Teenagers in their early to mid-teens have the habit of
testing the limit to which they can push their luck on things that may be of
interest to them; something they do out of perceived need – also push their
luck on things that may not be of interest to them; something they do out of
curiosity.
They get into trouble for what they do, whether they test
their parents, their teachers or strangers whom they happen to encounter and
deal with once in a while. And of course, these teens can always count on their
parents to bail them out and explain why they should not do that again.
Sometimes a teacher, a school principal or a counselor are called upon to help
straighten the kid.
When a kid is a kid – in the sense that he or she is still a
teenager – the adults around them have the duty to mentor them in the same way
that they were mentored while growing up, and the way that the kids of today
will mentor the next generation when they will have grown up themselves. Come to
think of it, this cascading nurture is a trait that we, humans, share with most
of the organisms that have evolved above the level of insects.
Because, as human beings, we have other traits that render
our human experience more complicated than the lower primates, things do not
always unfold with us as smoothly as we would like them to. And this applies to
some teenagers who find it difficult to kick the habit of being childish, thus
keep getting into trouble with their parents, their teachers, even strangers
they might have encountered only once.
Such kids require attention for a longer period of time than
their counterparts, and they usually get it unless it is observed that there is
something seriously wrong with their character. In this case the kid is
declared incorrigible by the normal methods, and is committed to receive a
different kind of treatment. At other times, the kid can be visibly handicapped
in a physical or emotional sense, in which case he or she is properly diagnosed
and given the proper medical or psychological treatment.
Because the treatment in such cases takes a long time, the
parents of these kids elect – most of the time but not always – to become the
prime caregiver even as the child grows up and becomes an adult. The parents feel
that it is their duty to care for and nurture an offspring that continues to
require assistance. Also, no one must underestimate the love that a parent has
for a child.
This is the culture and civilization of our planet; the
reason why we survived and developed to the point of contemplating travel among
the planets, and beyond them to the stars. But the journey up to now has not
been an easy one. We had our share of trouble for the reason that throughout
time, some cultures arose and correctly mimicked the growth of an organism in
its various stages, but then experienced a developmental arrest. This motivated
them to create trouble for their neighbors, even for the entire species. It was
the kind of trouble that's not different from what the teenagers create, except
that a culture that's out of control can cause trouble at the regional level,
even on a planetary scale.
With the exception of one, most of the problem cultures came
and went, leaving only a residue of the mischief they had caused when they were
alive and kicking. The exception is a culture that kept morphing from one state
of existence to another, adapting to the local conditions in form only while
maintaining the essence of the ancient Jewish culture. Almost everywhere that
these people went, they scored an initial success, but when the locals
discovered that no matter how sweet their external form may appear, their
internal essence remained as toxic as the deadliest of poisons. And so, the
locals turned against the Jews … sometimes harshly, sometimes fatally.
You can see how and why the Jewish culture refuses to
outgrow the teenager stage in which it has fossilized since coming to America – when you read the editorial of the New
York Daily News that came under the title: “John Kerry's duty to Israel ,”
published on October 17, 2015.
When you'll have finished reading the piece, you will want
to shout: Grow up, kid, no one owes you anything. You're not handicapped, and
so you owe it to yourself to start learning how to get along with the rest of
humanity. Thirty four centuries are long enough for you to have developed a
human culture that's above the animal culture which continues to motivate you
ever since you came down from the trees.