Author’s note, I’m having a severe difficulty with backlit screens, and find that migraines begin within 2 paragraphs. Embarrassing to admit this but more embarrassing to not explain why my writing seems rather kindergartenish compared to my former efforts. In any case, what started out ok devolved a bit, but I thank you for reading.
What do I mean when I say we were raised by wolves? As I outline in my introductory essay, my mother was a latchkey kid, both of her parents worked and they had moved to a suburb in post-war America that separated her from her extended family, a situation neither of her parents nor their families had ever experienced. This was not unusual and the 1950s and 1960s, and in the generations to follow became the standard. This new environment became the proving ground for just how far modern media could influence the youth of the country. When I say that she was raised by televisions, I'm paraphrasing her, not speculating myself. But it showed not only in her behavior but that of her peers, their adherence and loyalty shifting (and strongly) to pop culture rather than whichever religion they seem to have lapsed right out of.
When I've outlined the disaster of modern relativism, and postmodernism is a term I tend to use interchangeably because it has ceased to have any other meaning than this pastiche of 20th century academic philosophies that hinge on that key point, this is also what I mean. A generation was raised to be molded by popular culture, which included radical leftist celebrity as well as artists, but also with enough affluence and opportunity to be molded by higher education, which they entered at a much higher rate than their parents' generation. As most of us know, all of this collided at a pivotal point in history that some see as a brilliant era of change, which it was in terms of the Civil Rights Movement. A more critical eye reveals to be the point at which this generation broke from the permanent truths, or even the notion that there can be truths.
As a result many of us were raised by parents who….didn't know what to do, nor did they see it as their right to raise us with discipline and with core values. I say us, but mileage obviously varies here. This was the period when adults started counting themselves as religiously unaffiliated. After all, how can one religion be right? Relativism. Again and again, the destructive force of the 20th century. An attitude arose that parents didn't have the right to “indoctrinate” their own children into their belief system, their own religion, but the children should have the right to decide on their own, which of course has the effect of skipping the crucial step and development in which those exact beliefs and values are instilled. in other words, when faith itself is built. This was a huge handicap to those it was foisted upon.
The rest? Well, there's a big difference between women who were brought up to serve their communities and their families and this new ethos that screamed at most of us that we should serve ourselves. This is what led to my revelation, bluntly, not even that I had been horrifically selfish but that society itself had preached a brutal selfishness that was really an enslavement to the notion of self. For it is enslavement, this constant search for the “self” in a society that removed any reasonable and meaningful framework in which to do so, and there’s a reason many are returning to the Church and finding liberation in submitting to God. That may sound ham-handed, but it’s rather to the point, and once a person submits their will the vast difference in Before Hippies and After Hippies* becomes rather clear. We elevated the self and made ourselves demi-gods, exactly as the supposed spoilsports were saying all the time.
Point being that this is exponential, down the generations from the Boomers, and beginning with parents in each home that adhered to the ridiculous notion that none of us have any right to insist on universal truths such as the biological reality of sex. They didn’t believe in discipline either, nor much in the normal developmental phases in kids’ lives, wanting to fill in the next step instead of teaching these moments. Discipline was one of the old rules, after all, along with rigid adherence to religion and societal norms, and those chess pieces were swept off the board by the very people raised with them, who then expected their kids to just get the point by osmosis, then acted horrified when we failed to do so. When we failed to be much more than nihilistic but excellent students. And so on, until we arrived at college kids chanting support of our enemies abroad while declaring themselves transgender followers of Baphomet.
We can beat the horse to a pulp arguing whether it was feminism, working women, taking prayer out of schools, etc. but without addressing the elephant in the room, all of that is for naught. You cannot replace worship of God with worship of the self and job titles, nor fundamental truths with a toxic tolerance based on the notion that we’ve no right to judge anything until it has been thoroughly deconstructed by each of the social sciences. They threw a grenade at authority, tradition and the notion of sex based differences even being of value at the same time we splintered into more isolated single family homes, preached every new dogma simultaneously and somehow expected a utopia as well as kids who even know good from evil?
But keeping it simple, and for the purpose of tying this series to my own experiences, we were all raised by wolves. Female orcas in captivity, separated from their social groups and trained by humans, often reject their young and have no clue how to mother them even when they try. Or so I’ve read. Yet we still think that all our knowledge, all of the Academy, that it all protects us (and our children) from this most basic of circumstances.
* Author’s note: next essay was to be on the relative shift in the liberal modern mindset to a new calendar, from Anno Domini and Before Christ to before and after the Summer of Love. Hopefully, it still will be.