To cultivate absurd dreams

I have the impression that fascism and adolescence continue to be . . . permanent historical seasons of our lives . . . remaining children for eternity, leaving responsibilities for others, living with the comforting sensation that there is someone who thinks for you . . . and in the meanwhile, you have this limited, time-wasting freedom which permits you only to cultivate absurd dreams. 

Frederico Fellini

The modern world is prone to fascism. As Fellini notes, it grows out of an adolescent worldview and adolescence is a peculiarly modern phenomenon. It ought to worry us especially now as we live in a world where adolescence has run wild; the generation that currently obsesses about microaggressions and trigger warnings and that has already embraced a cult of personality in Obama is ripe for fascism.

At the same time, we too easily look outside ourselves for someone or something to blame. Fellini looked to the Catholic Church. He wasn't crazy to do so. There was a lot about the Catholic church, especially in the period of high Mariology that culminated with Pius XII, that lent itself to an adolescent worldview and the sort of immature fantasies that fascism grows out of. But it didn't have to be that way; the people aren't responsible for the culture that they inherit but they are responsible for how they respond to it. You are responsible for the sort of soil you provide for the seed that is sown.

Today, we might just as easily blame the universities and there is no doubt that a lot of appalling nonsense seemingly designed to churn out adolescents who forever put off growing up, who comfort themselves by letting others think for them and wallow in empty freedom where they cultivate absurd dreams. Ultimately, however, they still have the power to embrace responsibility.