Grow the fuck up, world!

"When I was a child, I thought as a child, and I spoke as a child, but when I grew up, I put away childish things." 1 Corinthians 13:11.

I've been thinking a lot about being a grownup lately, and how our culture is full of childish fantasies and superstitions. Being a grownup is not simply about giving up belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or being a professional athlete. These are just the low hanging fruit on the tree of immaturity. Let's examine some of the more pernicious myths that infect our culture. The less myth-like they seem, the more pernicious they are.

1. Romantic love will solve all your problems and make you happy and is the meaning of life.

Bullshit. The hollywood version of love has arisen as the bourgouise substitute for a dead God. It distracts the middle-class from the astronomical fucked-up-ness of our society. And it works very well, because we are hard-wired to seek out some sort of ultimate relational fulfillment. God used to fill that role. When God died, the human need for some object of faith simply manifested a replacement. We need that carrot of ultimacy, which in the case of God, was forever unattainable because, well, God is in heaven and we are not. With Love, it's just that The Right Person, or The One, is always just a new phone number away. It's waiting down the street at the next bar or party. If I just look at one extra dating profile, I will find IT...peace, fulfillment, ecstasy, meaning...

Meanwhile, the world is cooking, and organized crime has turned our southern border into a war zone, and Africa continues to suck balls, and the U.S. economy collapses under the weight of its own greed, and it still sucks to be black in the ghetto.

Love is nice. Hint: your lover is not God. Pay attention. Get angry.

This is enough for today. I will battle more infantalisms tomorrow.