Agency

Choices, options, actions

As I have mentioned previously, one of my favorite lines is from Sartre, “you are our choices.”

Although, I think Margaret Thatcher said it best, “Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, because they become actions. Watch your actions, because they become habits. Watch your habits, because they become your character.”

I know this sounds a little like Yoda, which probably made George Lucas really annoyed considering he is your typical Hollywood billionaire socialist. Can’t have one of his characters emulating a conservative, and a conservative who was friends with Ronald Reagan to boot.

But the truth lies within those lines. Who you are and what you become is all down to how you react to the vagaries of life. Life has a way of throwing curve balls and whether you figure out how to handle the issues that come your way, or end up blaming others says alot about you and whether in the end your life will have meaning.

Honestly, this goes back to how we raise our children. If we refuse to have our children take responsibility for their actions or live with the consequences of those actions we do them no favor. It’s the parent who refuses to believe that their child could be a bully or a cheater, or that their precious little bundles did something illegal or reprehensible. “Not my child” is the mantra of the day.

I remember when my youngest was in kindergarten and annoyed with the speech therapist he picked himself up and marched himself back to the classroom (It was just next door so he didn’t have to traipse through the entire school). Now that they let him leave is one issue, but the other issue is what do I do about that. He couldn’t just do as he would like. He needs to listen to the adults that are tasked with keeping him safe during the day.

I called the school and asked to speak with the Vice Principal and demanded they do something about this. The man was stunned. He told me I am a different kind of parent. Most parents would want to know what the therapist did to upset their child. Oh I wanted to know that too, but I can’t have my child doing as he pleased. So my son was called to the principal’s office. The next year he hit a little girl who had the nerve to sit next to him on the school bus. (6 year old boys are very interesting little creatures) I demanded he spend recess doing something other than recess as punishment.

The only time you ever got me annoyed at the school is when they never taught the lesson of right and wrong and how to handle situations properly. Punishment without a lesson is not sending the right message.

This same son got in trouble in middle school because he called his one-to-one aide a “nazi.” Turns out her grandparents were holocaust survivors so that did not go down very well. Of course, if he had just waited a few decades and called her a zio-nazi all would have been forgiven by the school. Well, back he went to another principal’s office…..seems there was a plague of nazi swastikas being drawn all over the bathrooms in the middle school building so the principal was clamping down, and son, who really did need to understand alot better what he had done, was also caught up in the hullabaloo. This was the argument I had with the principal. You cant simply tell a child not to call someone a “nazi.” You need to tell them why and why in this instance it was so hurtful. (Meanwhile this aide also crocheted him a kipa for his bar mitzvah- which he keeps displayed on his piano to this day)

Decades passed and the boys are in college. Both being autistic I met with the Dean of Students to make sure there were no issues and asked that I be informed if something arose. (Yes the boys signed all the necessary paperwork, and don’t say they were adults and I should not have been informed. Well fuck that stupidity. If there are issues, the school should tell you even if they are neurotypical adults. With the explosion of mental health issues among the population, you may need to step in, hopefully before your child can hurt themselves or their future. Oh and to those who say you need to let your child grow up, well a child with issues even if they are 50 is still your child and your job is to help them anyway you can.) He happily told me that my son was heads above other students. Mostly because he worked hard and didn’t think he was entitled to a grade. He was quite studious and earned his As. The number of parents who called him because their child lost their scholarships for not maintaining their grades was ridiculous, he told me. And of course, the parents blamed the school.

Fast forward to today, where we have fully grown persons who can’t have discussions with people that disagree with them, and adults who refuse to talk to family members because of politics. I remember a college age child (not one of mine) telling me that because I was arguing with him about his perspective on a topic I was interfering with his right of free speech. There in went an entire lecture on what is and is not free speech, and how it doesnt stop you from being proven to be a schmuck.

Perhaps if we raised our children not to be self centered assholes then we wouldn’t be having the societal issues that we do. When you make choices not to interact with someone because of their opinion, or refuse to discuss an issue because you can’t tolerate dissent, then the choice you made is to be a fascist, no matter which side of the aisle you are on.

You can think, oh I believe Jan 6 was a fascist attempt to overthrow the constitution, but is that more important than a loved one who thinks you are being overly dramatic. Or how about the person who thinks its ok to censure speech around COVID and there was nothing unconstitutional or fascistic about the government “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” to social media platforms to deplatform people who disagreed with their policies. Would this person no longer be welcome at your Thanksgiving table?

Seriously, would you truly disown a friend or family member because of a thought crime? I’m not saying that the family member is a card carrying skinhead or has decided to side with ISIS or even Hamas (even though I know there are families dealing with these problems now), but you do need to leave room to talk to people and try to bring them back to sanity as well. And yes sometimes someone is so lost there is no pulling them back, but should you really give up on someone you love without even trying?

Our society is full of extremes with very little middle. Now they say that the center is still where most people stand in the US, but you would never now it from polling and from social media. But we also make those choices to be this way. We allow ourselves to be taken in and to be manipulated by the algorithm and to stop using our own ability to parse information. We allow our children to do as they please on social media without even thinking of the outcomes.

I don’t remember where I heard this, so tell me if you know, the generation of the helicopter parent, who demanded that playgrounds be reconstructed so their little angel doesn’t get a bruise, that they can’t let play happen organically- everything needed to be scheduled, organized, preapproved, and over seen, and god forbid their child had sugar, gluten or “gasp” red dye…. just hands their children, starting probably around 10 years old, a computer more powerful than the one the astronauts used to get to the moon and back (the phone) without so much as a how do you do….it’s simply go gettem kiddos. Sure, go on social media and let it infect your life, it’s not like there are any number of predators on the web or sociopathic classmates…

Well, other children are doing it so of course you child has to as well. Heaven help us if a parent ever said “no” to their offspring. They might tell their parents, “I hate you.” We can’t have that now can we?

(While I am no a fan of The New York times, canceled my subscription over a decade ago, one of the best pieces of advice I had read about parenting came from a NYT article. “ (sic) If your child is not telling you they hate you at least once a day, you are not doing your job as a parent. And yes this was long before political correctness, DEI and the rise of the millennial enfant terrible.)

Whatever happened to when parents said to their child, “if your friend jumped off a roof would you follow?” Well actually we know boys would follow and that is why we put brakes on what they can and cannot do. Well at least we used to.

Little story- I have a neighbor who is building a brand new beautiful home. They have a retaining wall that has a short fence. The husband took one look and simply mentioned the family should just get the number for the local hospital now because boys (in the neighborhood or friends of those in the neighborhood) will decide that they can put on capes, or use umbrellas like in Mary Poppins, and try to jump down from the fence. The show Jackass isn’t popular because young men don’t have the propensity to do stupid things… that frontal lobe isn’t fully developed until late 20s. Hubby thinks they need to make the fence higher. Not so easy to climb on top. (Yes, he is the Jewish mother in our household, but he’s also not wrong.)

This does bring us full circle to the original theme of this post that choice and agency go hand in hand. The retaining wall may be an attractive nuisance, but it is other’s choices that can cause harm. Who is going to be blamed? The parent who doesn’t watch what their child does, or the family that built the wall?

Just as the children that bully another child to death, who is to be blamed? The family that allowed their child to go onto social media in the first place, the school that didn’t stop the bullying, or the parents of the bullies for not actually parenting their little shits.

We give too many a pass within society as if they did not have agency. Whether they are perennial victims or whether they are entitled brats, the fact that we do not teach that there is right and wrong and that there are consequences to your actions is ridiculous. How are these children supposed to function as adults? How are they supposed to make their way in the real world?

Why is it that in protecting our children from hurt or harm, we allow them to become little monsters that have decided that they are the righteous among the nations and that they should never suffer any bad outcomes to their poor choices. Think the tentifada hamasnik antisemitic fucking cunts and their professor enablers, leaders and celebrators who demanded that these little fascist0nazis not suffer any consequences for interfering with the civil rights of Jewish students. (Oh and I am using the term fascist-nazis appropriately)

Why is society such adherents to the “not my child” cult ….and what is this crap, gentle parenting? You can’t tell your child no? It reminds me of the movement when the boys were in 2nd grade that you couldn’t correct their spelling. How they heard it sound is how they could write it. And people wonder why millenials and later can’t read, write, or comprehend language. Just wait to the recipients of “gentle parenting” have to go out into society and be among adults not their parents. (As of today, GenZers and later millennials are actually not even hireable. No one wants to put up with their entitled ridiculousness.)

Listen, there are many issues facing our country right now. Not the least of which is the inability to take responsibility for actions, or inactions. People bitch and moan about consequences that they are going to have to endure because of a choice that they made, but do not ever think to question themselves as to why they made such a poor choice in the first place.

There is no accountability anymore from the President on down. Don’t get me started about the cover up of dementia and how many went along with it including the new nominee, or the grown ass man who is running for president who can’t man up and admit he lost the 2020 election.

The concept of the perpetual victim that can do no harm because they are suffering from any untold number of stigmas that have been thrown at them by society is destructive of society. It’s also why these progressive DAs are either being recalled or are about to lose bigly in the next election. Life has inequities. Life has challenges. Heck life is simply not fair. But it doesn’t mean our little darlings, or we, are immune from the consequences of our choices.

To be an adult, to have a functioning society, everyone over a certain age has to have agency. (In Judaism the age is 13, in some states its a young as 7 years old. Now that doesnt mean you go to jail at 7, but it does mean the state will intervene to see what is going on and why a 7 year old is violating basic societal norms.). Once you reach a certain age you have the ability of choice. It means you have options. Options have consequences. It would be alot better for society if everyone took responsibility for their actions and stopped acting like they are bratty toddlers.

Just stop complaining. It’s really time for the adults in the room to take charge once again….

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