Myth Of The Powerless Boy-Child
Time-wise, it seems to be Post-World War II. And it certainly even seems to be accelerating: The boy-child, lazing about. Extra, redundant, unnecessary, not cleared out by any war, in a sort of twilight. Not a boy anymore, unneeded for him to become a man. Nobody’s pulling him along, or coaching him or pointing him in a direction. A log-jam of years going by but without purpose.
There are no flags to slalom. There’s busy work, there’s a celebration of his adolescent mental illness, there’s a swamp of time not moving. But there is nothing up ahead to show a way towards any kind of purpose. We are unneeded and so we might as well dwell in an in-between waiting room at the doctor’s office. “There’s nothing that needs doing so just keep on with your teenage mental illness and your rock’n'roll music.”
There are a million poorly guided, sensitive young men – old in age even – who are mucking about. Our power, boldness, and potential for pioneering are unneeded at the moment and we occupy a cul-de-sac of stunted growth in place of adulthood, spiritual growth, and risk. We are powerless at 10, at 18, at 20 and we were never given the skills to progress to an effective emotional age of 30, 34, 38 and 45.
It’s true we could work on Wall Street and act like a cock, but we are sensitive and perhaps even trying to be profound and that world is the one we were warned about by the likes of Jim Morrison and Keith Moon and other boys who found their solution to the problem of maturation vis-a-vis never making it that far.
There is no paradigm for growing up right, no bridge from the celebration of youth and young manhood towards the effective life within a 30 year old man’s physical body. Your either a young Abbie Hoffman or you’re a dead Abbie Hoffman, that’s it. There is no enfranchisement, no contingency plan for turning a boy into a man, no meaningful existence. There is only a celebration of teenage mental illness and that provides for no sort of light towards a future. We were angry and impotent, now we’re bored, depressed, listless, boxed in. We’re log-jammed and made to wait.
There are all these extra men, waiting around to die in a war. Our grandfather’s lived a life. Oh man, they saw some horrors. We’ve been encouraged to celebrate our mental illness, and in the process there has been no bridge built towards the future that is now our present.
