This strikes a deep chord in me. I agree with what you say here. I grew up with and know people just like the man you describe. But for each person like him (or you) there are many who have been “marginalized” or left behind. I know plenty of them too. And they need help.

Before you get your hackles up, I don’t mean government help. We both know what that leads to. But somehow, people who have managed to make independent lives for themselves need to pass on what they have learned. Some people who appear helpless or lazy are really just clueless. They can’t imagine how to not follow the beaten path. Certainly their schools never taught them.

Mostly I’m thinking of young people. Not STEM snowflakes, but the kids around town who need information and examples of how not to be sentenced to death on the American Treadmill, where it has already been preordained they will fail, who really need a new definition of what success means.

I see this as a valuable form of mutual cooperation. I know that to a small degree it happens on an individual basis. I don’t know what the mechanism would look like to extend that, but there must be one.

I hope.

Nice porch, by the way. :)