premature assisted living
As children, we believe the world revolves around us. Ideally and historically, the growing up process is a shift from self-centeredness to selflessness. To find ways to give our life away. To seek practices to increase our impact in the world. To create space for others to grow beyond where we fall. The aging flight path winds up pulling our orbit back down to the realization of reliance. Incapability becomes our MO. Dependency our posture.
This process of reliance to independence back to dependence is natural and good. In its proper place, the idea and practice of assisted living for the aged is an essential maturation process for those learning how to step away from the throne they built for themselves in life. The process of “giving our deaths away” as we once did for our lives is the flowering of the fine wine in the human experience. Its predecessor and constituents (“middle life” and caretakers) are, in their proper time, both the reward and lesson of living.
Maturity is found by staying in middle life and not slipping into a premature assisted living. Dealing with uncertainty, navigating nuance, controlling our desires, and healthily channeling our emotions are the challenges we encounter. Our response is our cartography.
Too many “adults” today could plot themselves far to close to the extreme ends of human journey. The infantilization of the West has been correlated to a number of recent shifts. The ingredients of a premature assisted living are general incontinence which brings about the need for a personal caretaker and sees the slow decline of mental and physical capabilities.
I would propose the pervasive adoption of digital technology conjured up these ingredients in us all. So often touted as a “personal assistant,” our devices have shaped the way we interact with work, relationships, and the natural world. We are aided by a host of predictive technologies that say, “you don’t have to know, I’ll know for you. I’ll recommend, curate, and understand, so that you don’t have to.” These decide what we watch, hear, and see. They tell us who to message, date, and follow.
Our reliance upon them has brought about a mental and spiritual dissoluteness. The moral bankruptcy of our public figures and celebrities relates a juvenile picture of modern character training. The physical well-being of Americans has never been so poor. Could it be possible that our society has entered a premature decline with a sedative called “the smartphone?”
Without conflict and the challenges of encountering the real world, maturing is impossible. Video games and 24/7 entertainment on social media siloes off neighbor from neighbor and destroys our communities. Erasing the unknown, we are left to steward the power of gods without the practiced wisdom and prudence of gods.
This deficit will continue so long as the education we receive and distribute fails to provide cultivation for the virtues and promotion of the arduous good. If we cannot course correct the journey of a core subset of our rising leaders, our state will be in peril and our hearts will be forcibly swayed into a technological submission inevitable for those who give up their faculties in favor of convenience, comfort, and conformity.
