When There Are No Grownups Around

Unattended children, the wishes embodied in complaints and the mind-warping presence - or absence - of authority

I enjoy listening in on my daughter when she’s talking with her friends. She’s eight years old. And when she doesn’t think I’m listening, she holds forth with a swaggering certainty on subjects ranging from physics and history to biology and jurisprudence.

"Actually..." is how I know she's teed up something good. Her accuracy with what follows would be a decent batting average, if were also a strong fielder. Most of it’s ridiculous, but delivered confidently.

When there’s an authority around, kids are different. They play the crowd, appeal to the jury. They raise non-issues. They complain more. They say more things that they don’t mean.

Ever-present grownups

Adults are also different when there’s an authority present. And being an adult is unfortunately synonymous with authority - oneself - always being present. This is one reason any cool scene throughout the ages has always been light on the over-30 crowd. And forget the over-40s - they’re all either authorities or jockeying for the position.

Even supposedly freethinking individuals spend a disproportionate amount of attention to what the authorities say and do, whether it's Harvard, the President or the billionaire or branch manager of the moment. And sure that stuff does matter. But there’s no institution on earth that’s one well-placed nudge away from solving the problems you and I deal with every day.  

I’d complain, but…

…who’d listen? That’s the refrain from my fellow fathers. It sounds like nothing, but it says a lot. Middle-aged dads are, whether we like it or not, in a position of authority.

Look at that refrain: I’d complain but who’d listen? and who’s saying it. Some lessons you could draw.

• A complaint is not primarily an existential truth or even a personal revelation, but an appeal to a higher authority.

• Complaining is an impulse. While there’s a cost to restraining an impulse, there’s a seemingly higher cost to complaining.

• In the absence of an authority, it makes no sense to complain.

When I do hear grownups complaining, I wonder: To whom are they complaining? Do they have the ear of the institutions of our world? Do they really expect help from them? What leverage do they think they have?

In many cases, I suspect that complaining - freely and publicly - is a way of wishing authority into being.

Wishes, prayers and gift lists

It’s not just complaining that adulthood all but wrecks. It also messes with a person’s ability to plead, wish or pray for anything.

Anyone richer or more powerful than me likely won’t hear my plea. Their sentimental and spiritual inbox is jammed with lost causes - all of them more cute or desperate than myself. I know this because my own inbox is similarly jammed. By most calculations, I can probably take care of yourself well enough.

This dynamic bleeds into my private moments. It becomes hard to pray for something. My wishes are no longer so urgent or absolute. It's like Christmas gifts - I either buy it for myself, or I can't afford it.

Being an authority, however small, makes wishing, praying and pleading feel careless and risky. I have responsibility for the delicate balance that sustains the people I love. And I’ve learned that there is no such thing as changing just one thing.

The quest for mom and dad

Not everyone is ready for the notion that - once one becomes an adult - all authorities are kind of make-believe, jury-rigged and often primarily self interested. Not everyone is eager or even tolerant of the notion that they themselves as healthy individuals may be the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, and of reality itself.

To me, the funny thing about adulthood isn’t how many ways there are to escape actual authority, but how hard some people look for it.

Some people look for authority to confront it. Some people try to catch authority acting improperly, to prove a point that would only matter to another authority. Some people try to catch authority slacking off, so they can don its robes and gavel. Some people go looking for chaos and crime, to alert authority, and to prove we need more authority. It’s all a little self-serving and more than a little childish, if you ask me.

50/50 at best

The way we behave in the presence of an authority figure is different. It’s not always better. It’s 50/50 at best.

When we jaywalk, for example, I think we’re better people. We’re willfully ignoring the systems of safety control. We listen to our mood, our senses, our wits and our sense of luck. We’re better pedestrians. With no lights to support our decision, we pay attention.

My time as an authority

I mostly know raw authority from a few jobs as a manager, from watching after children, and watching other parents at work. I picked up a few things about what authority goes through.

With each appeal from the governed, authority becomes more burdened, more compromised. The governed demand consistency. But with children, consistency becomes impossible within about ten minutes. Sometimes authority gets tired and goes the way of the William Burroughs quote - “if you can’t be fair, then be arbitrary.” I know I do.

Sometimes authority becomes solicitous and craven, like a grandmother asking for mundane details of their kids’ lives so she can offer unwanted advice, or Congress congratulating itself for making up a new law in response to the latest headlines.

They say only one thing is happening

I’ve run afoul of authority plenty as a kid and a few times as an adult. I learned a little about authority from that, too.

Real authorities all have one thing in common - they won’t let you look away. The first thing the interrogator does is put you in a room. You have to participate in what they believe is happening.

You can’t look away - this is also true of humor and beauty. People who are into authority typically know humor and beauty are out of their reach. But they desperately want your undivided attention. Watch out for them.

Take it up with the mob

The search for authority brings animates many people on the internet, which they use as an akashic complaint line, and a megaphone to gather a mob. One of the most terrifying things that anyone in a real-life altercation can see is a phone angled in filming position.

With ever-present cameras and social media accounts, folks have improvised a little volunteer surveillance state, where egregious or unpopular behavior can be brought to the mob for punishment - or at least given a damning one-star review. This is only one of the ways we have debased ourselves with our own technology.

The best part of the trip

Every day we’re offered a future we feel less equipped to confront. And our relationship with authorities - a mix of reliance, bewilderment and fear - seems a part of that confidence gap.

To better face the present, and by extension, the future, I don’t think we need better-organized authorities, or even authorities with better morals. I think we need to let them go, let them say and do what they do, with all the personal investment we give a stranger on the street.

The last time the average adult lived without regular mental recourse to authority was likely the last time they were deeply depressed, or when they were about sixteen years old. Since then, you and I have learned a tremendous amount and gained self control in ways unimaginable to our teenage selves. And that counts for a lot.

What does this incredible adult agency mean in the presence of a crisis and absence of a real or imagined authority? This is the best part of the trip, or it should be.