I asked a friend,
If you hypothetically raise your children perfectly, does that mean they will have a good life?
And of course the answer was "no", but with the caveat that it sets them up the best they can, which is totally true. But, I followed up with another question.
What if everyone else does a terrible job of raising their children?
It is interesting to think about, because while I don't believe that most parents purposely raise their children poorly, changing culture might be influencing the practices. And, no matter how "good" a child is, we are social animals, which means that we are going to be affected by our peers in many, many ways.
"There are no good men out there"
I have heard this said in movies, and I have heard it said in real life too, but it is currently still a lie. There are "good men" out there, but what happens if there really isn't? And if there are no good men, are the women any better? Like it or not, we live in a society where both men and women are required, and it could be argued that the reduction of the role of "traditional" men has had negative impacts on society as a whole. But no one wants to hear that.
"Toxic masculinity" drives more clicks.
As a parent however, I should be thinking about what kind of world I want my daughter to grow up into, and what constitutes her wellbeing. Of course I want her to be safe and have opportunity, and I also want her to breathe clean air. However, our wellbeing isn't dependent on a few factors, it is more complex than that.
Health might be wealth, but there are more aspects to our "health" than our bodies. There is also our mental health, which despite all that therapy and "self-care" is on a steep decline across the averages. As is our emotional health. And, according to a Harvard study that spanned 85 years, the number one factor of our happiness is,
Social fitness.
Social health.
In our relational lives, there are seven keystones of support:
- Safety and security: Who would you call if you woke up scared in the middle of the night? Who would you turn to in a moment of crisis?
- Learning and growth: Who encourages you to try new things, to take chances, to pursue your life’s goals?
- Emotional closeness and confiding: Who knows everything (or most things) about you? Who can you call on when you’re feeling low and be honest with about how you’re feeling?
- Identity affirmation and shared experience: Is there someone in your life who has shared many experiences with you and who helps you strengthen your sense of who you are?
- Romantic intimacy: Do you feel satisfied with the amount of romantic intimacy in your life?
- Help (both informational and practical): Who do you turn to if you need some expertise or help solving a practical problem (e.g., planting a tree, fixing your WiFi connection).
- Fun and relaxation: Who makes you laugh? Who do you call to see a movie or go on a road trip with who makes you feel connected and at ease?
Read that list and see if the people in your lives offer enough depth, or if the relationships have weakened over time. Then, have a look at the list again and recognize that we are increasingly using tools to replace the people in our lives.
For instance, younger people tend to jump from experience to experience, but don't build deep relationships with people that span across their growth, instead "outgrowing" people, because tastes change. That affects Emotional closeness and Identity affirmation and shared experience. Not only that, younger people are turning away from long-term relationships, and in many cases, relationships altogether, so Romantic intimacy is replaced with one night stands, porn and a sex toy. And help has been replaced by DiY YouTube support, and paid service people.
It is interesting to note that if you talk to younger people, they believe that they are more social and accepting of diversity, but this is not actually the case, because while they want to be accepted, when people grow and change, they will drift and abandon them, because they no longer have "something in common". But, this is what happens to all people, so it means that if we each abandon the people in our lives because they change, we are also going to be abandoned, right?
Does that seem like a good experience?
Now, it is possible to avoid the feeling of abandonment by moving into the next experience and making new connections, but that means that those new people don't have the past shared experiences, so there is no continuity, meaning that they don't actually "now" us at depth, which is again, one of those keys to happiness.
It seems that most of the emphasis is put into the last point, the Fun and relaxation factor, which tends to lead to the consumer side of the equation, buying shared experience. A concert, a movie, a beer. But, while it is important, it also neglects all the other factors that apparently go into making the average person happy in life. Do we want our kids to be happy in life?
Content. Satisfied. Joyful.
Use whatever word you want, but at the end of the day, the words don't matter, the conditions do. The condition of the mind, the body, and the emotional soul. The condition of the air, water, and environment. And, the condition of society, the community and our interpersonal relationships.
We all want to feel recognized and valued in this life in some way, and even this is being outsourced to machines, where people are spending their time with chatbots who make them feel special, and paying money to AI-generated models for intimacy.
At least in my eyes, it is not a picture of health.
Yet, many will keep protesting and claiming that I don't understand, that culture has changed and the younger generations are more evolved. That in thirty years, they have outgrown two million years of evolution, and can leave it all behind.
Sounds familiar.
My daughter wants to be hugged. She wants time with us. She wants to play together. She wants to have her back tickled. She wants to discuss with us. She wants to have someone there to support her, encourage her, and help her when she falls. She wants to be close.
Nearly all kids want this, and always have.
They have not evolved out of it. So what makes them think that in the few short years from childhood to early adulthood, they fundamentally change who they are at their genetic core?
Social conditioning.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]