I was surprised when I learned that adolescence was first described in the early 20th century. That was around the same time children stopped regularly working with their parents in the family business/farm. As a society, parents have abdicated the "final transision" to adulthood to the school systems, but that isn't working, so kids have no clear path to "adulthood" and, instead, wander aimlessly.
Personally, I think (and have read others who agree, sorry, no references available) that the fairly ubiquitous "coming of age" ceremony is very important. My oldest is 17 and we will be doing something this summer with my father (backpacking or the like) to celebrate his manhood. And, yes, we will even have a formal ceremony.
I'm always looking for good reading on this subject (truly guiding your kids to adulthood), so if you have any good pointers, send them on!
Formal education is probably the culprit here. It segments young adults into age groups, and then limits the entire days interaction to the same lot of children.
You can't define people simply by what year they are born in. Some family environments provide children with an outlet where they end up with a very mature outlook, others don't.
The problem with this stratification is that it soon becomes the "norm" for children. My kids would say, for example, he wouldn't talk to some other kids because they are in another grade or in another class. It is a totally artificial barrier.
In days past, you'd have a grandfather or grandmother around. Kids would hang around their uncles and cousins workshops. There no distinct border. Children can see how they are expected to transition from one role to another.
Fast forward to the present day, the "teen" is now effectively a market segment, and it has become "weird" or uncomfortable to deal with kids who are too young for them or adults who are uncool for them. The narrative behind TV shows and books only serve to reinforce this.
As parents, we have a duty to help our children recognize these artificial barriers and help them overcome these perception.
I'd blame homework, not education in general. Kids have gone to school since Shakespeare's time. But they went home and either helped their dad on the farm, helped their mum do the housework, got a part time job, or read books and hunted crawdads.
Now, many people would consider it abuse, forcing a child of 14 to help out at work. Especially if they were only paid a nominal fee. They should be doing their homework, getting one-up on their peers. Unless they are from a family that doesn't value education, and then they should be learning to cope with a job market that won't value them.
I blame child labor laws. Since children below a certain age are unemployable adults lock them away in school where they can't cause trouble and learn to do what they're told.
Have you seen the photos of kdis making bricks in the third world? These children are going to have just as much problems relating to adults.
The real matter is because there is no regular "place" where teens are welcome. Not in the office, nor in a workshop. They end up being with other "lost" teens.
To me, it seems pretty obvious that all the adolescent tribulations are a cry for independence. The individual feels they're already at the point where they can take off on their own, but everything else around them beats them back down.
At the risk of being pretentious, I would say that what we all yearn for is (Heidegger's idea and vocabulary): "spatio-temporal ecstasis" -- the feeling that our self is expanding into the world, quickly and far. I get it when I learn more math -- I can feel my power or whatever it is expand into world. Teens in a good environment get it when they do their homework -- they know they are expanding and they feel it. All teens get it when they discover and become proficient at adult fun like fighting, working (at least some get this ;)), sex, driving fast, and becoming a mother. And when we crank down on this flowering of a person, they get upset. As they should (I love a pissed off teenager, myself, as long as they are smart too ...)
I don't think it's independence, it's this Nietszchean sort of power. (Remember, Nietszche knew that the discipline of the self christian ascetic was as much a will-to-power as the rape and pillage of Attilla or a successful HS football player...)
The classical notion of ecstasis is to be outside oneself, as in the phrase "beside oneself with joy". That's very different from inhabiting an expanded self. Are you saying that Heidegger revised the classical notion? If so, did he do this as part of an extended critique?
Nietzsche was a classicist and Heidegger's whole philosophy (if I remember grad school) was about taking off from classical roots, so it's unlikely they would have changed this concept without saying why. I'd like to know where they say it.
This isn't merely theoretical. My experience has been that Nietzschean self-assertion, at least in its more vulgar forms, leads to unhappiness in the long run - and that taking the focus off self, as suggested by the etymology of "ecstasy", is a more viable strategy. (Then again - not necessarily in adolescence, but later.)
> The classical notion of ecstasis is to be outside oneself, as in the phrase "beside oneself with joy".
Heidegger didn't really believe in a transcendent self, as far as my very amateur reading can tell. Rather, I think he was critiquing all things transcendent (yeah, Plato and Kant), and trying to show how things and experience would feel transcendent, even if they aren't.
I also think he used a lot of irony -- he talks about authenticity, and he sort of means it but he also sort thinks that any personal transcendence is just balderdash; so authenticity is facing both death and the lack of any final answer as to what is authentic. (All that a Dasein "is" is something that wonders what it "is". This self-questioning of being, or "is-ness", of both the world and ourselves, is fundamental to the human condition, and is where the "Being" of "Being in Time" comes from.)
Re ecstasis: He was talking about the phenomenological experience of interacting with the world. And I interpret "ecstasis" to mean "the process of expansion into the world" -- sort of getting outside one's "self", but with a sort of ironic notion of selfhood. Again, there is irony and allusion to the classical notion, but recast in his own phenomenology.
My rather loose interpetation of Nietzsche is that supposedly nietzschean self assertion is not really Nietzschean at all, but rather naive and foolish and immature. Zarathustra counsels against going to the city and indulging in pleasure.
YMMV -- I am just a guy talking in a bar about these things.
I appreciate the reply, but I don't know what most of these words mean.
I guess the advantage of talking in a bar is that you can get an intuitive read of where the other person is coming from, then line up your personal vocabulary to better match theirs. This makes for more satisfying communication. Online discourse seems particularly ill-suited to talking about anything hard to define.
Nietzsche was nuts and Heidegger, like some sort of pre-computer age Perl programmer, had extreme difficulty explaining or even, apparently, _understanding_ what he had previously written. Sound familiar? Today philosophers' continue to argue about what they believe Heidegger was _trying_ to say as well as what he said.
If you absolutely _must_ consider any of this further I could do no better than recommend "Why Heideggerian AI Failed and how Fixing it would Require making it more Heideggerian" by Hubert L. Dreyfus, perhaps after a half-carafe of wine. For true inspiration, LSD would likely be better.
Wow, (at the risk of breaking the anti-meta rule) this is the kind of comment I love and come to HN for.
This entire topic has been heavily on my mind for the last few months as I'm transitioning to legal adulthood and am in the college application process. Questions about who and what I am as a person and what I'll do for the rest of my life have been prime things in the back of my head throughout the day, and along with it, a lot of existentialist crisis.
I've spent the last 7 years at the same 2 public schools and community college, and before that 6 years at private/theme/charter schools that had unique teaching styles and freedoms that they gave their students. I felt like I matured better there than during my time at public high school and middle school. Yet during the last two years at community college (I was/am dual-enrolled) the new feeling of freedom from inane rules like asking for permission to do real silly and small things like going to the bathroom, getting up to sharpen my pencil or blow my nose, and daily attendance to classes I had limited choice over was exhilarating at first. Having all this freedom all at once after 11 years of harsh rules however proved to be too much of a rush and with little to no accountability to authority figures who were always checking on your work and setting soft/easy boundaries on assignments and guidelines to be strictly followed...I lapsed into a phase of constant gaming and wasting time on other non-productive things (like HN ;).
After my grades came back that first semester, along with it was a cold slap of reality and a realization that I had to take responsibility over my own education and learn and excel in everything I do for my own sake. This is when I began to learn Python seriously, treat school as a day-job that I did well on. In normal school, there is little to push the person to do more than what is required after a certain "honors" level (the kinds of classes I took during my first two years of high school before transitioning to dual-enrollment). I never really thought of learning pure math recreationally, or that was A Thing even.
I think Heidegger's idea you mention is a great way to describe the feeling of "becoming" into someone/something that I'm not sure of yet. This idea is explained in pretty-good manner here[1] by Mac thecaster, a really interesting guy who has been lifecasting his own development in life for quite a few years now since he was 15 and now is about 19/20.
Getting involved in real-world activities as a teen has also helped me develop better as an adult; I've worked jack-of-all-trades at an ethnic restaurant, and learned to haggle/negotiate while buying meats, sell products to potential customers, treat them well so they spend more and often, and how to clean many types of things. I've learned from criminals, former DJs and salesmen, and auto-mechanics while working side-by-side with them washing dishes, grilling large orders of steaks, and had many more experiences while being treated as an adult than before in my life.
This is partly why I believe most people who go on summer trips with programs like People to People[2], and EPGY[3], and other summer learning or traveling retreats are more wholesome and well-rounded people. Considering the formidable costs associated with these organized trips and learning retreats, the mostly affluent/well-off kids are able to actually go to them, or even be aware of their existence (from siblings or peer-networking amongst parents from the same socio-economic class). This can be correlated with the recent post about[4] how more confident and successful children born into prosperous families are and decides a lot of things for them in the long run.
I found both "Manhood" and "Raising Boys" by Steve Biddulph ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biddulph ) interesting reads. I can't say I agreed with everything in them, but they were thought provoking with the obligatory "that's obvious... why hadn't I thought of that already?" moments of a well written book.
Remember that this feeling is not necessarily correct. Starting at 13 everyone feels they can be independent and take care of things better than everyone else, and (at least at 13) they are wrong. They are really asking to be challenged or given responsibility, and they probably will fail or need a lot of help.
But without the experience of that first failure, and overcoming it with the guidance and support of people around them, these teenagers continue to demand their independence and fail to find any proof of their own self-worth long into their twenties and middle age...
> Remember that this feeling is not necessarily correct.
It is natural non the less.
> They are really asking to be challenged or given responsibility, and they probably will fail or need a lot of help.
So it's the responsibility of their parents and the society at large to help them become independent, instead of beating them down and accusing them of being stupid and irrational.
Personally, I think (and have read others who agree, sorry, no references available) that the fairly ubiquitous "coming of age" ceremony is very important. My oldest is 17 and we will be doing something this summer with my father (backpacking or the like) to celebrate his manhood. And, yes, we will even have a formal ceremony.
I'm always looking for good reading on this subject (truly guiding your kids to adulthood), so if you have any good pointers, send them on!