Dumbest Generation Also the Most Dishonest?

According to a nationwide survey of over 29,000 high school students, the current generation of late teens and early adults may add another superlative -- most dishonest -- to its previously awarded title of "dumbest." Shoplifting is very popular with this age group, as is lying and cheating.

Other findings from the survey:
# Cheating in school is rampant and getting worse. Sixty-four percent of students cheated on a test in the past year and 38 percent did so two or more times, up from 60 percent and 35 percent in a 2006 survey.
# Thirty-six percent said they used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment, up from 33 percent in 2004.
# Forty-two percent said they sometimes lie to save money — 49 percent of the boys and 36 percent of the girls.

Despite such responses, 93 percent of the students said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character, and 77 percent affirmed that "when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know."

..."What we need to learn from these survey results is that our moral infrastructure is unsound and in serious need of repair. This is not a time to lament and whine but to take thoughtful, positive actions." _Source

What we are likely to see, is a great deal of excuse-making instead. It is not surprising to see a rise in unethical behaviour among younger people, given the lack of any substantial ethical teaching from either the homes or the schools. Certainly the influence of religion has diminished significantly over the years, and can only continue to diminish with time.

We are living in a time between the ethical reign of religion, and the reign of anything credible enough ethically to take religion's place. Naturally, a huge gaping hole exists in children who have never learned ethics or morality. It does not happen by itself.

In the meantime, generations without ethics are likely to elect more "messiahs of the teleprompter" such as the narcissist-elect. Blank screens upon which dumb and ethically challenged young academically lobotomised humans can project their own poorly formed fantasies and dreams. This generation is also academically weak, shying away from difficult but vital professions such as engineering and math-intensive sciences--hoping for the "quick score" instead. Many of these impatient whiz kids no doubt found their way into the financial sector, and assisted in the downfall of financial markets recently.

Large numbers of this generation will find themselves dependent upon something or someone, to bail them out of problems they will continually find themselves causing. They will give lawyers a lot of business.

Whining as a Vocation and a Lifelong Avocation

Why do people in affluent countries whine so much? There seems to be a competition between developed nations and semi-developed nations such as Russia, to see whose population can whine the loudest. The epidemic of whining has been commented upon in the US:

"We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline," said the former Texas senator. "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession." __CNN

It is talked about in the UK:

Complaints and the people who make them are often seen as confirmation of the new miserabilism - a condition that led an outburst from Tom Harris MP asking why everyone is so bloody miserable in a world where in the UK at least, we have a lot to be grateful for. __Source

Chronic complaining is becoming an art form in Europe, Japan, South Korea, Canada. Where would the growing army of attorneys, "journalists", activists, "diversity" consultants, pseudo-environmentalists, doomers, and hobby-wankers be without this clamoring culture of complaint? You can understand why the vocational whiners whine. It's their job--they get paid for it! But why do so many people devote so much of their spare time and mental energy to dwelling on the "empty space" in their glass, completely ignoring the abundant liquid sustenance?

It is not that they lack a sense of purpose--not exactly. They have made whining their overriding purpose in life, rather than creating something productive, or solving real world problems. Why would anyone misdirect their precious and limited resource of time to self-fulfilling predictions of doom, harassment, and chronic complaint? Why cannot these avocational doom-wankers find a constructive purpose for their lives?

You have to go deeper, and ask why so many people in the affluent world are not actually "growing up." To understand the answer to that question, you need to understand childhood development better than most current schoolteachers, parents, and child psychologists understand childhood development. Is that possible, you ask? Actually, it is not even difficult. But it will require a lot of reading and objective observation of people--children, adolescents, and adults--in their natural environments. Learn to suspend judgment and try to see what is happening at all levels--social, brain development, psycho-emotional development, and on the level of executive funtion and practical skills.That is largely what this blog is all about. The next level cannot be formed out of the psychologically neotenous baby boomers. And for every generation since them that has been trained in a neotenous and academically lobotomous way, the way out of that morass is oh, so, hard.

Because that is the shortage we are facing: a shortage of well trained and educated humans with self-reliance and a sense of purpose. Not a shortage of energy, food, health care, money, or anything else the media drones on about. We have a shortage of people--particular kinds of people. We have enough whining clones to populate the entire solar system. What we need are purposeful, independent, innovative-to-the-need-at-hand, well trained, and emotionally mature people who are willing to work hard for what they want.

Hong Kong Super-star Tutor Millionaires

In Hong Kong, the best tutors get their photos on the trams, and can earn millions. Blogger Freeman Hunt looks at this very "un-American" trend, and can only say "wow!". She links this table in the Wall Street Journal that suggests that Hong Kong may have started a trend that is likely to spread.

Country Science Score Reading Score Math Score Argentina 391 374 381 Australia 527 513 520 Austria 511 490 505 Azerbaijan 382 353 476 Belgium 510 501 520 Brazil 390 393 370 Bulgaria 434 402 413 Canada 534 527 527 Chile 438 442 411 Taiwan 532 496 549 Colombia 388 385 370 Croatia 493 477 467 Czech Republic 513 483 510 Denmark 496 494 513 Estonia 531 501 515 Finland 563 547 548 France 495 488 496 Germany 516 495 504 Greece 473 460 459 Hong Kong 542 536 547 Hungary 504 482 491 Iceland 491 484 506 Indonesia 393 393 391 Ireland 508 517 501 Israel 454 439 442 Italy 475 469 462 Japan 531 498 523 Jordan 422 401 384 S. Korea 522 556 547 Kyrgyzstan 322 285 311 Latvia 490 479 486 Liechtenstein 522 510 525 Lithuania 488 470 486 Luxembourg 486 479 490 Macao-China 511 492 525 Mexico 410 410 406 Montenegro 412 392 399 Netherlands 525 507 531 New Zealand 530 521 522 Norway 487 484 490 Poland 498 508 495 Portugal 474 472 466 Qatar 349 312 318 Romania 418 396 415 Russian Federation 479 440 476 Serbia 436 401 435 Slovak Republic 488 466 492 Slovenia 519 494 504 Spain 488 461 480 Sweden 503 507 502 Switzerland 512 499 530 Thailand 421 417 417 Tunisia 386 380 365 Turkey 424 447 424 United Kingdom 515 495 495 United States 489 - 474 Uruguay 428 413 427

Source__via__WSJ
Imagine a society where the superstar millionaires are the ones who help students achieve their goals--instead of gangsta rappers and too-often-thuggish sports stars? What kind of society would reward the intelligent and productive people who have a positive impact on people's lives, instead of the psychological neotenates who are current pop stars and idols?

You may notice that Finland occupies the top spot in the WSJ table of achievement. Studying the top-level "national" performers should give us an idea where we have gone wrong. Notice also that Canada places third internationally, suggesting that US educational researchers can begin by studying their northern neighbor.

Educational unions in the US are a significant impediment to useful educational reform. The multicultural nature of the US population also makes it difficult to compare stats to smaller and more homogeneous populations. Finally, reforming the psychologically neotenous nature of US popular culture is virtually impossible. The best result to hope for is that a significant fraction of the US population will begin to see the importance of focusing more on things that matter.

Update 29March08: More here.

Oakland, Gaza, Paris, Kenya, Sao Paulo--Governments not Prepared for Gangs

On the streets of Oakland, California, young black men want what most young men want--respect, the attention of young females, to survive. But the environment of Oakland's streets is remarkably like a maximum security prison environment--without the bars.

...the meanest rise to the top. It's a survival skill that ensures ownership of drug corners, a sense of self-worth, female attention and protection from attack....

There are entire blocks without a single two-parent family, where drug dealers have become the predominant male role models, and children fend for themselves in crowded, chaotic homes where they are routinely exposed to drugs, sex and guns.

Criminal families are on their third and fourth generations. Grandparents - the ones who have historically stepped in to help raise fatherless boys and instill a sense of right and wrong - are dying off.

sfgate
The youth gang violence in Gaza is different. In Gaza, children are taught to hate from the cradle. Bedtime stories from grandparents and parents focus on ethnic and religious hatred. The children are programmed into violence from within two parent, deeply religious households. They are confirmed into hatred and violence by schoolteachers and religious authorities. Youth gangs, but on a "mission from god."

Hamas, Al Aqsa Brigade, and various jihadi organisations are the well armed, well-organised result of lifelong religious gang preparation--and the doom of Gaza.The youth violence in Paris is a combination of the social dysfunctionality of the Oakland streets with the religious and ethnic intolerance of Gaza. The worst of the middle east meets the worst of the dissolute west.

In Sao Paulo (and Rio), huge slums breed endemic gang violence. Gangs possess hand grenades, automatic weapons.

...In at least 100 separate attacks on Friday, Saturday and [Monday], groups of criminals brandishing hand grenades and automatic weapons swept across the metropolis, gunning down members of the security forces as they worked. At least two bystanders died in the crossfire.

Simultaneous rebellions broke out in 51 of the state’s prisons, where more than 240 prison guards were being held hostage yesterday.

source

In Kenya and other African countries, gang violence grows more prominent--leading to significant areas of loss of state control.

The fighting has emptied out an entire slum in central Nairobi, and on Thursday, women fleeing with mattresses on their backs slogged through the streets, while men with hammers knocked down the metal shanties that used to be their homes, selling their very walls for scrap.

The bloodshed began with a bootlegging dispute, but it has been fueled by ethnic rivalry. The epicenter is Mathare, a cluster of slums with approximately 500,000 people, crammed between downtown Nairobi and an affluent neighborhood where many ambassadors live.

source

These isolated reports are the tip of the iceberg. The actual malignant social dysfunction has become endemic to these disparate neighborhoods from divergent cultures, distant continents.

Demographic "youth bulges", where human young are rapidly produced into an adult culture unprepared or unwilling to raise them in less violent, more productive ways, tend to produce youth violence, youth gangs.

In the affluent western world, where birthrates are typically low, most of the youth violence is occurring in immigrant communities, or within minority communties where traditional authority has broken down, for a variety of reasons. In the Islamic world, youth violence is seen as Islam's best weapon against the dominant western infidels. Youth violence is encouraged by large numbers of Islamic clerics and wealthy muslim donors. In the non-muslim third world, youth violence is a natural outgrowth of rapid procreation leading to huge slums of impoverished humans, immersed in learned helplessness. Gang violence appears the only means of self-assertion to many, the lone alternative to giving up.


A social analysis of patterns of gang violence suggests that immigrants, transplants from rural to urban environments, and other "fish out of water" situations are largely responsible for youth violence. That is quite true--the loss of cultural and traditional authorities and guides leave the stage clear for drug dealers and violent criminals to serve as authorities and leaders.

In the early days of New York City, gang violence was the work of immigrants from Ireland or Italy. Now the violent immigrants may be from Santo Domingo, Vietnam, or Lagos.

It is easy to look at the perpetrators of most violence, and match them with population average IQs accumulated by various IQ researchers. Certainly the correlation between IQ and crime is significantly inverse. But it is important to keep in mind the history of gang crime that suggests that social factors are just as relevant as IQ. Executive Function is also no doubt involved in personal decisions about whether to engage in violence and crime.

Russia appears to be something of an outlier, where violence is instigated (or tolerated) by the government to create an atmosphere where ordinary people are terrified to stand out and express themselves. Russia, once a great world power, has become a "hunker-down" society.

Clearly the governments of the world are largely unprepared for the undertow of youth violence that appears to be barely kept under the media radar. For now the media is happy to be entranced by Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Global Warming, and other insignificant headliners. Genuine newsworthy phenomena must wait in the wings until they become too large to ignore.

Hat tip Clayton Cramer

Big Babies--Psychological Neoteny Grows More Common, Just As Al Fin Has Predicted

Psychological Neoteny is the retention of immature characteristics of behaviour--shirking from responsibility and seeking to escape the real world--in adults. It has nothing to do with adolescents, nor with the well-documented delayed neurological maturation of various brain centers until the late teens and early to middle twenties. It is an adult phenomenon, and here are some statistics documenting its growth?

it’s actually middle-aged adults — the parents — whose behavior has worsened.

Our most reliable measures show Americans ages 35 to 54 are suffering ballooning crises:

•

18,249 deaths from overdoses of illicit drugs in 2004, up 550 percent per capita since 1975, according to data from the National Center for Health Statistics.

•

46,925 fatal accidents and suicides in 2004, leaving today’s middle-agers 30 percent more at risk for such deaths than people aged 15 to 19, according to the national center.

•

More than four million arrests in 2005, including one million for violent crimes, 500,000 for drugs and 650,000 for drinking-related offenses, according to the F.B.I. All told, this represented a 200 percent leap per capita in major index felonies since 1975.

•

630,000 middle-agers in prison in 2005, up 600 percent since 1977, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

•

21 million binge drinkers (those downing five or more drinks on one occasion in the previous month), double the number among teenagers and college students combined, according to the government’s National Household Survey on Drug Use and Health.

•

370,000 people treated in hospital emergency rooms for abusing illegal drugs in 2005, with overdose rates for heroin, cocaine, pharmaceuticals and drugs mixed with alcohol far higher than among teenagers.

•

More than half of all new H.I.V./AIDS diagnoses in 2005 were given to middle-aged Americans, up from less than one-third a decade ago, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

NYTimes



What is interesting about this article is not the extreme obtuseness demonstrated by the NY TImes writers [ed: the oped article is written by Mike Males, sociologist and author of a 1996 book defending a previous generation of teens from the accusation that they are stupid, crazy, reckless . . . which are charges that we at Al Fin do not repeat] in their commentary. It is that although the statistics are presented in a typically deceptive manner, it is still possible to see that more adults are behaving badly--precisely as Al Fin's theory of psychological neoteny suggests they will do.

The brains of teenagers are not fully developed. It is quite a good thing, too, because what that means is that the teenager can learn more things more quickly than the adult whose brain is more "set." Of course, teens also lack experience and judgment which might help them make better decisions. Forget about all that.

What is being stated by both Al Fin and the NY Times article, is that large numbers of adults are passing the age of brain maturation without actually learning responsible or wise behaviour. And unlike the adolescent, who has a chance to remake his own brain, and learn wisdom, the psychologically neotenous adult has used up the larger part of his chances to mature.

No, all is not lost. The adult brain still has the ability to generate new neurons, glial cells, etc. With discipline and practise, the adult brain can grow new pathways, learn, myelinate, and mature even more. But the difference in potential to achieve further maturity between most teens and the adult psychological neotenate, is an order of magnitude. The teen has all the advantage.

The lesson to be learned from all this, is that child-rearing and educational methods need to be changed promptly--before more generations of psychological neotenates are thrown out into the world unprepared. The world does not need more criminals, drug addicts, adult escapists from reality and responsibility. If Al Fin must repeat himself to get the point across to persons who are sometimes slow to learn, that is what he must do.
;-)

Prefrontal Cortex Needs Time--Maturation to Cognitive Richness

Younger brains lack the prefrontal function for good judgment and rich memory. If the prefrontal cortex is damaged in infancy or later in life, sensitivity to future consequences and social/moral behaviour is compromised. Drinking alcohol in adolescence leads to smaller prefrontal cortex.

A recent MIT study demonstrates that a mature pre-frontal cortex facilitates richer memories.

In the August 5 advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience, the MIT team reports that children rival adults in forming basic memories, but adults do better at remembering the rich, contextual details of that information. The MIT study provides new insights into how children learn that are not only theoretically important, but could also inform practical learning in everyday settings.

The ability to remember factual information - who, what, where, when - emerges gradually during childhood, and plays a critical role in education. The brain systems underlying it have been extensively studied in adults, but until now little was known about how they mature during child development.

The MIT study indicates that a more developed prefrontal cortex (PFC) - an area of the brain long associated with higher-order thinking, planning, and reasoning -- may be responsible for creating richer memories in adults.

“Activation in the PFC follows an upward slope with age in contextual memories. The older the subjects, the more powerful the activation in that area,” explains senior author John Gabrieli of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

“That makes sense, because there's been a convergence of evidence that the PFC develops later than other brain regions, both functionally and structurally.... But this is the first study that asks how this area matures and contributes to learning.”

For the study, Noa Ofen, a postdoctoral associate in Gabrieli's lab, forewarned 49 healthy volunteers ranging in age from eight to 24 that they would be tested on their recognition of 250 common scenes, such as a kitchen, shown to them as they lay in a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. She recorded their brain responses as the volunteers tried to commit each picture to memory. Shortly after the volunteers left the scanner, she showed them twice as many scenes. Had they seen each one before, and if so, how vividly did they recall the scene"

Ofen then went back to the brain activation patterns. In both children and adults, several areas in the PFC and the medial temporal lobe (MTL) showed higher activation at the time when subjects studied a scene they would later remember. No age-related differences showed up in the activation patterns of the MTL regions in children and adults, but differences did appear in the PFC when looking at pictures that were later correctly recognized.

Those age-related differences related to the quality of the volunteers' memories.

Source

The poor judgment exhibited in adolescence and early adulthood is generally accompanied by immature prefrontal cortex. The inability to anticipate future consequences of current actions is a hallmark of youth. Poor planning, poor judgment, and other limitations in function associated with poor functioning of PFC are stereotypical characteristics of most high school and college aged youth.

The MIT finding that rich contextual memories are also functions of maturity help to further round out the picture of mental maturation.

In the arab world, PFC-immature youth are prone to joining jihadi movements. In the western worlds, most radical political movements center around universities, and recruit their most devoted adherents in university. These are all different versions of youth gangs. If not for youth, militaries would have far fewer members.

High testosterone levels of young males combined with slow maturation of their PFCs makes for a lot of excitement. No doubt that is one reason why young females are drawn to young males--for this unpredictable excitement.

The problem that I see with current western child-raising methods, is that the PFCs of youth may never truly mature, when held in a the neotenous environment of educational institutions, segregated from the responsibilities of the adult world, confined with only their PFC-immature peers during these formative years. No meaningful rites of passage. Thanks to the ideological straightjackets of most universities, these neotenised youth are isolated from a diversity of ideas and viewpoints. This makes them academically lobotomised.

Being raised in smaller families often with only one sibling--or no siblings at all--leads to narcissism, an unwarranted, unearned feeling of entitlement and specialness.

Narcissism, psychological neoteny, and academic lobotomy. The magic modern trio of decadent child-raising. Leading to an opposite society from the next level. We need to do something about this.

"Then What the Hell Good Are You, Anyway?"

If you hear the words in the title, the next thing that happens to you may not be pleasant. Most people have the absurd idea that other persons should be "good for something." For example, a woman expects her man to either provide well financially, or be very, very good at other things she values almost as much. A man expects his woman to be sexually available, to keep an attractive appearance and a clean living environment. If the expectations are not met, then "what the hell good are you, anyway?"

A boss expects the worker to provide value to the business at least as great as the salary and benefits package provided by the job, hopefully more. A parent expects the college student to return good grades in exchange for support. Those people sitting down below expect you up on the stage to put on a good show. A driver in the oncoming lane expects you to stay in your own damned lane. If not, "what the hell good are you?"

Social expectations prop up the greater part of the world in which we live. While we want to believe we are valued by others for our inner selves--our "intrinsic" value as people--deep down we know that is not true. True, there are political and religious ideologies that dwell on the intrinsic value of each living person, but in reality people who claim to believe that are the worst form of hypocrite. Give them that excuse they are waiting for to hold you in contempt, and they will happily do so.

"What have you done for me lately?" If the answer is nothing, or worse than nothing, the relationship is in danger of coming to a bad end. People expect you to "hold up your end." What is "your end?" It depends. But you should probably figure that out before your end starts to droop. In personal relationships, things are not spelled out as clearly as in a business or legal contract. The terms of the contract are implied, but still very close to ironclad. Get the picture clear in your mind, in detail. Otherwise, unhappy surprises await you.

Usually the sole exception to the rule is "home." Home is the place where when you go there they have to take you in, said Robert Frost. Something about home can make a hard person soft. The contractual calculus of home is somehow different.

So if you really want to be valued for your "intrinsic worth" in a relationship, you need to make it home. If your boyfriend doesn't see you as "home", you need to understand what he expects from the "contract", or you may be in default, in his mind. But if your hard-hearted boss sees you as "home" somehow, she will do everything she can before firing you, no matter how incompetent you may be. But that's not likely to be the case. More likely, you're on a hair-trigger in most of your relationships. Learn to size up the territory, and tread carefully.

Normally, there would be no need to spell things out so bluntly, but society has taken a very narcissistic, psychologically neotenous direction. Such a society, like a fallen Rome, is ripe for the plucking by more reality driven populations. It either wakes in time to save itself, or it goes the way of most complacent cultures that have rotted from within.

Narcissistic, Psychologically Neotenous, Academically Lobotomised

Most modern college students in North America have been sheltered from challenge and responsibility their entire lives. Compared to the upbringing of most children through history, modern college aged youth are pampered, and assured of their own specialness.

Today's college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

"We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back," said the study's lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. "Kids are self-centered enough already."

Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop Tuesday in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students' NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.

..."Unfortunately, narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others," he said.

The study asserts that narcissists "are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors."

Twenge, the author of "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled - and More Miserable Than Ever Before," said narcissists tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others.

Source.

Modern child-rearing in North America lacks meaningful challenges, and rites of passage--to provide a clear demarcation between self-centered childhood and a more competent and responsible adulthood.

In Science Fiction author Alexei Panshin's novel "Rite of Passage", 14 year olds underwent "The Challenge", a necessary rite of transition which some of them did not survive. Of course this idea was drawn from many earth examples of aboriginal and other cultures that require the child to undergo a rite of passage that sometimes results in the child's death.

For boys, the ritual often involved surviving in the wilderness--perhaps hunting a dangerous animal such as a lion. For girls, rites surrounding the onset of menses were common. Certainly giving birth for the first time was a sufficiently life threatening and altering experience to qualify as a rite of passage for girls.

Going to college for many years, and perhaps graduate school for many more, can often be a way to simply avoid one rite of passage--a full time job leading to economic self-sufficiency. If a youth considers himself too "special" to undertake most forms of work, the rite may be postponed indefinitely. For a young woman, school and long preparation for a career can postpone the childbirth rite so late in her life, that the biological clock eventually obviates the issue permanently.

Psychologically neotenous youth are typically narcissistic as well. If they also open themselves to indoctrination at a typical university or college, they have scored the magic hat trick--narcissism, psychological neoteny, and academic lobotomy. When that occurs, there is little reason to expect adult behaviour or responsible attitudes and participation in the society at large.

There are, however, some areas of North American society where the rite of passage occurs in all its historical potency. That would be in much of the military, fire departments, EMS, rescue units, and better trained and disciplined law enforcement personnel.

The idea of a rite of passage is a powerful one, as old as humanity. You can see how easily it is perverted in the muslim culture, where violent murder by martyrdom is too often celebrated as a rite of passage--although a rather grotesque and pointless one in my opinion.

But rites of passage need not be so perverse. An enlightened society has to understand that lifelong pampering and protection from challenge and responsibility is no way to raise productive adults who willingly contribute to their communities in all facets of living. Until North Americans understand the problem they have created for themselves, the ride will be bumpy and more than a little precarious.

Character

Character was formerly taught as part of religious training, when most families were religious. The embracing of secularism has meant a release from some ancient myths and superstitions, but it has also meant the neglect of training in character strengths that allow for maturity and competence. Without moral virtues, society is doomed--no matter how intelligent, well educated, or technologically advanced it may be.

For individuals or societies to be successful, they need to function competently in their environment. The "Wealth of Nations" depends on national IQ, human capital, cultural strengths, and the scope of government. If the government skims all their profit through exorbitant taxation, or over-regulates production, the talented producers will refuse to work--will even emigrate away.

Character is a basic part of human competence. But it isn't taught in government school. Government educated students whose parents don't take the time to instill strength of character in their children, will become part of the growing horde of neotenous incompetents in the west.

More than ten per cent of western adults are addicted to a lifestyle drug such as alcohol, nicotine, amphetamine, cocaine, or prescribed drugs. That figure is destined to skyrocket, as the current crop of government educated graduates and dropouts reaches the age of putative maturity. Mature people, competent people, wise people of character, do not need to stay stoned or high to face the world. A society full of immature adults hiding from reality is destined to fall.

Given that the replacement civilisation waiting in the wings is political islamism, it appears that the age-old scenario of decadence being overcome by barbarism is just a matter of time, once again. Of course, I have other ideas. Stay tuned.

This Isn't Working Out Part II

Modern societies have structured the lives of children, protecting them from the adult world, so that they will remain helpless and incompetent for as long a time as possible. Grammar school and high school are structured for preparing students for more schooling, rather than for preparing students for participating in the adult world. Youth naturally crave relevance and a sense of competence, but the adult world holds them back, "for their own good."

A "Youth Liberation Movement" has emerged over the past two decades, which demands modifications to the voting age, drinking age, and curfews--among other things. But it is easy to see why such a movement is futile. By the time youth become aware of being victimised by "adultism", they are only a few years away from being adults themselves. It is as if women who become deeply engaged in feminism suddenly became men themselves, or blacks involved in a black power movement suddenly became white.

Children and adolescents will never be able to free themselves from the neotenous society that is thrust upon them. They will try in their own fashion, but their forebrains do not mature until they are in their twenties. By then they are expected by employers and financial institutions to act like adults, even though society has prevented them from developing the skills and maturity they need.

In the absence of interaction with the adult world, youth will develop their own culture. But is "youth culture" really youth culture? Actually it is a corporate guided culture masquerading as youth culture. Clever marketers go to significant lengths to encourage a youthful impulsivity to "grow up without taking responsibility." To exercise the passions, independent action, and economic power of adulthood, without actually becoming adults.

The resulting society suffers from a lack of responsible adults, and a shortage of trained and trainable workers at all levels, resulting in the absolute need to import workers and outsource work overseas. Are you unhappy about illegal immigration? Employers will hire anyone who will do the job--often the alternative is going out of business. Penalize the businesses all you want, but going out of business is a bigger penalty, and results in less economic activity in your part of the world.

Anyone who complains about illegal immigration, but ignores the neotenous method of bringing up children in modern societies, is just blowing it out the tailpipes. The same is true about those who complain about juvenile drug use, crime, pregnancies, or other problems in the underage population. Neotenous child-rearing creates a bumper harvest of problems. It is a "lethal meme" for societies, but its lethal effects veil the underlying problem, and few people understand until too late.

Children need to learn competence early. A child should start learning how to support himself, and how to deal with the technology of modern existence, by the early teen years. By the normal age of high school graduation, a child should have at least one competence by which he can support himself by at least twice minimum wage. By college age, most youth should have multiple skills that are valued in the adult world.

Modern neotenous schooling methods are killing society. Children are not "pets" to be kept stunted for the amusement of their parents. Having twenty-five and thirty year-old children still living at home is not very amusing, but it is happening more and more often. This society of incompetents cannot survive for long, if confronted by a more primitive but more vital (rapidly procreating) society. Rome crumbled before the primitive tribes, after it had decayed from within.

Death by school. Death by neoteny. The epitaph of the modern world.

Part I.

Delayed Maturation: The Neotenous Society III

The human life cycle has been divided into stages by many theorists, including Freud, Erikson, Horney, Piaget, Lidz, etc. It is expected that a child must successfully meet the challenges of one stage, before it is properly prepared to meet the next stage's challenges. In other words, a child must grow up successively, in stages, to become a mature adult. This suggests the presence of many "rites of passage", often subconscious to both child and observer, throughout the maturational process. If a child misses a successful transition at a certain stage,it will have problems characteristic of that deficit.

One of the most difficult transitions is during the period of adolescence. In some cultures, girls are often married by fourteen or fifteen years old to cousins or wealthy strangers, sometimes much earlier. In other cultures, girls may be sold to a brothel at age thirteen or fourteen, to help support the family. Boys may be expected to join a religious militia or terror organisation by that time, or have been expected to blow themselves up in an act of religious martyrdom/homicide.

All of those adolescence scenarios could be considered "rites of passage." For North American youth, such situations would be rare unless the families in question belonged to particular religious sects, or unassimilated subcultures, and the arrangements were hidden from the authorities.

The typical North American adolescence involves mandatory government school education, with the atypical social pressures of adolescence magnified a hundred fold by the confinement of several hours a day with hundreds or thousands of other barely-in-control transitioning adolescents. What can one learn from the socialisation process in such a school?

Most adolescents in North America have not developed any meaningful skills or talents to set them apart. A few will be athletic standouts, some will be musically gifted, some will be good at math or science, some will be remarkably attractive and have slightly advanced social skills. But most will be scrambling for an identity and looking for a subculture to melt into. Often the most inclusive subculture is the "slacker" subculture--the subculture whose members avoid work and responsibility, taking such avoidance to the level of an art form. Petty crimes and academic ethical violations are not uncommon.

Most government high schools do not teach useful skills. They generally portray themselves as preparation for higher education, even though most students fall into the combined categories of "did not graduate" or "did not continue education past high school." This drops the students into a "no man's land" of dubious employers, often competing with illegal aliens who actually do have useful skills, and a stronger work ethic.

For a large percentage of inner city african american , hispanic students, and other minorities, the subculture with the strongest appeal is the identity culture--multicultural separatism--which is encouraged by official curriculum of government schooling, and by many universities. Separate styes of talking, walking, dressing, separate music and entertainment--sometimes completely separate languages--it is easy to avoid the mainstream, and the cultural intelligence that many mainstream employers demand.

Many colleges and universities offer special orientation weeks or weekends for minority students, and other separate events--to emphasize separateness, and to encourage the preservation of the separation from mainstream culture. Further curriculum continues to emphasize separation into tribes and cultures, celebrating the differentness rather than the things that bind people together and allow cooperation.

When it encourages tribalism, the modern multicultural curriculum frequently works against the maturation of the individual, and toward a resentful sense of victimisation. Combining hundreds of thousands and millions of resentful individuals with a sense of victimisation, leads to a society with a tendency to disintegrate. Resentful students are less likely to find meaningful careers, and less likely to put all of their effort into work for employers who they distrust and dislike. If the person never grows beyond this school/society-instilled resentment, they will never mature or reach their potential.

This type of designed obsolescence--or designed failure of maturation--leads inevitably to increased social and economic stratification. Eventually, North American societies may approach the unhealthy stratification that is seen in most latin american and third world societies, if the current regime of "education" is allowed to continue very much longer.

Ben Franklin suggested that there may be long term difficulties in keeping a representative constitutional republic functioning. He, along with Jefferson and other founders of the radical US form of government, might be surprised to learn that the general structure of the revolutionary republic has been maintained for so long--with many of its features copied by successful countries as far away as Europe and Asia.

But none of the early americans or canadians were faced with the neotenous effects of prolonged mandatory, dysfunctional government education. It is unlikely that any form of government that requires its citizens to take responsibility for their own actions, can survive this type of neotenous social engineering for very long. Children are not responsible for their actions, and it is children--adult children--that are being unleashed upon society. Illegitimacy rates up to 70% illustrate plainly the neoteny of many graduates of subcultural educational designs.

Here is an interesting history of multicultural theory and practise, for the truly interested. Multiculturalist tribalism is only one of the many neotenous forces acting upon modern North American society. More will be addressed in time.

Addendum: Here is a commentary by my cousin Abu, on Fjordman's piece above.

Delayed Maturation: The Neotenous Society Part II

By staying in school as long as possible, one can delay the day of reckoning, the dreaded day of taking responsibility and being accountable. Some courses of study can occupy a student's time until the age of thirty or later. What if the person finds that he dislikes that line of work, after the preparation is complete? I have known neurosurgeons who were well trained for the profession of neurosurgery, but who were deeply miserable in their work. The same is true for many dentists, attorneys, CPAs, engineers, computer scientists, and many other types of professionals, who for many reasons are compelled to continue on in their work despite their unhappiness.

Would you call such an unhappily compelled person mature? It is almost as if they had passed from the compulsion of schoolwork to the compulsion of an unhappy career, (and possibly an unhappy marriage), without reaching that point of balanced equanimity. Drugs and alcohol can blunt the awareness of one's predicament, but compulsions that are not confronted can remain subconscious and in control for a person's entire life.

We think of a mature person as someone who is accountable, who is responsible--someone who pays the bills and fills a substantial role in society. But if a person is merely going through the motions, without even momentary feelings of satisfaction or peace of mind, or sense of who one is, could that person actually be closer to being a slave than a mature individual? Is it possible the person is "stuck" at a lower level of existence than he should be? Could something have delayed the person's maturation, a badly timed trauma, or perhaps the absence of a necessary trigger of maturation?

Here is one way to look at career satisfaction that may shed a new light on the concept of maturity:

To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

....Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was not fun. Which is not surprising: work wasn't fun for most of them. Why did we have to memorize state capitals instead of playing dodgeball? For the same reason they had to watch over a bunch of kids instead of lying on a beach. You couldn't just do what you wanted.

.....By high school, the prospect of an actual job was on the horizon. Adults would sometimes come to speak to us about their work, or we would go to see them at work. It was always understood that they enjoyed what they did. In retrospect I think one may have: the private jet pilot. But I don't think the bank manager really did.

The main reason they all acted as if they enjoyed their work was presumably the upper-middle class convention that you're supposed to. It would not merely be bad for your career to say that you despised your job, but a social faux-pas.

....The most dangerous liars can be the kids' own parents. If you take a boring job to give your family a high standard of living, as so many people do, you risk infecting your kids with the idea that work is boring. [2] Maybe it would be better for kids in this one case if parents were not so unselfish. A parent who set an example of loving their work might help their kids more than an expensive house.

....Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do something.

.... If your work is not your favorite thing to do, you'll have terrible problems with procrastination. You'll have to force yourself to work, and when you resort to that the results are distinctly inferior.

To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's pretty cool.

Source.

The most successful people I have worked with, were also people who clearly loved their work. There was also, interestingly, something almost childlike about many of them. They had not encased their joy at life inside several layers of forced responsibility and compulsion. They all had to do things at times that they would rather not do, but underneath it all they knew they were living a life they loved. That type of joy has much less to do with the absolute level of income and wealth, and more to do with a person having found their preferred work.

Is it possible that society is so busy teaching children compulsion, that it neglects to teach them how to find what they love? Is it possible that a person never really matures--never really blooms into themselves--until they have found the work they love? Children need to learn how to find this love. Not just a love of work, but a love of work that is truly theirs. Who will teach it to them? It is not part of the curriculum. If they never learn to find their love, who will they blame for their lives going sour? What victims' groups will they join? What tort attorney's children will they help send to college?

I have seen happy plumbers and miserable plumbers. The same is true for virtually any occupation you might name. In opportunity societies such as the US and other anglospheric countries, a plumber can become a millionaire. A public schoolteacher can become a millionaire. I know examples of both. Retiring wealthy is a good thing. Better is working happy and retiring wealthy, or at least, comfortably. Best of all is loving your work so much that, although you could retire comfortably, working is just too much fun to stop.

You see that in many musicians, scientists, and other accomplished professionals who love what they do. But can everybody find that love? How can you tell, if children are not taught how to look for it while they are young enough, if it is left up to chance?

If society is made up mostly of people who are more compelled than mature, what would a society of mature people be like?

Neotenous Society I
Neotenous Society III

Delayed Maturation: The Neotenous Society Part I

Here is where the trend is taking us: as soon as parents take a newborn home from the hospital, they sign it up for infant-school. From the start, parents drop the infant off at school in the morning and pick it up in the evening, being careful to check its diapers. From birth on, school continues uninterrupted for the little tyke as it progresses through toddler stage, on into traditional K-12 schooling. The high school graduate progresses directly into university, achieving its undergraduate degree (of little value on its own), and progressing to graduate school.

Graduate school can never take too long, so it will be extended over several decades until retirement age. The late middle-aged student will now graduate from school, so as to go directly on retirement pension. Longer lifespans will carry the retiree on for two or three decades of well-pensioned retirement, before mandated euthanasia--to make way for newer generations.

Lifelong students, without any of the unwelcome requirement for employment or risk of running a business. There will be plenty of breaks and vacations to exotic places, as part of the extended curriculum. But no working will be allowed. Society cannot risk allowing these perpetual students cum retirees to shoulder any real responsibility, since nothing in their backgrounds will have prepared them for it.

Immigrants will do whatever work machines cannot do. Immigrants will drive the students to school through K12 and throughout graduate school, until retirement. Then immigrants will drive retirees between places of interest and their retirement homes. All police departments, fire departments, maintenance and custodial services etc. will be staffed by immigrants.

Whenever the immigrants decide to assimilate, they will step into the student/retiree matriculation as well. Students will form unions and agitate for shorter school weeks, and earlier retirement. That is to be expected, and society will do what is necessary to placate the students, since they will be the largest voting block within society.

All military service will be forbidden, since the military is seen as competition for the educational establishment. Any need for military action will be fulfilled by international troops unter international governmental control. Citizens of North America will not need to dirty their hands with that sort of thing. Likewise, religions will be forbidden, as "confusing and unnecessary intrusions into belief systems" that the education department should control.

All students will receive a stipend, which will help pay local and federal taxes to cover immigrant's salaries, as well as international government taxes. All goods and services will be available at the school store, free of charge to students. Students will live in school housing, provided free of charge. Bussing to and from classes is also free. The few married students will be housed separately, close to infant school.

All television, internet sites, magazines and newspapers, will be run by the Education Department, with content carefully selected so as to increase a student's self esteem and willingness to conform to the common good. All medical and dental services will be provided to students and retirees free of charge by immigrant doctors, nurses, dentists, hygienists and assistants.

I have glossed over how the economic system of this brave neotenous society will work. More on that later.

Neotenous Society II
Neotenous Society III