The Gate Keepers of the World

Where to turn?

Vast, free ranges used to fill our world, challenging a young man to prove himself. That world is gone. We have replaced it with a never ending series of gates to which you must pass to do anything.

Success, we’re promised, is just on the other side. “Pay your dues and you’ll be on your way!”

The path to success is a self-paved road. Go where no one else goes. Do what no one else does.

Trained to wait in lines

Everything is regulated and restricted, and I mean everything. An 8 year old boy can’t walk half a mile alone:

“Heather Wallace's oldest son, 8-year-old Aiden, was driving his two brothers crazy in the car as they all returned from karate one afternoon in October 2021. Wallace asked Aiden to walk the rest of the way home—half a mile in quiet, suburban Waco, Texas—so that he could calm down.

For this she was arrested, handcuffed, and thrown in jail.

She was charged with endangering a child, a felony carrying a mandatory minimum of two years in prison.”

• https://reason.com/2022/11/16/suburban-mom-jailed-handcuffed-cps-son-walk-home/

Outdoor play without supervision used to be considered completely normal. Gen Xers would run around miles from home with their friends for hours at a time. Their parents didn’t give a damn. The kids have got to play, don’t they? 

Well, no, not anymore. Keep them inside. Keep them locked up. Give ‘em a phone, that’ll keep them occupied. 

A full generation of kids have been raised like bubble boy. Stay inside. Stay safe. The only chance for interaction with the world lies in parent-planned activities…school, organized sports, and the occasional playdate.

A kid can’t even make a bit of cash on the side to buy some gas station candy. Hell, my dad was delivering newspapers in a neighborhood a mile from his house in the early morning hours when he was 9. 

You can’t get a job until you're twice the age my dad was when he was a paperboy. That is unless you get hooked up with a job by friends or family. 

Even then you’ve got to keep it on the down low so no one gets in trouble.

A fork in the road

Everyone comes to a fork in the road near the end of high school.

What will I do now? What’s next?

Perhaps they choose to go to college, a place where promises of a successful career are gate kept by the institution itself. Yet, for some, college seems like the best bet. 

After years have passed, and you finally finish school, one gate is opened to you. At last, that degree which you’ve been dreaming about is in your hands.

But something seems off. You jumped through the countless hoops. You listened to the promises of the gatekeepers and begged them to let you in, doing whatever they asked.

Once the key is turned and the door is opened unto you, what do you see?

More gates. Employers, credit bureaus, building permits, licenses, and professional experience are all gates you’ll reckon with again and again. Eventually, mid-career people push toward the final gate, retirement, where on the other side they’re promised ‘the golden years’.

If people could see beyond the first gate, would they have done something different?

It goes further

While doing research for The Preparation (a program designed to help ambitious young men bypass these gates), I realized something odd.

The program involves learning how to do things in the real world, so the trades play a large part in the program. Though, we aren’t telling young people to go to a 2-year trade school. Your grandpa can do that for you.

It turns out that the trades are at least as gate kept as a white collar career. We want to find places that allow ambitious young people to get a lot of exposure and reasonable competency across several skills. And it doesn’t take 2 years or more to learn the basic competency.

A friend of ours, an electrician, told us that while he was an apprentice everything he learned happened on a job site, doing actual electrical work and not while sitting in the required classes.

The best way to learn how to do the job, is to do the job.

There are private schools where you can learn the basics of many trades. Depending on the trade, classes last from 5 days to 5 months. I’ve done two already and plan to do more.

But here’s the problem, a great wall of China surrounds the trades too. The only way in is to submit yourself to a multi-year sentence. A slow and uninspired grind - paying your dues. Compared to college, the trades are a much better deal. High-demand skills certifications will always be better than a piece of paper from college today.

It hasn’t gotten better

Well, this must all happen for a reason. Everyone wants to find the most competent people possible, right?

No.

The Empire State Building was built in 1 year and 45 days, which is unthinkable in today’s world. At one point contractors added 14 stories to the building in just 10 days.

There weren’t countless hoops to jump through and restrictions to follow. Builders built. Workers worked.

OSHA would have cracked down on the entire crew for this one.

This picture sums it up perfectly. Life is risky, but it must go on. If a job needed to be done and you were willing to do it, the world was happy to receive you.

While most Americans worked, do-gooders and bureaucrats have been busy building gates. Now everywhere and for everything they demand forms be filled, lines be waited in, and every box checked - plus a fee, of course, for the indignity of it all.

The net effect is visible all around us. Never ending orange cones on interstate highways, flooding subway tunnels and power outages. When was the last time something amazing was built?

A man worth remembering

Our present situation is better understood by taking a look back at the past.

Take Louis L’Amour for example, a great man, and fantastic writer of the 20th century. More than 320 million copies of his books have been sold, with several being adopted into films.

“Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, assessment miner, and officer on tank destroyers during World War 2.

During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He has won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer.”

It isn’t everyday that you come by a resume like that.

Those incredible opportunities and adventures were, with a bit of effort, within the grasp of anyone at that time. Louis was not at all rich when he left home at the age of 15.

His age, lack of experience, and absence of cash didn’t inhibit him from doing any of this. At least, not to the extent that it would today.

Still, Louis chose to take his own path. Even then it would have been unheard of for a young man to do all that he did. There is a formula to success, and Louis is a wonderful example. All great men tread their own path.

The key is to avoid the long lines of mindless people waiting to enter various institutions. Adventure, success, competency, and a life worth living…it can all be found by going your own way.