Income inequality: conclusion

There is a category of people in our society that wants what it wants -- now. That category is called children. It is in adolescence that these critters begin to feel new powers growing in them and new urges that demand to be fulfilled. They are overwhelmed by desires for pleasure of a truly powerful kind, not just the desire for candy at the supermarket. Kept unchecked, kids will feel the urgency to realize their urges. In traditional societies the world over, these urges have been channeled by early marriage and by material limits that forced young males to go to work at an early age. For such unfortunates, there was not much of an opportunity to go wild, which throws some light on what adolescence itself is all about. By the 1960s, American technology had begun to reduce the need for the many skills and occupations on which a traditional order of life depended, especially the household tasks performed by women. With kids no longer going out to work at thirteen or fourteen, there was an in-between stage to be got through, a kind of holding place before adulthood. Thus, adolescence was not even a concept in most places in the world in the 1950s. It is instead a category that exists only in an advanced consumer society.

This preface allows me to finish off this series, and the presidential election offers me a perfect opportunity. Not the election itself, but the reactions to it. A friend phoned me last evening from Seattle, where it seems there were protests against the outcome. Indeed, there were protests in various cities throughout the U.S. Protest movements in the U.S. have principally been the domain of young people, as in the Sixties protests against the Vietnam War. These protests got a veneer of legitimacy from prominent adults who fronted the larger marches, e.g., those on Washington, D.C., written about so memorably by Norman Mailer. Mailer and the like were getting in on the fun. What it came down to, however, was not so much revulsion against a war as the unwillingness of young men to do what their fathers had done, without protest. This is not to say that there were not legitimate reasons for opposing the war, but the same could have been said for World War II: was it, in the end, worth the lives of so many young men and women worldwide? Historically, of course, men have always been induced or willingly become cannon fodder, but it was only in the Sixties that there was a generation of young men who saw better opportunities for themselves than those enjoyed by men of preceding generations. It was also a time when young women, for the first time in history, had choices unknown to their mothers. It was the first generation to experience adolescence, during the decade -- the 1950s -- in which their parents had rolled up their leaves, gone to work, and created the world's greatest economy which, in turn, provided unheard-of opportunities for this generation by the early 1970s.

Future leaders of the U.S.?

So began the protest era: young males against the war, young women against having to bear children. As adolescents, they had been the first generation in American history to enjoy good dental and dermatological care. Those who went to college by the mid-1960s, hardly 9 percent of their cohort, began to believe that the restrictions of their parents' lives was not for them. They were the first American generation to believe that they could have what they wanted -- and economically this has turned out to be the case. In the Sixties, when faced with unpleasant choices -- military service or restrictions on their sexual behavior -- they reacted like the young people they were. They wanted what they wanted, and they wanted it now.

They got what they wanted and went on to achieve many good things in life. They had, after all, gone to school in the 1950s, when they learned to read, write, and sit still at their desks for several hours at a time. They had the skills to participate in the new, explosive economy and to grow it. They gave up protesting and became well off. They now enjoy the fruits of their retirement accounts and worry about the inheritance taxes their children will have to pay.
 
All those kids out on the streets, protesting against Donald Trump, seemed to have learned only one thing: a belief in their right to have what they want and to have it now. Unfortunately for them, the economy is not in their favor, and many of them do not possess the skills to make a real contribution to society. They have grown up feeling entitled, with the attitude that society owes them what they want. A sign of their ignorance, however, a sign that they remain adolescent (even as many of them have segued into their late 20s and 30s), is their comparison of Trump to Hitler. For goodness sake, as Dilbert has pointed out, Reagan was compared to Hitler, as were both Bush presidents. It is, as Dilbert writes, their "first fake-Hitler scare."

Unfortunately, there is no sign yet that these kids will grow up to become really well-functioning, socially competent adults. They are, after all, the victims of the dumbing down of education instituted by my cohort (yes, I am, among this cohort), which began to take over the reigns of institutions by 1973. It was in that year, that we presided over a vast spending spree: the Great Society. Year by year, a many-tentacled octopus produced a national attitude and an accompanying bureaucracy of programs and entitlements designed to prevent people from … well, from feeling hurt, from having to face the consequences of bad choices, of failures. Once upon a time, it was our parents who protected us from bad choices. Now, if you make mistakes, you are supposed to turn to the government to bail your out, to allow someone else to pay for your shortcomings. If you become fat, it's not from overindulgence, but from a medical condition. If you can't read beyond third-grade level after eight years in school, you move on to high school anyway. Parents can no longer spank their own children, teachers can't fail them, and everyone agrees that competition is bad for the psyche.

No wonder we now have a nation of adolescents, whose claim on our attention derives solely from their belief that they should have what they want and have it now. If they are denied, they will behave like kids: they will scream and have tantrums.

Picture credit: Chicago Tribune