The common thread in most discussions about the coming global apocalypse is that our problems are systemic. They are built into the system. If we want to save ourselves, the thinking goes, we must change the system.
Of course, there are plenty who believe that the problem is that we’re not “systeming” properly or hard enough. These are usually ideologues who are heavily invested in the current system. They don’t want to change it; they want more of it, as if we can fix the window with the same brick we used to break it.
But all this is nonsense. The problem is not, and never has been, the “system”, although the system can certainly make our problems worse. Often, that’s why we build them.
Infantile is as infantile does
Before we can address the real problem, we need to define our terms. The terms are “infant” and “adult”, and I use them in very specific ways.
When I speak of infants, I do not mean very small children. I mean humans who think and act in infantile ways. And what are these ways?
Infants are impulse driven. They don’t think before they act; they act before they think, if they think at all.
Infants don’t reason before the fact; they rationalize after the fact. They are masters of the excuse.
Infants are ego-centric. Everything revolves around them. They are the center of the universe and nothing matters but their needs and wants.
Infants are impatient and reactive. They throw tantrums when they can’t get their way. Violence is their first resort and often their only resort.
Infants become indignant when they are told no. The more they are told that they cannot have or do something, the more desperately they want to have or do it.
Infants are amoral. It’s not that they are trying to be bad—most aren’t. It’s that good and bad simply don’t enter into it. For infants, other people aren’t really real. They are just venues by which the infant may get what it wants, or obstacles getting in their way.
Infants cannot stand accountability and demand impunity. Others deserve punishment, but never the infant. Their case is always the exception.
The vast majority of us are infants almost all the time. We may behave a little like adults when we fear reproach or punishment, but the moment no one is looking—or we believe ourselves exempt—we do whatever we please.
We cheat. We lie. We steal. We break all our promises. We defraud. We abuse. We rape and kill.
This is universal.
And the more power we have to avoid punishment for our actions, the more openly we offend.
Look around. The world is full of infants. The world is “led” by infants. How do governments behave? How do big corporations behave? How does any mob of humans behave?
Parenting needed; enquire within
None of this is even controversial, although we, as a species, are in deep denial about it. In perfect accord with the above, we all believe that “they” are the problem—those infants over there—while rationalizing our own infantile behavior and refusing to accept responsibility for our actions.
And absolutely no accountability, of course.
We have known for the better part of a century that we are destroying the ability of the Earth to support life—including our own. For several decades we’ve known that we are in free fall, ever accelerating toward a messy demise.
And yet we’ve done less than nothing. We’re making it worse every day. And all of us look around pointing the finger at someone else as if we weren’t every bit as guilty.
Schadenfreude, cruelty, brutality, and violence are everywhere, all the time. We rob and rape and torture and murder and enslave and oppress each other everywhere. We are as violent and sociopathic as ever.
We pretend that we have progressed, but where is the evidence of it?
We have at best a few decades left to save ourselves. But we’re not going to do a damn thing to prevent our auto-genocide.
It must be someone else’s job, right?
To the infant, adulthood is death
The problem, and the reason that we’re totally fucked, is that infants desperately want to remain infants. They correctly observe that the birth of the adult is the death of the infant. Just as the butterfly is the death of the caterpillar.
So infants, absent some external force driving them to maturity, never mature. Quite the reverse: they resist, resist, resist. They will kill themselves out of spite rather than “grow up”—and many do.
When all of our “role models” are infants, too, then we are well and truly irredeemable. We need adults to show us the way.
I’m with stupid
We don’t just avoid adulthood. We celebrate our infantile behavior. I have noticed this for decades. Just consider the popularity of posters, signs, t-shirts, and now memes all sporting statements celebrating infantile behavior. I’m with stupid. Right? They are multitudinous.
But the infant, never having experienced maturity, has an utterly twisted idea of what maturity entails.
To the infant, being an adult means not getting your way. It means having no fun. It means onerous responsibilities. It means being accountable—the worst fate imaginable. And, of course, it requires a constant and exhausting exercise of will to resist those infantile impulses.
The urge to give in to them is overwhelming.
A world of adults is imaginable
If infants have the concept of maturity all backward—and they most assuredly do—then what is the true definition of an adult?
There are many ways in which one may be an adult. The most obvious of these is biologically. We all begin the transition to biological maturity at puberty, with a peak somewhere in our mid-twenties.
But that happens on its own—barring toxic pollution in our environment.
The maturity of which I speak is intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and moral maturity.
There was a time, and their were cultures, in which some or many humans reached some sort of maturity other than biological. A few even reached peak maturity. You’ve heard their names: Lao Tse, Siddhārtha Gautama (AKA Buddha), Jesus of Nazareth, etc.
They wrote excellent tutorials for future students of maturity. Sadly, no one took them seriously. Which is to say that the infants, being infants, interpreted those scriptures in infantile ways.
They missed the point. Deliberately.
The religions founded on those teachings almost universally get them backwards. But then they have to because those teachings were all, at heart, anti-religion. Which is to say that they all encouraged maturity, and maturity is about thinking for oneself and making one’s own decisions rather than blindly following a set of rules.
Maturity is about knowing what to do without having to consult a book or a “holy” man. Or woman. And you can’t learn that from a book. You have to practice it.
Always do the right thing
What, then, are the characteristics of an adult?
In truth, it is simple and obvious:
An adult is a person who always does the right thing.
Every time and without fail. And not because the adult is exerting will or discipline to overcome infantile impulses. If will is required, then the infant has not really left the building, has it?
No, the adult does the right thing because the adult understands that doing the right thing is pure joy. More than that: it is power. It is connection with the entire universe. Everything is easy when one does the right thing.
To an adult, doing the wrong thing is literally inconceivable. It just doesn’t even come up.
When you sit down to dinner, do you have to exert discipline to keep yourself from picking up the fork (or chopstick) and stabbing yourself in the eye with it? If so, please seek professional help immediately.
But to nearly all of us, it never even occurs to us to stab ourselves in the eye with a fork. We don’t need any willpower at all to avoid it because we know it will hurt, and probably maim us. It just doesn’t even come up.
The infant believes that the adult must exert exhausting effort 24/7 to resist impulses, but this is because the infant cannot imagine a world without infantile urges.
As most of us never reach maturity or even approach it, our need to be “grown ups” is indeed painful and onerous. We are bombarded by negative impulses: to lie, to cheat, to steal, to avoid accountability. And resisting those urges is exhausting.
But this is because we’ve never really “grown up” at all: we are overgrown infants. Our jobs, our families, our societies demand that we behave as if we were mature—occasionally—but we are not. And this conflict makes us miserable and regularly boils over into destructive and especially self-destructive behavior.
And all destructive behavior is really self-destructive behavior.
How to grow the fuck up
The infant begins life with no sense of self. In the womb, the infant is the universe: there is nothing else. All needs are met instantly.
Upon birth, the infant quickly notices that needs are no longer being met without effort. Crying brings relief in the form of attention from a parent. If not, the infant soon dies.
The infant begins to recognize that there is something that is “not-infant” and something that is. Hence: not-self and self.
This is the beginning of the development of consciousness, of self. It is a crucial phase in the development of the human animal. But it is the caterpillar phase. Throughout childhood—done right—the human learns to become an individual with a strong sense of self.
The process of maturing begins when that self is complete. It is the process of emptying out the self. Now that the human is stable and self-sufficient, it no longer needs to focus entirely on meeting its own needs.
It has a surplus. And with this surplus it can act to change the world.
This is the task of the adult: to find ways to change the world for the betterment of all life rather than hoarding resources in a futile attempt to assuage the fear of scarcity and loss.
The infant seeks to get as much as possible. Remind you of any “wealthy” people? Infants all.
The adult seeks to give as much as possible. You’ve never met many adults because they are too busy giving selflessly to draw attention to themselves.
The way of emptiness is a tool for maturing. It seeks the emptying out of self. In its simplest form it is rendered thus: Get over yourself.
Infants sometimes help others as well, but virtually always while making all the decisions. They push their help on others rather than waiting to be asked for it. And they want recognition for it. Credit. Gratitude. It is all about self-glorification, as anyone can see if they open their eyes.
We have all known people like that.
Most people are too fearful of loss to give much of themselves. And yet, if you are reading this, then all your essential needs are already well met. What are these unmet needs really? Aren’t they only fears?
As Kahlil Gibran put it so elegantly:
And what is fear of need but fear itself?
Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?
Look around. Unquenchable thirsts as far as the eye can see.
All systems infantilize
All systems infantilize because all systems are created to restrain the infants.
Because adults do the right thing without fail and without conscious effort or will, they have no need of a “system”. They do what needs to be done, and they consult and collaborate with others when needed to ensure that the right things get done.
They communicate and cooperate rather than command and obey.
Our systems were designed to keep the infants in line, but in doing so, they infantilize. They perpetuate and worsen the problem.
We can only mature by being inspired to mature.
The good parent does not provide a set of rules and punishments. The good parent provides a dialogue on actions and consequences and a safe space in which the child may experiment to learn about consequences.
When others do our thinking and choosing for us, controlling us with rewards and punishments, demanding obedience, then there is no impetus to mature. Quite the reverse: we beget resistance and resentment.
The way of emptiness
So how to become an adult? I will discuss this in detail in coming essays, but the first step is to let go of the system. All systems. You will need to be aware of the dangers, obviously, because others will cling to the system and persecute any who appear to stray from it.
But to the extent possible, just do the right thing and don’t worry about what the system demands.
The system is, after all, an illusion. It does not exist. It’s not like it arrived here from outer space or has an existence of its own. We created the system. We re-create it every moment of every day. Don’t like the system? Then stop re-creating it.
We cannot change by doing the same thing today that we did yesterday and the day before. That’s the opposite of change. It is stasis.
So the simple trick is this: do something different—something better—every day. Ask yourself at the end of each day, What did I do differently today? Did it work or did it fail? What should I do differently tomorrow?
If you do that continually throughout your life, then you will rapidly mature, and if enough of us do so, then there is a small but measurable chance that we may yet survive as a species.