Alone in the Crowd: Social Devolution and the Boy Scouts
Very recently an article came to my attention while internet grazing. It dealt with the very real problem of ‘aloneness’ that is increasingly afflicting Americans of all ages.
Not an altogether startling revelation, since much attention has been directed towards this problem as a direct consequence of the Millennials’ obsession with their electronic social media plexus (e.g. Facef*ck and its clones). That is, the tendency to withdraw from direct human-to-human interaction in favor of the synthetic intimacy that social media ‘friends’ offer. As such, this phenomenon has been fairly well studied and focused upon…and it is admittedly an extremely perplexing problem in a United States that has become so excessively, obsessively ‘diversified’ and politically polarised that the entire nation appears to teeter on the razor edge of spontaneous disintegration.
What is only now being closely examined is the very same phenomenon, except as it relates to older individuals instead of those under 30. As a number of medical and psychological researchers have opined, the phenomenon of social isolation looms on the immediate horizon as a health threat as great or greater than the prospect of inherent physical decline that the aging process brings with it to our millions of older citizens.
What makes this increasingly problematic is that whereas the natural tendency of younger people is to cultivate relationships and peer associations (whether actual physical interactions or the deceptive pseudo-intimacy of far more deleterious ‘social media’ venues), the opposite dynamic…avoidance of others…has an equally impactful effect on those over the age of 60 as well as those under 30.
But why do older individuals tend to prize ‘alone time’ more than ‘together time’? Several dynamic processes have been pointed to in this regard, not least of them being that with age comes experience (and familiarity which, as has been observed by philosophers, breeds ‘contempt’). By ‘contempt’ I think the reference alludes to a sense of experiential tedium that decades of exposure to the vicissitudes of our fellow humming beans have inculcated into our outlooks, attitudes and awarenesses. Women, of course, who are biologically primed from puberty to seek the company of potential mates (or sexual playmates), eventually hit that dreaded biological wall called menopause, after which the balance of hormones that preceded this final state undergoes a pronounced shift that profoundly lessens the urge for heterosexual intimacy. Further, given that conventional (traditional) female roles centered so singularly on supportiveness and nurturing that decades of accommodation to those role aims often result in the dawning recognition that they can finally be freed of that suffocating ‘need’ to tend to husbands, children, etc. and that they may finally dedicate themselves to cultivating interests and activities that have intrinsic appeal, rather than ‘maritally supportive’ motivations.
One of the collateral processes that contribute to this desire to escape sexual intimacy on the part of women (at least as it regards the company of men) is the sheer sense of exhausting futility that many marriages impose on the female half of the marital bond. After being enslaved to both a desire for coital intimacy and the rigors of child-raising and bearing, menopause, despite its often-unhappy physical effects, also offers a positive (although permanent) break from that enslavement.
It’s a well-established fact, in this regard, that as men age, their natural titer of testosterone diminishes as the estrogenic component becomes stronger in their biochemical makeup. As a result, there is a tendency for men to become a bit ‘softer’, less aggressive and more compliant in their interactions, whereas women who have hit menopause tend to become somewhat more masculine in these same attitudinal considerations, as their estrogen level also drops off.
Consequently (at least in part), at this crucial phase of adult life (roughly, the 60s) men and women become demonstrably less interested in keeping each other’s company and, depending on a number of other, collateral factors that I have made no effort to enumerate here, seek out increasing solitude to varying degrees. I call this age ‘the watershed effect’.
For women, the watershed effect seems to have a far less immediate impact than it does on men, as several interesting studies tend to suggest. Men who are in this group suffer a discernible health liability that can include resorting to unhealthy habits such as smoking, drinking, lack of exercise and social withdrawal. Women, on the other hand, appear to have far less immediate physical (health) problems related to the transition, although ultimately both groups have been shown to suffer undesirable effects.
In both cases, another detrimental product of social withdrawal is depression, to varying degrees, and depression acts to exacerbate and amplify all of the behavioral changes cited above. Thus, this becomes a vicious cycle, and in many cases, lacking some sort of helpful intervention, the aggregate often results in a premature death. Returning to the article I mentioned at the outset, this was written by Olga Khazan and it first appeared in City Lab. Khazan is a staff writer at the Atlantic and her arguments for addressing the adverse effects of isolation and solitude are quite compelling.
By one definition, increased age is a cumulative process of mindfulness based upon life experience, a theoretical, ‘earned’ aggregate resource denied to those who are in the early stages of living. Again, theoretically, experience should contribute greatly to overall wisdom, insight, understanding and knowledge of how all of us benefit from shared altruism and qualities such as kindness, generosity, courteousness, consideration and an emotionally balanced nature. The broader the range of experience, so the theory goes, the more well-prepared a person should be to make wise choices and decisions in one’s life. Regrettably, these qualities vary considerably from person to person largely due to differences in upbringing, peer associations, education and basic intelligence. In the end, each of us must make due with what resources life has accorded us, of course.
Of collateral bearing on this, and not unironically, the brighter and more intelligent a person is, the greater potential there may be for the development of a sense of loneliness as one ages, for it may well seem extremely difficult for many to seek out suitable friends. It is a well-established and often remarked upon fact that the brightest members among us in society are often among the most emotionally isolated. Part of this stems from the fact that nature favors a mean value, regardless of the categorical circumstances of any given population. Stated more simply, when more people are average in their perceptivity and awarenesses, the truly bright may suffer a particularly acute form of social insularity, since those individuals at the apex of the IQ curve are proportionately quite small in terms of overall numbers. A look at Charles Murray’s Gaussian distribution curve of intelligence quickly illustrates this fact.
Other factors can also bear significantly on the development of isolation and loneliness. It is interesting to note that the nature of communities has been continually evolving over the past three hundred or so years, this dynamic also having a profound effect on the above. Whereas back when the nation was founded, communities tended to consist of like-minded individuals (as in the case of religious groups seeking freedom to practice their particular beliefs, etc.), a characteristic that was still true as recently as the early 1900s, events that unfolded beginning with the First World War, and that continued through the Second, exerted an undeniable influence on social mobility that ultimately found communities consisting of a wide ranging mix of individuals with vastly different backgrounds, beliefs, outlooks and social customs.
Each of these armed conflicts resulted in masses of widely different individuals being thrown together into armies, where they had to function cooperatively under extremely trying conditions (warfare); after the wars were resolved most did not return to their originating points but chose to live elsewhere. This effect gathered momentum when large American commercial enterprises and corporations spread out across the country, instituting a pervasive form of social mobility that in many cases was not a voluntary one. One went wherever the jobs were and established new roots on a fairly regular basis; mobility became the new norm. These effects, in combination with liberal American immigration policies resulted in a growing ethnic, racial, religious and social diversity that has grown even more pervasive in recent decades where the rallying cry of ‘diversity’ has become a PC catchphrase of left-wing liberal progressivism.
One of the primary effects of all this has been to lessen traditional bonds to the point where today’s communities, especially those population centers in the social change vanguard states along the west coast, are heterogeneous to such an excessive extent that social bonding options and venues that were formerly extant are now either largely nonexistent or extremely difficult to avail.
As someone born in California, I have witnessed this phenomenon accelerate over the past 60 years to such an extent that I now personally find it extremely difficult to find potential new friends of my own who share even the slightest of my many interests, ideas, outlooks and/or opinions. As one of those increasingly ‘isolated’ old people, this disagreeable and involuntary status quo is not a matter of choice, but rather one that arises out of the behavioral mandates imposed on us by our dynamic socio-economic matrix. And there are the effects of generational differences to factor into this already perplexing mix of dynamics, as well, with the ideological chasm dividing so-called ‘Boomers’ and ‘Millennials’ almost uncrossable.
Speaking from a personal vantage, as one of the very first ‘Boomers’, I came from a white upper-middle class family comprised on one side (paternal) of Irish ancestors and on the other (maternal) of French Huguenot and German ancestry. Since my father was the youngest of 10 brothers and sisters, all of his sibs had passed away prior to his own death in 1950 (at age 72). Hence, I had little awareness and knowledge of my paternal family. Consequently, my mother’s family, strict upper-middle class Presbyterians from southern Idaho (originally from Missouri), became the sole source of my familial associations and the values transmitted to me by them.
Mother’s family were reasonably well off (albeit with upper-class bourgeoise aspirations), thus I was raised in an environment wherein education and the veneer of ‘gentility’ were strongly emphasised aspects of my early upbringing. When my mother unexpectedly passed away, the rest of my childhood occurred in Oahu (HI), when I was ‘hanai’d’ by relatives (adopted, Hawai’ian style). Hawai’ian culture imposed a whole different set of behavioral standards on my nascent youthfulness and in adapting to the new lifestyle and surroundings I was often at a disadvantage, since my Hawai’ian relatives were ‘poi-dog’ (mixed) middle-class and given to the sort of informality that most characterises mainstream Hawai’ian society. As a child who had been raised to be respectful of elders, treat others with polite courtesy and hew to European standards of behavior and decorum (but without money), life as a youth in Hawai’i was, at times, quite challenging (understatement).
Despite this disruption of my early life, I remained a ‘polite’, courteous person who never really had any real awareness of deeper, underlying racial or ethnic issues. I assumed, rather naively, considered in retrospect, that the world was a ‘fair’ environment within which to exist: that the ‘Golden Rule’ obtained ever and always, and that you got as good as you gave. What a shock it was to find out differently and what a decided disadvantage this somewhat simplistic outlook on life would turn out to be for me later!
Lacking a ‘real’ family at that point in my life, I was fortunate enough to connect with what quickly became my salvation: the Boy Scout movement. Back then, the Boy Scouts of America movement stood out like a shining beacon of morality, strong moral ethics and high standards of behavior.
Today’s tragic contemporary problems of rampant child-molestation weren’t even on the social radar back then (fortunately). Our adult leaders were all World War 2 veterans who knew all too well from direct personal experience what it was that America ostensibly went to war to protect and preserve: a way of life that although greatly filtered through a ‘white’ cultural filter, nevertheless emulated the core British social aspirations of personal honor and meritorious behavioral standards.
For me, as a child that had been raised largely along those same guidelines, the Boy Scout movement was very much like a substitute family. Looking at some of the original Boy Scout manuals and handbooks that governed our lives as Scouts, I am often overwhelmed with a sense of how far our present American society has sunk in the present day. I can still recite the Scout oath and the Scout Laws by heart, since I regarded them as the moral norm for ideal American life and fit standards to emulate.
Again, that isn’t to say that there weren’t the same elements of dishonesty, political corruption (and ethnic bias) then that still exist today, but because white, Anglo-Saxon culture set the hallmarks for proper social conduct, these were the norms we Scouts were told to adopt and take to heart. “Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean and Reverent.” These were the 12 Scout Laws. The Scout motto: ‘Be Prepared’. ‘Do a good turn daily’ was the Scout Slogan.
The Scout Oath also bears repeating here: “On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law. To help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.”
These maxims were more than a mere recitation to me and millions of other young Boy Scouts who experienced Scouting during the 50s. They were a gold standard of sorts that I, for one, truly took to heart.
Perhaps I should qualify things a bit by saying that at that time I was still a church-going Anglican (my mother’s religion prior to her passing) out of habit, but by the time I had reached ‘Life Scout’ rank, I was already questioning the whole religious paradigm of belief in a Supreme deity.
Quasi atheist-to-be that I was, that did not keep me from recognizing a truth first expressed by Karl Marx (‘Religion is the opiate of the masses’) but also understanding its importance to those who hadn’t the intellectual perspicacity to look ‘belief’ directly in its face and question its validity, as an absolute. A lack of ‘belief’ also didn’t prevent me from recognizing that many religious values are positive behavioral influences (well-intended delusions can still be a contributory factor in building well-intended culture, if selectively applied and carefully considered). Needless to say, I didn’t pursue the so-called God and Country Award, LoL, but that didn’t deter me from being a ‘good person’ by any means.
As for aspects of the Scout program such as camping, hiking, fitness, adventuring, conservation, wildlife appreciation and so forth, these were all tremendously valuable to me and my fellow Scouts, for they contributed basic coping skills that were as valid then as they are today, despite our all-subsuming immersion in the dark heart of our highly developed ‘electronic’ culture.
Nowhere is the inculcated value of all these basic Scout values more apparent than on the local 5 o’clock news, with its legions of anchor persons reciting the daily litany of actions by absolute idiots and generally stupid people who have committed colossal acts of ignorance (one such example: a felow driving his family over the Sierra Nevada Donner Summit, in a snowstorm, clad in a tank-top and what I call ‘bassaball’ shorts, with maybe rubber flip-flops to round out the sartorial ensemble). Or people who have wandered off a trail somewhere, gotten lost, then used their smartphone to call out a costly Search and Rescue Team (guess who pays for THAT?! Not them!) to be rescued, an act that is typically lauded on the news as a heroic story of survival. This gives the vacuous TV viewing audience some vicarious entertainment, of course.
[Back in my day, such total idiots as these were usually left to languish out there, thereby ridding the collective gene pool of yet another set of substandard behavioral genes.]
As you might correctly infer, back in my Scouting days when you got in trouble in the wilderness it was because a dire and completely unavoidable fate had befallen someone already possessed of wilderness skills, not because some grossly naïve oaf without water and suitable clothes diddly-bopped off a marked national forest trail, on a whim and quickly got lost. Boy Scouts, by contrast, were trained to rescue themselves when lost and those skills are still valuable beyond counting today.
I am sure that one of the main reasons why all these stupid people we hear about each day on the news continue to do stupid things is because they have been encouraged to regard themselves as fully prepared to do just about anything merely by virtue of having had some outdoor retail outfitter sell them $1000 of camping equipment (or sporting gear or whatever). After all, as the advertising and marketing people believe, camping and wilderness exploration is simply a matter of buying the right gear (what the consumer does with it is NOT a concern of REI, or The North face, etc.). After all, that’s what capitalism is all about, isn’t? Selling material things (that the hapless individual probably never needed in the first place) to marginally astute people who are unprepared to use the stuff wisely or knowledgably. The ‘Great American Way’…ya gotta love it!
But to return to my thesis here, Boy Scouts in my era didn’t need to invest several hundreds of dollars in outdoor gear because we were taught that most of it you could make yourself, inexpensively. Most importantly, self-sufficiency was a core value and Scouts were taught how to survive anywhere with just the natural materials they had at hand. Today, in contrast, most contemporary Scout training programs instead foster knowledge of how to use electronic gadgets, how to surf the internet, enhancde their STEM skills, use smartphone apps, and be ever politically correct in their interactions with others, I’m sure…
It is highly instructive and illuminating, here, to take a brief look at the original 1910 Boy Scout Handbook, as put together by turn-of-the-century naturalist and outdoorsman Earnest Thompson Seton (whom I am distantly related to, by the way…true!). Seton was the American Scout movement’s Chief Scout, a title accorded him in recognition of his strong advocacy of youth programs designed to promote a healthy, vigorous lifestyle among boys and and foster moral development in young men.
In the event that any of my readers are unaware of the origins of the world-wide Boy Scout movement, the concept began when in 1905 British Lt. General Sir Robert S.S. Baden-Powell, who was the chief of the British Army’s military scouts (a special type of soldier whose job was to ‘scout’ out the enemy’s forces and operations, during war; comparable to the American frontier Army scout of the old west, the term defining an covert field observer who reports back to headquarters), conceived of a plan to teach boys techniques that would enable them to develop self-reliance, confidence and natural coping skills in a natural (outdoor) environment.
Below is an introduction to the Scouting concept quoted from Wikipedia that outlines the original concept.
“The Scout movement, also known as Scouting or the Scouts, is a voluntary non-political educational movement for young people open to all without distinction of gender, origin, race or creed, in accordance with the purpose, principles and method conceived by the founder, Lord Baden-Powell. The purpose of the Scout Movement is to contribute to the development of young people in achieving their full physical, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual potentials as individuals, as responsible citizens and as members of their local, national and international communities.
"During the first half of the twentieth century, the movement grew to encompass three major age groups for boys (Cub Scout, Boy Scout, Rover Scout) and, in 1910, a new organization, Girl Guides, was created for girls (Brownie Guide, Girl Guide and Girl Scout, Ranger Guide). It is one of several worldwide youth organizations.
“In 1906 and 1907 Robert Baden-Powell, a lieutenant general in the British Army, wrote a book for boys about reconnaissance and scouting. This book, Scouting for Boys, was based on his earlier books about military scouting, with influence and support of Frederick Russell Burnham (Chief of Scouts in British Africa), Ernest Thompson Seton of the Woodcraft Indians, William Alexander Smith of the Boys' Brigade, and his publisher Pearson. In mid-1907 Baden-Powell held a camp on Brownsea Island in England to test ideas for his book. This camp and the publication of Scouting for Boys (London, 1908) are generally regarded as the start of the Scout movement.
“The movement employs the Scout method, a programme of informal education with an emphasis on practical outdoor activities, including camping, woodcraft, aquatics, hiking, backpacking, and sports. Another widely recognized movement characteristic is the Scout uniform, by intent hiding all differences of social standing in a country and making for equality, with neckerchief and campaign hat or comparable headwear. Distinctive uniform insignia include the fleur-de-lis and the trefoil, as well as badges and other patches.
“The two largest umbrella organizations are the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), for boys-only and co-educational organizations, and the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), primarily for girls-only organizations but also accepting co-educational organizations. The year 2007 marked the centenary of Scouting worldwide, and member organizations planned events to celebrate the occasion.”
Whereas the Scouting movement in UK was originally begun specifically for boys, a collateral organisation for girls was also set up shortly thereafter in the UK (known as the Girl Guides), as mentioned in the above quote. In America today, under pressure from proponents of the oppressive ‘political correctness’ ideology that dominates the leftist liberal progressive mindset, entry in the ‘Boy Scouts’ has been opened up to girls, as well as youths professing to be ‘gay’ (I say 'professing' due to the fact that many are far too young to even remotely understand exactly what 'gayness' is)…two nuances that would have been unthinkable to proper British Victorians of the early 1900s. While the intent of these changes may be commendable, the practical consequences have been nothing short of disastrous.
All that having been stated, it would be propitious here to quote briefly from Chief Scout Seton’s original (American) 1910 Boy Scout handbook (this was an early, temporary version of Seton’s plan that preceded the publication in 1911 of the first official Boy Scout Handbook). His prefatory remarks were as chillingly prescient and astute then as they are today:
“Every American Boy, a hundred years ago, lived either on a farm or in close touch with farm life that he reaped its benefits. He had all the practical knowledge that comes with country surroundings: that is, he could ride, shoot, skate, run, swim; he was handy with tools, he knew the woods, he was physically strong, self-reliant, resourceful, well developed in body and brain. In addition to which, he had a good moral training at home. He was respectful to his superiors, obedient to his parents, and altogether the material of which a nation could be made.
“We have lived to see an unfortunate change. (This has occurred) partly through the growth of immense cities, with the consequent specialisation of industry, so that each individual has been required to do one small specialty, and shut his eyes to everything else, with the resultant perpetual narrowing of the mental horizon.
“Partly through the decay of small farming, which would have offset this condition, for each mixed farm was a college of handicraft.
“And partly through the stereotyped forms of religion losing their hold, we see a very different type of youth in this country (America) today.
“It is the exception that we see a boy respectful to his superiors, and obedient to his parents. It is the rare exception, now, when we see a boy that is handy with tools and capable of taking care of himself under all circumstances. It is the very, very rare exception when we see a boy whose life is absolutely governed by the safe old moral standards.
“The personal interest in athletics has been largely superseded by an interest in spectacular games, which unfortunately tends to divide the nation into two groups—the few overworked champions in the arena, and the great crowd, content to do nothing but sit on the benches and look on, while indulging their taste for tobacco and alcohol.
“It is this last that is turning so many thoughtful ones away against football, baseball, etc. This, it will be seen, is a reproduction of the condition that ended in the fall of the Roman Empire. In her days of growth, every man was a soldier. In the end, a few great gladiators were in the arena, to be watched and applauded by the millions who personally knew nothing of fighting or of heroism.
“’Degeneracy’ is the word (that best describes it).
“To combat the system that has turned such a large proportion of our robust, manly, self-reliant boyhood into a lot of flat-chested cigarette smokers, with shaky nerves and doubtful vitality, I began the Woodcraft movement in America. Without saying as much, it aimed to counteract the evils attendant on (arena sports), but substituting the better, cleaner, saner pursuits of Woodcraft and Scouting. Its methods were fairly successful; at least 100,000 young people joined (Note: in 1909-10). But the idea, as enlarged by General Sir Robert Baden-Powell, has in less time achieved greater popularity in England; the results have been such that we are justified in adopting his innovations.”
And adopt it they did. For a number of decades up until the fairly recent present, the American Boy Scout Movement continued to carry forward Seton’s admirable aims and objectives of instilling genuine character and strong moral fiber into our youths.
Sadly, today the scourge of ‘cigarettes and alcohol’ that concerned Seton so has been largely supplanted by an even greater threat to America: the proliferation of dependence upon illegal (and legal) drugs and use of behavior-altering substances. Alcohol continues to be a huge national liability and smoking also manages to persist (largely thanks to reactive ignorance on the part of so many individuals of marginal mental acuity, in my opinion) as well, but whatever the catalyst, the effects on America’s collective morality and ethical standards have been catastrophic. So much so that today the entire nation appears to be teetering on the edge of moral oblivion in just about every context conceivable.
But enough of this preaching to the choir. What I wish to affirm is that when I was a boy in the 50s, there was a set of standards available to me as a child who lacked suitable role-models to guide my growth through the turbulence of adolescence and safely onwards, towards genuine maturity. Had it not been for the fact that I was a Boy Scout, I would not be the person I am today: an individual still guided and motivated by those high moral and heigenic standards of living that I aspired to as a youth.
Tragically, today’s modern Scout movement is no longer the same as it was back then. Irresponsible sexual promiscuity has become rampant throughout American society, grossly distorted, highly partisan liberal-progressive outlooks on life have infected our whole nation to such an extent that even our traditional national political processes are now totally dysfunctional. Such terrible and perverse aberrations as child molestation and incest are commonplace, even in the Scout movement and religious institutions. Honesty and truthfulness are today a huge joke to most, and respect for the basic dignity of others has almost entirely vanished. A large segment of America (those mainly who have risen above irrational belief in a benevolent personal deity: read, atheists) have become sardonic, cynical, pessimistic and deeply dissatisfied with life in contemporary America, as it has devolved.
I recently responded on-line to a comment (big mistake, of course) made in response to child-molestation incidents that have occurred in today's Boy Scout organisation, citing much of what I have recapitulated in the above paragraphs and lamenting that those ‘kinder, gentler days’ of my youth are forever gone. Some erstwhile Pollyanna subsequently responded to my post, stating that this was not true and that the Boy Scout movement of old will still survive and thrive, despite all the damning controversy.
Despite bring a die-hard pessimist, I have to grin somewhat grimly over that display of unfounded exuberance, for those wonderful aspirations of Scouting that so inspired me are indeed quite dead and gone today, but I silently thank whatever powers that may be in the universe that I had Scouting to help me grow up into a responsible, productive, reflective, intelligent and humane person while Scouting was still an upbeat, positive socialising influence.
And besides, who knows when I'll next bump into a sweet little old lesbian at the stoplight, somewhere here in the gay capitol of Californica, whom I can help across the street?
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