Something about creating an acronym out of technical jargon for life experiences gives it a dangerously dehumanizing feel.  I have in mind this pair of tweets from Democrat state representative Marcia Ranglin:

What are Adverse Childhood Experiences?
CDC indicates that ACEs can have Traumatic experiences in childhood and the teenage years may put children at risk for violence, chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance abuse in adulthood.

Some adverse childhood experiences are Gun Violence, Structural Poverty, Structural Racism, Neglect, Hunger, Divorce of Parents, suicide of family member or friend, homelessness and COVID-19.

Even those who buy into the general concept might object to the ideological insinuation of including “structural” social issues on a list with acute traumatic experiences like suicide.  But whether or not we keep the list intact, the therapeutic impulse that Ranglin echoes has pitfalls that its advocates apparently don’t see.

The definition of “ACE” appears so broad that it simply means “difficulties,” and if we set as a goal to eliminate those — rather than develop strategies to help people deal with them after they’ve happened — we’re on a path to erase our humanity.  Arguably, this impulse is behind the most bedeviling problems we’re facing in our times, and we should doubt the wisdom of progressives’ faith that the discord is merely the discomfort of metamorphosis to a utopian future.

Overcoming difficulties is intrinsic to who we are and our sense of meaning.  We’ll look for them if life doesn’t bring them to us.  To be sure, we’re objectively better off finding our challenges at a higher level than avoidance of starvation and other fundamental threats to our existence, but if we empower ourselves to wipe out “ACEs,” we’ll soon be wiping out great swaths of meaningful human experience, and probably not a few humans, too.

Featured image by Gabriel on Unsplash.