In our part of the world, roughly the ‘G-7 countries’, their EU-partner and Israel, the adults have left the room after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In part it was an accident waiting to happen, with an increasing number of people rejecting the concept of individual responsibility, shifting the burden of their quirky behavior to the insurance company and the government, while paying others to take care of their offspring, leaving and entering relationships to optimize their personal sense of happiness. Debt started to rise. First slowly but deliberately, today exponentially, transferring payment to the future, and future generations, insisting that whatever we spend it on is an ‘investment’.
In 2004 the American journalist Ron Suskind spoke to an anonymous aide in the Bush administration, widely believed to have been Karl Rove, Bush' ‘spin doctor’, who derisively spoke of ‘Reality Based’ people. He stated that the US was past that stage, since it could act as it desired, without paying attention to the consequences, since the US was an ‘Empire’ in a unipolar world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the US acted in that fashion ever since, and already way before that. So, when Putin went to Munich in 2007 to address the Security Conference, begging the assembled ‘world leaders’ to behave like adults, and design a lasting treaty to bring security and stability to Europe, he was appealing to the remaining adults within the NATO-sphere. And he got his answer the next year, as NATO announced it would continue to expand, spitting him in the face. There were rumblings inside NATO about this blatant rejection of Putin’s proposal, but it didn’t amount to an adult response. The Europeans felt safe hiding behind their American bully, and went back to play.
Now, before I continue, I would like to draw your attention to a little known, very insightful Canadian psychiater Eric Berne, who came up with a new approach to analyzing people based on their ‘thinking’ and subsequent acting within a group, called ‘Transactional Analysis’ (TA). It was, and still is, pretty influential, as parts of it morphed into numerous approaches that went by other names. And since it can be used to influence people by ‘pushing’ the correct buttons, it has been used by numerous people who sought to influence others without the need to convince them. That technique eventually went by the name of ‘nudging’, after another intellectual, in another branche of science, economy, discovered that people were not intelligent, always picking the best choice for themselves, as economic theory assumed. Carlo Cipolla maintained that the number of ‘Dumb Fucks’ was way larger than anyone could have guessed, and it included those with a high IQ and eye-watering education. His tongue in cheek booklet went by the title ‘The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity’.
Now, I’m certain that Berne never intended his theory to be used in such a way at all. Neither did Cipolla envision a situation where large scale influencing operations would replace rational solutions and win-win compromise, reducing the adults/intelligent people to bystanders, powerless to reach out to the ‘Dumb Fucks’ running the asylum. Berne described ‘vectors’ within a person which pulled him of her towards observed behavior. ‘Vectors’ which supplemented each other, or which were diametrically opposed to each other, or threw the main impulse off track. He identified three basic ’states’. ‘Parent’, ‘Adult’, and ‘Child’. As ‘Parent’ both the ‘caring parent’, and the ‘strict, punishing parent’, as two complementing ‘vectors’, clearly reflecting the general idea at the time of two parents raising children, with the mother seen as (predominantly) ‘caring’, and the father as (predominantly) ‘strict, punishing’. However, he did not stick these ‘states’ onto people in a certain position, but insisted it was typical for a ‘mind-set’. The father could be the ‘caring’ type, while the mother was the ‘strict, punishing’ individual within a family. Or they might alternate between ‘states’, depending on the situation, if they moved into a ‘parenting state’ from an ‘adult state’ to address a certain challenge to authority. Anyone ‘locked’ in a parenting state, or ‘locked’ in a childish state was problematic. Raising children, while done by parents, acting as ‘caring’ and/or ‘strict/punishing’, should therefore be aiming for the development of a (predominantly) ‘adult’ state within their children. The ‘adult’ had the ability of switching between ‘states’ temporarily as the situation required, or allowed. Non of this is ‘rocket science’.
Numerous ‘reasons’ why ‘adults’ went out of fashion in our part of the world. ‘Boring’. And because we could. We were rich. All powerful. ‘Great Fun’ to unleash your ‘Child’ and act irresponsible, or turn into a ‘strict, punishing’ adult and become a bully, demanding blind obedience. Or tap into your ‘caring’ parent and satisfy your need to take care of everybody, using tax-Dollars/Euros. Or leave reality altogether, and turn life into a ‘play’, with random ‘lifestyles’. The result is ‘Gotham’. Detached from reality, and running circles around the ‘adults’ who are simply ‘boring’, while you could have lots of fun! Smash things. Destroy entire countries, simply because you can. Lose yourself in play and entertainment, and ignore the real world, demanding more, and more, and more. Helping people in need with endless streams of freshly printed money, feeling good about yourself. This is going to end badly.