I do too, but I don’t think it’s enough. I’ve noticed over the years that so many people are experiencing this thing where their parents are adopting extreme ideas based on what they’ve picked up while scrolling through Facebook.
It is true, those (relatively younger) children think that they still hold the Gramcsian hegemony-like hold on what’s considered to be the “truth”, and hence the non-“extreme”, but that has stopped happening with the advent of social networks and the democratization of information (think of how happy everyone was about that democratization via social media when the Arab Spring started).
Somebody should write a study to show the correlation between the pension funds getting bigger and bigger and the number of companies getting in/out of the the S&P500 or Dow Jones getting lower and lower over time. That second number getting lower and lower means less innovation, means less real wealth going into the future, means less real money for people who are now in their 30s and 40s.
I’d say that many of the NIMBY policies also respect that premise, i.e. government-supported decisions that help keep the wealth among the elderly by (artificially) keeping the existing home prices up (and it is known that those houses are some of the most important assets that said elderly people own).
Previously, when some new social shift occurred there would be an initial conservative backlash. However, over time as people were exposed to the change they would see that it wasn't actually the end of the world and find ways to adapt their views to find a "new normal" that allowed the old and new to coexist.
That doesn't seem like it's the case anymore. People are fed a constant stream of media designed to keep them afraid of anything that's different such that they don't have a chance to experience the other side and find a middle ground.
Seems pretty extreme to me.
As to our children, they have never had either a smartphone or unmonitored access to the internet. It's that simple.
Through the twist of fate that is the pandemic combined with living in public housing, they were already home-schooled as they didn't need to be around other adolescents watching "Game of Thrones" or porn, or listening to Black Metal or the more ignorant kinds of Hip Hop (glorifying wealth, violence, objectification of women, and braggadocio).
We are each the product of many different cultures, which we then combine into our own individual cultural worldview. Few people appear able to apersonally evaluate their cultural tendencies, so they are susceptible to influence from the dishonest, immoral and/or belligerent.
They were raised with compassion and taught why we should be as compassionate as possible to every single person, and that makes them a delight for every single person they encounter. I have found that surrounding them by good people, ideas, attitudes, and behaviors was important to their development.
Keeping them away from submorons who are both ignorant and overconfident is an important factor in the development of young adults. I know this deeply because -- while not myself belligerent -- I was a total dipshi_t as a teenager.
I do not blame my parents for my idiocy, for they worked their asses off to provide for us. I blame our society for not facilitating our being able to have responsible adults around to educate myself and my peers.
My first rule of parenting is to not let children raise children. When left to their own devices (PNI), they tend to gravitate to the worst ideas, and the younger kids will learn from their elders' abyssmal examples.