It can be an advantage or a disadvantage, as circumstances vary. The boldness of youth comes from inexperience with bad consequences and a short memory for pain, while the timidity of age is a product of dwelling too much on all the possible bad outcomes to the exclusion of taking any action at all.
So TRUE, it is often the inexperienced that find new worlds and explore them with wonder and fascination.----- Lewis and Clark, what did they know of the wonders they would find???
When the age of space came in, none of our astronauts had ANY experience with space flight, most had family's that needed them yet these men climbed into these ridicules small capsules to ride into space on the tail of an explosive and hope to return to earth.-----Only the slide rule back then no hand held calculators to build the craft and as no one in their parents generation at their age had ever done this.
We went West into the unknown regardless of news of Indian attacks and the loss of hundreds of waggon trains, the old folk were left at home and men woman and children were willing to go forth and face their fate with no knowledge of what they would face, no idea of the climate the terrain or natural hazards floods, drought, tornado's, few dentists, doctors or school teachers. ------Fancy today any of us packing up and taking new born baby's to our teens into that situation.
Why did these people leave the civilisation they were use to, why head out into a new world with their woman and children knowing nothing of what they would face except for the horror story's from those that had been there and now wanted to head East???? A huge amount of people that went east after a while in the city's headed out west again, a place they felt alive in??
Interesting the number of woman and young girls who were kidnapped by different tribes of Indians that killed their family's, when ransomed and brought back to their family members escaped the family and went back to the Tribes that gave them the freedom to marry who they wished and have a voice in tribal matters. They had more freedom with the tribes then with the mores of civilization.
Some of the greatest Indian warriors and chiefs were white boys captured by the Indians,
They also at one time had a chance to return to family but as the woman found freedom better to their liking.
Youth and the inexperience and just going on gut action is what put us apart from the rest of the world. It was not the well educated that formed our country, it was the ignorant youth that by the hundreds of thousands, perhaps with some fear to carry a bible in their pocket and risk all. Amazing people that built America, built not on the Educated who knew better, but by the ignorant that knew no better.
God did bless America, our ancestors who were lucky to have a trade went forth and built us to what it is today.
Came down to someone that was educated in 5 different languages but did not know how to load a gun, watch the sky for weather, pay attention to the cattle for water holes, grind corn or hunter gather---these were the first to die.
The Black Smith or Weaver, Tracker or Midwife that knew the uses of plants. these even if unable to read were the most valuable and did more to help Americans then any one person in the safety of civilisation making laws ever did.
We made it to become the greatest Country and People in the history of the world on the back of the young and ignorant, too stupid to fear anything, the law of the west was the Gun and darn if it didn't work. Hanging Judges and as strange as it sounds the more difficulties we came up with the stronger we got.
Most of the youth today have little difficulty, Government steps in if they do. Bleeding hearts insure the youth gets all they want at Xmas, few kids are left with just one doll or truck.
Few kids are greatfull for food or clothing or not having to sleep on the floor. More and more they demand, Crap, put some kids in the back of a Conestoga Waggon, wondering each night if the waggon will be attacked, wearing the same clothing for 2-3 weeks at a time, no baths, no makeup, no sun screen. One will get a total melt down until survival kicks in, a sense of family and belonging beyond the self and their own needs, this is what built strength and backbone in our past today another ball of wax.
