On the Modern Plight of the Youth

During oral arguments in the Murthy v. Missouri First Amendment case, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson  talked about kids “seriously injuring or even killing themselves” by “jumping out of windows at increasing elevations” thanks to a social media “teen challenge” that the government would need to suppress. 

This statement is not only loaded with layer upon layer of irony; it is representative of how badly we have misunderstood and hurt the younger generations in this country, which includes those under the age of 40. This should become even more evident as you read this article.

The Brownstone Institute website has a contact link where anyone can pose questions; every one of which is read, and a response provided. In fact, it was through that process that I became a contributor. Recently, Jeffrey Tucker, the Founder and President of Brownstone Institute received the following communication, which he posted to the contributors email group on the evening of April 13, 2024. Note that minor edits have been done to this and all other communications, in order to maintain anonymity and improve the flow of the narrative: 

Mr. Tucker,

You may not remember me, but you and some of your writers had responded to me in regard to an article your institute wrote about California, and I wrote in about my son’s suicide.

One of your writers was willing to write about my son, and she drafted a very nice article, but it was just too much about him and less about the bigger issue at hand. I appreciated her good intentions, but I was just uncomfortable with the article so centered on my son’s death.

I was wondering if there is any way the institute could address the teen and youth suicide issue/epidemic. I would be more than willing to lend my perspective, and unfortunately, personal experience with it, but I just can’t have the article focused on my son; it’s just too painful. But this is a very, very important issue and it’s ongoing. Another boy here killed himself a few weeks ago. This is a small town Jeffrey, and we have had a lot of teen suicides since 2020. The county stats say the following:

• Suicide is the leading cause of death for youth ages 10-19 years old in my county
• 29% of my county’s resident deaths ages 15-19 years are by suicide
• Over 50% of my county’s high school juniors experience chronic sadness or hopelessness

And this county is not alone with those types of stats. I’m hoping maybe there is something we can do. I don’t know but it’s really bad. Jeffrey, we need to try something. 

Sincerely,

Prior to anyone responding to the posting of this communication, I sent the following email directly to Jeffrey:

Jeffrey,

This coming Monday will mark the one year anniversary that the youngest of my 3 sons (age 29) took his life. Without getting into details here, the circumstances in my son’s case are different than what has been seen across the country over the past several years (i.e., fentanyl, consequences of the Covid response, etc.), but there are certain experiences that are shared by everyone who has gone through this tragedy.

While I have no interest in writing about this in the first person, interviewing anyone, arranging meetings or otherwise chronicling this subject; I am willing to participate in any other way, if there is someone among the Brownstone contributors with an interest in taking this on.

I’m in agreement that something should be done; and who better than the contributors to Brownstone to find the right skill sets. Please note that I’m at peace with what has happened, so it’s not as if I’m looking at this as a means of getting some sort of “therapy.”  That’s the last thing on my mind.

Thanks, Steve

Over the next two days, the posts by Brownstone contributors were so compelling that all that was needed was to edit and combine them, which I am doing here. The first response in the email chain was posted by a writer in her mid-30s, who has contributed several articles to Brownstone over the past 18 months:

A former neighbor of mine here had a nephew who killed himself, in his words “because of what is happening in the world…you know; the Covid vaccines…” (He was suffering the effects of the Covid vaccines and that’s why? This seemed to get a vague affirmative answer.)

The question I have (I am probably not the person this guy wants to write an article) is, give me three good reasons someone under about 50 *wouldn’t* want to kill themselves in the world we live in?

After that guy’s nephew’s suicide, the community held an event about preventing youth suicide. That really pissed me off. Yeah, try to talk them into living in a sh*tty world despite how sh*tty it is, while you do nothing to fix anything or even question your own mistakes? These people are still requiring facemasks at community decision-making events.

But that’s what “society” wants to do. Move on with their horrific policies and barbaric ways of living, and try to accustom their youth to accepting a pitiable “new normal” OR encourage medically assisted suicide for eugenics purposes, both completely ignorant and insensitive approaches.

If I was any younger than I am now, I would absolutely kill myself rather than live in this pathetic world. As it is, I feel I should have been born 15 years before I was, but I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I was lucky to get a head start on life and it feels like my entire existence has been a series of running across bridges just before they crumble into ravines behind me. The older generation, in general, doesn’t get it at all — even many of the people in their 50s and 60s who can see what’s going on have told me, “My life was pretty good, I’m not too worried anymore.” The people in this group display some rare honor, because while you could be whiling away your retirement you stood up to try to put some work in to make the world a nice place for the people who come after you. And I respect that.

Idiot friends of mine have said, “Suicide is always a bad option because things always get better.” Can you imagine a more stupid comment? It’s not based on a single shred of evidence, but the people who tell you that cannot be dissuaded from their ignorant assumptions. Try telling that to the millions of Jews who died in concentration camps or to the people who spend their entire lives, from cradle to grave, working in sweatshops or cobalt mines. Things do not *always* get better, in fact, and it demonstrates an enormous amount of pigheaded privilege and a life spent in comfort to assert something so provably false. 

Life for human beings has never been easy, and at least since civilization emerged, it has appeared just only to a minority, but at least in the past it has been beautiful, and we had tools to face its darkness, and we had some culture for crying out loud.

I would not live through this era a second time no matter what you offered me. Pitiable, unenviable ants without legs we are, spiders whose appendages have been consumed one by one by cruel cats, mutilated and undignified monstrosities twitching about on the floor in our nerve juice.

Most of the oldest generations that are still alive grew up with such comfort that they are flippant and blind, they were raised on television, they are distracted, they never taught their children about what came before them, they have a stupidly optimistic vision of life, they are arrogant and sheltered, and they also never possessed the tools themselves nor have they passed them to their offspring to create or understand anything of beauty.

They gave away everything they had in pursuit of novelty and modernity. And now they are overworked and have no time to reflect on what has actually transpired in their 50+ years of being alive and what that means for society at large. 

Their children exist in a shallow, almost illiterate world, where no one cares about them or gives them the tools they need to become self-sufficient, independent and confident. Moreover, the sources of all these virtues have been well-hidden from their access, so they have no clue where to begin looking for themselves. Even those who stand a chance at piecing together a fragmented, broken picture from the pieces stand little chance at paving avenues for themselves toward a successful, fulfilling, meaningful and dignified life, and this after all that excruciatingly hard work, unrewarded by society at large. 

We are surrounded by flippant gossip-mongers, chatterers, liars and squeakers of lies, uneducated, uncultured brutes and dishonorable cheats, flamboyant sociopaths, mouth-foaming insect-brains and a host of other unsavory characters who add nothing to society while somehow managing to occupy its positions of power and prestige and receive undue social attention.

And we are being taken over by a brutish Germanic imperial power (sorry German friends, I mean your ruling institutions, not your lovely individuals) — the Germans never had much love of democracy, and their method of social organization has always been abhorrent and artless — from which it seems there is little avenue for escape.

Where are the literary salons? Where are the pianos in every home? Where are the men who speak multiple languages and have read the Renaissance thinkers in the original? Where are the Florentine woodcutters? Where are the massive libraries? Where are the men of science who practiced in their home studies? Where are the REAL musicians? Where is the poetry and where are the butterfly collections?? 

Why has the vast majority of society been turned into worthless schizophrenic zombies? I hate them all and I deserve better than that. And I’m not saying that to be elitist because I think everybody does. I might be descended from the Duke of Guise and my great-great-great grandfather was the King of Italy. My family line is filled with revolutionary heroes. One of my woman ancestors got scalped by Indians who dashed her baby’s head against the wall and despite that, she fought back in self defense and killed them. So I didn’t come from a line of people who lets other people turn them into slaves or tell them how to live their lives or accepts a mutilated, barren existence quietly. And it’s not that I think I’m better than anybody else, because I don’t think anybody should accept that kind of world. Death is better than servitude to anyone, especially if they want to take a German model for organizing society or if they want to create a barbaric, uncultured world. 

Sorry for the rant, but this is why the youth are killing themselves, and why it makes perfect sense you would WANT to. And the only way to create a better option than death is to make things BEAUTIFUL and CLASSY again. I didn’t come here to watch Mr. Beast on YouTube or look at transgender narcissists parade about all day. I didn’t come here to take all the worst elements of civilization — the fact that it is a nature-destroying prison — without being able to enjoy its best elements — PAINTING and HUMAN CREATIVE INGENUITY. And I bet that kid and the other and all those other ones, though they may not know it, felt and feel in their hearts more or less the same thing. 

As you would expect, there was an immediate outpouring of compassion from several of the group to what was, at least from my perspective, a plea for help that was coming directly from the trenches where young people really live. My response to her was as follows:

The self-satisfied people that you correctly call out are predominantly the baby boomers. I know this because I’m one of them. My generation is the most successful generation, from a socioeconomic perspective, in the history of this planet. The problem is that my generation is overwhelmingly clueless as to how we got to where we are. As a result, we did not transmit the things to our children (and grandchildren) that should have been transmitted… and the void was filled by those with evil intent. Covid only served to highlight and accelerate the rot that you describe.

Know that the contributors to Brownstone, who you acknowledge as exceptions to the general decline you see all around you, are part of what I believe is a much larger army of people who get-it…and I believe we are finally beginning to mobilize in ways that I pray will accrue to the benefit of the younger generations.

Another response came from a Brownstone contributor for the past 6 months, who works in the insurance industry:

I have an anecdote to add about the arts you mention a few times and in particular about your last paragraph. I hope you find value in it, as I found value in a book you mentioned a while ago – Lud in the Mist.

In my difficulties to continue to learn the cello during the pandemic, I had found a new teacher who was the only one “brave” enough to meet in person. We met masked 8 months after everything began, and frankly I think he needed the money more than anything else.

I had a conversation with him where he expressed gratefulness for the shutdown of his orchestra, but he was confused by the unwillingness to reopen. He was the assistant principal cellist, and they sent a survey around where 80% of the orchestra said they felt unsafe sitting next to their stand partners. These people had all worked together for 20 years, their kids played together etc, and they were not safe. He didn’t know how they could come out of that, especially because the virtual performances they patched together only had something like 350 views. You can’t support 40+ salaries on 350 views on YouTube.

I mentioned that they had better figure it out, because in virtual orchestra world, there will only be one winner. Only one orchestra would have the production value and name recognition to succeed and make money in that environment. His orchestra’s competitive advantage was playing music locally for people who wanted to hear it and feel the vibration in the same room the orchestra was in.

Even if he understood these things, he was trapped and couldn’t do anything other than profess how good the shutdowns were for the health of his orchestra. This is a very sad state of living, but this is what he needed to do to get through the day.

Though he ghosted me after several months of teaching, I will give him credit for being such a metronome nazi that he actually made my rhythm quite good.

While the improved rhythm was a valuable lesson, I will remember him more for being exactly the sort of cellist I do not aspire to be.

The next post came from across the Atlantic:

Suicide has long been the largest killer of young people in Northern Ireland. Mind you, no young person died OF Covid–but try telling the Chief Medical Officer that.

At this point I posted to the entire group the email I had sent to Jeffrey Tucker the day before, with the following introduction:

Below is an email I sent to Jeffrey yesterday late morning, a few hours prior to the first post in this chain. Given our colleague’s post, and the ones that followed; I felt that now is as good a time as any to share my email to Jeffrey with this group. More and more; I’m viewing her post as a plea from the younger generations to the older ones to do something before we reach the point of no return. I’m thinking that this group has the ability to put something together to address what I believe the perpetrators of this atrocity (the Covid response) are all too willing to write-off as minor collateral damage. 

Thanks for your attention, Steve

In addition to the kind words of support to me from several members of this email group, a second email from the young woman who had posted earlier appeared: 

Thank you for your warmth. I’m sorry for your loss, Steve. This is completely right: “the void was filled by those with evil intent.”

What we have done is hand the youth a problem — first of all, the set of typical problems humanity has always faced, for which history provides thousands of deeply nourishing solutions; second of all, another problem — the problem that it has all been fractured to pieces and that our culture and society has been eaten alive. This one is completely new, or at least, it is being perpetuated in ways and on a scale never before seen in history.

This happens over and over again. We have to continually recognize the patterns as they shift and apply timeless solutions in new ways to find ways to nourish ourselves and our spirits. 

But as the complexity of society grows, it becomes harder and harder and more importantly requires more and more time to piece together that picture…exponentially… 

What we have done to youth in a period of about 100 years, is lose touch with the things that truly nourish the spirit, leaving as Steve mentioned a void where these tools should be.

The problem today’s youth are left with is akin to having a bicycle or other contraption they need to repair, but the specific tools required to loosen the bolts and change the parts are denied them.

Those tools exist, but they have not been provided by anyone, let alone has anyone talked about what the tools would look like, be used for and under what circumstances, where such tools would be found, or even the concept of what a tool is. 

But something even worse has happened. They have been given false tools, which closely seem to resemble the real ones, but don’t fit correctly, and even worse, actually strip the bolts and screws, leaving their contraption in worse shape than when they started.

And these all at the hands of people they assume love and care about them — parents and educators and storytellers and other leaders in their lives — and who in many cases actually do.

In addition to this they have been given a series of distractions which are fun, but ultimately do not solve the problem they are facing and leave them feeling empty and lost. They have been told these things, and not working on their problem, are the most important things in life. 

So the problem they have to solve is, essentially, first to figure out that the contraption they need to use is broken, and that is why it is not working satisfactorily; second of all, that the next step should be to repair it; third of all, they will probably spend some time fiddling around with the false tools, perhaps their whole lives, if they don’t discover on their own that the false tools are actually making the problem worse; fourth, it needs to occur to them almost out of thin air that there might be REAL tools out there somewhere; fifth, it needs to occur to them to search for such tools; then, they must try to start putting together a picture of WHERE to search; then, they must not be distracted by any of the other false tools they encounter along the way; and they may gradually, if they put together the millions of fractured, broken pieces correctly, start to come across some of them; in order to do this they need time, and space, and emptiness; if they come across some of them they still must figure out what they are for, how they fit, and how to use them correctly…

And no one rewards them for any of this, in fact society may in fact punish them, and no one is there to tell them whether or not they are on the right track, or that there is a track, or that there is a point to anything. 

As the complexity of society grows so does the apparent complexity of the contraption and the number of endless labyrinths and corridors down which they might be lost in their search.

But many of them never get past the initial stage of coming to the conclusion that something needs to be repaired, and that is why they feel so empty in the first place, or understanding that the false tools they have been given in the void by the evil people are actually making things worse.

A game that one seems rigged to lose or that would spend a lifetime trying to figure out how to play is a recipe for learned helplessness, nihilism and despair. And the temptation would be too strong to throw one’s hands up, declare the problem to be impossible and plead to someone else — anyone — to solve it for you; even if those people are liars and scammers and tricksters.

Even though, if you like I did, spend several decades piecing together many of the tools and made surprising headway on putting together the contraption, at the end of it all, you are faced with a monstrosity so horrible that having found solutions to ageless problems does not detract from its sheer mangled vomit-inducing piteousness. Instead, you realize only the fuller extent of your own incredible deformity and the deformity of nearly everyone and everything around you, and what living in this kind of world has done to us all and to the most precious elements of life. 

And to try to communicate this to anyone (outside of, perhaps, a very tiny and special group of people like those here) is a near impossibility.

In the past in tribal societies people would prepare their youth with basically all the tools they would need to face the world around them by the age of about thirteen. And even until recently, people of a very young age would have been guided along the way to finding many of these tools and have the confidence to face the rest of their life. And most importantly of all, the whole process would be adorned with beautiful metaphors, beautiful social scenarios, the beauty of the natural world, the presence of the sacred in glorious buildings and public squares and natural sanctuaries, the entirety of the process of learning and working and solving and engaging with life’s problems would be integrated with adornment and with love and with artisanry, and with a sense of reverence and attention to detail. 

This is the thing that has changed, only in the past 20-100 years, and accelerating greatly in the last 20. Things are being separated and fractured. The process of solving life’s problems is no longer a beautiful one. It is barren and unfulfilling. Even in the artistic and creative elements that remain — as Charles alluded to with orchestral music — the nutrients have largely been removed. People are distracted or simply refuse to touch on or integrate what is right in front of their faces. We are removed from the natural beauty of the environment, removed increasingly from the beauty of each other, behind walls and screens. Every aspect of the environment we inhabit has been turned to ugliness and brutality. 

So the youth of today have what looks from their perspective to be an impossible problem on their hands, which no one is helping them to solve, very few people who *should be* capable actually *are* capable of helping them to solve, and which the tools they have been given are only making worse and filling them with emptiness; were they to put in the excruciatingly hard and decades-long work and time required to go about beginning to solve that problem, the view from the mountaintop would be utterly horrifying and not at all reassuring (which is probably why their parents largely refused to touch it with a ten foot pole themselves); and they solve this problem in the context not of a beautiful and rich landscape filled with allusions to love and to the sacred, but a terrible and labyrinthine prison filled with abominations, which is every day becoming more complex and growing more horrific and pestilent. And they do this, if they attempt it at all and manage to get anywhere, more or less completely alone. 

Is there anything more despair-inducing you could possibly imagine?

In response, I posted the following:

I believe that these posts have provided a detailed description of the problems faced by the youngest generations. Let me add the following points:

1. The affluence within which the youngest generations have grown up is unique in world history. As such, when everything collapsed, the contrast between the lives they knew, and the lives they now live is probably greater than at any other time in world history. It’s hard to cope and adapt under those circumstances.
2. As has been written by others prior to this email chain; safety has taken precedence over freedom to a degree that I don’t think has ever occurred. This adds to the inability to cope and adapt to the current circumstances, since safety has been taken to the point of suffocation. If freedom has been removed from even a child’s playtime; how can that child cope when he or she is older, the sh*t hits the fan, and they’re called upon to fix it?
3. Our ‘progressive’ education, in conjunction with suffocating safety, has created adults who still engage in magical thinking; something the child psychologists tell us is usually outgrown by age 7.
4. Something that I didn’t come to recognize until my mid-40s, and has been indispensable to my ability to deal with what happened to my son, is coming to faith; and most importantly, using my faith as a resource to deal with all of the slings and arrows that life has thrown at me. In my case, I became what is described as a Messianic Jewish believer. 

Our society makes a joke of religion, and has spread the myth that science and religion (I actually prefer the word faith, and I think there are major differences between the two terms) are mutually exclusive. That’s pure unadulterated BS. As someone trained in science, who then came to faith, I can tell you unequivocally that my faith is an important resource in helping me to separate real science from fake news. In previous posts, I had stated that the smelly Walmart deplorables were onto the scamdemic earlier and in larger percentage than the intellectual/academic class, from which only a few have seen the light…and make up the bulk of Brownstone contributors. Similarly, faith-based Bible believers were also onto the scamdemic earlier and in larger percentage, as well. 

At this point, I believe we have compiled a tremendous amount of information to explain the mental state of those under the age of around 35-40. What we need are suggestions/ solutions that address these problems.

The next post, from a physician, became the initial impetus for wanting to get a story posted on the Brownstone site in order to provide a clarion call to action:

I am currently working on several stories. One outlines several ways in which the Medical industrial complex exploits children.

I was wondering in the light of this recent group of emails/news regarding the toll upon children, if Brownstone might publish a “theme” series on this broad topic?

I’d be pleased to put my above article atop my queue to get it out sooner. Any thoughts?

I responded as follows:

I would only add that, based on this email chain, the exploitation you’re looking to chronicle actually extends to anyone up to the age of 35-40. As an example; should the Covid jab ever have been recommended, no less mandated, for anyone under the age of 40? The answer is no. For that entire group, it’s poison, and that’s true even before we see the full picture, which will take another 3-5 years. Another question is whether the exploitation has distinct features depending on whether you’re a younger millennial, Gen Z or Gen Alpha?

At this point a man with master’s degrees in psychology and biology, who has contributed articles to Brownstone over the past 16 months, posted the following:

Without dating myself too much, I think I am in the same age bracket as the young woman who posted twice previously. As someone from part of that age bracket, I would say although I might not agree with her on every specific point she made, I probably share the general sentiment.

I can’t say I was overly optimistic about the world in the Before Times, but I more or less thought we lived in a relatively free society (assuming you stayed out of airports and didn’t think too much about Big Tech). 

When the lockdowns hit, however, it became pretty clear that most of the freedoms we thought we had were an illusion that the ruling class permitted us to maintain when it was convenient. When our freedoms (or even just minor pleasures) get in the way of larger goals related to safety, corporate profit, or frivolous but fashionable ideologies (e.g. public health, climate, DEI), those freedoms and pleasures can and will be taken away.

Presumably things were always like this, but now it’s much more overt to the point where, depending on your thoughts on surveillance, censorship, and top down bureaucratic control, you probably feel a little less free today than you did a month ago and will likely feel a little less free next month than you do right now.

I am completely in favor of bringing attention to this and fighting this when and where possible and appreciate the work that people at Brownstone and a few other organizations do on this front, although it does feel daunting after a certain point.

Personally, I feel the perfect life span would have been born 1960, died March 1, 2020. That way you would have been too young to be drafted to Vietnam, been able to travel before the TSA, and died before COVID, all while living for a pretty decent stretch of time. 

For people born in the 80s, 90s, and later, there is a good chance you’ll spend the last few decades of your life (or most of your life) in an increasingly totalitarian society where everything you do is monitored and analyzed by the government and corporations and your life can be shut down in the event of a pandemic, a climate crisis, or a computer glitch. 

Add to that the fact that you’re expected to get in debt to get the increasingly meaningless “education” that’s required to get a mid-level bullsh*t job (to borrow a term from David Graeber), and I can see why someone under 40 might be unhappy or feel it’s preferable to just ignore all of this and just be thankful they live in a time when they can post pictures of their food on Insta.

Piggybacking on the posts from these two young people, I made the following points:  

1. I believe that from an economic perspective, looking at rolling 25 year periods; the period from 1982 – 2007 tops the list. It was also the heart of the baby boomer’s working careers. It should be noted that from 2000-2007; only about 40% of the households (upper income and upper middle income quintiles) continued to enjoy increased prosperity, while the rest were treading water.
2. About 8 years ago, progressive economists whose agenda revolved around doing something to address income inequality, presented data showing that 90% of people born in the 1950s did better, economically speaking, than their parents. On the other hand, only 40% of people born in the 1980s were expected to do better than their parents… and this was before Covid. Given the direction the country’s going; what are the prospects for those born since 2000?

These points indicate to me that Covid merely accelerated a decline (that extended well beyond economics) that had been ongoing since around 2000. After that many years, it’s too late to merely stop the hemorrhaging. Major interventions are needed. The first step, of course, is to recognize that there’s a problem.

The physician who posted previously responded, as follows:

I agree with you.

I focus so much on kids because a) the risk of COVID to them is truly vanishingly small, b) ethically speaking, they are the classic vulnerable population, and c) because the Medical industrial complex does seem to have it in for them even more than the rest of us.

And finally, because (at least in theory) adults are supposed to protect kids.

My comment:

Regarding your last sentence; one of the goals of the leftists who control the government is to destroy the family unit. Game; set; match!

Our young writer then responded to our young psychologist/biologist:

You summed it up incredibly well. The prospect of living out a good, potentially, half my life under a global totalitarian dictatorship…no thanks, I’d much rather die. And I’m not really like most people. I’m a quality over quantity person. I was extremely lucky in my childhood and early adulthood to have access to a wide range of experiences and I feel even at my age I lived well and I’m thankful for what I had. But I simply can’t imagine how hopeless I would feel if I was any younger. 

To have at least glimpsed an age before this started happening on a large scale, is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing comes from understanding that incredible things DO and CAN exist in the world and to have a starting point to recreate some of what was lost. The curse comes from, as Steve alluded to, *knowing* what was lost and being exceptionally not okay with it. And having to deal with the grief that almost everyone around me seems to have forgotten — or perhaps they were not as lucky as I was and never experienced it in the first place. 

I will share one more comment on this topic. There comes a time in every being’s life when it must stop living for itself and live for something beyond itself. And humans are no exception. 

We have gotten the impression, though, that the goal of life is to live as long as possible, in as much comfort as possible, surrounded by amenities and for personal enjoyment.

It couldn’t be further from the truth. The point of life — at least from my vantage point, and this is heavily reinforced in my heart by the fact that this is one of the only things that has ever seemed to shine through the most intense times of darkness — is to create something and pass it on to its beautiful fulfillment and fertility — be that the miracle of giving life to a human child, the fulfillment of some creative or artistic work, a meaningful societal endeavor or a set of scientific or philosophical ideas.

When young people are killing themselves before they have reached this point of turning, AND when we have structured society and made it so complex and labyrinthine and devoid of sensible integration that it has become a nearly impossible task for them to find, integrate and utilize the tools of the soul even were they to survive, then this not only stops them from being able to live fulfilled and fully actualized lives, but it cuts short that fulfillment for the parents as well.

We reach sexual maturity, and — in my opinion — we are meant to reach a maturity of the spirit or the soul around the same time as well, so that both can work in concert. Just as the tools of the body are the key for passing on the flesh, the tools of the soul are the key for passing on the spirit and the connection of the flesh to something more transcendent.

It’s no coincidence I think that, just as the world we live in kills the spirit and hides the tools of the spirit in a sadistically complicated puzzle so that youth cannot reach psychic maturity until WAY too late in their lives, so there is this push to take advantage of the corresponding despair to encourage young people to mutilate their sexual bodies, lying to them and telling them that will solve their woes before they even get a chance to comprehend the least part of the problem they are facing — and thereby turning them into political pawns. 

That is why I call this a pitiable and mutilated age. It is a barren age of infertility, miscarriages and mangled, mutant life. We have destroyed the fertility of our crops and seeds, we have poisoned our land and our groundwater, we have destroyed countless plants and animals and breathtaking natural landscapes in the pursuit of selfishness, greed, comfort and the production of senseless novelties, we have poisoned our food supply, making people fat, bloated, sick and lazy, we have laid waste to the beautiful built landscapes that used to characterize our civilized society, we have replaced the nutrients and the beauty in nearly everything with meaningless junk, we have been taught for multiple generations now a completely backwards story about the purpose of life, and we are mangling and mutilating our ability to produce physical, spiritual, intellectual and creative offspring that lives to its full maturity and flourishes with its own fertility. And we are mangling and mutilating our own youth and seeing what we produce die and shrivel up before it even has a chance.

That’s why I say it is a disgusting, pathetic era to be alive, the worst era to be alive. Because before, there were many places one could go to get away from such things, if they happened to be occurring in his or her society. Most empires, tyrannical as they were — and I’m under no illusions about this — were still relatively porous. There were routes of escape. The entire world was not becoming a conquered prison.

That’s why I feel grief every day that I am alive. The endless tragedy of seeing beautiful things that could be, the offspring of the mind, the heart, the body and the soul, put to death before they can come to fruition or forced to grow into the most mangled and horrifying shapes, played out over and over again in every corner of reality, from the smallest undertaking to the most transcendent dreams, is the worst possible nightmare for any living thing on the planet, human or otherwise. It is a living horror that is impossible to look away from. 

That is what makes me jealous of the birds, of the butterflies, of the trees and even of the moss growing on rocks, because they all fulfill their purpose — to put beauty into the world and see it utilize its tools to the best of its abilities to do the same itself — even if they die an early death or suffer greatly in the process, and we humans live in a mangled world of our own awful creation, where we put our lives into the painstaking and loving fostering of beauty only to see it die or malfunction over and over and over again in every twisted way possible. And sadistic people contrive it to occur as tortuously and ubiquitously as they can.

At least, though, I lived to an age and I found the tools myself to realize that was my purpose and to make some decent headway toward fulfilling it. No one is ever guaranteed success, but our birthright with all things on this planet is to have access to that real chance. And what I hope to be able to do, and my last purpose in life, is to share what I have found with others. 

Those of us who understand that purpose cannot allow the Age of Miscarriage to continue. We must work toward healing this abomination and recreating what was lost. We must pass on the way to the path to re-finding that true purpose in the world and to creating beauty, and spirit, and fertility, and flourishing in it once again. So that beauty will not die, and so that those who come after us will have the chance to escape the doom of a mangled existence, to escape being lost before they come into their own, and maybe, eventually, create something different. 

Finally, a young educator, who has contributed articles to Brownstone for about 18 months, and recently published a book on the Covid response, added the following: 

I’ve been thinking about this thread quite a bit since it started a few days ago. I am so sorry for your devastating loss, Steve. The hurt, anger, disillusionment, sorrow, and discouragement resulting from what has happened to our world are palpable. 

A form of nihilism can set in when one becomes aware of so much corruption in virtually every public institution, and experiences many of the consequences of that rot. As was said in an earlier post, “It does feel daunting after a certain point.” It makes me appreciate even more all of you who continue to fight the good fight.

I would like to say that I am around quite a few young people in my family, social, and work environments, who are still enthusiastic and hopeful for the future. Some of that hope is due to ignorance of the global forces working against them, some of it is faith based, and some is the enthusiasm of youth that hasn’t been squelched, despite what they experienced during the Covid response.

This past weekend, for example, I attended a free community production of

Rob Gardner’s Lamb of God, in which many young people participated with adults in the orchestra, chorus, and as soloists. It was beautiful and inspiring as a musical production, but just as much because of the voluntary coming together of so many to uplift each other and their community.

The work we do at Brownstone, in concert with other truth-telling organizations, is motivated partly by the intent to preserve all that is good in our world – and there’s still a lot of good. Most people don’t want the future that the few elites and globalists are pushing. I’m hopeful that ordinary citizens who actually do the work of society and make up the bulk of our population in all countries, will say “No more,” and the tide will turn. We’re starting to see it with the pushback against DEI, militant gender ideologies, radical social justice, government interference in food production, and other issues.

At the risk of sounding trite, we never say in a bright room, “Turn on the dark,” and if we did, we wouldn’t be able to perceive it. Conversely, a pinprick of light can be seen in a totally dark room. I believe that we can bring light to these dark times by doing our part, having hope, and believing that God wants good things for this earth and the people on it. For those who don’t believe in God, it seems consistent with the laws of nature that while there is evil working against good things, there has to be an equally powerful force working for the good. History shows it.

Thanks everyone for sharing your heartfelt and deeply thought out ideas. I hope we will continue to lift and support each other, even as we work against corruption and heavy challenges.

Having heard from the under age 40 group loudly and clearly, are those of us over the age of 40 ready to take ownership and responsibility for the current tragic state of affairs, and what are we going to do about it? The ball is in our court, and time is running out! We need to reestablish those institutions that have made this country the most successful in history, at least in terms of the proportion of the population that has had the opportunity to access that success, however defined. This is in sharp contrast to the current mantra: You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy. 

By ownership, I don’t just mean physical possessions. As the posts from the younger Brownstone contributors have made clear, it must also mean ownership of, and active participation in: 1) our shared culture; 2) a faith-based connection to the eternal; 3) a revitalization of the family; and, 4) a return to the principles of our Constitutional republic. All of these things are hanging by a thread, and the younger generations are paying, and will continue to pay a very heavy price for as long as these items are not addressed head-on. 

Maybe, just maybe, we can start with the 4^th item on the list by getting the correct decision in the Murthy v. Missouri First Amendment case. Last time I checked, all of the Supreme Court justices were over the age of 40!