For Now: It's The Family, Stupid!; Tomorrow, It Will Be Something Quite Different

Question: Why Are So Few Women at the Top of Their Professions or Companies?

The answer to that question 50 years ago was quite different than the answer to that question today. And the answer to the question today, is quite different from the answer tomorrow. Yesterday's women may not have had the opportunities to compete beyond "the glass ceiling." As for today's women? Kay S. Hymowitz explains why today's women are not willing to fight for the top job:

...women don’t ascend the career ladder in the business world the way men do. According to Catalyst, just 37 percent of those who receive the first major promotion—to manager—are women. And the higher you go, the scarcer women get. Only 26 percent of vice presidents and senior executives are female, as are 14 percent of executive committees, and those numbers haven’t changed in years.

It seems that few women are even auditioning for the star positions. A longitudinal study of Booth School of Business graduates at the University of Chicago found men and women launching careers in equal numbers and, if you take into account differences in their industries and subspecialties, earning about the same amount of money at the outset. Ten years later, though, barely half of the female grads—52 percent—were working full-time, compared with over 90 percent of the men.

In their thirties and forties, women with children are typically looking for ways to work less, not more. They’re twice as likely as men to work part-time, and surveys show that that’s the way they want it. Female physicians have been avoiding emergency-room medicine and flocking to dermatology and pediatrics, which bring fewer emergency calls and night hours. Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have demonstrated that women’s preference for fewer and more flexible hours has transformed a number of professional occupations, including veterinary medicine, pharmacy work, and certain medical specialties. The group practices that have all but replaced lone practitioners in these fields allow women to limit their night and weekend hours, work three or four days a week, and avoid the headaches of ownership. The rising generation of women doesn’t look likely to change any of this. One recent survey of students by four University of Wisconsin psychologists found that college women, as they planned their careers (and they did expect to work), were already thinking about cutting back hours when they had children. A recent Gallup poll showed that 44 percent of women wished that they didn’t work at all, compared with 22 percent of men. _Kay S. Hymowitz

Ignore biology at your peril -- unless you are a politician, journalist, professor, or a bureaucrat -- and do not pay a penalty for your egregious mistakes.

So, yesterday's woman could not get to the top of the heap even if she wanted to. Today's woman, for the most part, doesn't want to pay the penalty for reaching the top, and staying there. What about tomorrow's woman?

The problem for tomorrow's women will be more complex, as coming generations of women are being raised more by peers and consumer electronics offerings than by adults who are capable of passing along meaningful principles of navigating their way through life.

Catastrophic Crisis for Girls

...young girls are in a ‘catastrophic’ state of crisis because of the ‘toxic’ influences of advertising, celebrity and pornography which pressurise them to grow up too quickly._Daily Mail

What if there is even a tiny sliver of truth in the quote above? Then rather than expect tomorrow's generations of young women to lead humans into a brave new future, we should more likely expect them to create huge new headaches for anyone even remotely connected to them.

The human capital of a society is its most precious resource. What would cause a society to squander its present and future resources -- male and female, young and adult -- at such a prodigal and cynical rate?

It may be that most of tomorrow's women will be challenged maintaining a halfway competent retail counter, or even household accounts -- much less planning important tactics and strategies for the survival or ascendancy of important public and private entities.

Where will tomorrow's competent women (and men) come from, if popular culture, the educational establishment, and the family have all been corrupted to the point of being unable to instill confidence that is based upon true competency in meaningful skills?

A lot more money is being spent on raising girls up to competitive levels in science, technology, law, medicine, business, and government. But most of that money is being mis-spent on political and ideological strategies that take no account of biology and genetics -- and are thus destined to fail.

Boys are certainly being neglected by modern hyper-feminised PC society, but in the long run that may be to their advantage -- once more unpaid volunteer mentors for boys come along and figure out what is what.

Young women, however, are caught in the political feminist's web of control, and may never emerge from the trap as a whole, independent, thinking, competent person, separate from the PC groupthink police and informer network. More's the pity.

Majoring in Hackademics: The UnCollege

College debt across the US has skyrocketed to near $1 trillion, risking a catastrophic financial bubble when it bursts. At the same time, the benefit a student derives from a four year college degree is falling off, year by year.

Minyanville

The diverging trends are taking a toll on students and recent grads. Student loan delinquency rates now exceed those of credit card, mortgage, and all other types of consumer debt. And many indebted grads are being forced to delay buying homes, having children, and saving for retirement.

The situation is causing many experts to warn of a student loan bubble that could burst much like the housing market did in 2008. Howard Dvorkin, author of Credit Hell, told The Fiscal Times last month: “It's hard to predict when the student loan meltdown could occur, but if the bubble explodes, the consequences will be devastating for the economy.” _Minyanville

NYT

The idea that a college diploma is an all-but-mandatory ticket to a successful career is showing fissures. Feeling squeezed by a sagging job market and mounting student debt, a groundswell of university-age heretics are pledging allegiance to new groups like UnCollege, dedicated to “hacking” higher education.

...UnCollege advocates a D.I.Y. approach to higher education and spreads the message through informational “hackademic camps.” “Hacking,” in the group’s parlance, can involve any manner of self-directed learning: travel, volunteer work, organizing collaborative learning groups with friends. Students who want to avoid $200,000 in student-loan debt might consider enrolling in a technology boot camp, where you can learn to write code in 8 to 10 weeks for about $10,000, Mr. Stephens said.

THEY can also nourish their minds from a growing menu of Internet classrooms, including the massive open online courses, or MOOCs, which stream classes from elite universities like Princeton. This guerrilla approach hits home with young people who came of age seeking out valuable content free on Napster and BitTorrent.

Mr. Stephens, a dropout from Hendrix College in Arkansas (he later earned a Thiel Fellowship), started UnCollege less than two years ago, and already its Web site attracts 20,000 unique visitors a month. “I get on scale of 10 to 15 e-mails a day from people who say something along lines of, ‘I thought I was the only one out there who thought about education like this, I don’t feel crazy anymore,’ ” he said.

There are other groups, too, like Enstitute, which offers two-year apprenticeships with entrepreneurs in lieu of college, and Zero Tuition College, an online support network for students looking for alternatives.

The goal is not to foment for a mass exodus from the ivy halls, Mr. Stephens said, but to open people’s minds to a different set of opportunities. _NYT

Children need to be trained in the many arts of making money long before they reach college age. Children schooled in The Dangerous Child Method will acquire the skills to support themselves financially at least three different ways -- and they will know how to manage the money for its best utility as well.

The US government educational system isolates children from a very young age from real world responsibility and avoids teaching them vital real life skills which they will need when they are out on their own. Each stage of education kicks the can down the road a little further, expecting that the next level of education will fill in the gaps. Sadly, parents are complicit in this massive scam of the "educators," and then they wonder why their children move back in with them -- unmarried, unable to find work, without meaningful skills or competencies.

The trend toward general indebted incompetency is one that the government welcomes -- because it gives governments new excuses to expand to new areas of oversight and responsibility, while taking away or restricting more individual responsibility. Time is running out on this misguided culture of psychological neotenates and lifelong incompetents.

Ode to Lifelong Incompetence: Shite on a Silver Platter

The Wall Street Journal offers an disturbing perspective on the emerging listless incompetence of generations of young adults without a cause, purpose, or meaningful goal. But should we blame the Journal and its writer Melinda Beck for such an enabling of societal decay, or should we blame the "experts" who were quoted?

The article is framed as an attempt to reassure the parents of sluggish and vacant twenty-somethings, suggesting that their vapid little darlings have simply not found themselves yet -- just give them time. After all, the article suggests, their brains do not fully mature until their middle twenties or later. How could we expect them to make important decisions?

Psychologists and cognitive scientists are quoted, backing up this acquiescent and neglectful approach to child-raising and fledging. But where would those "experts" be if their own parents had raised them to be dormant blockheads well into their twenties and beyond? They would probably not be considered worthy of being quoted in the WSJ. We could ask author Melinda Beck the same question: Where would you be if you had been content to wile away the years until you were a thirty-something, before you began your career and/or family?

Here is Jay Giedd, neuroscientist of the US NIMH:

"Until very recently, we had to make some pretty important life decisions about education and career paths, who to marry and whether to go into the military at a time when parts of our brains weren't optimal yet," says neuroscientist Jay Giedd at the National Institute of Mental Health, whose brain-imaging studies of thousands of young people have yielded many of the new insights. Postponing those decisions makes sense biologically, he says. "It's a good thing that the 20s are becoming a time for self-discovery." _Melinda Beck in WSJ

Is the man completely insane? "It's a good thing that the 20s are becoming a time of self-discovery???" That type of disconnectedness from the reality of life reminds me of people who say it is a good thing that robots will take over almost all manual jobs, relieving human workers of their responsibilities. That way, "humans can devote themselves to art, literature, travel, and other enobling leisure pursuits."

Here is Jeffrey Arnett, psychology professor at Clark in Worcester:

"It should be reassuring for parents to know that it's very typical in the 20s not to know what you're going to do and change your mind and seem very unstable in your life. It's the norm," says Jeffrey J. Arnett, a professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., who coined the term "emerging adulthood" in 2000. _WSJ

Oh. Are you, Professor Clark, volunteering to pay the child's living expenses, his university bills for 6 different half-finished courses of study, and otherwise support this overgrown child for the foreseeable future? I didn't think so.

More from Dr. Arnett:

"It pays to relax and not panic because your 21-year-old or even your 26-year-old doesn't know what he or she is going to do. Almost nobody still has that problem at 40 or 50. We all figure it out eventually." _WSJ

And if they still have that problem at 40 or 50, can we call you for advice, professor?

Here is Jennifer Tanner, developmental psychologist:

Even young adults who are financially dependent on their parents can practice independence in other ways. "My advice is, if your parents are currently doing things for you that you could do for yourself, take the controls. Say, 'No. Mom, Let me get my own shampoo,' " says Jennifer Tanner, a developmental psychologist and co-chair of the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood, an academic organization. _WSJ

I see. If only we can get our children to get their own shampoo, everything else will take care of itself? Very reassuring indeed.

To illustrate how stressful and trying young adulthood can be, we are presented with 28 year old Nikki Cohen, case study:

At age 28, Nikki Cohen has explored more careers than many people do in a lifetime. After a year as a pre-med student at Emory University, the Long Island native moved back to New York to attend Parsons School of Design. "I decided fashion was more exciting than science and a little more 'me,' " Ms. Cohen says.

She opened a clothing boutique when she was 23 and starred in a short-lived reality show, "Downtown Girls," on MTV. When the show was canceled and her store fell victim to the economic downturn, Ms. Cohen decided she was passionate about health issues after all and is now completing her master's thesis in health education at Columbia University.

"It's definitely a scary time," says Ms. Cohen. "I'm fearful that I'm not going to get a job or meet a man that makes me happy for more than a month. But I'm also happy that I get to try out different things." _WSJ

It does tear at one's heartstrings.

It is certainly true that a person's brain is not "fully mature" until the middle to late 20s. But that does not mean that a person should not be held responsible as an adult until then. After all, no sooner does a brain become "fully mature" than it begins to lose its power of focus and memory -- little by little. Should we view these 30 something, 40 something, 50 something and beyond as disabled by reason of normal aging?

Modern education and child-raising is geared toward delaying adult responsibility and achievement until a much later time than earlier generations were geared. Once, the late teens were seen as proper ages to set out on one's own. More recently it was the early twenties. Now we are being told that autonomy from parents may have to wait until into the thirties.

Rather than following this path of the pop PC skankstream mainstream, the WSJ should be pushing for the kinds of changes which will strengthen the future innovative and productive foundational core of a society, rather than enabling a passive weakening the foundations.

But it seems that the WSJ is merely another part of the skankstream mainstream, after all. If people want to lay the groundwork for a more solid and abundant future, they will have to look elsewhere than the media, the academy, or the government.

But then, you already knew that, right?

It is never too late for a dangerous childhood.

How Old Should Children Be Before You Teach Them to Make Pipe Bombs?

According to a report in the Wednesday edition of the Lübecker Nachrichten newspaper, [a] 39-year-old teacher, who has not been named, made gunpowder together with his students who then filled pipes with the explosive. The bombs were later detonated on a nearby heath, using sparklers as detonators. The newspaper reported that the teacher built bombs with classes of fifth-grade students between 2009 and 2011. _Spiegel

The teacher in question taught fifth-grade students at a Waldorf school in Lubeck, Germany.

Here is more about Waldorf education:

The central focus for the Waldorf teacher is the development of that essence in every person that is independent of external appearance, by instilling in his/her pupils an understanding of and appreciation for their background and place in the world, not primarily as members of any specific nation, ethnic group or race, but as members of humanity and world citizens. _WaldorfAnswers

After skimming the Waldorf Answers website, I confess that I was unable to find a reference to the proper age for teaching children to make pipe bombs.

Spiegel: Lubeck, Germany
Both Waldorf and Montessori schools are oriented toward a more "hands-on" and experimental / experiential approach to education, than is the case for a conventional western education. This is also the case for the very daring curriculum devised by John David Garcia.
Full Garcia early childhood curriculum here.

Knowledge is power. Competence is power. Creativity is power. Clear discernment of reality is power. The best educational approaches seek to instill in students not only knowledge, but competence, creativity, and discernment. Successful graduates of such programs are likely to be quite powerful -- and quite dangerous to any given established order. The more petty and corrupt the established order, the greater danger to the establishment are well-educated young people.

In the age of radical religious terrorism (originating principally within Islam at this time), it may seem outlandish for a teacher to help students make pipe bombs. But if the basic lessons of chemistry, physics, engineering, safety, and demolition were considered valid lessons to teach to a child -- at what age would it be appropriate?

"No syllabus in the world contains something like this," the mother of one of the students told the newspaper. She said that when the bombs were detonated, the students were only 30 meters (100 feet) away and were not wearing protective glasses or ear protectors. "The explosion was so powerful that the children felt the shockwave in their guts," she said. There were apparently no cases of injuries, however.

A spokesman for the Lübeck public prosecutors office confirmed to the newspaper that an investigation was being conducted into the case, on suspicion that the teacher had committed an offense against Germany's law on the use of explosives. If the teacher is convicted, he could face a fine or up to three years in prison.

Hans Peter Scherer, the head of the association that runs the private Waldorf school, also confirmed the investigation but said that the teacher "continues to enjoy the trust" of the management and the parents. _Spiegel

It is the opinion of Al Fin educational theorists and child psychologists that children should be taught many advanced skills from the earliest ages of pre-school and school. Among those subjects would be food growing and preparation, basic shelter construction, basic survival skills of orienteering, firemaking, survival foods, finding water, signaling for help etc, basic individual and group self-defense, and more.

On the topic of edged weapons, firearms, archery, and explosives, experts of the Al Fin Institute of Advanced Childhood Educational Studies agree that all children of sound and stable mind should be taught these deadly skills. The main point of contention among these luminaries is the exact age when children should become competent at such dangerous practises. All are agreed on the point that such skills should only be taught within a philosophical matrix of the limits of and strict non-initiation of violence, using the best safety precautions available.

A well-educated child is a dangerous child. While this concept seems quite foreign to modern psychologically neotenous and sheltered societies, it is in fact transparently obvious and necessary to anyone who expects humans to progress to the next level.

More on this concept, and how it relates to the much needed revival of the concept of multiple "rites of passage of childhood" later.

Footnotes on the Higher Education Bubble's Many Failures

The following excerpts are taken from a NYBooks.com article by Anthony Grafton. Grafton tries to take a wide angle view of the performance of US universities, using several recent books on higher education as springboards. His conclusions are not encouraging.

The Collegiate Learning Assessment reveals that some 45 percent of students in the sample had made effectively no progress in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing in their first two years. And a look at their academic experience helps to explain why. Students reported spending twelve hours a week, on average, studying—down from twenty-five hours per week in 1961 and twenty in 1981. Half the students in the sample had not taken a course that required more than twenty pages of writing in the previous semester, while a third had not even taken a course that required as much as forty pages a week of reading.

...Second, and more depressing: vast numbers of students come to university with no particular interest in their courses and no sense of how these might prepare them for future careers. The desire they cherish, Arum and Roksa write, is to act out “cultural scripts of college life depicted in popular movies such as Animal House (1978) and National Lampoon’s Van Wilder (2002).” Academic studies don’t loom large on their mental maps of the university. Even at the elite University of California, students report that on average they spend “twelve hours [a week] socializing with friends, eleven hours using computers for fun, six hours watching television, six hours exercising, five hours on hobbies”—and thirteen hours a week studying.

...Fewer than 70 percent of high school students graduate. Just over 70 percent of those graduates will enter some form of postsecondary education. But barely more than half of those who start BA programs will finish them in six years, and only 30 percent of those who start community college will win an associate degree in three years. After that point, most people don’t manage to graduate.

...Americans, as Malcolm Harris recently pointed out, now owe almost a trillion dollars in student loans, more than they owe in credit card debt. Student debt, he explained, “is an exceptionally punishing kind to have. Not only is it inescapable through bankruptcy, but student loans have no expiration date and collectors can garnish wages, social security payments, and even unemployment benefits.”

...All this to pay for an education that—as we have already seen—means little, intellectually, to many of those who are courting debtors’ prison to pay for it. The unkindest cut of all, of course, is that those who drop out must still carry the full burden of the loans that so many of them have taken out—even though they will, in all probability, earn less and fare worse in hard times than graduates. Yet even unemployment among graduates has been rising—as have rates of student loan default.

... Students drink too much alcohol, smoke too much marijuana, play too many computer games, wreck cars, become pregnant, get overwhelmed trying to help anorexic roommates, and too often lose the modest but vital support previously provided by a parent who has been laid off.

...the dark hordes of forgotten students who leave the university as Napoleon’s army left Russia, uninspired by their courses, wounded in many cases by what they experience as their own failures, weighed down by their debts, need to be seen and heard.
_NYBooks.com Anthony Grafton

We are likely to see and hear them in news coverage from their crime-ridden "Occupy" camps -- perhaps in your hometown. Or maybe they can get jobs as professional activists, community organisers, union enforcers or get-out-the-vote strong armers.

Never prepared for genuine responsibility by their parents or "the system", they learned to put off growing up until the last possible moment. And "surprise!" they never did accomplish the feat.

This is one piece of the puzzle, which in toto reveals the collapse of human capital across a society. Someone will need to come along and pick up the pieces of former wholes which a massive -- in some cases, designed -- neglect by responsible parties has fractured to shards.

Anthony Grafton, the author of the above review, suggests that the answer may lie in the public dissection of the university by skilled writers -- including fiction writers. He feels that if readers were to see the reality in all its poignant destructiveness, that changes might then be forced upon the university. But honestly, who reads anymore? Not the power brokers who would have to be swayed in order to effect the necessary changes. And even if they did read, their vested interests in the current system penetrate so deeply, that nothing short of a nuclear explosion under their chairs would do the trick.

Thinking More Deeply: Building Innovation Engines

Innovative Thinking
In research and development, the most revolutionary discoveries are often hidden beneath the flash and whiz-bang of fancy products, processes, and therapies. But here are two examples of discoveries of a more subtle and important type:

A TEAM of North-East academics and industry experts have "cracked the DNA code of plastic" which could mean massive cost and energy savings for business. Researchers at Durham University and the University of Leeds have collaborated with the Tees Valley chemical process sector to solve a long-standing problem that is set to revolutionise the way new plastics are developed.

Before the discovery, industry would develop a plastic and then find a use for it, or try hundreds of different recipes until they stumbled across the right mix. _Source

Alert readers will see the similarity between this new innovation engine for creating plastics-on-demand, and approaches to "rational design" of drugs and proteins. This type of breakthrough often sets the stage for large numbers of rapid-fire innovations to follow.

University of Utah chemists developed a method to design and test new catalysts, which are substances that speed chemical reactions and are crucial for producing energy, chemicals and industrial products. By using the new method, the chemists also made a discovery that will make it easier to design future catalysts. The discovery: the sizes and electronic properties of catalysts interact to affect how well a catalyst performs, and are not independent factors as was thought previously. Chemistry Professor Matt Sigman and doctoral student Kaid Harper, report their findings in the Friday, Sept. 30, 2011, issue of the journal Science.

“It opens our eyes to how to design new catalysts that we wouldn’t necessarily think about designing, for a broad range of reactions,” Sigman says. “We’re pretty excited.” _Physorg

This is another example of a discovery that could potentially set off a chain reaction of new discoveries and revolutionary products.

Some people intuitively understand the deeper nature of such discoveries, and the infinitely larger potential of such developments to revolutionise entire fields and societies. Others, failed by modern dumbed-down educational systems, may need to think about the idea for a while.

A great deal of attention is given to the concept of "higher order effects (PDF)," but too little attention is given to "higher order causes."

The modern mass production methods of education do not generally help students to learn how to think. Ideologically driven educators assume that if the student is indoctrinated in the proper ideology, she will then naturally think in the "correct" manner. And so indoctrination replaces education, and graduates and future leaders become lifelong incompetents, because they never learned to think.

This is not just about logic and resolving contradictions. It is also about generative thinking, lateral thinking, problem solving, and growing beyond ideology. A society whose graduates can think rationally and generatively is less likely to fall into a quagmire of malaise such as currently entraps much of the advanced world.

Generative thinkers do not merely solve problems as they arise. They also solve problems that lead to other problems -- before they arise. They do this by thinking more deeply, and further out of the ideological box.

Let's be clear: Although ideology can make a person's life easier and his choices more automatic, an honest person who is bound tightly by ideology cannot truly think -- the cognitive dissonance becomes too great. Thus the heated and perpetually unresolved arguments one sees in religion, politics, and on environmental issues.

It is always a pleasure to confront an ideological opponent, and to mutually penetrate beneath the level of ideology to a generative level and mode of thinking. The productive output of such sessions can be much greater than any number of brainstorming sessions occurring within a circle of "self-anointed truth-bearers."

Generations of children are being short-changed and mind-stunted by inappropriate educational methods. This stunting and starving of brains occurs from kindergarten through university, and beyond. Those who have been paying attention understand that this is not happening by accident, just as the "energy starvation agenda" of modern governments is not happening by accident.

If a society is marinated in ideological thinking -- as virtually all human societies have been -- change can be very slow in coming. Since the converging problems of debt and demographic decline in the west are occurring at a rate which will probably not allow the needed changes to occur at high enough levels, it is up to persons at more local levels to instigate necessary changes to the best of their ability.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that a magical singularity will miraculously solve the human world's problems. Singularities help those who help themselves. Humans will have to make this transition from ideological thinking to generative thinking.

What proportion of humans will need to move beyond conventional thinking? Al Fin futurologists estimate that at least 10% and perhaps as many as 20% of humans within a society will have to forsake ideology and learn to think for themselves. The odds of finding such an innovation-rich environment by accident are very poor.

The Brief, Exhilarating Eroticism of Youth

"With girls, Nature has had in view what is called in a dramatic sense a 'striking effect', for she endows them for a few years with a richness of beauty and a fullness of charm at the expense of the rest of their lives; so that they may during these years ensnare the fantasy of a man to such a degree as to make him rush into taking the honourable care of them, in some kind of form, for a lifetime – a step which would not seem sufficiently justified if he only considered the matter." _Schopenhauer, "On Women"

Girls of JakartaThe beauty and eroticism of youth is powerfully striking. It can be of great use to the young woman who knows what to do with it, and a great curse to the young woman who does not. In the field of prostitution, youthful beauty is a highly profitable asset. But in that often rough and tumble world that frequently is mixed with drug abuse and every bad health habit known to man, youthful beauty fades even more quickly than in girls living more conventional lives.

Catherine Hakim, a research fellow at the London School of Economics, has published a book entitled "Honey Money: The Power of Erotic Capital." The book discusses the erotic power that women are capable of wielding, and bemoans the lack of awareness of this power on the part of too many young women.

According to Hakim, there’s a ''beauty premium’’ in the workplace – she cites a US survey that found good-looking lawyers earn between 10 and 12 per cent more than dowdier colleagues. Hakim also claims the ''beauty premium’’ makes it more likely that an attractive person will land a job in the first place, and then be promoted. And, says Hakim, erotic capital isn’t limited to the boardroom – ''marriages where the wife is more attractive are happier than those where the husband is the more attractive’’. _Telegraph

Lori Gottlieb and the Collapse of the American Empire

The message we send kids with all the choices we give them is that they are entitled to a perfect life—that, as Dan Kindlon, the psychologist from Harvard, puts it, “if they ever feel a twinge of non-euphoria, there should be another option.” Mogel puts it even more bluntly: what parents are creating with all this choice are anxious and entitled kids whom she describes as “handicapped royalty.” _Lori Gottlieb

Pity meek and mild Lori Gottlieb, an intern in family counseling who has made some interesting observations in the course of her work. Gottlieb discussed her observations in a recent piece in the Atlantic. The piece has raised a firestorm of online debate, snark, and condemnation, almost entirely undeserved. The fault in Gottlieb's piece lies not in what she says, but in what she leaves out -- what these disturbing findings imply for the future of the American empire.

...Here I was, seeing the flesh-and-blood results of the kind of parenting that my peers and I were trying to practice with our own kids, precisely so that they wouldn’t end up on a therapist’s couch one day. We were running ourselves ragged in a herculean effort to do right by our kids—yet what seemed like grown-up versions of them were sitting in our offices, saying they felt empty, confused, and anxious. Back in graduate school, the clinical focus had always been on how the lack of parental attunement affects the child. It never occurred to any of us to ask, what if the parents are too attuned? What happens to those kids?

...Dan Kindlon, a child psychologist and lecturer at Harvard, warns against what he calls our “discomfort with discomfort” in his book Too Much of a Good Thing: Raising Children of Character in an Indulgent Age. If kids can’t experience painful feelings, Kindlon told me when I called him not long ago, they won’t develop “psychological immunity.”

“It’s like the way our body’s immune system develops,” he explained. “You have to be exposed to pathogens, or your body won’t know how to respond to an attack. Kids also need exposure to discomfort, failure, and struggle...

...Wendy Mogel is a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles who, after the publication of her book The Blessing of a Skinned Knee a decade ago, became an adviser to schools all over the country. When I talked to her this spring, she said that over the past few years, college deans have reported receiving growing numbers of incoming freshmen they’ve dubbed “teacups” because they’re so fragile that they break down anytime things don’t go their way. “Well-intentioned parents have been metabolizing their anxiety for them their entire childhoods,” Mogel said of these kids, “so they don’t know how to deal with it when they grow up.”

...A few months ago, I called up Jean Twenge, a co-author of The Narcissism Epidemic and professor of psychology at San Diego State University, who has written extensively about narcissism and self-esteem. She told me she wasn’t surprised that some of my patients reported having very happy childhoods but felt dissatisfied and lost as adults. When ego-boosting parents exclaim “Great job!” not just the first time a young child puts on his shoes but every single morning he does this, the child learns to feel that everything he does is special. Likewise, if the kid participates in activities where he gets stickers for “good tries,” he never gets negative feedback on his performance.

...This same teacher—who asked not to be identified, for fear of losing her job—says she sees many parents who think they’re setting limits, when actually, they’re just being wishy-washy. “A kid will say, ‘Can we get ice cream on the way home?’ And the parent will say, ‘No, it’s not our day. Ice-cream day is Friday.’ Then the child will push and negotiate, and the parent, who probably thinks negotiating is ‘honoring her child’s opinion,’ will say, ‘Fine, we’ll get ice cream today, but don’t ask me tomorrow, because the answer is no!’” The teacher laughed. “Every year, parents come to me and say, ‘Why won’t my child listen to me? Why won’t she take no for an answer?’ And I say, ‘Your child won’t take no for an answer, because the answer is never no!’”

... _theAtlantic

And so on... An interesting glimpse into the modern state of child-raising in the US from someone on the front lines of family therapy.

If Americans truly are raising generations of fragile, entitled children, who is going to do the hard work that needs to be done? As long as the US economy was doing well, America could import its hard workers and many of its hard thinkers, so as to keep the wheels of commerce and invention moving along. But with the rapid emergence of crisis levels of debt and demography, the US economy may not be able to import so much of its needed human capital -- to compensate for the disastrous failures of its parents and educational system.

Children need to learn practical competence in a wide range of skills. They need to learn to focus on a difficult task, and learn to work hard at it until it is done. Children must not be age-segregated in prison schools for so many of their formative years, kept away from any responsibility or opportunity to explore the real world.

The Roman Empire collapsed over a few centuries for many of the reasons the American empire is threatened: debt, demography, social problems that were swept under the rug, entitled and abusive ruling classes, etc.

American parents have only one or two children, on average, and far too many of them are being raised as "trophy children," pampered perpetually childish pets rather than skilled, competent, and responsible proto-adults. This failure to reproduce -- and failure to competently raise the meagre progeny which they do produce -- is what truly threatens the collapse of the American Experiment (not actually an empire in the Roman sense at all).

Gottlieb was actually rather tentative and modest in her conclusions -- not taking them as far as she perhaps should have. Yet she was widely castigated by the "pampering nannies" of modern academia, journalism, and the blogosphere. The dysfunction can probably not be reversed before catastrophe ensues, at least not in the many strongholds of the destructive philosophy.

It is up to parents who wish to raise competent and functional children to structure an environment around the child which facilitates the acquisition of skills and an ongoing successful adaptation to adult world responsibilities.

Previously published at Al Fin, The Next Level

College: The Five Year Party

If college is a rite of passage, what is a five-year party of binge drinking, fornication, and indoctrination into dysfunctional philosophy and lifestyle a rite of passage into? If modern employers are forced to give remedial training and education to college graduates, what was that five-year party all about?

In high-priced private colleges, students may become indebted by as much as $200,000 or more. If they graduate with a bachelor's degree in queer ethnic women's studies, literature, or social sciences, they may never pay back their college debt. In government-subsidised colleges, low tuition fees allow students more latitude in their leisure activities, without worrying so much about later debt to themselves. They can begin cultivating better tastes in liquor at an earlier age, in other words.

...artificially low fees attract some students to higher education who simply aren't suited to the academic rigors of a university. Ultimately, the presence of these lower-achieving students hurts those who are more academically inclined, as they end up in watered-down courses in which professors have to focus on bringing the low achievers along. _LATimes

Only students with IQs of 115 or higher should be studying for a rigorous 4 year degree. In the US, that might include 30% of Asian students, 25% of Europeans, 15% of Hispanics, and 5% of African Americans, to be generous. Even many of the brighter students can be uninterested in learning, when presented with all the other opportunities available at a party college -- and these days, what college is not a party college?

...only 10 percent of students are really interested in academics. The rest are there for mostly social purposes.

The slackers take dumbed down courses in which grade inflation results in 90 percent of students getting As and Bs. Learning is optional, neither required nor expected. Even mental midgets who do no work are too big to fail. Nobody fails. That would make the professor look bad, and the school would risk losing a paying customer. _UnionLeader

Why not just relax, party, accumulate debt (either personal debt or societal debt), and simply go for broke with the devil taking the hindmost? Take advantage of your 5 year party to learn about life (?!?) at parental or societal expense, in preparation for a lifetime of unemployment?

I suppose someone will have to pay for it all eventually, but there will be plenty of time to worry about that.

Five Year Party Blog

H/T Instapundit

Knocking Out Puberty

Puberty seems to be arriving at earlier ages for both boys and girls. There are many reasons why puberty onset is earlier now, but most of these reasons are still unclear. The problems that arise from premature puberty include violence, higher risks of cancer and diabetes, increased behavioural problems (drugs, alcohol, delinquency etc), isolation from peer groups -- even a change in growth rates for the children of girls with premature onset of puberty.

ImageSource

...children who go into early puberty are prematurely sexualised and too immature to deal with the implications. They are more vulnerable to sexual abuse, inappropriate sexual behaviour, sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancy. “It means that children develop sexually much earlier,” Stanhope says. “They are physically ready for sexual reproduction but mentally completely unready.”

Studies have shown that adolescents who go through puberty earlier are involved in more risk-taking behaviour, such as taking drugs, binge drinking and breaking the law. A premature increase in testosterone can lead to aggression in boys who lack the maturity to control impulses. “We all realise that testosterone is a very difficult hormone to learn to live with,” Stanhope says, tapping a pencil vigorously on his pockmarked table, “and if you get a rise in testosterone outside the normal physiological age, then it’s even more of a problem.”

Research published this year in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology also found increased aggression in girls who reached puberty early. In Britain the uncomfortable reality that children are becoming sexually mature earlier has been overlooked in the recent debate about the over-sexualisation of children. Instead of simply focusing on cynical manufacturers producing padded bras for seven-year-olds, perhaps we should also consider how to respond to the new reality that some girls are now growing breasts at this age.

Stanhope also points out that for women there may be long-term health problems, because early puberty increases exposure to oestrogen. According to Cancer Research UK, a girl who has her first period a year later than her contemporaries has 5% less risk of developing breast cancer in later life. “There may be an important link with breast and ovarian cancer,” Stanhope says. “The earlier a girl has her period, the longer her exposure to oestrogen and this may well have very important sequelae for oestrogen-dependent tumours. This increases her risk of breast cancer, ovarian cancer and of developing cardiovascular problems.”

Girls who reach puberty early are also more likely to develop type 2 diabetes. A 37-year-long study of 61,000 Norwegian women showed that women who got their first period at ten or 11 had a 10% higher mortality rate than those who got their period four years later. _PubertyBlues

Scientists are beginning to home in on the physiological initiators of puberty, and have found a way to delay puberty in mice. By "knocking out" a specific gene, IGF-1R, researchers have both delayed puberty and maintained normal reproductive function after puberty in these knockout mice.

Pubertal onset, initiated by pulsatile gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), only occurs in a favorable, anabolic hormonal milieu. Anabolic factors that may signal nutritional status to the hypothalamus include the growth factors insulin and IGF-1. It is unclear which hypothalamic neuronal subpopulation these factors affect to ultimately regulate GnRH neuron function in puberty and reproduction. We examined the direct role of the GnRH neuron in growth factor regulation of reproduction using the Cre/lox system. Mice with the IR or IGF-1R deleted specifically in GnRH neurons were generated. Male and female mice with the IR deleted in GnRH neurons displayed normal pubertal timing and fertility, but male and female mice with the IGF-1R deleted in GnRH neurons experienced delayed pubertal development with normal fertility. With IGF-1 administration, puberty was advanced in control females, but not in females with the IGF-1R deleted in GnRH neurons, in control males, or in knockout males. These mice exhibited developmental differences in GnRH neuronal morphology but normal number and distribution of neurons. These studies define the role of IGF-1R signaling in the coordination of somatic development with reproductive maturation and provide insight into the mechanisms regulating pubertal timing in anabolic states. _JCI

Scientists will find additional triggers for pubertal onset besides insulin and IGF-1, and some of those factors may provide a more benign approach to the delaying of puberty.

Paradoxically, IGF-1 is vital for normal development of mice, but knocking out IGF-1 receptors in certain flies and worms can increase lifespan. That paradox is still being studied.

So -- how long should puberty be delayed, if at all? If childhood could be extended for several more years without impairing the ability of the child to learn and mature psychologically, would the potential health and societal benefits be worth the postponement of sexual development of the child?

What if aging itself were to be postponed along with puberty? If total lifespan were extended by the number of extra years a person spent in childhood, would that be beneficial to society or not? What if a person could live an extra 20, 30, or 50 years -- but had to spend those extra years as a pre-pubertal child. Would it be worth it?

Those who see increased longevity as a sure path to overpopulation collapse of Earth's ecosystem, would insist upon some form of sterilisation for those who opt for longevity. In some countries, laws of that type -- mandating permanent sterilisation for anyone undergoing longevity treatments -- should be expected.

Extended pre-puberty is a form of time-limited and (probably) reversible sterilisation, so any longevity approach that also delayed puberty significantly, should not raise the hackles of those suffering from overpopulation anxiety too much. But there are likely to be a large number of objections to such treatments, all the same.

Modern societies appear to see children in a schizoid manner. Fewer children are born, so the one or two children a family does have, are cherished and pampered. On the other hand, children are seen as a hindrance to a hedonic lifestyle, an exorbitant expense and often a great bother. Overall, most children do not seem to be raised or educated very well in modern societies, judging by observable results.

While childhood is not prolonged in modern societies, an incompetent adolescence is certainly prolonged -- in many cases indefinitely. Given the choice between a prolonged childhood leading into an accelerated but prepared-for adolescence, and the current state of lifelong incompetent adolescence commonly seen in the affluent world, most Al Fin mental health professionals would choose the prolonged childhood combined with a prepared-for adolescence that leads into a responsible and competent adulthood.

Gen Y: A Very Inflated Sense of Self, Totally Unprepared

Journal-Gazette
We are living in increasingly difficult times financially and geopolitically. Meeting the challenges of these times will require an internal toughness and resiliency which was present in past generations -- the depression and WWII generations for example -- but which seems to be increasingly absent with each new generation that comes along in our affluent societies.

An entire generation of young people is rising up which somehow believes it is entitled to having it all -- just by existing. Think of them as Cinderellas and Peter Pans, or psychological neotenates if you will. They never learned work ethic, work skills, practical competencies, or how to move past inevitable failure to success. They are "Generation Y."

Those who were born into "Generation Y" have an over-inflated sense of entitlement lack the work ethic to achieve their goals.
They also hate being criticised, it is claimed.

Researchers believe that the problem stems from being constantly told from birth they are special and as a result now believe it - and will ignore anybody who says otherwise.

But far from making them happy their approach to life leads to higher levels of depression and "chronic diasppointment" as unjustified levels of self-esteem masks the ugly reality.

Academics have concluded the values drummed into their grandparents, such as a strong work ethic and self-sacrifice, have been lost in the relentless quest for self-fulfilment.

"Generation Y" or Gen-Yers refers to those born between the 1980s and 90s who are now in their 20s or approaching their 30s.

They are also known as the "Millennium generation" or the "Boomerang generation" because they keep moving back home with their parents in young adulthood due to financial or commitment issues.

They are marked by dependence on technology, delaying of adulthood, a casual approach to life and placing a higher value on self-fulfilment than previous generations. _Telegraph_via_ImpactLab

As economic times grow more difficult, those hoping to succeed in work and careers will need to be tough enough to bounce back from rejection and criticism. They will need to have insight into their own inadequacies which will require correction and self-improvement. They will have to understand how to constantly learn and grow, when they do not "measure up" to external standards and requirements. Otherwise, widespread failure, disillusion, and misery are the result.

"They do seem to have a chip on their shoulder," said Karen Obringer, internships coordinator and counselor for IPFW Career Services. "We've seen a lot of students not coming to events that could help them, and that's not good, because in this market, you have to be aggressive."

...A report from the Economic Policy Institute on the class of 2010 says it faces the worst job market since the end of World War II. The institute is a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C., that researches economic issues.

Authors of the study say it will take "years for the labor market to recover from the damage induced by the recent recession."

In short, institute researchers believe graduates are entering the employment market at a particularly bad time, although poor job prospects are not their fault.

..."There are those out there that feel it wasn't this hard for my brother or sister, so why is it for me?" said Harvey, assistant professor of management at the University of New Hampshire.

"It is a bit depressing, certainly frustrating for them, and they're not used to" rejection.

Students today, Harvey said, might have been coddled by well-meaning parents and others "and now are facing economic reality." _Journal-Gazette

Children must be taught basic competencies, and basic exploratory and learning skills. They have to know how to learn from failure, and to want to constantly improve their abilities, skills, and knowledge. They must be challenged and given honest assessments of their performance. And critically, they must have legitimate rites of passage that signifies to them and to others that they have successfully completed basic phases of development and are ready to move on.

In affluent societies, children are sheltered from reality, kept separate from the adult world and responsibility -- and somehow they are expected to magically become adults when they receive a diploma and are thrust into the job market. But too many never became adults -- were never given the type of upbringing or education which would lead them into adulthood.

Now that the economy has taken a long term dip and the world ecology of aggressor nations and militant religions is once again heating up, a smarter, stronger, wiser, and more self-reliant population is called for.

Good luck with that.

Human Beings Evolving at Unprecedented Rate

A team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison anthropologist John Hawks estimated that positive selection just in the past 5,000 years alone -dating back to the Stone Age - has occurred at a rate roughly 100 times higher than any other period of human evolution.

...The human population has grown from a few million people 10,000 years ago to about 200 million people at A.D. 0, to 600 million people in the year 1700, to more than 6.5 billion today. Prior to these times, the population was so small for so long that positive selection occurred at a glacial pace, Hawks says...

The Wisconsin study is published in the Dec. 10 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences __DailyGalaxy

Many of the recent adaptations relate to disease resistance, such as resistance to malaria, smallpox, and other plagues. Other adaptations no doubt relate to resistance to heat or cold, ability to digest particular foods, body size and shape, muscle mass and speed, and other relatively uncontroversial adaptations.

More controversial would be adaptations that influence brain size, complexity, plasticity, and reaction times. Anything that gives genetic advantage in terms of problem solving and / or goal orientation, would give significant advantage to populations possessing those positive 2nd order adapatations.

The study of Ashkenazi Jews by Harpending and Cochran ATTN: PDF provides a view focused upon a single population of loosely related individuals who underwent rapid evolutionary changes over the past few thousand years.

One of the greatest intellectual curses of modern day humans is "groupthink", which includes "political correctness" and excessive deference to authority. Mass incompetence provides groupthink with its power over populations. Mass incompetence is fed by poor childraising, perverse educational practises, a self-destructive popular culture, and the mass indoctrination into the groupthink cult by media and higher academia.

As scientists learn more about evolutionary adaptation to human culture, it will be fascinating to locate genes that provide resistance to groupthink.

Kicking the Dead End Kids Out of the Cradle

Unemployment for young Americans is now over 52%! Bad government policies such as minimum wage and "living wage" are inflating an already bad employment problem.

...millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.

And worse, without a clear economic recovery plan aimed at creating entry-level jobs, the odds of many of these young adults -- aged 16 to 24, excluding students -- getting a job and moving out of their parents' houses are long. Young workers have been among the hardest hit during the current recession -- in which a total of 9.5 million jobs have been lost. _Post

Since Social Security relies upon a steady supply of FICA tax payments from young workers to keep the sinking old age pension afloat, it is not just the young unemployed who will be punished by foolish and corrupt government leaders.

What will you do with all the unemployed young people who should be learning good work practices, and building a nest egg for their future lives? How many will turn to gangs, drugs, crime, welfare, and other wastes of youthful potential?

The answer is to kick the dead end kids out of the cradle. Give them a challenge that provides a chance for a real payday at the end. Stop pampering and sheltering the young ones to death, and teach them the meaning of challenge and risk / benefit.

Western culture has drifted into a socialist quagmire of central planning and top-down regulation. Maximise security, minimise risk and individual initiative. In the end, you have a stagnant cesspool of wasted life potential. There is no future under the stifling universal controls of ubiquitous government. There is only the strangulation of hope and dreams.

Everyone needs to hold the image of a vibrant future in their minds -- but the young are in particular need of an expansive and exciting future. Government controls, restrictions, regulations, taxes, mandates, and creeping bureaucracy are drowning the hope for that exciting future under an ocean of debt, red tape, and prohibition.

Perhaps the singularity will save us? The Singularity Summit is being held in NYC on October 3,4, 2009. Or perhaps those who want to be free can join seasteads, and sail away into freedom on the open sea? The Seasteading Institute is holding their annual conference in San Francisco today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.

But to cure the modern malaise of the west, possibilities that are truly exciting and boundless are called for. Nothing is quite as boundless as the universe. That is the proper goal of anyone who wants a free future. For the masses of unemployed youth, consider space enterprise as a form of Outward Bound on steroids, where the participants could easily end up as millionaires or better at a very early age.

Space is risky, so some will die. But then they are already dying of gang violence, drunk driving, drug overdoses, and other forms of pointless risk taking, where the rewards are non-existent. Humans -- particularly young humans -- need some risk. But the risk needs to be accompanied by significant potential benefit.

Even before the current economic depression, we were raising crops of dead-end kids. We just didn't know it. Dead end education, child-raising, popular culture, all have led to dead end kids. Now that unemployment has mushroomed to historic proportions, we are starting to see what we have done. But those on top -- government officials and functionaries most responsible for the decay and rot -- they are not admitting a thing. They are too tied into corrupt lobbies that are getting wealthy from the murder of our children's futures.

We need to bypass these corrupt obstructionists, but it will not be easy. It is time for some creative ideas. But in order to think creatively to solve problems, it helps to understand the ultimate goal. Arriving at that understanding may take some time. Fortunately, new media has arrived to allow a bypass of mainstream (skank) media. Stay tuned.

Extreme Echo Chamber: Modern Politics and Economy

It sounds insane, and in a way it is. Public opinion, as manifested in economies and politics, is controlled by massively interlocking opinion feedbacks that can swing wildly from one extreme to the other. Witness how quickly one political party can go from dominance to subservience. Watch the economy as it rapidly swings from irrational exuberance to dark despair. What is it about humans that predisposes them to such irrational and chaotic mass shifts in behaviour?

In economics:

... the business cycle is tied to feedback loops involving speculative price movements and other economic activity — and to the talk that these movements incite. A downward movement in stock prices, for example, generates chatter and media response, and reminds people of longstanding pessimistic stories and theories. These stories, newly prominent in their minds, incline them toward gloomy intuitive assessments. As a result, the downward spiral can continue: declining prices cause the stories to spread, causing still more price declines and further reinforcement of the stories.

At some point, of course, the process must end, as when the market falls so low that it becomes enticing, or when new stories emerge. Similarly, an upward movement in stock prices generates its own upward feedback. _NYT_via_Simoleonsense

And in politics and law:

...hundreds of studies from around the world have shown the phenomenon of group polarization in action. For example, after a group discussion, people already supportive of a war become more supportive, people with an initial tendency towards racism become more racist and a group with a slight preference for one job candidate will come out with a much stronger preference.

Naturally this shift towards the extreme has all sorts of implications for government, religion, commerce and the justice system. In fact one of the neatest pieces of real-world group polarization research examines the US legal system. Main and Walker (1973) analysed the decisions of Federal district court judges sitting either alone or in groups of three to see if group discussions were a factor.

In the 1,500 cases where judges sat alone they took an extreme course of action only 30% of the time. However when sitting in a group of 3 this figure more than doubled to 65%. _Psyblog_via_Simoleonsense

It is the rare individual who possesses the moral courage to go against group extremism, and the dominant feedback meme. The classic obedience studies by Milgram illustrated the strong tendency to "go along to get along" that dominates most human group behaviour.

While conventional thinkers worry about giving humans the moral courage to resist an unjust authority, more penetrating thinkers understand the stronger unconscious tyranny of group-think and group-speak.

Once an individual understands the innate nature of human group extremism, it becomes easier to observe this irrationality in action: both in themselves and in others.

Propagandists in the media and in public relations understand this phenomenon all too well. The media echo chamber is becoming something of a trite joke. And it might even be humorous, if not for the tight relationship currently between the media and an increasingly irrational ruling power structure.

When children are raised and educated in such a way that they never grow up, never mature into individuals, never accept responsibility -- the resulting "adults" are said to be psychological neotenates. Perpetual adolescent incompetents, always looking outward to the group for a cue as to how to behave. See them in action in the media, on the courts, in legislatures and voting booths, in the markets . . .

A Brain Changes Over Time: Make Yours Count

Anyone who has studied the behaviour of children, adolescents, and adults understands that -- beyond basic aptitude -- brains function differently at different ages and levels of experience. Now neuroscientists at WUSM in St. Louis have the beginning of an explanation for the differences -- adult brain centers learn to communicate quickly across greater distances.

The results have revealed that most of the connections in children's brains are formed between regions of the cortex that are physically close to each other. Conversely, in adults' brain, most such paths are created between distant brain regions, which are not functionally linked to each other. The scientists have also determined that kids have a very reduced number of long-distance brain connections, as opposed to adults, where this form of interaction is the standard. _Softpedia

The explanation sounds simple, but the reality is far more complex. The brain is plastic throughout life, but particularly during early childhood and adolescence. The mechanism for brain plasticity is defined genetically, and influenced by the brains environment in the womb and in infancy. The specifics of micro-plasticity of particular brain regions are strongly influenced by environment in childhood and adolescence. If a child learns a second language, is trained in music, or studies martial arts, for example, the brain organises itself differently.

Throughout childhood, myelination of brain pathways occurs from back to front -- from occipital to pre-frontal. The famous "developmental windows" of a child's brain correspond roughly to periods of regional myelination. A person's pre-frontal myelination may not be completed until the age of 25 or 30, suggesting that that person's brain is not fully functional (lacking in judgment and perspective) prior to that age. But in order to acquire the ability to communicate "by long distance", brain centers need more than well-myelinated neural connections.

They need to learn the neural language of synchronous oscillations, in order for enough complementary brain centers to be able to interact simultaneously to create rich and textured perceptions and conceptualisations. Closer brain centers tend to communicate via beta wave synchrony. Farther centers tend to use gamma wave synchrony. The significance of these distinctions is still being worked out.

Younger brains can certainly be as "intelligent" as older brains, in terms of IQ scores. But it is unlikely for a young brain to be able to achieve the complexity or efficiency of thought and action that an older brain can display, to say nothing of wisdom and perspective. Part of the difference may well be due to lack of experience / knowledge. Part may well be due to differences in myelination and underlying micro-connectivity.

Here is the huge problem we are facing as a society: modern educational and child-rearing methods are permanently handicapping the brains of our young, by missing critical "developmental windows". Large chunks of entire generations have been lost so far due to our societal dysfunction in this regard. And there are no signs that society is waking up -- quite the opposite in fact. A societal wide shortage of competence is likely to be the result.

As baby boomers start retiring, critical skills shortages will grow more acute. Besides being fewer in number, subsequent generations have been damaged more thoroughly by the wave of social engineering that hit university schools of education in the late 60s and early 70s. This damage to young minds is not slowing down, but is growing worse. Under the Obama / Pelosi reich -- which is most beholden to teachers' unions and more radical academics -- the brain killing machine will only grow larger and stronger.

In order to create a core of competent individuals and communities that will be able to best take advantage of the coming breakthroughs in genetics, neuroscience, and psycho-philosophy, it is important that large numbers of parents opt out of government education and other brain-stunting influences of popular and mainstream culture. As an atheist, I choose to be neither pro-religion nor anti-religion in the coming cultural schisms. There are larger things at stake.

Biohacking In Every High School Curriculum

Biohacking is growing in popularity among amateur bio-hobbyists, but government overseers of biological threats are concerned. The government is worried about dangerous organisms being created in basements, garages, and walk-in closets in ordinary neighborhoods -- perhaps your own. But should the same government efficiency that makes air travel such a pleasure, has totally eliminated drug and human smuggling across the border, and is currently destroying the private sector of the economy be applied to the close oversight of every closet, garage, and basement in America?

These hobbyists represent a growing strain of geekdom known as biohacking, in which do-it-yourselfers tinker with the building blocks of life in the comfort of their own homes. Some of them buy DNA online, then fiddle with it in hopes of curing diseases or finding new biofuels.

But are biohackers a threat to national security? ... biohackers argue that Mother Nature is more likely than any home hobbyist to create dangerous new pathogens. They cite the current A/H1N1 "swine flu" virus, which is a made-in-the-wild brew of human, bird and pig influenzas. Mackenzie Cowell, a founder of DIY Bio, says members aim to do good and are committed to working safely.

The movement has made big strides recently thanks to the commercial availability of synthetic DNA. This genetic material, normally found inside the nucleus of cells, can now easily be purchased online. That provides any amateur with the ingredients for constructing an organism....So far, most garage biologists playing around with synthetic DNA are simply adding a gene or two to an existing organism, a fairly standard scientific practice involving some test-tube mixing, and not something biosecurity experts are very worried about. But technology promises to allow the creation of entire organisms from scratch -- something academics are aiming to do in university labs -- and that has some experts worried. _WSJ

The government's instinct is to shut everything down that it conceives as the least threat. Far more rational, would be to train students from the earliest age in the science and safety of bio-research of all types.

The best answer to any kind of serious threat is an educated and informed public that has learned the competencies to respond effectively. Currently, government schools produce helpless incompetent sheep that must be protected and cared for at every turn. The pampering and coddling continues at every stage, so that instead of an informed and effective citizenry, the end result is a horde of confused, milling zombies capable of electing a government of smoothly deceptive clowns in hopes of being well taken care of.

Sorry, zombies, it doesn't work that way. Once the clowns are elected, they are obligated to do favours for their big money supporters. Trial lawyers, labour unions, billionaire bankers and speculators, eco-extremists.... And so it goes until it can't go any longer.

Al Fin is going on record in support of the training of children and youth to be truly competent across a wide range of skills -- some of them quite deadly. Make them smart, strong, and formidable. The ongoing experiment of turning children into lifelong pets isn't working out very well.

Future Focus: Importance of Long Term Goals

"If we are feeling fresh, it's easy to focus on our goals and exert self-control. But when we've already tested the limits of our self-control, it's harder to keep going," the authors explain. "This is when focusing on the big picture helps us to keep our eyes on the goal and push ourselves harder. In contrast, focusing on the immediate situation only emphasizes how we've already maximized the extent of our willpower and hinders self-control." _PO

Childhood is regarded as a time for play, when a focus on immediate gratification is expected. As children approach adolescence, when more adult emotions and gratifications come into focus, children need to learn self-restraint. Adolescents must act without the developed "executive function" of an adult brain. Mature adults are expected to be able to act responsibly and transcend most of the more destructive of the urges for immediate gratification. But increasingly, more and more "adults" lack the ability to postpone or deny themselves pleasures that can hurt them in the long-term.

Human brains incorporate the potential for a wide range of behaviours, involving all time scales of planning and all levels of self-restraint. It is the pre-frontal cortex that provides humans with the ability to envision many possible futures, and to carry out complex intertwined sequences of actions that can create the most desirable future.

Executive functions are the high-level cognitive processes that facilitate new ways of behaving, and optimise one's approach to unfamiliar circumstances.....But we particularly engage such processes when, for instance, we make a plan for the future, or voluntarily switch from one activity to another, or resist temptation; in other words, whenever we do many of the things that allow us to lead independent, purposeful lives. These processes are thought to be supported, at least in part, by structures within the frontal lobes of the brain. _ScienceDirect_via_DericBounds

Several conditions (besides childhood and adolescence) can interfere with a person's ability to utilise the "future focus" of his pre-frontal brain to avoid self-destructive behaviours. Damage to the brain's frontal lobe, surgical pre-frontal lobotomy, or just a drink or two of ethanol -- all of these are well known to interfere with normal executive function and self-control. But simple fatigue, discomfort, or lack of sleep can also interfere with future focus. In addition, lack of good role models in childhood, poor childhood upraising, and a childhood educational and social environment that emphasised immediate gratification over future goals, all lead to societies such as ours, where ever larger numbers of persons, over time, lack basic future orientation and self discipline.

The obesity epidemic is but one symptom of the society-wide deficiencies of functional executive processes. The increasing tendency of voters to choose candidates on the basis of security over freedom is another example of a society rife with adults whose frontal lobes never grew up.

The cure for the problem has to be administered at an early age -- between the ages of 4 and 7 -- to be considered effective. Much of a person's character comes with his genes, but the effect and expression of genes is strongly influenced by environment -- particularly early environment. If parents, teachers, and society in general miss that window of opportunity, too bad for the future.

Their future will tend to be full of obese adults who spend beyond their means, choose childlessness in order to have more time for personal pleasures, and vote for corrupt politicians who promise them ever more security, at the expense of vestigial freedoms and independence. Such a society is easily overrun by more primitive cultures with stronger future orientation.