Being the Adult in the Room

The world has been polarized into two factions, one being the totalitarians and the other being those in favor of liberty. The totalitarians have control of the narrative, and they have no lack of followers. However, being in the majority is no guarantee of success. What's required is not numerical superiority, but character, and character is rooted in superior morals and good behavior.

This is not a new insight. It's been known for millennia. The Greeks didn't teach their children discipline and rhetoric just for the heck of it. It was seen as vital for the survival of their culture. It was to secure their continued success.

Conversely, the totalitarian agenda is not merely a whimsical agenda of destruction. Their attack on conservative values has a purpose. It aims to confuse our understanding of good morals and good rhetoric, so that they alone are perceived as educated and moral. They want us to come across as childish and confused so that they can tell us what to do and how to behave.

The best way to counteract this agenda is to keep in mind the archetype of an adult. Once we have a clear vision of this archetype, it becomes easier to act constructively against the current push towards tyranny.

The adult has several characteristics that we need to internalize. These include:

• a clear vision of right and wrong
• an understanding of relative importance and strength
• patience
• a preference for substance over ego
• a distaste for physical conflict
• clear and concise language

Adults don't rebel with violence and loud protests. They don't go headlong into a fight with their opponents. They don't strike with impatience. They don't care about the social status of their opponents, and they don't act on any desire to become famous themselves.

Adults are meek, and they engage their enemies in attrition warfare rather than pitched battles. No matter how things go, they don't play the victim nor the hero. All that matters is the end result and the legacy that comes with a life lived well.

An important part of this is how we formulate ourselves in our conversations with others, because our language and choice of subject matter reveals our character. It's important to show people that we care about them. We must also reveal who we are. We must always be our friendly helpful selves, polite and open for a good story or two.

We must avoid talking too much about ourselves and what we believe. We don't gloat. Nor do we express self pity. Once we've explained our position to someone, there's no point in repeating it.

Written text should be stripped as much as possible of adjectives and adverbs. There's no point in saying "very big" or "enormous" when "big" is equally good. If "big" can be removed from the sentence without loss to its meaning, then get rid of it. Adults don't engage in "very big" or "enormous" battles. They engage in battles, and even that may be an overstatement.

Done correctly, our language and actions speak for themselves. It's clear where we stand, and it becomes clear to everyone that we are the adults, and that it's the pushy, impatient and grasping totalitarians that are the ones who never fully graduated from kindergarten.

A relaxed conversation