YOUTUBE: Joseph Campbell--On Becoming an Adult

Length: 00:05:40

Note: Campbell makes an EXCELLENT observation: higher education keeps on trapped in an "infantile ego" dependent on authority well past the age where a person (especially a MAN), should be transitioning to that of a self-responsible adult, and as you go further to that of a PhD., that "infantile ego" can last up to age 35 or 40!  It's a psychology of dependency.  Ancient and primitive societies do a FAR better job transitioning boys to that of self-responsible authority as ages as early as 13 or 14. 

Hence, the correlation of the popularity of communist/socialist ideology--where the state has to give us everything we need--with that of the increase in education, especially higher education and college education, in the past 100 to 150 years of history.  One wonders if all the far-left protests of the 1960's would have happened if it were for the tremendous increase in college enrollment that happened after World War II. 

I'm not the first person to notice this of course.  The tremendous increase in the popularity of communist/socialist ideology is really nothing more that the outward manifestation of the infantile ego wanting "someone" to take care of them, until the day they die.   The transition from infant to adult, while it may have occurred bodily, has never happened mentally.  So the communist/socialist state now becomes a projection of the need for perpetual parenting.   This also explains why far-left social protests, especially by those known as "social justice warriors" so often resemble that of a toddler having a tantrum.  Despite all the jargon of "compassion" and "tolerance" the left likes to wrap their ideology in, the simple truth is that a socialist/communist ideology is anything but compassionate and tolerant.   The proof of that is the last 100 years of world history, where those societies that embraced communism to the fullest, turned into nothing more than large scale barbaric prisons for their population.   And no where is the hate of this ideology more keenly felt than in the countries of eastern Europe, who were under the twin curse of Nazism and Communism.   The citizens of those countries were first hand witnesses to the evil and barbaric conditions that come from wanting the state to be your mommy and daddy. 

But we don't have to look just to Europe, no where in the world is the juxtaposition of the evils of socialism with the true compassion of capitalism and democracy so apparent as in Korea, north and south.  Here we have a real life example of how truly evil socialism is in regards to North Korea, and how truly compassionate and tolerant life is in democratic, capitalist South Korea. 

It is frightening that after 100 years showcasing the explicit stupidity and failures of socialism, that such an ideology can even be taken seriously by anyone any more.