JUNE 2024 SULLYGRAM:  At what age do we get it right? When are we fully knowledgeable, socially integrated, politically correct, pacific in our grasp and balance of all things? Or to put it another way, why should our goals and aspirations from one age be devalued or disowned at another? Why should we renounce ourselves? Didn’t we respond to the necessary priorities mandated by nature and circumstance at each leg of the journey? You might apply this reasoning to changing cultures and historical eras that renounce themselves as well, but let me juxtapose three snapshots as a metaphor for where I’m going.

The Masai, the Dinka, the Ashanti and other herder societies SMILE at their domesticated charges. The herds are simple sheep, goats and cattle, after all, and they mindlessly obey whoever leads them to water, grass and safety. Industrialized cultures from around the globe SMILE at the Masai, the Dinka, and the Ashanti. The herders are simple, after all, and they are mindlessly awed by gadgetry – a cell phone, a recorder, a camera. From distant realms of the cosmos where Newtonian physics is a quaint artifact, where dark energy is understood and time is no longer linear, unknown entities SMILE at the backwater planet that calls itself Earth. Its human species is simple, after all, and they mindlessly parade primitive toys as proof of supremacy – a cell phone, a recorder, a camera.

Cultural perspectives are always relative, even within each human lifetime. Each generation rolls in with its contending tide of values that can leave aging generations on a sandbar as they struggle to keep their relevance. Like chameleons we all try to blend with the ambient society that surrounds us, but time and rites of passage create new agendas. Values change, circumstances shift, the limelight dims. Too blind to see the forest for the trees, we may patronize and condescend toward what we leave behind (…or what leaves us behind). The truth is we never own the one-and-only correct perspective. We simply adopt a rationale that best serves our needs, options and justifications at each given moment.

Is there any age where our changing skill sets, attitudes, philosophies, and achievements cannot sneer at what we left behind and say “boy, was I dumb”? Or do we fear becoming worthless when assets we built our worth on decline or molt into different assets? And what of youthful health and looks? Since by definition they do not blossom past mid-life, do we criticize or demote them? Would we really forego their prerogatives if we had them again? Or is the shift in perspective largely defensive, a matter of maintaining status and relevance?

What was right for us at one time served a purpose. It was part of our journey, a weighing of our needs in a distinct time and place. How ironic then that in these unsettled times we so easily let society be our judge and jury looking back in the rearview mirror, usurping our perspectives and manipulating our values. It’s a heady power we grant to the dominant bellwethers of the human herd – the medias, the institutions, the revisionists of history, the factions of political and cultural power. “Feel guilty,” woke society says, “or be a victim. We have lots of categories. Let us choose a blame for anything you don’t like about your outcomes. We’ll supply a rationale, cherry-pick history, gerrymander the narrative, tell you what to feel. You don’t even have to know why. You just have to emote on cue with tears and self-righteousness! Cry for our cameras, help us cast stones. Protest, riot, loot, dissemble, accuse, demonize, posture. Your hysteria will testify to our sincerity. So, let us cripple you with sympathy, with empathy. But fair warning…if you oppose us, we’ll censor/cancel/cleanse you, we’ll brand you as a pawn of American evil, a shill, a privileged plant.” 

The more emotionally dependent we become on woke culture, the more we enable its permissive core of lawlessness, entitlement, and steadily declining competency. It’s end-game is societal collapse. If we wait until all our institutions of justice, education and law enforcement are completely corrupted and weaponized, there will be no remedy. By all means, we should give and receive love and understanding; but that is not the same thing as the topsy-turvy values we see today. Open-mindedness has been manipulated to the point of our brains falling out. Inverting ideals is how identity politics exploits the gullible and orchestrates guilt.

You are a cumulative being, take pride in the sum total of who you are, past and present. You don’t need excuses or to sell yourself to identity politics. Call forth your tribe, your generation, but let them be exemplars of what they achieve rather than dupes or victims.

Photos below: thought I’d venture back to a bosom bud I miss very much since his premature passing: gentleman cowboy Fred Bean. We recognized each other instantly at first meeting, a kinship of eccentric brotherhood. You may recall the TV series about legendary hanging Judge Roy Bean. In real life, Fred was his colorful grandson, rodeo cowboy and a charmer without equal. Our connection over the years spanned many adventures from his house on a kayaking river near Belton, Texas, to my domicile in Michigan. The photos below are mostly from a mutual friend’s BBQ in Whitmore Lake, Michigan. Famous writer and another bosom bud (I was Best Man at his wedding) Loren D. Estleman threw an annual 3-day bash attended by friends and luminaries that included the likes of Elmore “Dutch” Leonard (Hollywood flicks “Hombre,” “Get Shorty,” “3:10 to Yuma” among others). Central to the BBQ was a phenomenal brisket Fred would prepare that took two days to smoke/cook (panther piss sauce optional). I’m sorry for the jumbo rubber snake I put on the grill you were using, Fred. R.I.P., bro…

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan