Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
Every Generation Discovers Coca-Cola
Every Generation Discovers Coca-Cola. Every generation believes it has discovered something brand new.
The young discover Coca-Cola as if the secret formula was whispered to them personally by the gods. They discover alcohol, drugs, socialism, communism, libertarianism, rebellion, tattoos, and every other old temptation wearing a new hat.
At eighteen, a man knows everything. At twenty-five, he is still certain of it.
By thirty, the bill starts arriving.
By forty, if he has children, he begins warning them not to do the very things he once defended with great passion and terrible logic. “Don’t drink that stuff.” “Don’t smoke that.”
“Don’t waste your life chasing that.” “Don’t believe every politician selling heaven with somebody else’s money.”
And the child, naturally, looks at the parent with the same expression mankind has worn since the Garden of Eden and says, “You don’t understand. This time is different.”
But it is never different.
That is the comedy and tragedy of civilization. We do not move forward as much as we trip over the same rake in a slightly newer pair of shoes.
One generation found alcohol and called it freedom. Another found marijuana and called it enlightenment. Another found LSD and called it consciousness. Another found cocaine and called it success. Another found fentanyl and called it the end of the road.
The slippery slope is not a theory. It is a road with billboards, sponsors, lobbyists, slogans, and young people dancing at the entrance.
Every generation thinks it is more sophisticated than the last. But most of the time, it is simply being sold the same poison in better packaging.
The salesman changes. The product gets renamed. The label becomes more modern. The marketing improves. But the transaction is ancient.
Bernie Sanders has been around almost as long as Coca-Cola, and he is still selling the same old bottle with a new label. The same promises. The same resentment. The same idea that human nature can be defeated by a committee, a slogan, and a tax increase.
And every new generation buys it like it just came off the shelf yesterday.
The same thing happens with culture. One generation rebels against its parents, then becomes the parents, then tries to explain to its children why the rebellion was not as wise as it looked from the passenger seat of a used car at midnight.
The parents say, “We already tried this.” The children say, “Yes, but you did it wrong, this time is different”
That sentence should be carved over the entrance to every failed civilization.
Religion, for a long time, slowed this cycle down. Not perfectly, because people are people, and people can ruin a church picnic with enough time and opportunity. But religion at least put brakes on human appetite. It gave man a reason to tell himself no.
Now the brakes are gone, and we are surprised the car keeps gaining speed.
Common sense was supposed to replace religion, but common sense has never been popular among crowds. It is too quiet. It does not chant well. It does not make a good campaign slogan. It rarely goes viral.
So we keep repeating the old mistakes, except now we do it with better cameras, faster internet, and fewer excuses.
The question is not whether the next generation will be tempted. Of course they will.
The question is what the next temptation will be.
In thirty years, what will we be arguing about?
Brain chips for pleasure enhancement?
Drugs that make you taller, faster, stronger, more attractive, and more reckless?
Some miracle pill that promises happiness, genius, beauty, and sexual performance, while quietly removing ten years from your life?
And of course people will take it. They will take it, defend it, sell it, make memes about it, build political movements around it, and then act shocked when it destroys them.
The government, if it truly wanted to get rid of something, might try requiring it. I have often wondered whether tattoos would remain popular if every citizen were ordered to get one.
Nothing kills rebellion faster than making it mandatory.
But that may be the great lesson we refuse to learn: people do not chase wisdom. They chase permission.
Permission to do what they already wanted to do.
Permission to believe what flatters them.
Permission to repeat the same mistakes their grandparents survived.
And then, when the consequences arrive, they call it bad luck, oppression, capitalism, trauma, or society.
Anything but cause and effect.
Can the cycle be broken? Maybe.
But not by government. Not by slogans.
Not by another politician promising to save us from ourselves.
A society is only as wise as the lessons it is willing to pass down, and only as strong as the young are willing to hear them before pain becomes the teacher.
Because pain is a very expensive school. And every generation keeps enrolling like it just opened.
