I’ve been writing lately about how the crisis of a lack of objectivity — and the disappearance of even basic first- and second-order thinking — creates a cascade of unintended consequences. When people stop asking “what happens next?” or “what happens after that?”, society slowly fills up with individuals who react to everything emotionally and instantly. They become, for lack of a better phrase, human raw nerve endings.

Every stimulus produces an immediate response. No reflection, no restraint, no perspective. Just reaction.

Not surprisingly, I was asked recently what we can actually do about it. How do we reverse what looks like a pretty dangerous social trajectory? What actions should we take as a society, given the constant influence of social media, the professional agitators who thrive on chaos, politicians who scream “Nazi!” at every disagreement, and a media culture that profits from outrage?

My answer?

Get your kid a dog.

I’m not kidding.

At first glance, that might sound overly simple, maybe even a little ridiculous, but it goes directly back to something that has been quietly disappearing: parents teaching children the habits of responsibility, reasoning, and moral understanding. For centuries, much of that instruction was reinforced through religion and community traditions. Whether people believed deeply or simply participated culturally, those institutions taught patience, duty, humility, sacrifice, and the reality that the world does not revolve around you.

But many people abandoned religion while still expecting it to function like some kind of benevolent magic spell — something that would automatically produce good people without effort or discipline. When it didn’t work that way, they tossed the whole structure aside. In other cases, religion itself was hollowed out and replaced with something that looks less like faith and more like emotional reasoning mixed with political activism.

Either way, a lot of the practical moral training disappeared.

So I say again: get your kid a puppy. Or even better, adopt an older dog from a shelter.

Do it as soon as the child is old enough to help care for it.

I grew up on a farm, so I admit I had an unfair advantage. Farm kids learn early that living things depend on you. Animals must be fed. They must be watered. They get sick. They require attention and discipline. If you ignore those responsibilities, the consequences are immediate and obvious.

A dog compresses those same lessons into a form a child can understand.

A puppy depends on you for everything. It needs food, water, shelter, training, exercise, and affection. If you neglect it, the dog suffers. If you treat it well, the dog responds with loyalty and love that is almost embarrassingly unconditional.

Through that process, a child learns responsibility, patience, and empathy — lessons that can’t really be taught through lectures or social-media slogans.

Adopting a stray or neglected dog adds another layer. It teaches compassion and the value of rescue. Living with that animal for years builds routine and discipline. And when the dog eventually grows old and dies — as all dogs do — it teaches one of the hardest but most necessary lessons of life: how to deal with loss.

Even if parents aren’t consciously trying to teach these things — or aren’t prepared to do so themselves — the experience does so anyway, for both the parent and the child.

And just as importantly, children also see the contrast. They see people who neglect, abandon, or treat their animals poorly. That contrast quietly reinforces what responsibility and character actually look like.

Loving and caring for a dog is about as personal as it gets. In a world increasingly filled with abstract arguments, digital outrage, and ideological slogans, a child caring for a living creature may be one of the simplest ways to teach the fundamentals of love, duty, and moral reasoning.

Sometimes the cure for a complicated social problem is not another theory.

Sometimes it’s just a kid and a dog.