A couple of years ago I wrote the book, Looking Backward, Forward. It was published in early 2018. At the time, having a Website and Blog was not on my mind and I had no idea what it could be.
This is a positive viewpoint on the state of our people, it has a direct effect on what will happen on Election Day. I hope you will share it with others if you find it worthwhile. Your comments are appreciated.
The time has come for me to create a blog series for that book and to share some of my experience, education, and interest in research with my readers. This is the first of a long series. Along with it will be some topical diversions based on recent news and how the treatise of the book is reflected in daily events.
A blog that believes in the kind of America where we grew up
Some 40 percent of our population includes adults who are locked into thinking like an adolescent child, a term coined as Adult Arrested Adolescent, or Tri-A. They are adult people who act like children. Tri-As (pronounced Try-Aze) respond, think, act, and have outbursts of adolescent angst and emotion that, looks like an adolescent child. By empirical evidence I hope to show you this is not only a problem but an opportunity for the USA.
While this might strike you at first as a curiosity, it is not merely an observation about an obscure part of social psychology. If that many of our people are not mature, what can we infer or observe that may have a profound effect on our culture as we know it. What does that mean about how our government works? Is it observable in your daily life that the people around you, your bosses, the check out clerk, the people to whom you trust everything from your laundry to your financial transactions are emotional, feelings driven people? Would you rather they be able to think critically, to adhere to the social contract that says do for others as you would expect them to do for you. The fact is, we may be at a tipping point from which we cannot return. To have a large section of our adult-aged population remain emotionally adolescent with a stunted ability to think is somewhat of a crisis.
The idea came from my first book on social networking behavior, in 2006 about the internet. The behavior there was so similar to classic Adolescent characteristics, it reminded me of reading in college Eric Hoffer’s book, The True Believer, thoughts on the nature of mass movements, (1951.) Hoffer was the first to give us definitions and an understanding of how mass movements work. Central to his writing is the idea of the true believer. True believers see themselves as damaged as adolescents often do. They instinctively look for a way to fix themselves by becoming part of something bigger and not always better. Being famous for crazy stuff is good enough. Ideas like Progressivism, Socialism, Catholicism, Christianity as a religion, Protestantism, and Islam also contain a large number of fanatics. Social Reformers like Barack Obama seek out those who mistakenly or foolishly see themselves as nonredeemable. The reformers offer them glory by “hitching themselves” to a big movement. To accomplish that ruse, Obama bastardized an idea of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s whose suggestion was for the individual to personally set high goals, “hitched to stars” rather than subsume themselves to lower expectations. To be fair, warrior chiefs, generals, and all other forms of totalitarians seeking cannon fodder have used the same spiel throughout history. From those ideas, I began to look at them as seeds of a latter-day behavioral disorder called Tri-A or Adult Arrested Adolescence. Hoffer didn’t say a word about the Tri-A himself, my research following his line of thinking led me to the Adult Arrested Adolescent.
Utopian schemers have created the Tri-A to be the ideal follower of their causes.
Then as now, Hoffer showed us that Utopians are constantly trying to fiddle with mainstream American culture. My own observations and research tell me not much has changed. Creating the Tri-A takes that one step further, and it was not an accident. By manipulating the American school systems quietly and promoting political correctness they have changed many of our youth into followers instead of leaders. They have created the Tri-A to be the perfect activist for social causes – most of which are a myth. My investigative training as a police officer taught me to use empirical data. In other words, data that was readily observable. So, to a degree, this may read a little like an offense report. One day, I expect the Tri-A or a behavioral disorder by a similar name to be in the Desk Reference to Diagnostic Criteria. It may become a diagnosis like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or Depression, Anorexia, or Bulimia.
After WWII and the revelations of what fanaticism had done to millions in the world, Hoffer could study the direct cause and effect of manipulative governments and populist leaders. Hoffer watched these activities as they occurred during the 1930s (Nazism or Social Democracy) through the 1950s (Stalinism) He then compared them in The True Believer to ideas that are more ancient and the words of those who spoke on similar eternal truths. He favored Montesquieu the philosopher and originator of the idea of separation of powers in government. What he taught us has passed the test of time. Hoffer understood mass movements because he immersed himself in the topic. Since 2006 I have spent hundreds of hours studying the Tri-A. For the last three decades since first reading his book, I have applied his ideas to what has happened in America. Since the lure of Utopian ideas and political movements are highly attractive to the person who feels he is damaged and incomplete they are interested in changing things. Change — without any further definition has become a war cry for Progressive partisans. Their slogans sound profound and meaningful when they are just words that mean little or nothing. They are merely trying to recruit those who seek to reinvent themselves. The same partisan evangelists promise that change will make the damaged person whole but offer only fairness, equality, and promises of creating new legislation. Each evangelist hopes that their one great effort will guarantee equality and fairness. They tell every listener the solution is to promote the concept of centralization of all matters to the highest authority. The first problem with all their solutions is that fairness and equality are concepts that work between individuals. A third party, unless it is a judge deciding a fact of law, is a poor choice to determine fairness for others. So is a judge, but that’s how we set it up in the legal system. Fair solutions cannot be enforced by a top-down structure that comes from an overeager government. As far as centralization and dictation from the government are concerned – why do we think people in government know better? The kids of my heyday would have said, “Who died and made you king?” Secondly, teaching that there is an ultimate authority to which all disputes can be referred does not teach self-reliance and the ability to negotiate with your friends and neighbors. In early civilizations, the elders of some societies met at the city gate to act as judges in disputes. It is an ancient method, more a teaching experience on how to get along than a jury system. Involving the police or courts in your affairs speaks of a weakness of character. It says you cannot reach a constructive agreement effectively. At that point, the only thing left is to recover damages from whatever the elements of the dispute show are called for. Letting others decide how to live your life is like shooting nuclear warheads. A real rocket scientist who worked in the intercontinental missile program told me, “No matter what happens, if we use these things; we lose.” To teach children that they cannot get through life without handouts or help from the “boss” is to teach them to be peasants. We lose. Have you not asked yourself if there is something more serious going on when grown people have no understanding of things once taught in high school or working with their parents? They cannot understand or construct simple sentences or grasp more complex issues like cause and effect? Were you slightly amused at the number of people who went to psychiatrists because their candidate lost the election in 2016? Do the people who serve you, work for you, sit next to you at a ball game sometimes amaze you with their childish view of things? Do you wonder how they arrive at concepts like, “Drug-free zones” or “Safe Spaces” since those are hopelessly childish views of how social control works? That is the point. They are not just acting like kids; they really are still adolescents behaviorally. They let others tell them how to live. They get furious and hateful when things do not always work out in their favor because they interpret fair and equal as “The way I want it to be.” Then they get elected to public office.
W.D. Edmiston, Robert Starr, Arlington J North, Allen Spence, D. LaRue Mahlke
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