instead, even as the adult becomes more aware of it, it comes to define civilization. Materialism is a concept for people who are not easily swayed by the humility that religion imposes and spirituality inspires, those who want to believe that because they are in the "full maturation of their faculties" that they are gods themselves, and the material culture of western civilization feeds into and is a product of that egotistical belief. These are the people who believe the full maturation of their faculties means there can be nothing higher or more transcendental than the narrow adult human, animal, five-senses, culture-specific, planet Earth perspective they have. Given the massive scope of "existence" itself, there is nothing more childish than that.

What is childish is human. In the grand continuum that is human nature, there are many shades. Adult is just one variety. It is no more or less important than any other. It should command no more or less authority over the universe than any other because it has no more authority over it than any other. It can't. Just like all the other varieties, it is too self-absorbed.

Adult is No Standard

Children are often accused of thinking the world revolves around them as if believing this was such a "low" or lesser thing--as if it were a behavior divorced from the adult. Believing one is at the center of something important is as human as human, whether it's believing that all one's friends are spending their time talking about them or believing that extra-terrestrials would have any reason to travel endless light years to us for momentary visits. No. Far from being something divorced from adults, it is the very nature of the human ego to assume itself untouched by behaviors it deems low or lesser than it. By so easily dismissing the child's egoism, adults reveal their own.

Advertisements will even exploit this standard, simultaneously depicting children as rambunctious egoists bent on gratifying their passing fancy along with an adult, normally the mother, in desperation for what she deserves--attention to her plight, attention on her struggles and efforts, only to find that her labors are such that only some godsend product can help dissolve. Advertising is the propaganda of its target audience. When adults are the demographic, the advertising is unquestionably adult-centric. Because adults reserve for themselves the resources of society, they are inevitably the main target audience, thus the majority of advertising is adult propaganda.

Adult-centrism is reinforced by this propaganda. Its main tenet being that whatever constitutes adulthood at any time and place is the standard and pinnacle lifestyle, ideology, perspective, culture, and developmental ability of the human race. Indeed, "adult" is often interpreted as meaning or being synonymous with "human." Childhood and youth is considered unfortunate temporary states of being on the way to becoming adult, which is to say, becoming human.

However, all is subject to interpretation, and all interpretation that prevails is a function of power. Alternative positions, whether adult or child, are simply alternative positions--developmentally defined expressions of humanity. One is no more "superior" by virtue of its power and authority as the other is "inferior" by virtue of it's ignorance. No one is inferior or superior. All expressions of humanity are relative to one another. The only thing maintaining the adult as the standard form of human being and all it's various alternative (child-like) positions as "lesser" or "inferior" states of being, is a function of their power to enforce this perspective. This is done through their propaganda.