It’s because of my knowledge of these realities that I firmly believe any presuppositions about age-oriented developmental psychology theory are based on age bias and discrimination. Today, after studying developmental psychology and education as an undergraduate and spending 22 years as a professional community educator, I maintain that youth development as we know it is a psycho-philosophical mis-orientation, a malignant tumor on the heart of society today. I believe that this bias towards adults and discrimination against youth—which is called adultism—is a society-wide construct that permeates our legal, political, cultural, economic, environmental, educational, and familial institutions.

There are those who would suggest that young peoples’ motivations for engaging in social change is a psycho-chemical reaction that is responsive to their age. However, after these years of field study and practice, I have found that rather than any time-based orientation, the motivations of children and youth to change the world come from their socio-economic backgrounds, class consciousness, and political worldviews. Yes, that’s correct: young people have political worldviews. In my belief age is irrelevant; rather, it is exposure, critical engagement, and conscious reflection that drives the desires of young people to want to form, reform, challenge, critique, examine, deconstruct, and otherwise identify the imbalances of the world around them. All children and youth do not want to change the world; however, all are capable of engaging in social change, and that capability is not contingent on their age.

Social conditioning—including familial backgrounds, socio-economic grouping, and education—is the single greatest factor in determining a young person’s desire to change the world.

That is to say that I believe developmental psychology is generally bunkus when it comes to explaining social engagement. With regards to physiology, I don’t believe that chemical reactions in the brains of an average young person make them incapable of empathizing with others; they merely make teachers, parents, and mentors more responsible for doing their jobs capably.

That said, it can easy for adults to agree with all that, and still make the assumption that age is still the predominant factor for engagement in social change, if only because age is assumed to be the great accumulator of experience. The thought is that the longer a person lives, the more they’ve done, and the more a person has done, the more they’ll desire to change the world, and the more knowledge they’ll have in order to change the world. None of this is true.

Age isn’t determinant of experiential accumulation, if only because the breadth and depth of experience is due to cultural stimulation rather than age. In the same way that a lot of teens have more political education than a lot of adults, not because of age, but because of interest, it holds true that there are young children who may be more engaged than youth in work designed to change the world. However, that isn’t because of interest, alone. Rather, it’s because of their experiences, and this, in turn, reinforces my statement at the beginning of this paragraph. Children can have a great deal of experience with discrimination, oppression, disparity, and inequity, even at young ages. Whether they relate because of their race, socio-economic status, compassion for the Earth, or other factors, all young people of all ages have the ability to empathize, and that is what determines their aptitude for engaging in social change.

Again, this reinforces my belief that age isn’t generally relevant, insomuch as their empathetic background. Let me say that I do believe that young children may not have the capability to determine when to run from a burning building. However, I do not believe that every situation is analogous to a burning building. Unfortunately, many adults treat almost every situation that way because we’re conditioned to. That conditioning, which is adultism, unfortunately rears it’s ugly head in a lot of ways.

That is to say that while there is a philosophical reasoning behind re-imagining the roles of young people throughout society and there is movement towards this, we have not overcome the broad acceptance of adultism. The next steps in this effort are to address the cultural and attitudinal effects of adultism. While continued action by children and youth is essential for doing this, I believe that it’s absolutely imperative that as adults we re-examine our assumptions, beliefs, and actions throughout society towards young people. Only then will we be able to go to the next step. Only then will be have the radically effective democratic society millenia of people saw as possible. Only then will we actually become fully powerful as individuals, communities, and societies to become the world we have always dreamed of becoming.

Youth can do anything, and will continue doing as much as they can. It’s up to us to create the scaffolding, opportunities, and sustainability needed to expand and deepen what anything means, and as long as we’re not doing that, we’re part of the problem—not the solution.

“It is necessary that the weakness of the powerless is transformed into a force capable of announcing justice. For this to happen, a total denouncement of fatalism is necessary. We are transformative beings and not beings for accommodation.” - Paulo Freire

I have spent the last eight months concentrating my studies on hope in it’s broadest sense. This is a hope that is determined and intentional, that goes beyond any box and elevates to the highest levels. I wanted to change my life, and hope became the clearest path to take.

Growing up in circumstances that seemed struggling, as a young adult I became seduced by cynicism. It’s allure was the cool, suave nature that my peers seemed to radiate, and it’s staying power was the indifference it showed towards the situations I was in. Whether I was struggling or celebrating, confused or concrete, cynicism was always there, waiting easily to temper the situation. The seduction to cynicism was it’s fatalism, which couched itself deeply in my oppressed psyche, constantly defeating my attempts at living well.

It seems that hope is a stronger force though.

With kids packed in the car and 1000s of miles of road unfurling before us, I never consciously understood my parents’ motivations when I was a kid - but who does? Parents, in their infinite possibilities, seem to intuitively shroud their decision-making from their children, and my parents were no different. For all the challenges they faced, they trouped onward. Today, I attribute that progress to their hope. While it may have been unconscious at times, there were many times when it came sounding out loud, chasing down the potential disregard of poverty, homelessness, and mental disease.

Today, after a career of promoting anti-fatalism, I am firmly committing myself to, “a total denouncement of fatalism.” I will not accommodate fatalism anymore, and I have learned to reject cynicism. My own life is becoming my playground for transformative action, and I want to take everyone with me.

How about you? Want to find hope?

I’m often asked for answers by folks who want to know exactly what to do. As many of my readers know, I don’t really give answers though. Instead, I’m a critical examiner, constantly asking questions and deconstructing answers that have been given.

Following are some essential questions I ask about youth involvement.

Somewhere along the way a meme grabbed a hold of society that said, “Children are the future.” Musicians sing about it, governments unite around it, charities raised money off it, and taxpayers shouldered the burdens of it.

However, this kind of chronic debt weighed heavy on a lot of peoples’ shoulders. The childless, the retired, and the young themselves saw hypocrisy at having to pay for “other peoples’” kids. Parents themselves stopped seeing the benefits of keeping an eye on the neighborhood’s kids, because what were they going to get out of that arrangement anyway?

Unfortunately, this new reality, one where we’re not responsible for our children, is mainstream now. It is the new norm. Children and youth today are being raised to believe in a type of fascist libertarianism, cloaked in veils of indifference and apathy, all the while actively subjected to the constant abuse of very active age discrimination.

The myth of indebtedness is one that is perpetuated today, to the continued misfortune of young people today. Just below the current belief, it lies in wait waiting to further prop up adultism, making itself seen in policy, culture, and personal beliefs throughout our society.

This myth goes far beyond our young people, too: It permeates our thinking about the environment, the economy, all of education, social services, and so much more. It weighs the burden of noblesse oblige around our necks like a yoke, forcing us to haul the weight of debt from generation to generation without ever acknowledging it’s cost or outcomes.

The consequences of this framework of belief range from subtle resentment and cynicism to a type of wide-spread Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, thrust heavily upon succeeding generations in order to ensure the continuing prevalence of guilt, dysfunction, and inability on everyone who might have the opportunity to throw off these shackles.

One lesson of systems thinking is that every system is designed perfectly to ensure the outcomes it gets. Every single one. So what is the function of indebtedness, and how can we displace that appropriately?

“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but… life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” - Gabriel García Márquez

Over the last twenty years I have been concerned with writing a script for a new world, and helping others write their own. I concentrated on our collective journey, built on interdependence and deliberately focused on changing the world. Important successes came from my efforts, and transformation has occurred. Today, I know I changed the world.

About six months ago I undertook a process of deep self-examination designed to enhance my professional development. However, it quickly became apparent that this process was about my personal growth, as well.

Me, fueled by bravado, ego, and world-focus. Oh, those ol’ days seem so faraway, and yet so close!

My career has occurred during a rich period of social action in the United States, one when institutional efforts were embodied in programs like AmeriCorps and service learning, and supported by large foundations, politicians, and well-established national nonprofits and international nongovernmental organizations. While being involved in all that process, I frequently heard Gandhi’s matra, “We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.” Today, after 20 years in, I am beginning to understand it.

All this time I’ve focused on superficial changes in my own life reflecting my philosophy about the roles of young people throughout society. I have watched my language and honed my behaviors; I have rallied for systems changes and challenged peer apathy. The entire time, though, while leading workshops focused on social change and youth alienation, I have neglected to address the oppression I faced as a young person and have continued to face as an adult. I have owned my whiteness, my maleness, my many privileges afforded by a predominate culture that affects and predicts and seemingly necessitates hatred. However, until six months ago, I hadn’t faced the inabilities that have hampered my own successful living today.

So for the last six months I’ve been doing this work. I have named the situations, people, circumstances, and other realities that challenged me. I have drilled into my own psyche to drag out some painful memories, and come to face some lasting legacies. Old connections have been severed or transformed; new wire has been laid, and different connections have been made. Facing the truth of pain, I have sought to draw out new meaning and purpose in my movements, and have learned a lot. I have faced a lot, and all of it has made me who I have been, and who I am. It will continue to form my conception of me, too, to some extent.

This has been a radical journey for me, one in which I’ve been able to take ownership of my own path, recognizing where I’ve come from, and carefully begin laying the stones ahead of me, one at a time. It’s been a little precarious, and as my close friends and family know, I’ve struggled a bit. They have been there to support me through this time though, and I have ceaseless gratitude for their generosity.

Me with a partner during an exercise at a recent retreat I attended. Participating- not facilitating- events like these over the last several months has been good for me.

Right now I do not have absolute certainty about where my path will lead me. However, instead of forcing myself to lay a narrow path, I’m looking at a wide open plain of opportunity. I am more committed than ever to living another part of the vision of the Mahatma, who also said, “My life is my message.”

Today, I get what that means for me. I believe that we all must DO SOMETHING, only now I’m doing it in a different way: I’m changing my own life to change the world. I know that as I emerge from this growth space I am entering the playing field from a new frame, a new perspective. Facing myself has been one of the most challenging experiences of my life. Have you met you, today? When the time is right, you will. In the meantime, I’ve enjoyed sharing a little about me - thanks for reading.

Addendum: Reflecting on this post, I came across a Thoreau quote where he said, “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” That is what this recent body of my personal work has been, putting foundations down. From here, I will continue to build, rebuild, and evolve my castle to the next big thing!

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. And when I ask why they have no food, they call me a Communist.” - Brazilian bishop Helder Camara

I am a default questioner. I think that starting at a young age I took it upon myself to question and examine and critique and analyze life, situations, assumptions, even other questions, not as a defense mechanism or routine, but as a default, a way of being, a practice that acknowledges the corners of my soul that are always asking, “Why?” It’s a childlike part of me that continues to sustain me.

Why is it that when I ask adults why they don’t share society with youth, they call me a radical?


This is the situation in Washington, DC, where the nation’s hierarchy of youth organizations and government agencies that work with children and youth have routinely excluded me from their reindeer games in which they call meetings, determine agendas, set conferences, host forums, and write papers, all outside of my realm of contact. Oh, they’re influenced by me, as many of my colleagues back east readily acknowledge. I have contacts in large organizations and influential posts who cite me, note me, and drop my name in order to demonstrate their connection to critical thinking within our shared realms. As is our habit, we follow each other on twitter and friend one another on facebook, like we’re all old friends forming a club, a clique, a cabal that informs, decides, and maintains a social order determined to change the social order that disengages young people throughout society.

This reality echoes across the country as countless youth organizations, community groups, and activista institutions have adapted and plagiarized my materials without so much as mentioning my name in relationship to them. Academics in ivory towers freely liberate my theoretical frameworks, and authors in lonely rooms repeal my information to fill their fetid minds with incense, all the while incensing me.

Thus I am a rebel to the system, and an informant to the cause. For more than a decade I have sought nothing other than to influence, and now I’m seeing the fruits of those labors. More than ever my advocacy of radical democracy is informing and motivating this movement for change, this transformative re-imagining of the roles of young people throughout society… And for this, I am fully grateful.

So to those who have borrowed and left, and those who have taken and laughed, and those who snickered while they critiqued and snarked while they pursued, I thank you all. I am merely abetting an enemy whose name is “Children” and “Youth”. Occasionally, I’m helping you, too.