The Wisdom of Human Ritual; Don't Leave Home Without It

The ritualistic inclination is built into our species, as you can learn from the profound but simple experiment described below.

Imagine you are a five-year-old being led into a small office. A woman with a warm smile shows you an assortment of strange objects. Some of them are shiny. You feel like playing with them. That’s OK, that’s allowed. Soon the friendly lady takes the objects away and says she wants to show you a video. On the screen is another woman. She has an identical set of objects lined up neatly in a row and she’s doing odd things with them — she lifts one and taps it on another, then puts it back and takes something else, twirling it in a peculiar fashion before replacing it. This goes on for some time. Then the strange objects are pushed back towards you and the lady says: ‘It’s your turn.’ What would you do?

If you were a five-year-old, you would imitate at least some of the actions you observed in the video. No instruction would be necessary. And yet, the behaviour doesn’t appear to achieve anything. The psychologist Cristine Legare and I have been working together for several years trying to understand why young test subjects bother to copy it. Our starting point is that they treat it as a convention of some kind. That is to say, they adopt what we call ‘the ritual stance’, imitating without questioning the purpose of the actions.

In our experiment, however, the behaviour of the woman in the video is ambiguous. Children can't be sure it if is oriented to a goal or not. A surprisingly simple shift helps them to decide: we just alter the last move in the sequence. If the woman puts the last object into a box, it looks like the whole procedure was just a ‘funny’ way of putting an object away. We call this the ‘instrumental condition’. On the other hand, if the objects all end up back where they were originally placed, the whole action sequence appears not to have any tangible purpose. We call this the ‘ritual condition’. When the start and end states are identical, children are more confident that the demonstration on the video should be interpreted as a kind of ritual. And guess what? They copy it much more faithfully, and are less inclined to try out variations on their own initiative. _Harvey Whitehouse

Ritual Mosaic Humans value ritual from their earliest years. The need for human ritual only grows with the years. It seems to have always been that way.

Whether we consider the aborigines of Australia, the Native Americans, the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, or our own European ancestors, we find a world-wide preoccupation with ritual action that cuts across all races, religions, and cultures. We could even say that human culture is primarily a culture of ritual. _Culture of Ritual

Yet in our modern scientific world, the human need for ritual is typically denied and scoffed at, as an unnecessary residual of a more superstitious age.

But only a little thought and reflection should tell us that the further from religious belief and culture that we travel, the more necessary our grounding and passage of time rituals become.

Each culture, society, community, and family will have its own rituals based upon a unique history. Depending upon the ritual one is observing, one is either connecting with his family, community, society, culture, nation, or all mankind.

Rituals were once an unthinking part of daily life for every human living within a society or culture. In the modern scientific age, however, rituals must be consciously employed for their underlying purposes, or they become neglected and forgotten. The loss of grounding that occurs with the withering away of ritual is tragic -- for all that it is rarely noticed.

In The Dangerous Child Method of Education and Child-Raising, ritual is given a prominent role -- particularly in the toddler years, and in the years prior to puberty. Puberty itself is a passage, and deserves its own rite. And so on, through the years of passages that constitute human existence.

Daily rituals should also be utilised, from the earliest years. Here is a brief look at some "mindfulness rituals," meant to ground and vitalise one's daily existence.

1. Sit in the morning. When you wake up, in the quiet of the morning, perhaps as your coffee is brewing, get a small cushion and sit on the floor... I’ll ... just sit, and focus on my breathing going in and out. I’m an absolute beginner when it comes to meditation, but this always starts my day right.
2. Brush your teeth... Try fully concentrating on the action of brushing, on each stroke of each tooth, going from one side of the mouth to the other. You end up doing a better job, and it helps you realize how much we do on autopilot.
3. Eat mindfully. Turn off the TV, put away the computer and mobile devices, even put away the book or newspaper... unless you do this, you are not truly appreciating your food. I like eating... mindfully, paying attention to each bite. It makes the food taste better, and I eat slowly and with gratefulness.
4. Wash your bowl. When you’re done eating, wash your dish immediately. Do it while paying full attention to your washing, to the water and suds.
5. Drink tea... Make your own tea ceremony — prepare the tea carefully and mindfully, pour it slowly, sip it with thoughtfulness. See if you can set aside one time each day to do this, and it will transform your day.
6. Walk slowly. I like to take breaks from work, and go outside for a little walk. Walk slowly, each step a practice in awareness. Pay attention to your breathing, to everything around you, to the sounds and light and texture of objects.
7. Read in silence... Have no television or computers on nearby, and just immerse yourself in the world of the novel. It might seem contradictory to let your mind move from the present into the time of the novel, but it’s a great practice in focus...
8. Look at someone gratefully. Each day, find someone you care about. Instead of just seeing what you always see, really look at the person. Try not to do it creepily. See this person for the miracle that she is, and be grateful for her existence. If you’re feeling generous, tell that person how thankful you are for her.
9. Work with focus. Start your workday by choosing one task that will make a big difference in your work, and clearing everything else away. Just do that one task, and don’t switch to other tasks. _Leo Baubata

These particular "rituals" are based upon the practise of "mindfulness," which is usually associated with zen. But in Dangerous Child training, we incorporate mindfulness rituals without any particular trappings, other than those which might be particularly salient to the child.

There is something trance-like in the observation of many rituals. But rituals can just as easily liberate one from a default state -- a "spinning of the wheels" trance which the brain can easily fall into. Mindfulness rituals in particular tend to help break us out of the many unthinking default trances into which our minds can easily sink.

If meaningful rituals are incorporated into our daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly lives, we are more likely to have a subtextual "soundtrack", mapping system, or system of life indexing, which helps us to better understand where we have been and where we may be going.

Most of us are somewhat familiar with religious ritualism. But many forms of pagan ritual preceded all forms of organised religious ritual as far back in time as we can go. And it is interesting to observe the return of much of this pagan ritual across various parts of modern societies.

As humans try to make sense of an increasingly secular existence, it is crucial for us to understand the importance of our underlying need for ritual -- both on a daily basis, and to mark critical events and transitions in our lives.

To make the most sense of this need, we must go back and understand how rituals naturally came about, and how these native rituals were modified and adapted to meet the needs of different cultures, civilisations, religions, and societies.

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.

Life: An Ongoing Journey from Passage to Passage

Today...rites of passage are almost extinct. Boys [or girls] lack clear markers on their journey to becoming a man [or woman]. If you ask them when the transition occurs, you will get a variety of answers: “”When you get a car,” “When you graduate from college,” “When you get a real job,” “When you lose your virginity,” “When you get married, “When you have a kid,” and so on. The problem with many of these traditional rites of passage is that they have been put off further and further in a young man’s life. 50 years ago the average age an American man started a family was 22. Today, men [and women] .... are getting married and having kids later in life. With these traditional rites of passage increasingly being delayed, many men [and women] are left feeling stuck between [childhood] and [adulthood]. College? Fewer men are graduating. And many that do “boomerang” back home again, spending another few years figuring out what the next step in their life should be. As traditional rites of passage have become fuzzier, young men are plagued with a sense of being adrift. _ArtofManliness

Today's western young person is poorly prepared for the constant "testing" nature of reality. Sheltered and pampered from the adult world of responsibility throughout childhood and adolescence, modern children too often become lifelong adolescents of incompetence and indecision. Young Peter Pans and Cinderellas, forever looking and waiting for that ideal world to which they feel entitled.

The diagram above looks at "life events" and how a person might react to them. Things happen to people throughout life. How a person reacts to these "things" determines the path of the person's life. The same set of curves could also describe the repetitious "rites of passages" which mark a person's life as he either fails or succeeds in negotiating each transition. It is best to teach children to recognise these "tests of transition" very early in life, and how to successfully pass them.

Books have been written describing this dearth of modern rites of passage. Commercial enterprises have sprung up for youth and adults, in an attempt to fill the gap.

Science fiction fans will immediately understand the concept from reading books such as Alexei Panshin's "Rite of Passage" and many of the books by Robert Heinlein.

What Is a Rite of Passage

Sociologists have identified three phases that constitute a proper rite of passage: separation, transition, and re-incorporation.

Separation: During this phase an initiate is separated in some way from his former life. In the case of the Mandan tribe, the young man was isolated from the village in a hut for three days. In other tribes, boys’ heads were shaved and they were ritually bathed and/or tattooed. In a more modern example, when a man has just enlisted in the military, he is sent away to boot camp. His former possessions are put aside, his head is shaved, and he is given a uniform to wear. During the separation phase, part of the old self is extinguished as the initiate prepares to create a new identity.

Transition: During this phase, the initiate is between worlds-no longer part of his old life but not yet fully inducted into his new one. He is taught the knowledge needed to become a full-fledged member of that group. And he is called upon to pass tests that show he is ready for the leap. In tribal societies, the elders would impart to the initiate what it meant to be a man and how the boy was to conduct himself once he had become one. The initiate would then participate in ritual ceremonies which often involved pain and endurance. In the case of the new soldier, he is yelled at, prodded, exercised, and disciplined to prepare him to receive a rank and title.

Re-incorporation. In this phase, the initiate, having passed the tests necessary and proving himself worthy, is re-introduced into his community, which recognizes and honors his new status within the group. For tribal societies, this meant a village-wide feast and celebration. The boy would now be recognized by all tribe members as a man and allowed to participate in the activities and responsibilities that status conferred. For the soldier, his boot camp experience would come to an end and both his superiors and his family would join in a ceremony to recognize his new status as a full-fledged member of the military. _ArtofManliness

Military service still serves as a distinctive and frequently successful rite of passage for some young people. Membership in the military definitely incorporates the three phases -- separation, transition, and re-incorporation -- listed above. But those classical phases of rites of passage are most distinct and recognisable for the transition from childhood to adulthood.

Other, less obvious transitions may passs through the phases so quickly or subtly that they are not recognised for passage rites. Nevertheless, like a whitewater journey, each person's life is a succession of rapids, calm, waterfalls, etc occurring in all kinds of weather and at all levels of water flow.

The long transition from the incompetence of infancy to the competence of a skilled, well-rounded, and confident adulthood, should provide many opportunities for acquiring personal competence and for discovering one's own pace and direction of discovery and mastery over challenges. If a society -- such as ours -- is profoundly neglectful and negligent in providing for these successive rites and opportunities for competency acquisition, it will be rewarded with lifelong adolescents who lack both competency and confidence.

Although it may never be too late to have a happy childhood, it may be too late to learn competencies at your peak learning window. That is a pity, but only one of many, and not to be cried over. The lesson to be learned from it is to not repeat the same mistake for your students, children, or grandchildren.

If you are 30 or 40 years old and still trying to find your "vision quest" or "rite of passage", you have been ill treated by well-meaning parents and society. Do what you can to make up for it in yourself, but try not to perpetuate the crime on future generations.

Baby birds have to first crack their way out of their hard shells. Then they have to learn to leave the nest without killing themselves. They have to learn to fly, feed, survive. Then they must find mates, raise their young, migrate with the seasons, over and over again.

Modern humans of affluent societies wish to spare their young from all of those difficulties. That is the worst thing they could do. Modern college professors too often tell students what to think rather than preparing them to competently mind-wrestle all comers. Such indoctrination -- a hallmark of a modern university education -- is likewise the worst possible approach. And so it goes, as government takes the place of parents and schools, creating an artificial layer of regulation and "protection" around the citizen.

As new generations of incompetents work their way further into the control rooms of government and society, expect things to get harder for almost everyone. These are the times when you want maximum competence for yourself and those around you.

The Goal Is Competent Societies

Unconscious Incompetence
The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it.
Conscious Incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.
Conscious Competence
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.
Unconscious Competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes "second nature" and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned. _Wiki4Stages

The beginnings of competence are instilled in early childhood. Good parents work hard to instill competence (and thus confidence) in the growing child.

As we foster a sense of competence in the home, we build confident, capable, and independent thinkers. Wyatt will begin to understand the dangers of stairs under my watchful eye. He will be able to make better decisions as he learns with me rather than having to wait and learn these skills in front of his peers or other strangers. It is definitely more work to teach your children to master skills at home but it will promote their self-esteem and make them more emotionally successful and physically capable as they venture out into the big world. _FosteringChild'sCompetence

But good parenting skills are a vanishing commodity in the hurry-up modern world. Most parents tend to let the television or the babysitter or the teacher or the child's peer group or popular culture do the child-raising. This is a mistake.

The early childhood is a rare and irreplaceable opportunity to instill the core competencies of living in the rapidly developing brain. Executive functioning skills, basic social skills, the rudiments of problem solving and self-teaching.

And something very important: The Rite of Passage. Not just one rite of passage -- or rite of competence -- but multiple rites of competent display are needed at different stages of development. Such rites should be hard-wired into any competent approach to child-raising.

In homes where "chores" are done -- such as when growing up on a family farm, a working ranch, or within a family business -- such rites and competencies are simply part of daily life, and passed from one generation to the next.

It is true that some types of competence are genetic and heritable. But it is also important that whatever seeds of competence exist, should be nurtured.

The alternative is societies where important competencies are dying out. As western nations age, their competent craftsmen and engineers and skilled technical teachers are retiring and dying out.

As manufacturing is outsourced to China and South / Southeast Asia, manufacturing skills are likewise lost with no prospects for return.

An aging population in Europe, parts of North America, and Oceania will grow more and more dependent upon technical products and technical skills which are no longer locally made or locally taught.

Competence slips away every year, more and more.

Find the pockets of competence that are stubbornly resistant to obliteration, and try to attach yourself to them. Contribute your own competence and learn from the competence of others.

Society at large is sinking in a quagmire of incompetence -- particularly at top levels of political, academic, and intellectual leadership. A thriving and prosperous civilisation encourages the cultivation and growth of independent competence at all ages and levels. A stagnant civilisation encourages a cradle-to-grave dependency, and a constriction of opportunities to excel, thrive, and profit on one's own merit and efforts.

A society that congeals into a monolithic institution is not a healthy or thriving society. What little sprouts of competence and independence that may show, are quickly stifled and discouraged. Most of the world is like that. America was once different.

Men Growing Less Mature, European Men Even Less

Recent personality testing of men and women (PDF) in various countries appear to indicate that men in developed countries are becoming less mature--as mature behaviour grows less to be expected and demanded by society. Among developed nations, the process of lowered male maturity appears to be further advanced in Europe than other advanced nations.

...it may be that cultures in which people have longer life spans and which are more affluent put fewer expectations for men to grow up quickly. These cultures can afford to indulge less mature behavior for a longer period of time because the onset of adult roles is delayed. In contrast, women have more complex life paths to negotiate. They typically think more seriously about multiple roles at earlier ages, for example. Thus, despite the cultural trends toward equality in occupational opportunities, women may still have higher expectations for assuming the responsibilities of adulthood at earlier ages than men regardless of culture.

....Dr. Schmitt also noted that, among men in the richer countries, American men are something of an outlier because they score higher in conscientiousness than men in most European countries even though per-capita income is higher in the United States. Still, the Americans don’t appear as conscientious as men in places like Botswana or Ethiopia.

Could it be that young men in rich countries are slower to mature and therefore relatively less conscientious than young men in traditional countries? Might European men be less mature than American men? _Tierney

There is a reason why many boys in affluent societies never truly become men. Because they don't have to. If they are never forced into self-discipline or responsibility, why should they make the effort? Military service is often a "rite of passage" separating boyhood from manhood, youthful fecklessness from more manly competence and responsibility. Employers are beginning to note the differences in ambition, maturity, and "stick to-it-iveness" between males who have passed through such a rite, and those who have not.

Psychological neoteny is not just a river in Egypt. Wait, er--never mind. Anyway, if you raise children in age-cohorts, separate from the adult world of responsibility, pamper them, let children essentially raise each other--you will reap a harvest of perpetually adolescent incompetent narcissists, as often as not. Which is why we see large numbers of such lost souls--unable to read, reason, communicate, or take responsibility for themselves.

Embracing the Incompetence of Perpetual Adolescence

If a society is to preserve its stability and a degree of continuity, it must know how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, attitudes, values, and fantasies on everyday life.
—Eric Hoffer

It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities and talents.
--Eric Hoffer

These quotes begin to reveal the complexity of maturing into adulthood. Youthful energy is always useful, whereas youthful petulance and naive impulsivity can make fools of persons of any age.

27 percent of adult children striking out on their own return home to live at least once; and that 46 percent of adult couples regard their parents’ houses as their “real” homes.7 Over in Italy, nearly one in three thirty-somethings never leave that “real” home in the first place.8 Neither have 25 percent of American men, ages eighteen to thirty.9 Maybe this helps explain why about one-third of the fifty-six million Americans sitting down to watch SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon each month in 2002 were between the ages of eighteen and forty-nine.10 (Nickelodeon’s core demographic group is between the ages of six and eleven.) These are grown-ups who haven’t left childhood. Then again, why should they? As movie producer and former Universal marketing executive Kathy Jones put it, “There isn’t any clear demarcation of what’s for parents and what’s for kids. We like the same music, we dress similarly.”11

...In considering what I like to call “the death of the grown-up,” it’s important to keep a fix on this fact: that for all but this most recent episode of human history, there were children and there were adults. Children in their teen years aspired to adulthood; significantly, they didn’t aspire to adolescence. Certainly, adults didn’t aspire to remain teenagers.

...The National Academy of Sciences has, in 2002, redefined adolescence as the period extending from the onset of puberty, around twelve, to age thirty.5 The MacArthur Foundation has gone farther still, funding a major research project that argues that the “transition to adulthood” doesn’t end until age thirty-four.6

Source

The Death of the Grownup by Diana West takes one look at the perpetual youth culture that has worked its will upon most western societies. Ms. West suggests that a society that attempts to focus upon youthful attitudes and proclivities to the exclusion of mature concerns, may be setting itself up for a hostile takeover. In this case, the hostiles would be Islamic supremacists.

The takeover would be demographic (differential birthrates) and by force of will--the barbarians who are willing to take the issue of control to an extreme that the "civilised but perpetual adolescents" cannot bring themselves to do.

Readers of Al Fin blog may recognise the much-mentioned issue of "psychological neoteny"--the perpetual incompetence of pampered adolescence--in my description of West's book.

Another book with overlapping concerns is The Case Against Adolescence by Robert Epstein. Epstein touches on another Al Fin concern with psychological neoteny--society's unwillingness to expose adolescents to the adult world of work and responsibility.

North American attitudes toward adolescence are certainly dysfunctional, and may even lead to increased vulnerability to outside threats. It is worthwhile to consider these concerns while there is time to address them.

The tenured incompetents who run much of academia and the media do not want ordinary people to concern themselves with these issues, since they consider the education of youth and the public to be their exclusive purview.

It is up to us, how long we allow them to believe that.

Robert A Heinlein Birth Centennial--A Bold Author in a Timid World

Robert A Heinlein was a prolific author who left a legacy in writing and endowment. For many readers here, Heinlein was too far before their time (born 7 July 1907, died 1988) to have been exposed to very much of what he wrote. For you, there is the book navigator pulldown menu, for brief synopses of most of his novels.

I had the privilege of hearing Heinlein speak shortly before he died. Although he had undergone surgery for occluded carotid arteries, and was nearly 80 years old, his mind was crystal clear and his voice was strong. It was fitting that Heinlein's mind was sharp at the end of his life, after a brief interlude of carotid vascular insufficiency. He was able to make the farewell tour and appreciate how much he was admired, respected, and loved.

Heinlein was one of the first authors I read, when I started reading science fiction. Along with Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Poul Anderson, Heinlein introduced me to the far imaginings and possibilities of speculative fiction--fictional worlds with no boundaries but science.

Heinlein was not afraid to face his critics, who were typically people who did not want to learn from another person's experience. When Heinlein stood before a large crowd during the Vietnam War era and declared "there will always be war," he was soundly booed, and branded a fascist by psychologically neotenous mind-children yet to experience real life. Naturally, Heinlein was able to take their measure and place their criticism where it belonged.

Heinlein was controversial and bold. He spoke his mind and stayed around to confront anyone who wanted to debate ideas reasonably, based upon logic, science and history. Most of his critics were not up to the task, but rather sniped at him from a safe distance. Unfortunately, it was these cowardly critics and their like who took over most of the universities and still control them today--still smothering campus atmosphere with lockstep PC oppressiveness.

My favourite RAH novels include Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Citizen of the Galaxy, and Tunnel In the Sky.

[Tunnel In the Sky] is the story of a High School graduating class's final examination. Course 410 is an elective senior seminar called Advanced Survival, and the students must successfully complete (i.e., survive) the final field exam to pass. Rod Walker and his classmates receive 24 hours notice to prepare themselves before being blindly transported to an unspecified planet, with unspecified climate and terrain -- and unknown hazards. At moments reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, this is a must read, really!

Tunnel In the Sky is similar to Alexei Panshin's "Rite of Passage." It is true that the "rite of passage" theme is used in science fiction frequently, which is one reason that I favour using science fiction as reading material for young teens--the scientific constraints of good science fiction teach logical thinking, and the frequent use of teenaged characters placed in trying circumstances allows SF to entertain teens as it educates.

Citizen of the Galaxy is another good example of Heinlein's use of the "rite of passage."

Citizen is an impassioned plea for life-long education. In many of Heinlein's books, a principal character is portrayed over time, beginning in relative ignorance, learning from experience, receiving the benefits of tutelage from an authoritative source, and then using those teachings to resolve subsequent problems. A formula, but one that works very well, repeatedly, in the hands of this master story teller.

Citizen portrays this young man's education in four stages: a disenfranchised child tutored by a man of wisdom, an adolescent in an artificial space-faring culture that may prefigure tomorrow, a young recruit in the Guard, and an unwilling adult but youthful player in economic, social, political, and legal machinations that clearly satirize 20th Century America's corporate civilization.

Heinlein's life is the antithesis of psychological neoteny. He took responsibility for himself and his ideas, and proceeded to find his forte` and pursue it without apology. He left his critics in the dust, forgotten. One of the lessons of his life is that anyone who chooses can do the same.

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.

Escaping the Labyrinth

Prior to the middle of the 19th century, contemporaries associated puberty with rising power and energy rather than with the onset of an awkward and vulnerable stage of life which would later become known as adolescence. Census classifications also underscored the importance attached to the age of 15 or 16, for after 1740 censuses generally distinguished those under 16, the "dependent" ages, from those between 16 and 60, the "productive" ages (p 17).

Joseph F Kett, Rites of Passage, Adolescence in America 1790 to the Present (1977 Basic Books)

Kett's important but neglected book lays out other systems of child-raising that did not produce the neotenous incompetencies for which our modern school systems are famous. I strongly recommend reading the book for its historical insights into alternatives to the present-day educational and child-raising disasters.

As you can see from John Gatto's Online Underground History of American Education, a prolonged confinement inside age-segregated classrooms is not particularly important in the cultivation of character, refinement, or achievement.

You had to do it yourself through courage, determination, honesty, and hard work. Don’t discount this as hot air; it marks a critical difference between Americans and everyone else. Teachers had a place in this process of self-creation, but it was an ambiguous one: anyone could teach, it was thought, just as anyone could self-teach. Secular schools, always a peripheral institution, were viewed with ambivalence, although teachers were granted some value—if only gratitude for giving mother a break.

JTGatto

In addition you can see from looking at the opinions of several Nobel Prize winners, forced confinement in classrooms can detract from accomplishment more than it contributes.

It took a large number of educated idiots to contrive our modern labyrinthine monstrosity of government forced "education." What the government has destroyed, no government will restore to effectiveness--notwithstanding "No Child Left Behind". The special vested interests that come together to form the educational establishment in North America are as ruthless as any mafia and as self-interested. Your children are a means to an end for these corrupted organisations, not an end in themselves.

Individual parents, enlightened educators, and the children themselves will have to take the lead in plotting an escape course from the downward path of modern mis-education into neotenous incompetence.

The effects of the system on minority children are particularly horrendous, resulting in mounting numbers of incarcerated and otherwise state-dependent minorities. More on that later.

Permanent Space Colonies: Humanity's Rite of Passage

Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill helped to kick-start the space colonies movement during the 1970's. Stewart Brand of the Coevolution Quarterly, was another driving force for the space colonies movement, and edited a book on space settlements that is available online. NASA also did several studies on space settlements, including the original 1975 design study that is available online in ebook form.

Several private grassroots organisations were founded during that magical time of citizen space enthusiasm. Some of the best known included the L5 Society, Permanent, Artemis, and TMP/LUF, discussed in a previous posting here at Al Fin.

NASA maintains an excellent site dealing with space settlements resources, organisations, and links, here. Wikipedia's Space Colonization site is a good complement to the NASA site, with fine links to resources.

Humans will still be in their childhood, until they learn to live off-planet. Sea-steads and under-sea communities will be important rites of passage for humans, but only permanent space colonies will truly mark the passage to adulthood of the species.

The natural human trait is to concentrate on the disaster du jour, or the local cause, fad, or fashion--and forget that dinosaurs were once the top pedestal species, like humans are now. But somewhere out there in the Oort Cloud, the Kuiper Belt, the Asteroid Belt, the Earth Crossing Asteroids, or even interstellar space--there is a large fast moving object with the Earth's name on it. When that hunk of matter hits this planet, that will be all she wrote, folks. Being natural is not going to help humans survive. Growing up is dangerous. Never growing up is a dead end.

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.