Don’t trust anyone under 30

It is a profound time in anyone’s life when something trips you that gradual aging has passed a critical point, a node, a surprise, a jolt, a kind hint, a sarcastic hint, maybe an injury, and even a real report that my age has become generational. I have become of another generation that has, or may have been, superseded in the old fashioned normal way. In my case this is the old fashioned USA way.

Politics come to mind now as I think of war and peace and being passed by, and knowing I am too old to serve. I do want to serve again, but my presence may do more harm than good. Boy, does that thought hurt. And yet, I also think how very important it is now to think of war and peace and how it might affect my progeny. The normal human instinct is to say I am willing to go in harms way, but committing my progeny to the same is another matter. I want them to succeed where I don’t really give a darn about me.

And there are other cultures where the “old” have different positions in families, societies, and life in general. I tend to read about these cultures in aging articles and National Geographic magazine articles. And I have lived in some of these cultures, and seen all this with my own eyes. Obon in Okinawa especially impresses me.

And now to today’s friction between Islamic wackos and us decadent western types. Maybe we old people can bring something to the plate. And I speak of a plate that is two way, and I put ideas on and take ideas off of the plate.

Much friction today is from ideas from long dead people. Maybe they were intellectuals worthy of reading today, and maybe they were megalomaniacs operating in their small world. The ideas of Salafism and Qutbism from those objecting to the Arabian dictatorships come to mind. Wahhabism and its oil and desert tribe funding in Arabia are apparent to old people like me. Then there are Madrasah’s in Pakistan, but the evil Moslem input is totally over reported, in my humble opinion. And Pakistan is the sixth biggest country in the world, by the way.

And all I want is for my progeny to have a chance to go forward in their own lives.

Here’s what maybe old USA people like me can bring to the plate. We have the time to read and research, and then say what we think. That is very powerful. And probably it is.

In the other cultures, I am not sure.