The modern lack of Rites of Passage

Every so often I come across another article bemoaning the apparent lack of rites of passage in modern Western society and claims that this is tied to our problems with directionless, feckless youths and disconnected, unhappy societies and the downfall of humanity and whatever.

Much of it seems to stem from romanticism of the good ol' days and/or the noble savage.

In anthropological studies and documentaries there is a disproportionate focus on major events because those tend to be the most dramatically different from our own lives - they're not going to spend hours showing hunter-gatherer women scrubbing clothes and dishes in a river, but some celebration with lots of people and music and dancing and special foods and possibly bizarre ceremonies will get more attention. So maybe we have an over-exaggerated idea that non-Western societies are all about their rites of passage, and we overlook all our own graduations, weddings, exams, birthdays, (not to mention baptisms, bar/bat mitzvahs, communions, and other religious ceremonies) that seem so much more unremarkable in comparison to this foreign tribe.

The way those documentaries narrate rites of passage always seems so straightforward and unequivocal - this person was a boy, and now he is a man and is given all the privileges and responsibilities of a man in his community. But they rarely go into great depth about what that means - is he capable at his trade? Has he really proven he can handle responsibility? Do we have a rosy idea about how his life is simpler and more easily defined than our own, because we don't know much more about it than what this documentary or book has shown? There is that risk of thinking we know a reasonable amount about something we've just started researching, before delving even further into the research and finding out just how little we actually know.

And what if his life is simpler, and ours are more complicated due to the plethora of careers and vocations we might choose from? Then wouldn't it make sense that we don't have definite demarcations for everybody?

Now the liberals have re-branded the rights of passage "Hazing". From what I hear they have cut all that out in the military. I never understood that. If they can't handle hazing by their fellows in arms, how the hell can they handle an enemy?

Actually, we have one major one that's observed almost universally in the U.S.: High school graduation.

There are others that are specific to culture and religion -- the Quinceaneara, the bar/bat mitzvah, confirmation in many Christian denominations -- and some that are specific to families, like the first time a kid goes hunting with Dad, etc.

Does everyone smear the face of a child with the blood of their first kill? Or is that just a Southern thing?

There was a great moment on Tim Allen's show, "Home Improvement" where he taught one of the boys to use a cutting torch. When the kid had made the cut, he informed him that he had just cut metal with fire.

Shortly after military school, I went camping with my dad. On the way there, he bought a 2-4 and told me it was my beer for the week. I was 13. A few years later, it was going out to the titty bars with him and a few of the guys from work that I'd grown up around.

Rites of passage are about accepting a youth into the world of adults. What we tend to forget is that they are tests as well as celebrations. Passing those tests is as simple as showing that you "get it"-no matter if "it" is getting a subtle joke among the older fellas or throwing in when one of them starts a bar brawl.

On the flip side of that, there are countless rites of passage within an age group. Most of those take the form of meeting a dare or challenge. What they lack in form, they make up for in cumulative effect.

I did mention those. But we typically don't see graduation as the dividing line between child and adult, and seem to have an ever-expanding adolescence (which might itself be an incorrect assessment; the 'Greatest Generation' shifted expectations for the age one was married on average from late twenties/early thirties to the late teens/early twenties, so maybe millennials' later average age of marriage is just regression to the mean).

I thought getting laid was a rite of passage.

I'll never forget the first time I killed a Yankee. It was...cathartic.

In the UK we have a system where students learn all about respect if they bad mouth a teacher. The teacher is entitled to go running to the Headmaster to get them suspended. That usually teaches them a lesson.




I believe you lot have something similar in Arkansas.

Let us know how it goes for you when it finally happens.

I think the key thing in a RoP is the community group expression that one is able to bear the responsibilities of adulthood. For many, it is graduation. For others, it may be as simple as earning a paycheque. We're kind of limiting ourselves to the ritual celebrations, but not the test.

What do we consider milestones in the modern world? Levels of education? A job? Driver's license? Popping one's cherry? Look back on your lives and ask when you first figured you could hang with the big boys.

For those of y'all that have sons, when did/will you hand him his first beer with the old man? How about when he dropped an F-Bomb in conversation and you just smiled?

In other words, when did your baby boy become the smart assed young punk you used to think of yourself as?

At the age of 14, a Zoroastrian named Vilmer ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum — it's breathtaking -- I suggest you try it.

[YT="The Left Rights agree!"]RkpJlu_O9Sg[/YT]

Really? You don't try to kill your hazers (I hope!) but your job is at, the end of the day, to destroy your enemy or assist your comrades in destroying the enemy.

Apples and umbrellas comparison IMO.

I think you somewhat missed the meaning of my post.....

Thank God for that. Nobody wants to look at hunter-gatherer titties. Fuckin' things look like leather tube socks with slices of pepperoni glued to 'em.

I wonder if it's "modern" or simply "mainstream American among people whose ancestors came here so long ago they no longer remember where they came from"?

In any case, pronouncing a mid-adolescent a "man" is a revenant of a time when there was no childhood (a 19th-century Western invention) and "adulthood" meant taking up the full measure of labor beside your father, as opposed to the small tasks on the farm or in the forge or cottage industry that you'd been doing from the time you could stand.

In African cultures, these rites of passage often include circumcision - not performed on infants, but reserved for adolescents. Anyone here up for that?

Families that have their own rituals are a good thing. If cultural/societal rituals have faded, it might be a good idea to ask why.

Oh, and the more we learn about brain function, the more we realize that simply turning 20 does not automatically confer adulthood. Consensus these days is that intellectual maturity occurs at around age 25 for women and at around age 30 for men...something some might find unsettling.

Lastly, "the more complex the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play."

Didn't go to mine.

Got the diploma from the principal.

12 years of misery, and degradation, and being bullied by the teachers, as if I was gonna do the little costume ball, and "bright sunshiny future! ", load of horseshit.

Not without feeling like the biggest lying phony ever.



Nope, I just wanted out.
Fuck 'em.

I got my HSD when I was 39.

You've sure shown them up.

Diacanu makes Holden Caulfield seem like a phony sell-out.

I bet he would've gone if the ceremony had involved the awarding of a pair of black out curtains and a lifetime supply of cheetos.

What would have?
Being a fucking millionaire?
I don't order my life around "showing", people.
"Show", who?
Anyone I give a shit about?
No?
Fuck do I care then?
Walk me through why I should.

Try not to start it off with "your thupossed tuh give a thit about thothiety and durpah duppah uhr...".

Well, I fucking don't.
Save your breath.

Some might say that the years of misery and degradation had some influence on your resulting aggro-phobia.

From that point of view, isn't it fair to say they may have had a victory, even if partial?

In PopPsych circles, maybe, but actual psychologists know the brain and mind continue to change throughout life; there's no definite distinction between a child/adolescent/adult brain.

No phobia involved.

I venture out when I need to.
I don't like high-traffic, stop and start, squeezed in, horn-honking, city driving, but I grit my teeth through it.

Other than that, there's nothing another human can do I'm scared of.

I just don't LIKE people.
They're tedious.
I buy their wares, and I'm done.

Done prefrontal cortex studies, have they? Love to see their data.

Correct. And nothing in my post suggests otherwise.

Excluding JC from your dataset, present your argument.

And, out of curiosity, how has the absence of ritual affected your life?

The prefrontal cortex (and the rest of the brain) continues to change throughout human life. There is no one point where you can look at a brain (or a scan) and say 'this brain has ceased to be juvenile and is now mature', much less extrapolate that to the human's actual behavior.

Heh. Ironically Sunday was First Communion at my church.