Last week, part of one comment on a blog post read: “I don’t think the average parent’s behavior regarding their children has changed over time.” The poster then went on to blame teachers for the attention deficit problems of students and for not adapting teaching to the internet.

Parents’ behavior hasn’t changed? Oh, really? Over what time period? Twenty-five years ago, I never saw parents buried in their cellphones all the time, as I do now. I never saw mothers with earbuds on talking on their cellphones and ignoring their children as they drive them wherever. Children weren’t spending an average of seven hours a day looking at screens. I walk daily, and have for over forty years, and it’s only been in the last ten to fifteen years when all the “younger” joggers are trotting along talking apparently to no one. I see parents using cellphones as baby-sitters all the time.

Until about twenty years ago, when college students switched classes, they talked to others they encountered. Today, classes change almost silently, and students walk along looking down at screens or concentrating on what they hear in their earbuds.

This is a seismic social change in American culture [and likely others as well], and it’s had seismic impacts on young people’s ability to concentrate, as well as on their social development. Far too many young people literally don’t know how to make conversation, and they’re awkward in social interactions. Their social maturity is 1-2 years behind that of the previous generation.

Now… the vast majority of these habits and patterns are developed before children ever enter a classroom – by the parents and the example they set. Is it the teacher’s fault that a student cannot concentrate because the student effectively has electronically-established ADHD? Or because the student is conversationally deprived?

Usage studies show fairly conclusively that parents aren’t very effective at monitoring their children’s screen time.

But, if the poster meant that parents ignored their children too much twenty years ago, I can’t really argue with that. But the cost of that ignorance is far higher now, and blaming teachers for not “solving” the habits and patterns learned at home isn’t going to address the problem… or help the children.

Also, insisting that teachers need to “solve” the problem is just passing the buck. Because teachers have always been underpaid and still are, there have always been some bad teachers, but previous generations still learned. Now, too many aren’t, because skills aren’t gained by looking things up, and real learning takes concentration that too many students not only don’t have, but find boring.

But… go ahead and blame the teachers. It’s easier than looking in the mirror.

Societies and civilizations cannot exist without one basic element, and that element is trust. What is too often overlooked, however, is that, the greater the complexity and technological level of a society, the greater the need for trust.

If you grow or hunt your own food, you don’t need to worry about others tampering or degrading your food to make a few extra coins. You may be poisoned by your own failings or carelessness, or you may be a terrible farmer or hunter, but you don’t have to trust someone else.

Throughout history, there have been those who abused trust, those who sold spoiled food, debased coins, misrepresented goods, and the like. And that’s why laws against such acts have been part of cultures from early on.

Such laws become more important as technology advances. If a potter covers a flaw in a pot with glaze, or uses substandard clay, and the pot later breaks, the damage is limited to the cost to the buyer and whatever food is lost or spoiled. If a ceramics factory uses substandard clay in making a batch of electronic power insulators, the damage is far greater and far more wide-ranging.

The same is also true with regard to speech. Falsehoods used to be limited to a given community and communities were small enough that people generally knew who to trust and whom not to – based largely on the observations of actions. It wasn’t perfect, but spreading “big lies” was difficult. That’s not to say it didn’t happen. The Egyptian records involving interactions between Ramses II of Egypt and the Hittites read quite differently from the Hittite records.

The problem today is technology. Technology is neither good nor evil; it’s simply a system of knowledge and technology that multiplies the effect of everything. The associated problem is human nature. Humans are hard-wired to react more to what we perceive as dangerous. So we react more strongly to what is presented as evil or dangerous – even when we should know better. And the combination of technology and that aspect of human nature makes it difficult to combat big lies that prey on our fears.

Yet, human nature being what it is, there are always those who, for personal gain or misguided ideals, abuse trust. When a society refuses or is unable to deal with and prevent such abuses more and more people take matters into their own hands. The result is usually either anarchy and growing lawlessness or a societal reaction that results in a restrictive and authoritarian government.

Vladimir Putin has effectively claimed that Ukraine poses an existential threat to Russia, and that claim has been widely disputed and ignored. But Putin is correct. Merely by existing, Ukraine in its present mode of government, with all its flaws, poses an inexorable threat to everything that Putin believes and holds dear.

Ukraine has discovered the appeal and the effectiveness of greater personal and economic freedom, and the current level of success in resisting Russian efforts to conquer Ukraine flows from that greater level of economic and personal freedom.

Just before the Russian Revolution, Russia had the fifth largest economy in the world. Today, it’s not even in the top ten. Except for military technology, Russia relies heavily on western technology all across its economy. Most of its best petroleum equipment comes from the west, and Russia cannot build enough commercial aircraft to supply its own airlines, which may be another reason why Putin just confiscated all foreign-owned commercial aircraft in Russia. He’ll worry about the spare parts he can’t get later, or cannibalize some of those aircraft for the parts.

In addition, much of the Russian economy rests not on technology, but the export of natural resources and agricultural crops.

If Ukraine had been able to continue on its current economic and political path, within a generation, if not sooner, more and more Russians would have been moving south for economic opportunity and greater freedom.

Putin may talk military terms, but those are only a cover for the fact that Russia, as it is now ruled and structured, cannot continue to exist without leeching off its “vassal” states, and Putin cannot help but know that, at least subconsciously. By crushing as much of Ukraine as possible, even if he cannot obtain an absolute victory, he can at the least postpone the comparative decline of Russia, although, obviously, he is hoping that by destroying Ukraine, he can totally halt that trend.

For him, it is, in fact, a fight for survival of all he holds dear, and the United States and Europe need to understand that.

As many of my readers know, I’m married to a lyric soprano who’s a full-time Professor of Voice and Opera. She teaches everything from voice lessons to Vocal Pedagogy [grad-level courses on the anatomy and physiology of all body functions required to sing, as well as proper techniques and common vocal difficulties].

Contrary to popular perceptions, as well as to the beliefs of incoming students, music, especially vocal music, is one of the more difficult college majors. First of all, opera singers – the successful ones anyway – have to not only sing well, but have to learn and know cold a tremendous amount of music in multiple languages. The usual standard opera is at least two hours long. On top of that, they have to act and move on stage while singing powerfully enough to be heard over an orchestra.

Unfortunately, in recent years a large percentage of incoming students has never had to memorize or learn music of any length, nor have they obtained much of the background knowledge necessary to learn what they need to know to succeed in music. They think that they can just Google it – or find a video. Except when they Google music terms, they discover that much of the time they don’t know enough to use what they find or to apply what they find correctly.

And, surprise of surprises, the internet doesn’t have videos of everything. As with everything else on the internet, there are lots of videos of the most popular operas and incomplete snippets, if that, of the rest. Singers have to have the tools to learn on their own, and that means basic piano/keyboard skills. In fact, voice students can’t get into upper division courses without passing a basic piano proficiency test.

Then, there’s the “reading problem.” Too many incoming students can’t read well, and they certainly can’t read anything complex or at length because they’ve never had to before, and when they get to college it’s a bit late to start learning how. Far too many never even read the class syllabus, even when it’s online.

Add to that a low boredom threshold, and a total loss of focus every time their cellphones ring, flash, buzz, or vibrate. They can’t even concentrate that long on multi-media presentations. Lectures? Five minutes of attention, if that. They also have trouble retaining knowledge, possibly because they perceive every bit of knowledge as a separate unrelated fact [likely the result of a lifetime of standardized multiple choice tests] and can’t integrate what they read and hear.

There’s always been a significant number of students who leave college music programs for easier majors, but the numbers are going up, and, as a result, the administration puts pressure on music faculty to retain students, but pressure doesn’t solve the problem of missing skills, basic skills that should have been learned well before they arrived in college.

So far, the situation isn’t getting better. For the most part, success is going to the students who aren’t ruled by the internet, social media, and their cellphones… and there are fewer of them every year.

Is it any wonder so many college graduates have trouble finding high-level employment?

As I’ve often tried to point out in my novels, the greatest evil lies in extremism, and that especially applies to governments and the economic systems they foster.

Tsarist Russia economically wasn’t all that different from the time of the Robber Barons in the United States and, just before World War I, had the fifth largest economy in the world, even with a government best described as monarchist-authoritarian with some democratic window-dressing. With the Russian Revolution, the Russian equivalent of the Robber Barons, the monarchy, and the democratic window dressing (mostly) got thrown out and Russia ended up with pretty much a straight autocracy. At present, it bears an eerie modern-day resemblance to Tsarist Russia, except that the head autarch makes the last of the Romanovs look like an incompetent milquetoast by comparison. And it’s still an autocracy with an economy hobbled by the requirements of surviving in an autocracy.

This is a problem that the Chinese recognize, and what they’re attempting to do is to create a sort of semi-free market circumscribed in various degrees by an authoritarian government.

On the other hand, true capitalistic free-market systems are efficient at producing massive amounts of goods, but extremism in capitalism tends toward excessive concentration of wealth and power, which, if unchecked, isn’t that much different from an authoritarian government in repressing wages and in creating unhealthy workplaces, except that the autarchs are the business owners and not the government. Also, without strong government oversight, capitalistic systems tend to create continual boom and bust economic cycles and to neglect creating strong infrastructure on a national basis, as well as underfunding national defense.

At the same time, too much regulation/regulatory control in a capitalistic economy has a hobbling effect similar to that of an authoritarian government, as unfortunately the state of California is beginning to demonstrate.

History demonstrates, pretty conclusively, in my opinion, that countries dominated by the extremes of authoritarian governments or of free-market capitalism are pretty miserable places to live for anyone but the elites, but that’s something that the elites always rationalize away.