Our mentally challenged government

I long ago came to the realization that I see the world a little differently than most people do.  But there are times when I feel so disconnected from what appears to be mainstream thinking that I wonder if I’m really some sort of alien dropped off on this planet by mistake, and somewhere in the universe there is a whole planet full of people who see the world that way that I do.

I’ve been feeling especially disconnected this week as I follow the two big news stories that are dominating the headlines: the looming “fiscal cliff” and the aftermath of the elementary school mass murder in Connecticut.

My first problem is that I don’t even understand how those stories can be receiving roughly equal coverage from the media.  When I read about the school shooting I was shocked and horrified, like any thinking/ feeling human being would be.  But when I read that the shooter had killed himself I really had no more interest in hearing any more about it.

For me, the story was over.  A seriously disturbed young man had done something horrible and then taken his own life.  What more was there to say?  What more did I need to know?  What good would it do anyone to endlessly rehash the awful details?

But I’m totally out of step with the rest of America, judging by the media coverage of the killings.  First we must grieve together, and then we must turn the story into a debate about reenacting an “assault weapon” ban that proved pointless and ineffective the last time we tried it.

Our president even flew to Connecticut in person to declare that “we can’t tolerate this anymore” and then returned to Washington to lead the debate on banning assault weapons and high-volume magazine clips. 

And all the while our country is rushing headlong towards financial disaster.  The President and Congress are burning up valuable time and energy consoling a grieving nation with promises of demonstrably ineffective legislative measures while the country’s economic system is about to implode, possibly never to recover.

Not that it matters a great deal, I guess.  The two parties spent months before the election and weeks afterwards talking over each other and grand-standing over a tax increase on the wealthy that would play only a tiny role in addressing our deficit problem at best.  It’s difficult to say if a few lost days or even a few lost years would really hurt the fiscal cliff negotiations.

I use the word “negotiation” very loosely here, of course.  It’s seems self-evident to my (possibly alien) mind that when you have a divided government compromise is necessary to get anything done.  And in any compromise there has to be give and take.  You cannot get everything you want, and in a good compromise no one walks away completely happy.

Yet the Democrats have drawn a line in the sand that tax rates most go up for people who have a certain income level and some Republicans refuse to approve a debt-reduction plan that includes any tax increase whatsoever.  The end result could well be that taxes will go up a lot, on everyone, next year. 

And if you’re a federal government employee like I am you could also get furloughed for part of the year in 2013, so for some of us it could be a very bad year indeed.

Oh, and since the sequestration thing doesn’t actually address the ballooning expenses of our entitlement programs it’s not really going to solve our deficit problem anyway.  In fact, if it results in a renewed recession as many economists believe it will, it may not end up helping the debt situation at all.

I hear the president wants that assault weapons legislation ready to roll when the new Congress is seated in January.  I’m not sure it’s going to be necessary.  Who’s going to be able to afford expensive guns next year anyway after the government gets through doing a number on our pocketbooks?

Too young to fall in love?

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been in a conversation with someone who is middle-aged or older and heard them say “I got married too young” or “I had kids too young.”  Usually “too young” in the context of that conversation is anywhere from the late teens to early 20s.  I’ve always wondered though, who’s to say what age is too young to make certain big decisions that affect the course of the rest of your life?

I’ve recently become aware of some scientific research that might suggest that at age 18 or 21 (ages we’ve traditionally considered a person to be a fully mature adult) we may indeed be a little young, in terms of our brain development, to be making be such big decisions.

Research suggest that the part of the brain responsible for reasoning and impulse control - the Prefrontal Cortex - does not fully mature until we are 25.  In fact that part of the brain is most unstable from the beginning of adolescence until we reach our mid-20s.

That helps explain why people in that age group tend to be prone to somewhat unpredictable (to put it mildly)  behavior and decision-making.  It might also help explain why people who get married younger are more likely to get divorced and why people who have children when they are very young often struggle with the heavy responsibility of parenting.

It seems to me that we’ve plucked 18 and 21 pretty much out of the air as ages when we expect people to become fully responsible for themselves.  The results of that can be disastrous.  I’m sure you can think of plenty of examples of what I’m talking about.

How many people who you know who married someone who was “totally wrong for them” and ended up getting divorced in a relatively short time got married before they were 25?  Probably a high proportion of them.

How many women who have children when they are very young end up needing a great deal of assistance figuring out how they are going to take care of their children?  And do very young fathers tend to be the most responsible ones?  You probably don’t know many couples in their 30s who had to live at home with their parents just to have a roof over their child’s head.

Now don’t get me wrong.  There are plenty of people who get married or become parents at a young age who do just fine.  But science and experience suggest that we are more likely to impulsively pick the wrong partner or have a child long before we are prepared to properly care for them if we dive into those very adult activities while our Prefrontal Cortexes are not quite fully ripened yet.

That’s all well and good, but what are we supposed to do with this information?  I doubt that we’re going to have laws changed that raise the age of consent or the legal age people can get married to 25.  Things like that become deeply ingrained in our culture and tend to not be greatly impacted by scientific research.

But if you are a parent, or just an adult who has any degree of influence in a young person’s life, you might need to get rid of the idea that you are off the clock trying to influence their lives when they graduate high school or even when they graduate college.  Until they have reached their mid-20s, they still need to be nagged, meddled with, and otherwise encouraged to slow down, take a breath, and wait for life to come to them.