Just as I don't think it's _possible_ to be "ready" to be a parent, I don't think we, as a society, were "ready" for the internet — nor were we ready for Covid.
As I've learned in the last 3.5 years, being a parent is such an enormous change in life that explaining it is impossible. The fact that every kid is different, and every parent is different, and that we all have our issues and hang-ups and upbringings and preferences, and we can't read minds, and it's impossible to know what a crying child _needs_ without trying everything, is just... different. It's something you have to do to understand. And every time you get the hang of it, they're a month older and there are a whole new set of things to learn and deal with. It seems to take a couple generations to understand it. And by then we're almost gone.
In the same vein, when I got online as a young teen in the early 90s, back when there were scary news reports on the nightly news of: gasp "people meeting strangers online!", there was no way to _know_ what it would be like for society to hold up a big fat, unblinking, always-on mirror unto itself. It was impossible to know the implications. A time traveler could not have ever stopped it. We wouldn't have believed them. It's too different. It's going to take generations for us to understand it, and deal with the emotions and the fear and the _everything_ that comes from it.
As for Covid, I remember going through waves of depression and grief during the lock-down stages. But then I would remember: "We're _all_ going through this". It didn't make it better; It just made it reasonable. I was weirdly lucky to be a husband, new parent, and a startup co-founder to keep myself focused in that time. It's going to take a long time for us to figure out the toll. We still have no idea.
Collectively, we're going through a lot. I hope we can remain kind to one another through this.
As I've learned in the last 3.5 years, being a parent is such an enormous change in life that explaining it is impossible. The fact that every kid is different, and every parent is different, and that we all have our issues and hang-ups and upbringings and preferences, and we can't read minds, and it's impossible to know what a crying child _needs_ without trying everything, is just... different. It's something you have to do to understand. And every time you get the hang of it, they're a month older and there are a whole new set of things to learn and deal with. It seems to take a couple generations to understand it. And by then we're almost gone.
In the same vein, when I got online as a young teen in the early 90s, back when there were scary news reports on the nightly news of: gasp "people meeting strangers online!", there was no way to _know_ what it would be like for society to hold up a big fat, unblinking, always-on mirror unto itself. It was impossible to know the implications. A time traveler could not have ever stopped it. We wouldn't have believed them. It's too different. It's going to take generations for us to understand it, and deal with the emotions and the fear and the _everything_ that comes from it.
As for Covid, I remember going through waves of depression and grief during the lock-down stages. But then I would remember: "We're _all_ going through this". It didn't make it better; It just made it reasonable. I was weirdly lucky to be a husband, new parent, and a startup co-founder to keep myself focused in that time. It's going to take a long time for us to figure out the toll. We still have no idea.
Collectively, we're going through a lot. I hope we can remain kind to one another through this.
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