EdgarAlanPoser
New member
- Apr 5, 2008
- 21
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Today's youth have caught the eye of society only after such disasters as the Columbine school shootings, suicide, substance abuse, runaways, and slayings of parents. We have spoon-fed our youth and raised them with the notion that everyone can grow up and be whatever they want. They are unprepared to encounter obstacles set by age, race, gender, and class discrimination. These obstacles become barriers to them because they do not know how to function in an adult society. They are so overwhelmed with this discovery that they don't try to overcome the obstacles society has placed before them and many resort to deviant behavior.
Rites of passage are necessary to mark one's transition from one stage of life to the next. This leaves a map or chain of self development embedded in a person's conscious and is a key factor in behavior, self-confidence, and social skills.
Without proper rites of passage people become disoriented and left in a limbo-type of state. This is common with our adolescents. They are often told, "don't act like a child," yet they are not treated as adults.
Our cultural mainstream provides pseudo rites of passage, they are incomplete, unhealthy, and often dangerous. When a child gets older they are encouraged to play with different toys, entertainment may become less censored, they are given chores or responsibilities, and there are other changes. For example, graduating from high school and college, getting a driver's license, your first sexual experience, voting for the first time or even getting drunk. These experiences do not meet the transformational needs of young people. They are superficial and don't make a big enough impact to penetrate and change our psyche.
Pre-industrial societies knew the value of proper rituals and rites of passage. Girls were secluded and taught the art of womanhood by older females. Great grandmothers, aunts, mothers, and sisters would educate them about the path of life. If a girl showed promise with certain gifts, for example herbs, healing, or crafts, training in those areas would be intensified. Young men would often undergo years of martial training, a first hunt, a first kill, initiation into certain clubs or organizations of older men, scarification, the knocking out of teeth, or apprenticeship to a spiritual master.
Elaborate rituals have developed around the heroic deed. Many required skills for rituals, like hunting, are no longer vital in modern society. Risking one's life was inevitable during rituals in most traditional societies. That kind of ritual makes an impact on the psyche. This may affirm to the participant that they are somehow predestined to live. That could also explain the recent teenage craze for extreme sports. Extreme sport enthusiasts claim that the rush they get makes them feel alive.
America's youth culture has powerful elements of rites of passage. This includes separation from family, initiations, special hairdos, clothing, piercing, tattoos, music, religious experimentation, and conscious-altering drugs. Many immerse themselves into a particular subculture. Teenagers engage in these behaviors to fill in the missing pieces of their developmental education. This is the time when they see the ugliness of the world and begin to question things. Many parents agree by saying, "they are trying to find themselves."
Anthropologist Joseph Campbell said, "boys everywhere have a need for rituals marking passage to manhood. If society does not provide them they will inevitably invent their own."
The use of rites of passage to enter adulthood all have one central goal, respect. Whether it's seen in the form of a gun-wielding maniac or a person becoming a doctor to appease the expectations of parents and peers, they are demanding respect.
When you throw in neglectful parents, exhausted by long work hours to make ends meet, the parents themselves may turn to drugs and alcohol and children are left in adultless communities. Also, many low-class parents leash their children with the idea that they should never expect to accomplish more than the parent has. They are fed many discouraging lies like "college isn't for everyone," encouraged to drop out of school, work in low-wage unskilled labor, or join the military.
Many of these children join gangs because they work, if they didn't young people would create something else. When they encounter obstacles the gang path seems the best choice because it's the quickest shortcut to power and respect. Try walking into a room with all your best clothes and jewelry and lashing influential people with a silver tongue and you're taking your chances. Walk into that room with a raised gun and suddenly your clothes, looks, and social skills don't matter anymore, you suddenly have everyone's attention.
In deviant communities peer admiration has extremely high value. Gangs provide a mock family created to distance young people from parents, make bonds of friendship, fear, protection or enmity, ensure the supply of drugs, smuggle drugs, and make money. It is the quickest way for a street-smart person to strong-arm themselves. When you have access to influential contacts and shady individuals you have more power. Gangs have their own code of honor and use rituals like a gang-rape, gauntlets, or murder to initiate new members.
There are many ways that society could introduce positive rituals into the lives of young people. Grade schools should assess students in many areas and rate their strengths and weaknesses.
Based upon this information, a student could decide to take specialized courses in a particular subject and earn college credits or degrees while enrolled in high school. Outdoor activities and organizations like the boy scouts and girl scouts could also help develop an individual. These programs create diversity and set the individual apart, he or she would have a more established sense of purpose or direction.
Situations of families stricken by poverty, racism, broken homes, and unemployment leave our society in ruin. As the financial gap widens between the ruling class and lower classes, teen violence will be an increasing problem if rites of passage aren't introduced into our society.
Rites of passage are necessary to mark one's transition from one stage of life to the next. This leaves a map or chain of self development embedded in a person's conscious and is a key factor in behavior, self-confidence, and social skills.
Without proper rites of passage people become disoriented and left in a limbo-type of state. This is common with our adolescents. They are often told, "don't act like a child," yet they are not treated as adults.
Our cultural mainstream provides pseudo rites of passage, they are incomplete, unhealthy, and often dangerous. When a child gets older they are encouraged to play with different toys, entertainment may become less censored, they are given chores or responsibilities, and there are other changes. For example, graduating from high school and college, getting a driver's license, your first sexual experience, voting for the first time or even getting drunk. These experiences do not meet the transformational needs of young people. They are superficial and don't make a big enough impact to penetrate and change our psyche.
Pre-industrial societies knew the value of proper rituals and rites of passage. Girls were secluded and taught the art of womanhood by older females. Great grandmothers, aunts, mothers, and sisters would educate them about the path of life. If a girl showed promise with certain gifts, for example herbs, healing, or crafts, training in those areas would be intensified. Young men would often undergo years of martial training, a first hunt, a first kill, initiation into certain clubs or organizations of older men, scarification, the knocking out of teeth, or apprenticeship to a spiritual master.
Elaborate rituals have developed around the heroic deed. Many required skills for rituals, like hunting, are no longer vital in modern society. Risking one's life was inevitable during rituals in most traditional societies. That kind of ritual makes an impact on the psyche. This may affirm to the participant that they are somehow predestined to live. That could also explain the recent teenage craze for extreme sports. Extreme sport enthusiasts claim that the rush they get makes them feel alive.
America's youth culture has powerful elements of rites of passage. This includes separation from family, initiations, special hairdos, clothing, piercing, tattoos, music, religious experimentation, and conscious-altering drugs. Many immerse themselves into a particular subculture. Teenagers engage in these behaviors to fill in the missing pieces of their developmental education. This is the time when they see the ugliness of the world and begin to question things. Many parents agree by saying, "they are trying to find themselves."
Anthropologist Joseph Campbell said, "boys everywhere have a need for rituals marking passage to manhood. If society does not provide them they will inevitably invent their own."
The use of rites of passage to enter adulthood all have one central goal, respect. Whether it's seen in the form of a gun-wielding maniac or a person becoming a doctor to appease the expectations of parents and peers, they are demanding respect.
When you throw in neglectful parents, exhausted by long work hours to make ends meet, the parents themselves may turn to drugs and alcohol and children are left in adultless communities. Also, many low-class parents leash their children with the idea that they should never expect to accomplish more than the parent has. They are fed many discouraging lies like "college isn't for everyone," encouraged to drop out of school, work in low-wage unskilled labor, or join the military.
Many of these children join gangs because they work, if they didn't young people would create something else. When they encounter obstacles the gang path seems the best choice because it's the quickest shortcut to power and respect. Try walking into a room with all your best clothes and jewelry and lashing influential people with a silver tongue and you're taking your chances. Walk into that room with a raised gun and suddenly your clothes, looks, and social skills don't matter anymore, you suddenly have everyone's attention.
In deviant communities peer admiration has extremely high value. Gangs provide a mock family created to distance young people from parents, make bonds of friendship, fear, protection or enmity, ensure the supply of drugs, smuggle drugs, and make money. It is the quickest way for a street-smart person to strong-arm themselves. When you have access to influential contacts and shady individuals you have more power. Gangs have their own code of honor and use rituals like a gang-rape, gauntlets, or murder to initiate new members.
There are many ways that society could introduce positive rituals into the lives of young people. Grade schools should assess students in many areas and rate their strengths and weaknesses.
Based upon this information, a student could decide to take specialized courses in a particular subject and earn college credits or degrees while enrolled in high school. Outdoor activities and organizations like the boy scouts and girl scouts could also help develop an individual. These programs create diversity and set the individual apart, he or she would have a more established sense of purpose or direction.
Situations of families stricken by poverty, racism, broken homes, and unemployment leave our society in ruin. As the financial gap widens between the ruling class and lower classes, teen violence will be an increasing problem if rites of passage aren't introduced into our society.