Hiding Out

 I admit it. 

I've been hiding out for the past couple of years. 

I've been afraid to speak up, afraid to stand out. Yes, I guess I've been part of the problem.

I didn't think we would be the kind of nation that would elect someone like Donald Trump president, but we did. I don't entirely blame all the people who voted for him. I mostly blame the people who did not even bother to vote. You are the ones who screwed this country.

There are many reasons to dislike Trump and not support him. There are many reasons to dislike Kamala Harris and not support her. All of those reasons are based on values an individual has and what information they focus on. And in this day and age, our values are generally pretty crappy and the information we have access to is often distorted, biased, manipulated, and false.

I don't know what kind of a world we will be in when Trump is through. I don't even know if the values and direction Trump is taking us will change once he's gone. The only thing I can do is focus on what values I have and try to make sure that they are truly worthwhile.

I value individualism. 

By this I mean, I believe in the freedom of the individual to live their life as they wish, pursuing the goals they value, doing the things that bring them joy. I don't believe that people should be coerced into being something they are not. 

But with individualism comes responsibility. I fear that all too many people want the freedom to be whatever they want without assuming any responsibility for that decision. They don't examine the consequences, intended and unintended, of their decisions. They make the mistake of believing that individual choice is okay for themselves, but not appropriate for others.

The solution to this is education. Education is hard, it's slow, it's inefficient. It requires educators -- teachers, mentors, role models -- and we often lack sufficient numbers of those individuals or undervalue their role in society. We tend to identify them using fatuous criteria, such as popularity or acquirements that are artificial indicators of superiority.

In our modern technological society, the primary source of educators was the family. The parents, the grandparents, the aunts and uncles, and even the siblings and cousins. We're destroying that institution by very subtle means. In America, the most significant destroyer of the modern extended family is the value Americans place on geographic dispersion. I know in my own family history, when our family moved out of Massachusetts to NYC, and then to Buffalo, the decision resulted in unspoken alienation between my family and my father's family. Over time, most of the members of my extended family have moved all over the country. That has caused a breakdown in our family's ability to pass on traditions and new values that are needed to survive. Now we all do that on our own.

The problem is that individualism doesn't mean doing everything on your own. It means doing things with other people while maintaining one's own sense of identify.

Next time, I'll talk more about how one does maintain one's sense of identity in a world of alienation, isolation, and misdirection.