I wish it was enough to “say something” to them, but it’s not. In Beyond Civilization I write, “It’s estimated that in the last 40 years depression among children has increased by 1000% and teen suicide by 300%. Since 1997, classroom-assassins have killed two in Mississippi, three in Kentucky, five in Arkansas, and thirteen in Colorado.

Make a graph of these numbers and watch them go exponential in years to come—unless we start giving our kids a new way to go and some real hope for the future.” This is what they need—a new way to go and some real hope for the future—and nothing anyone merely “says” to them is going to help. It’s taken me a while to see it clearly enough to talk about, but a new way to go is what’s on offer in Beyond Civilization.

I wish, too, that I could reduce it to a simple formula like Timothy Leary’s “Tune in, Turn on, Drop Out,” but if that were possible, it wouldn’t have been necessary to write a book at all. 

ID: 416
posted: 06 Jun 1999
updated: 06 Jun 1999