We All Live in the Land of the Lotus Eaters Now
What Percy Jackson can teach us about raising kids in the modern environment.
Hello Bar-setters!
I recently watch the first Percy Jackson film with my kids. This film is based on Rick Riordan’s book Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. In one scene, the young heroes are en route to finish their mission to save Percy Jackson’s mother, when they enter the Lotus hotel in Las Vegas. Upon entering, they are swept away by this Casino of pleasure, fun, and bliss inducing lotus treats. Intoxicated by these treats, the trio lose the desire to do anything other than indulge in the pleasures of the Casino. Percy even forgets about his mother. When Percy finally snaps out of it, he finds that, although it feels like only a couple hours have passed, he and his friends have been in the Casino for almost a week.
Riordan’s modern reimagining is inspired by the scene from the Odyssey when Odysseus and his men land on an island inhabited by the “Lotus-eaters.” This gentle people eat the fruit of the lotus plant. When Odysseus’s men begin eating the fruit, they lose any memory of their mission to return home to their families. In their blissed out state, these warriors forget about all they hold dear and have fought so hard for.
The moral of these stories is more prescient now than ever.
Comfort and temptations abound. Many, if not most, young people today grow up immersed in the land of the lotus-eaters. They are immersed in a constant drip of temptations and comforts perfectly tailored to be as addictive as possible to their individual psychologies—perfectly tailored to subvert their aspirations to become something greater and to live a life of impact. The effects of this environment are apparent…
And unlike Odysseus’s soldiers, most young people today are exposed to the land of the lotus-eaters long before they have participated in the sort of formative experiences that might awaken the natural aspirations that could rival the call to self indulgence. Immersed in dopamine hits, their aspirational natures are never fully activated. The innate drives that would cause them to yearn for self-expansion and a life of impact are blunted, leaving them hollow shells of their potential.
Don’t Gamble Your Child’s Character Away
You may have heard that smartphones are designed to replicate the addictive qualities of slot machines…
… or that slot machines earn more money each year than the movie industry, professional baseball, and theme parks combined.
But most of us hear this and think it doesn’t apply to us. We don’t appreciate just how addictive machine gambling is and, by default, how vulnerable we are to the machine gambling world’s tricks. It’s a world we’d do well to explore, given that we all subject ourselves to it every day.
In a brilliant chapter from The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew Crawford offers us a fantastic look at the power of slot machines:
It is not uncommon for heavy users to stand at a machine for eight or even twelve hours at a stretch, developing blood clots and other medical issues. Paramedics in Las Vegas dread getting calls from casinos, which usually turn out to be heart attacks. The problem is that when someone collapses, the other gamblers won’t get out of the way to let the paramedics do their job; they won’t leave their machines. Deafening fire alarms are similarly ignored; there have been incidents where rising flood waters didn’t dislodge them. The gamblers are so absorbed that they become oblivious of their surroundings.
Schüll interviews one woman who makes sure to wear dark clothing when she goes to gamble, so it won’t show when she urinates on herself. Once a gambler has taken possession of a machine, the thought of leaving it is intolerable, and so the urine-and-feces issue turns out to be a fairly common part of the machine gambling experience.
All of us, now, have a slot machine in our pockets—one that learns from our every swipe, click, and pause. Luckily, we’re able to take it with us when we need to use the bathroom.
For more on how our human vulnerabilities are exploited see these past articles:
So, What do We Do About All of This
A chief responsibility of schools and parents is to prepare the next generation with the skills they need to be capable of flourishing in their futures. To be able to do this, we must first:
Stop the denial: Just because it appears normal to have a smartphone at age 10 or to eat Pop-Tarts for breakfast each day, doesn’t mean it is normal. And it certainly isn’t preparing our kids thrive.
Create a better environment: Intentionally activate your children’s aspirational natures and intentionally create boundaries to prevent lotus-eating effects.
Thank you for reading and sharing!
If you want to dig deeper on the topic of igniting people’s aspirational natures, check out these past articles.
Carry the fire!
Shane