If you don’t know where you’re going…

…any road will get you there.

Great line, huh? I heard it at a conference. I know who said it then but she attributed it to someone else, so I can’t take or even give credit where it’s due. But I’ll keep saying it.

Not that anyone will listen. Nobody listens. That used to frustrate me. Lately I find it liberating. I can say anything; it’s not like I’ll have to take responsibility.

That’s the silver lining anyway. Of course I’d rather they listen. Not so I’d be right but just so I’d get through.

I want to figure it out. Existence. I’ve made some strides. But no way can I do it alone. I need to brainstorm with others.

“You may have the best idea in the world,” my dad used to say, “but it will be useless unless you can communicate it to others.” That was his argument for a liberal arts education. Sure he was right. But he didn’t go far enough. He never considered what “communicate it to others” really means. It’s not enough to be correct or eloquent or even charismatic. You still have to get through…

Problem is, getting through isn’t possible any more. If it ever was. Whole damn culture’s gone autistic now.

I’m talking about American middle-class middle-aged culture. The post-war baby boomers and adjacent cohorts. The notorious demographic bubble.

See, here’s the simple version of the story:

Once upon a time (not very long ago), there was a war to end all wars. It was called the second World War because the first hadn’t, and although it didn’t involve all of the world it was big enough to swallow a whole generation of America’s young adults.

They went they fought they won, and they returned to covet the American Dream, which turned out to be a single-family ranch house on a cul-de-sac with a perpetual chicken in a pot on the stove and a triennial station wagon for the attached garage.

They moved to their American Dream homes in the new suburbs, leaving in the cities their older and wider relatives, who would have acted like guides for them into the mysteries of parenthood, so they were clueless, the poor war vets and their brides, about how to be.

Incompetence loves company. Their neighbors were just as lost. Coffee and cocktails and card parties became their entertainments; the children were safe and hardly needed tending. The children would be all right.

Meanwhile the grandparents tsked. Dr. Spock instructed. Vodka spiked mothers’ morning coffees. Affairs occurred. Divorces became just horribly common enough to merit a daytime reality show.

The children of course were not all right.

Until around age seven a kid’s world is magical. That’s why it’s unfair to expose them to religion before then; they’ll take it too much to heart. Until seven or so, a child’s world won’t be stable unless the child sees the parents as gods.

When confronted with inescapable proof of parental incompetence, a kid has only two possible reactions: willfulness or autism. Nothing else will address the problem. The child either has to take charge or opt out.

Few take charge. Depending upon surrounding circumstances, the willful number 1% to 5% of the population. Except for age, they don’t share qualities that permit the sociologists to predict them – they’re as rare and random as albinos – but almost all willful children assume responsibility for themselves between age five and seven.

The autistics are too numerous to assess. They comprise almost all of the culture and have to be broken into subgroups to be studied. There are agoraphobes to varying degrees, who try to stay home and avoid social contact; ragers who indulge their social frustrations in manners even kindergarten teachers would never condone; groups accused of bigotry and prejudice who in fact suffer from simple unresolved xenophobia – they were deprived of guidance by their nuclear families about how to enjoy strangers. There are a huge number of apparently functional individuals who do well enough socially but lack a basic interactive skill, like the ability to say goodbye, or any understanding about privacy in the context of personal space. But by far the largest set of autistics, the crowd who provoke the standard of measurement for the group, are the depressives.

Willful people are seldom depressed. They can suffer from boredom, but the benefits of self-control are so powerful and consistent that they rarely sink in spirit. When they do go down they tend to rebound within days, no matter what. When a willful person is impassioned, expression is outward and often forceful.

Depressives work in the opposite direction. Although often tragically apathetic, they can experience passion. And when they do they implode.

For them the storm aims inward. They swirl into a vortex of their own sadness. Still waiting for the grownups.

I watched. I’ve been paying attention. Used to be I was pulled out of my school classes, deposited into a room with the stutterers, the rockers, the arsonists. But as we got older our numbers thinned. I watched them mostly turn inward, to darkness and sadness, away from our hopping red impatience.