By ESTHER RAMOS

Can we really be this socially clueless? We clean up after our nine year olds and wonder why they don’t learn to become responsible for their own space.

We eat prepackaged and fast foods laden with salt, sugars, preservatives, hormones, nitrates, triglycerides, etc., yet we cannot imagine why we’ve been diagnosed with blood pressure problems, blood sugar problems, low energy, weakened immune systems, low bone density etc.

We drive doing several things at once and fully expect the odds to continue in our collective favor.

We sign an online pledge, to be more careful in crosswalks, yet we will not put our texting down as we’re going along until we’ve walked into something.

We have given power to a government agency to decide for us how much we can have as student loans, and are amazed as we see the prices and costs of college educations continue to rise.

We do not require Congress to pass a budget year after year, but are astounded by the spending overruns and mismanagement of our tax dollars. How can it be we don’t know this is purposely done from the top down?

Every few days I become aware of some new problem we the people have made for ourselves, and most of these are the result a normal progression of events stemming from some project we have undertaken without considering the natural consequences of, or conclusion to, something we’ve begun.

Where are the adults? Why aren’t more of them in charge?

The next time you hear” unintended consequences” remember the kinds of scenarios I have posed here, and you will be amazed how easy it is to find the smoking gun.