No, you don’t.

You miss who you were when everything looked like this.

You were young, you were discovering the internet like a new frontier, every new app you tried or new album you found or new comedy website was like discovering a new country. You could while away hours without responsibility or care or trauma, or at least nearly as much. You were not cynical and jaded yet.

Nostalgia isn’t a longing for when things were simpler, it is a longing for when you were simpler.

Kind of like asking if we can stop picking up stones and rocks and using them to beat each other and instead use them to build homes.

This isn’t a new fight. There will always be people who take our tools and abuse them by using them to hurt others. That’s what we’re fighting against, people who use our tools to hurt people instead of doing good. Unfortunately, if we just let people who collect stones and sticks for hurting people be, and not push them out of our village, they will just grow in number and strength so we can’t just block it out, we can’t live and let live around those who would take your life if they grew strong enough.

If it’s tiring and annoying to see people have to always yell at the club-and-rock-wielding thugs and throw rocks back at them, you don’t have to get involved, but don’t decry those who DO have the courage to throw rocks back. If they didn’t do this, the rocks would start hitting you next.

Do you think people become more conservative with age or is it society becoming more progressive and leaving them behind?

I am getting up there in years and seeing this play out over and over.

I think every generation wants to be more progressive than the last, but we tend to carry baggage of fear and insecurity through the generations. Or more specifically, older people tend to gain the political and monetary capital needed to affect policy and shape our societal outlook and attitude. They will always be more conservative than the younger generation who will want more freedoms and personal rights, inherently, and as the ruling class will clash with newer sensibilities, over and over.

What we’re asking here, is the conservatism reflected in our elders and leadership now broadly more harmful or helpful? Are we out of the touch or is it the kids who are wrong?

I think it’s a mix but mostly it’s not our real problem. Our real problem is that no matter what our age, we have greatly misunderstood how our own existence works. Most people have been taught that they have brains designed to exercise logic and reason and that brains are the best thing ever if you use them and make them smart.

No, our brains are not logical tools. We are not a rational species. There was no “age of enlightenment.” It’s all a hoax. Our brains are tools designed to write a story to explain how you feel. And that’s it. It doesn’t even have to make sense. When we all learn how our brains actually work we will collectively make better decisions, have more compassion for each other, and likely sink into even deeper despair as we all start to realize we have no free will.

We should all be learning that we’re all children. Some of us, over time, gain a lot more baggage and issues, but that shit just layers right on top of the “child” parts so we’re all just basically children with complex problems.

The brain doesn’t “prune” itself. The brain you had when you were 12, you have that same damn brain. It doesn’t change. Stuff just gets added to it.

Almost anyone with an irrational political stance betrays their youth.

Political ideology has always captivated the passions of youth, but isn’t successfully implemented or even internalized except by people with age and experience and emotional regulation.

Bears can be trained to drive cars and communicate through various means, it’s thought they may be as smart as great apes like gorillas. This is why they were a choice circus animal for a long time.

Yes, this should be terrifying information.

Should have took a lot more.