You’ve seen or heard the saying, “The children are our future.” But are they?
I can’t remember where exactly, but it was a sign on some road, maybe one on a school marquis, and it read, “The children are our future.” Ordinarily, I would have passed the sign with a mental note that “Yes, they are, obviously.” But I had just seen a couple of on-the-street interviews on YouTube involving college-age students. Those interviews elicited in me a rejection of that old saying as an encapsulation of optimism. I’ve come to believe that the opposite is true.
The children are our past.
If optimistically we can say the children are the future—our future—why does every generation repeat the mistakes of its forebears? And not just the immediate forebears, the whole of humanity’s ancestors?
Anecdotes aren’t proof, but they can be indicators. In one YouTube interview I saw, a girl said she didn’t like Donald Trump because “he was a capitalist.” When the interviewer asked what she was, she replied, “I’m a communist.” In response to his next question about where communism “had worked” for the betterment of mankind, she said something like “Here, in the past.”
Everyone knows Santayana’s statement about repeating past mistakes, maybe even the girl in the interview—though I doubt it. But ignorance of the past is exactly why I cannot see children as our future. Oh! Sure, some will know that socialist and communist regimes have been responsible for more than 100 million deaths, maybe as many as 200 million murders in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but those will be few in number and will not be "the future." No, the future belongs to the ignorant, to those who will repeat the mistakes of the past.
Take little Vlad, for example. Born into the Soviet Union, he has grown to become the head of that union’s heart, Mother Russia. Desirous of having things as they were during his formative years, Vlad has set about conquering, or should I say, reconquering Soviet lands and peoples. In the process he has started a war, and armed with nuclear weapons, this child-turned-adult has threatened to use them. So, here we go again, would-be conqueror after would-be conqueror, from ancient times to modern, the child takes the misery of the past into his generation’s present, that past becoming the future of a generation and eventually becoming the past to be ignored by a future generation—those children proclaimed to be “our future.”
Thus, the current generation of anarchists, not realizing the futile nature of their anarchy, destroy as their ideological forebears destroyed—with no workable system in mind other than destruction in the name of some ideal. Thus, the destruction in Seattle and Portland and in other cities over the past 120 years. And always with the same result, always with the recreated past as the product of the “children.” Thus, the current generation of gangs wreak havoc as their forebears did in almost every “civilized” country. Thus, the next generation of warlords cause the same kind of misery their forebears caused in attempts to control those in their sphere of influence or in attempts to expand their control. And thus, a nation built successfully on capitalism will succumb to today’s children as they turn the future into the past.
And, of course, we have only ourselves to blame. We—the people of any generation—never seem to get the message to the following generation. No one ever seems to have taught Vlad and his like, for example, that the destruction and death they cause will come to them in return, that conquerors and dictators are never really mourned though the officials they emplace or who take their places might erect monuments to them. No one ever seems to have told the current young that socialism and communism are repressive and that unless they are among the ruling elite—whose own success will succumb with their own demise or to the next generation’s greed—they will repeat the failures that run, among Americans, for example, from Brook Farm through Jonesville and Heaven’s Gate. No one seems to have explained that the aimless destruction of past anarchic movements is the future of current anarchists and that they will themselves succumb to unwanted anarchy: The so-called CHOP district, where crimes and even murder occurred is one telling example, and the Occupy Wall Street movement, also bedeviled by crimes, including rape and assault, is another example.
So, no, I don’t believe the children are our future. Well, maybe some are, but they will as we, have to contend with contemporaries who seek to relive the past because they are unaware of its nature. Thus, humanity today, repeating the mistakes made throughout all of human history from Cain to Vlad, will find its future firmly rooted in its past.
Time to take down that often repeated statement that claims optimistically “Children Are Our Future” and replace it with “Children Are Our Past.”
Is there a way out of the seemingly endless cycle of violence and folly? Generation after generation has tried. Heck, one can go back to Psalm 95 in which the psalmist advises against hardening one's heart. We can as our ancestors have, plead with the next generation in paraphrase of that advice, "If today you hear our voice, harden not your heart." It hasn't worked before, but why not give it a try on the odd chance that it just might work this time?
I can’t remember where exactly, but it was a sign on some road, maybe one on a school marquis, and it read, “The children are our future.” Ordinarily, I would have passed the sign with a mental note that “Yes, they are, obviously.” But I had just seen a couple of on-the-street interviews on YouTube involving college-age students. Those interviews elicited in me a rejection of that old saying as an encapsulation of optimism. I’ve come to believe that the opposite is true.
The children are our past.
If optimistically we can say the children are the future—our future—why does every generation repeat the mistakes of its forebears? And not just the immediate forebears, the whole of humanity’s ancestors?
Anecdotes aren’t proof, but they can be indicators. In one YouTube interview I saw, a girl said she didn’t like Donald Trump because “he was a capitalist.” When the interviewer asked what she was, she replied, “I’m a communist.” In response to his next question about where communism “had worked” for the betterment of mankind, she said something like “Here, in the past.”
Everyone knows Santayana’s statement about repeating past mistakes, maybe even the girl in the interview—though I doubt it. But ignorance of the past is exactly why I cannot see children as our future. Oh! Sure, some will know that socialist and communist regimes have been responsible for more than 100 million deaths, maybe as many as 200 million murders in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but those will be few in number and will not be "the future." No, the future belongs to the ignorant, to those who will repeat the mistakes of the past.
Take little Vlad, for example. Born into the Soviet Union, he has grown to become the head of that union’s heart, Mother Russia. Desirous of having things as they were during his formative years, Vlad has set about conquering, or should I say, reconquering Soviet lands and peoples. In the process he has started a war, and armed with nuclear weapons, this child-turned-adult has threatened to use them. So, here we go again, would-be conqueror after would-be conqueror, from ancient times to modern, the child takes the misery of the past into his generation’s present, that past becoming the future of a generation and eventually becoming the past to be ignored by a future generation—those children proclaimed to be “our future.”
Thus, the current generation of anarchists, not realizing the futile nature of their anarchy, destroy as their ideological forebears destroyed—with no workable system in mind other than destruction in the name of some ideal. Thus, the destruction in Seattle and Portland and in other cities over the past 120 years. And always with the same result, always with the recreated past as the product of the “children.” Thus, the current generation of gangs wreak havoc as their forebears did in almost every “civilized” country. Thus, the next generation of warlords cause the same kind of misery their forebears caused in attempts to control those in their sphere of influence or in attempts to expand their control. And thus, a nation built successfully on capitalism will succumb to today’s children as they turn the future into the past.
And, of course, we have only ourselves to blame. We—the people of any generation—never seem to get the message to the following generation. No one ever seems to have taught Vlad and his like, for example, that the destruction and death they cause will come to them in return, that conquerors and dictators are never really mourned though the officials they emplace or who take their places might erect monuments to them. No one ever seems to have told the current young that socialism and communism are repressive and that unless they are among the ruling elite—whose own success will succumb with their own demise or to the next generation’s greed—they will repeat the failures that run, among Americans, for example, from Brook Farm through Jonesville and Heaven’s Gate. No one seems to have explained that the aimless destruction of past anarchic movements is the future of current anarchists and that they will themselves succumb to unwanted anarchy: The so-called CHOP district, where crimes and even murder occurred is one telling example, and the Occupy Wall Street movement, also bedeviled by crimes, including rape and assault, is another example.
So, no, I don’t believe the children are our future. Well, maybe some are, but they will as we, have to contend with contemporaries who seek to relive the past because they are unaware of its nature. Thus, humanity today, repeating the mistakes made throughout all of human history from Cain to Vlad, will find its future firmly rooted in its past.
Time to take down that often repeated statement that claims optimistically “Children Are Our Future” and replace it with “Children Are Our Past.”
Is there a way out of the seemingly endless cycle of violence and folly? Generation after generation has tried. Heck, one can go back to Psalm 95 in which the psalmist advises against hardening one's heart. We can as our ancestors have, plead with the next generation in paraphrase of that advice, "If today you hear our voice, harden not your heart." It hasn't worked before, but why not give it a try on the odd chance that it just might work this time?
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