“I Don’t Want to Grow Up” Or why we may not really believe in democracy

“I Don’t Want to Grow Up”

Or why we may not really believe in democracy

As children, we longed for the perfect Mommy who will nurture and care for us. If we fall, she will “kiss it and make it better.” She will make sure that the consequences of our falls are not severe.

We also longd for the perfect Daddy who will protect us and do the hard things we fear doing. He will make the decisions and we can stick out our tongues if we don’t like it, but we know we are not the responsible one.

As we grow up, we begin to see our parents as imperfect, no stronger than we are becoming, no wiser than we are becoming. If we become mature adults, we give up on wanting prefect parents. We may believe in a God or gods who perform either or both roles. But we know we have to be the adult now.

I remember when I had to take my old dog in to be euthanized. And I thought of when my father had done that with my dog when I was 13. He tried to protect me from that. Now, I thought, I have to be the Dad myself. It was not pleasant or easy.

As adult and mature as we may become, there is always some part of us still longing for those perfect parents.

We may want the government to be the perfect Mommy, to always nurture us and keep us from the full consequences of our actions and from the vicissitudes of living. A good government smooths out the effects of class, limits how much the rich and powerful can abuse their positions, provides some level of support when bad times come. But a good government is not a Mommy. A good government is all of us helping all of us.

We may want a government led by the perfect Daddy. One who protects us and decides for us and keeps us from having to make hard choices. A good leader sees their role as servant leader and tries to use the power and position for collective defense and collective enforcement of the rules we agree to abide by. But a good leader also needs all of us to be adult and competent citizens.

If we allow that childlike part of ourselves to transfer its desires to our government, we may want an extreme Nanny State that does everything for us. Call this the Socialist impulse.

Or we may want a government led by the all-knowing, all-seeing Daddy who decides for us and absolves us of any responsibilities. Call this the Fascist impulse.

We will be disappointed in government as Mommy. It can never nurture us. It can never kiss everything and make it better. We will have to be our own adult.

We will also be disappointed in any leader as Daddy. As much as they may try, they cannot be all-knowing and all-powerful. We will begin looking for a new Daddy almost immediately, showing our disapproval in polls and waiting for the next election. And they may likely get seduced by the role or may want to enhance their own wealth, power, ego through using that role.

We can try to eliminate or limit some of the programs of the Mommy state. It’s hard to go back when they are created.

But we have a better chance doing that than getting rid of the Daddy if we give over all our power and responsibility to them. We may think that as long as we keep our heads down, Daddy will not punish us. We may want the goodies we can get from the government and be willing to surrender our role as full citizen. China seems to have gone this way.

More likely, those goodies will increasingly go to the few who enable and support Daddy at the highest levels. That’s true in China and Russia now.

More likely, Daddy will suffer a psychopathology from this role and abuse the role and us as Putin does. There is no guarantee that the arbitrary power will not sooner or later be used against us or those we love.  

Being an adult is hard. Being a full citizen with one full share of the responsibility for the nation is hard. Telling the child in us that the adult in us will have to be enough is hard.

The United States has largely survived as a democracy from over two centuries.

If it ends, it will be because leaders abuse their roles for their own power and gain. And because we let them or even encouraged them to do so. Democracy is hard because it requires us to nurture each other and make hard choices together and live with the consequences as we agree to ameliorate them where possible.

It’s time for each of us to be the Adult now. It’s time to grow up. It can be too late all too quickly.