Musings

I feel sorry for today’s youth, society provides very little recreational outlet beyond sporting activities. It seems every young person I know spends their free time on pc’s and play stations with little idea how to create their own entertainment.

In comparison my own youth was beyond description doing things others could only dream of. I was raised by whacky adventurous parents who wanted their children to experience the world, and we did! From living in the wild arid Australian outback where the heat is beyond description, the terrain wild and rugged and the wildlife astoundingly fascinating. When not hunting for evasive golden nuggets we’d hunt kangaroo’s, gather emu eggs, swim or attempt to swim in salt laden lakes formed during seasonal torrential downpours, each raindrop almost the size of a fist hitting the ground with force turning the yellow dusty earth blood red, sending insects and snakes scuttling for cover and bringing larger creatures out from hiding all happily wallowing in the gloriously warm rain.
Of all the many places I’ve visited and lived in, none gave me as much wondrous freedom and pleasure as the Aussie outback.
In a strangely warped way my interest in human behaviour, cultures and societies came from studying worker and solder ants. I recently read that scientists and engineers now study ants and use the data to assist modern construction and behaviour. I was there first guys! People would be amazed how much we have in common with these amazingly intelligent insects, their ability to design and construct, their work formations when cultivating food, the hereditary status each type of ant holds in the nests and the survival ability is purely awesome,

How did my conversation progress from teenagers to ants? Easily, from the moment they hatch ants are nourished by a community of “nurse ants” thereafter every step of the way to adulthood they are guided by worker or solder ants, shown how to play, work, feed, construct, never left to run loose or left to their own devices but encouraged to explore and learn. There’s a moral there humans could and should apply to young people. It only takes one kick from a human to destroy an ant’s nest, or one careless footstep to crush hundreds underfoot. Yet even when covered in a swarm of ants the vast majority of species won’t and don’t bite, they simply gather themselves together, reconstruct and reinstate the survival, growth progress all over again.