When people lived in villages and tribes, there were older people who were sought out to provide their wisdom and knowledge for the benefit of younger people who were struggling with the common problems that ‘life’ presents to everyone. A young mother with a ‘cranky’ child would seek the counsel of an older and more experienced mother. Such people are readily available in a ‘village’ society. Today, our lifestyle has imprisoned our people in electronic boxes that replace the natural social resources of daily living in past generations.
Some people use computers as their reference to every problem that they have. Many/most people have grown away from seeking wisdom of older people. Instead they invent our own ‘truth’ as it is represented in their peer group which is predominantly made up of people with experience like our own. The peer groups among teenagers are other teens. The ‘truth’ generated among college students is similar with the additional element of the ‘social engineers’ who bring values and politics into every class they teach. The ‘wisdom’ generated ‘in these situations produce is a case of ‘the blind leading the blind’.
My intention is to not so much to offer answers as it is to raise awareness. I believe that when people understand the problem, they will find their own good answers
The missing quality has been called, ‘horse sense’, ‘common sense’ and ‘the voice of experience’. I make no claim to having much of it, but I see in other people the need that they have for what I have learned ‘the hard way’ by surviving my mistakes and learning lessons. One expression that sums it up is; ‘The wisdom of mankind’ as it has been refined and proved over the millennia of man’s existence.
Great social change has happened in just my lifetime. Both of my grandfathers were Civil War veterans. The machine age was being born with the first automobile and the first airplane. There were steamboats on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. (A great grandfather captained a side wheeler on the Mississippi river.) We went from dirt roads and horses to paved roads, first with only one lane of a two lane road paved with bricks that was shared by traffic in both directions. (You don’t remember that, do you?) Now we have paved roads eight and more lanes wide.