There is a serious problem: that sensible, sensitive people don't want to grow-up - and rightly so; actually, this has probably been the case for hundreds of years, but at different ages.
In middle agrarian societies such as Europe in the Middle Ages, most children were (it seems) compelled to work (the most menial, repetitive agricultural work) from the earliest age that they could be so compelled... so maybe they barely had a conscious childhood. Certainly the 'golden age' of my own childhood - say six to nine years - was obliterated. They were mini-adults before they knew enough to know what they were missing. Given what we know of human nature, this was of course physical child abuse; normal, mandatory - socially-approved.
Nowadays, there is the nasty transition to adolescence - being pushed-back, younger and younger in the form of sexualising children; not just by the media, but now by the politicians and government, by the education system.
This is systematic sexual abuse - children's minds being force-fed with sex, and wrong sex - here, now, increasing; normal, mandatory - socially-approved.
Then adolescence; which is supposed to be (by the role models depicted in the media, implied by official policy) a period of promiscuous sex, drugs and intoxication; mental illness treated by indoctrination (i.e. 'psychotherapy') and drugs (mostly and increasingly sedatives and tranquillisers; emotion numb-ers; SSRI-type agents, antipsychotics, anticonvulsants etc.).
Adolescents are groomed to feel themselves entitled, victims; groomed to resentment and despair (the two great modern sins); groomed, of course, to pride.
Yet, even so, because this adolescent stuff is all addictive; people don't want to grow up - which means marrying and having families. They stay as adolescents.
Insofar as people do grow older (not up); they hate it - because life without religion, without spirituality, is strictly and necessarily and by definition meaningless and purposeless.
So, decent people yearn for childhood; which we can't have - because it is on the other side of adolescence.
So they are stuck; they despair - and basically they want to die, painlessly; as soon as the distractions and pleasures wear-off.
There is a solution; but there is only one solution - and it has two parts.
One is religion - and, if we wish to avoid despair, that must be Christianity; the second part is to heal the alienation that cuts us off from reality, and the materialism which insists that reality is dead (and humans, as part of reality, are dead too). Dead stuff whirling in a void...
We can fix the alienation by recognising that we were correct when we were young children: reality really is made of beings having relationships with each other. All is alive, conscious, motivated...
One solution: two parts... But nobody is going to do this for us, these two things - for as long as we rely on external validation and authority and institutions, we shall remain stuck.
But we can do it for ourselves - and we can do it in the realm of thinking (thinking of this sort being the real 'action', the real Life); where (if we are thinking by-from our real, divine selves) we have direct knowledge and contact with the purpose of things.
We can do it this instant - if we choose; it is entirely up to each of us.
What then? Who knows? - because it will be different for each person... but that is the essential first step. Only after we have taken it will we know what comes next.
