There’s a life lesson I had to teach my son today (age 8). I had to teach, or really reteach, this lesson to him after he had a fight with his younger sister and kept saying, “well she did it first.” The lesson is ‘age is just a number.’ Let me explain or paraphrase how I said it to him.
Age is just a number. Most kids think once they reach a certain age, they are now adults, but this isn’t true. You become an adult once you reach this conclusion: I must take responsibility for my actions without shifting accountability to others. The ‘others’ can refer to other people or circumstances we can’t control.
The reaction to an outside force CAN be equal and opposite, but it is still MY action. Human behavior is not defined by physics or a mathematical state of equilibrium. Some actions against you may be taken too far but that does not justify any reaction you may deem justifiable in the moment. The real world has no obligation to be ‘fair’ or result in equal reward or punishment. The real world is a delicate balance of chaos and order, and sometimes, you just gotta swallow your pride to maintain that balance. You can’t take accountability for other’s actions, but you MUST take accountability for your own.
You become an adult once you accept the burden of adulthood. Even though that burden may not always result in a constant state of happiness or just rewards, it is the cost we pay for the ability to act for ourselves and pursue whatever gives us meaning in our lives. If you aren’t willing to pay that cost, you’ll never escape the constraints of a dependent, child-like mindset.
Being an adult isn’t something you grow into. It’s a mature state of mind.
I wanted to share this because as I was explaining this to my son, I found myself relating this lesson to the behavior by many who consider themselves adults today. Inequality, racism, bigotry, and other forms of discrimination that result in unfair treatment are all real. I never refute that. But using that unfair treatment as a way to shift accountability or interact with the world in a way that suggests you have no (or little) control over your life will not result in solutions that will fix those injustices. If you fight injustice with immature behavior, you’ll get immature solutions.
People who blame injustices on non-tangible entities, like systemic racism, with no clear definition of that injustice shift accountability much like an immature child would. What are the results? Proposed solutions meant to discriminate in the other direction to correct past injustices. It’s the ‘well she started it’ argument.
Today, it’s the people who don’t want to grow up who have the loudest microphone. We can blame social media, bad parenting, or whichever past or present president who opposes our viewpoints, but this behavior didn’t start with them. It started with us, the culture.
I plan on writing a piece within the next few weeks to fully explain why division and immature behavior can’t be blamed on a political party, activist group, or large corporation. If you’ve read or listened to my work before, then you’ll know that I fully believe in the concept forwarded by the late Andrew Breitbart, “politics is downstream from culture.” Understanding this point will help shed some light on why I believe this is a cultural issue.
Thanks for listening to this little rant.
I was listening to some news updates when I heard this CNN clip about the potentially hazardous water in East Palestine, and as soon as I heard her ask the question about whether or not her guest would drink the water, I IMMEDIATELY thought of this clip from South Park. Enjoy.
In this special episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, Truman from Return To Reason is back for a new video and podcast series titled ‘Revisiting The Road To Serfdom’ where we review F.A. Hayek’s classic work, The Road To Serfdom. This episode covers ‘Chapter 15: The Prospects of International Order’.
This will be an ongoing series that covers the entire book. We put a ton of work into making this insightful and relevant, so we hope you enjoy watching/listening as much as we enjoyed reading and recording.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, I team up with Truman from @ReturnToReason to interview one of the most intelligent and influential creators in the space of philosophy today. Stephen R.C. Hicks is a Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and Senior Scholar at The Atlas Society. He has written many books including Explaining Postmodernism and Nietzsche and the Nazis. We bring him on to talk about the social and political issues we are currently facing in America, and the West more broadly, and what the collectivist ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau might have to do with it.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this special episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, Truman from Return To Reason is back for a new video and podcast series titled ‘Revisiting The Road To Serfdom’ where we review F.A. Hayek’s classic work, The Road To Serfdom. This episode covers ‘Chapter 15: The Prospects of International Order’.
This will be an ongoing series that covers the entire book. We put a ton of work into making this insightful and relevant, so we hope you enjoy watching/listening as much as we enjoyed reading and recording.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, I team up with Truman from @ReturnToReason to interview one of the most intelligent and influential creators in the space of philosophy today. Stephen R.C. Hicks is a Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship, and Senior Scholar at The Atlas Society. He has written many books including Explaining Postmodernism and Nietzsche and the Nazis. We bring him on to talk about the social and political issues we are currently facing in America, and the West more broadly, and what the collectivist ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau might have to do with it.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
In this special episode of The Engineering Politics Podcast, Truman from @ReturnToReason is back for a new video and podcast series titled ‘Revisiting The Road To Serfdom’ where we review F.A. Hayek’s classic work, The Road To Serfdom. This episode covers ‘Chapter 14: Material Conditions and Ideal Ends’.
This will be an ongoing series that covers the entire book. We put a ton of work into making this insightful and relevant, so we hope you enjoy watching/listening as much as we enjoyed reading and recording.
Become a subscriber of the Engineering Politics Locals Community to support this content. Also, consider joining the @ReturnToReason Locals Community to show Truman some support.
