(no subject)
Although I always idealized rugged, individualist rebellion as a teenager, I never had a conventional teenage rebellion. I was very quiet, I had a normal haircut, I didn't try to piss off my parents, and was outwardly a good kid. I always saw the whole thing as self-destructive in my high school years.
For a while, I have been wishing that I had had that experience while I was young. Now I am glad that I did not.
I see high school kids today wearing counter-cultural clothes, and I think, this is not a rebellion at all. It's a uniform. They're following precisely the social norms of their age group. So do the long-haired Marxist college students who decry empty materialism from the safety of their leftist dormitories.
But in the end, they all turn into rat-racing, career chasing yuppies when they enter their mid-twenties. They look at all their youthful antics, laugh collectively and say "hah, how young we all were!" and follow each other into a downward spiral of empty, materialistic consumer culture, and die empty shells of people.
It takes nothing to rebel against destructive social norms when it is socially convenient to do so. It is one thing to reject consumer culture when you are nineteen and neither you nor any of your friends have any money...it is quite another thing to do it when you are thirty.
It takes some real intellectual discipline, and I am proud to say that I believe I have found mine :)
For a while, I have been wishing that I had had that experience while I was young. Now I am glad that I did not.
I see high school kids today wearing counter-cultural clothes, and I think, this is not a rebellion at all. It's a uniform. They're following precisely the social norms of their age group. So do the long-haired Marxist college students who decry empty materialism from the safety of their leftist dormitories.
But in the end, they all turn into rat-racing, career chasing yuppies when they enter their mid-twenties. They look at all their youthful antics, laugh collectively and say "hah, how young we all were!" and follow each other into a downward spiral of empty, materialistic consumer culture, and die empty shells of people.
It takes nothing to rebel against destructive social norms when it is socially convenient to do so. It is one thing to reject consumer culture when you are nineteen and neither you nor any of your friends have any money...it is quite another thing to do it when you are thirty.
It takes some real intellectual discipline, and I am proud to say that I believe I have found mine :)