-
@ Branden with an E
2025-02-17 00:08:04
Ever notice how we’ve all turned into a bunch of regulation junkies? Not just the kids—us, too. The parents. The supposed adults in the room. We sit around shaking our heads at this new generation, wondering why they can’t make a move without a permission slip, but let’s be honest: we made them that way. We were trained for it. We just passed the neurosis down like a bad heirloom.
Used to be, kids ran wild, made their own fun, learned how things worked by getting their hands dirty and screwing up a few times. You fell out of a tree? Tough. That’s how you figured out gravity was real. Now, a kid gets a splinter and half the neighborhood has to be briefed. But let’s not act like it started with them. We didn’t grow up in the Wild West. Our parents—the ones who were handed a country built by men who cleared forests and carved railroads and settled frontiers—they took one look at all that, clutched their pearls, and decided the real enemy was *risk.* They started slapping safety labels on everything, turned common sense into a government-subsidized industry, and set about making sure we never had to experience a single moment of danger, discomfort, or—God help us—independence.
And we ate it up. Grew up afraid of the sun, the air, the drinking water. If you touched a stranger, you’d get kidnapped. If you ate the wrong snack, you’d drop dead from an allergy you didn’t even have. If you rode a bike without strapping on enough gear to survive re-entry from orbit, you might as well be suicidal. Then, just to really hammer it in, we were given rules for *everything.* How to sit, how to talk, how to play, how to think. And because we’d been softened up, we listened. We obeyed. We internalized the great lesson of modern civilization: *only do what is approved.*
And when it came time for us to raise kids? Oh, we ran with it. Helicopter parenting? That was us. Participation trophies? Us. Baby-proofing the entire godforsaken planet so that Junior never had to encounter anything sharper than a cotton ball? Us again. Every bit of micromanaged, soul-sucking, over-regulated nonsense we complain about today? We enforced it. So now we’ve got a generation that doesn’t *know* how to function without checking the rulebook first. They hesitate before every decision because we taught them hesitation. They sit around waiting for a green light because that’s all we ever told them to do.
And you know what? We’re no better. When’s the last time *you* did something without checking if it was "allowed"? When’s the last time you ignored a ridiculous rule instead of just sighing and complying? When’s the last time you acted like a *free man* instead of a well-behaved tax mule hoping the system doesn’t notice you?
We’ve swallowed a lie, and we keep regurgitating it—that compliance is morality, that following orders is a virtue, that a safe, predictable, well-regulated life is a *good* one. It’s not. It’s never been. You don’t get freedom by waiting for permission to use it. You don’t get courage by asking if it’s okay. You don’t build a worthwhile life by making sure you never color outside the lines.
And yet, here we are, acting surprised. Acting like we don’t know how we got here. Acting like we didn’t *choose* this. Like we didn’t let it happen.
So what now? We could stop. We could teach our kids to take risks, to get their hands dirty, to act instead of waiting for permission. We could start ignoring stupid rules, start trusting our own judgment, start living like we weren’t raised in a padded cell.
Or we could do nothing. Keep following orders. Keep playing it safe. Keep watching the world shrink into a flavorless, permission-based, committee-approved version of itself.
Your call. But either way, don’t pretend to be surprised.