Sexual Revolution: Rites of Passage
What causes childhood to disappear?
For the purposes of this discussion, let us consider childhood as a state in which one does not possess autonomy.
In my life, I often see adult children. Adults who play with toys, who spend more time playing games than living life, who may “provide” for themselves financially, but who are not autonomous. Going through the motions to get a well-paying job is not the same as growing up, if somebody devotes the resources obtained through this well-paying job solely to collecting toys and entertaining oneself, that person is not an autonomous subject. That person is merely a child working for the means to preserve the state of childhood.
(Note please that I say SOLELY. I have my toys and entertainments too, as do all adults, but there are other things in my life. It’s not just about working to provide myself with toys, and playing with those toys. I’ve got other shit on the go. This is the key distinction.)
Growing up in a small, reasonably wealthy town, I was used to seeing child-children, and adult-children. When I stepped off of the plane in Jordan, I met my first real child-adults. I witnessed these creatures in Europe when I was twelve, but I didn’t understand how radically different they were from me at the time. Outside of the airport there was a boy of about seven or eight selling handguns and ammunition, laid out on a blanket in front of him. I was twenty-three at the time, and remember thinking to myself, “I’ve never HELD a gun like that. This kid, who is a third my age, makes his living by selling them…” It was a rude awakening.
The human animal is infinitely adaptable. If a child has to become autonomous, it will, as long as the need presents itself soon enough in the child’s development. Once the pattern of dependence is established, even drastic circumstances will fail to break it. European culture institutionalized childhood in the 1700s, in a way that has been adequately described by Neil Postman whose book The Disappearance of Childhood I highly recommend, although it comes to conclusions that I strongly disagree with. Other cultures have had childhood as a cultural institution as well, but those cultures traditionally have rites of passage, which are traumatic events designed to break the cycle of dependence and allow the child to be reborn into adulthood as an autonomous subject.
European culture couldn’t come up with anything like that… so they’d just fuck.
As we all know, sex was the big taboo of late European culture. I say “late,” because fucking was not private or taboo in early European culture. It wasn’t until the birth of European childhood in the 1700s, when suddenly there was a whole class of people in society that sex had to be kept secret from, that it became a serious taboo. In this sense, sex became the neurotic rite of passage for the West. It wasn’t a culturally institutionalized rite of passage, but there can be no doubt that it was a rite of passage all the same.
Modernity has utterly torn this apart. Sex is everywhere. Sexual images are used in advertising, so the first encounter with sexuality that most children of our age will have is with images being used to sell products. The psychological impact of this is obvious: we are breeding a generation of prostitutes, and adult-children. The rite of passage, neurotic or not, is robbed of its significance. Sex isn’t a taboo that one breaks, thereby gaining autonomy over social expectations, but rather it becomes a commodity. Sex is one more form of entertainment, and a lover is another toy. This may sound harsh, but I think it’s also obvious if we stop and look around. Many people in western society stay children because they can conceive of nothing higher than entertainment and leisure to direct themselves toward. At the prey of these desires, they will never become autonomous.
Child-adults in our society, paradoxically, are often prey to the same desires. Adult-children are accustomed to having those things provided for them, first by a loving parent and later by an infantilizing corporate institution. Child-adults know that if they want something, they will have to take it for themselves. They have no higher goals, but meeting their lower goals is significantly more difficult, so they develop a kind of autonomy that enables them to take over aspects of their own lives. It’s also true that Child-adults start off struggling to meet needs, rather than wants. That gives them a power that Adult-children will probably never know.
Child-adults, however, are only autonomous to a point. Because they are struggling to meet needs, they are still reactive rather than active. They may be very impressive to adults in that they function at a high level when it comes to meeting those needs, but they do not direct their own lives. They react and develop according to their circumstances.
Both categories of individual are essentially innocent in that they are not developed enough to really empathize with anything other than their own desires, and can hardly be blamed (although they can be held responsible) for the trouble they cause. Innocence and cruelty go hand in hand. In fact, I’d say that real cruelty is impossible without innocence, because cruelty is not malicious. If someone hurts you out of malice, it’s about you. They’ve got you on their mind. If someone hurts you out of cruelty, it’s because what that person wants is all that they can think about, and your suffering is purely inconsequential. This is why both categories, although they contain adult aspects, are still fundamentally children.
And as a fun filed closer, check this out, which I coincidentally noticed while writing this post. (synchronicity, eh?) If you would like to feel slightly more dead inside, take a look.
My dinosaurs are going to rape you? Man o man…
For the purposes of this discussion, let us consider childhood as a state in which one does not possess autonomy.
In my life, I often see adult children. Adults who play with toys, who spend more time playing games than living life, who may “provide” for themselves financially, but who are not autonomous. Going through the motions to get a well-paying job is not the same as growing up, if somebody devotes the resources obtained through this well-paying job solely to collecting toys and entertaining oneself, that person is not an autonomous subject. That person is merely a child working for the means to preserve the state of childhood.
(Note please that I say SOLELY. I have my toys and entertainments too, as do all adults, but there are other things in my life. It’s not just about working to provide myself with toys, and playing with those toys. I’ve got other shit on the go. This is the key distinction.)
Growing up in a small, reasonably wealthy town, I was used to seeing child-children, and adult-children. When I stepped off of the plane in Jordan, I met my first real child-adults. I witnessed these creatures in Europe when I was twelve, but I didn’t understand how radically different they were from me at the time. Outside of the airport there was a boy of about seven or eight selling handguns and ammunition, laid out on a blanket in front of him. I was twenty-three at the time, and remember thinking to myself, “I’ve never HELD a gun like that. This kid, who is a third my age, makes his living by selling them…” It was a rude awakening.
The human animal is infinitely adaptable. If a child has to become autonomous, it will, as long as the need presents itself soon enough in the child’s development. Once the pattern of dependence is established, even drastic circumstances will fail to break it. European culture institutionalized childhood in the 1700s, in a way that has been adequately described by Neil Postman whose book The Disappearance of Childhood I highly recommend, although it comes to conclusions that I strongly disagree with. Other cultures have had childhood as a cultural institution as well, but those cultures traditionally have rites of passage, which are traumatic events designed to break the cycle of dependence and allow the child to be reborn into adulthood as an autonomous subject.
European culture couldn’t come up with anything like that… so they’d just fuck.
As we all know, sex was the big taboo of late European culture. I say “late,” because fucking was not private or taboo in early European culture. It wasn’t until the birth of European childhood in the 1700s, when suddenly there was a whole class of people in society that sex had to be kept secret from, that it became a serious taboo. In this sense, sex became the neurotic rite of passage for the West. It wasn’t a culturally institutionalized rite of passage, but there can be no doubt that it was a rite of passage all the same.
Modernity has utterly torn this apart. Sex is everywhere. Sexual images are used in advertising, so the first encounter with sexuality that most children of our age will have is with images being used to sell products. The psychological impact of this is obvious: we are breeding a generation of prostitutes, and adult-children. The rite of passage, neurotic or not, is robbed of its significance. Sex isn’t a taboo that one breaks, thereby gaining autonomy over social expectations, but rather it becomes a commodity. Sex is one more form of entertainment, and a lover is another toy. This may sound harsh, but I think it’s also obvious if we stop and look around. Many people in western society stay children because they can conceive of nothing higher than entertainment and leisure to direct themselves toward. At the prey of these desires, they will never become autonomous.
Child-adults in our society, paradoxically, are often prey to the same desires. Adult-children are accustomed to having those things provided for them, first by a loving parent and later by an infantilizing corporate institution. Child-adults know that if they want something, they will have to take it for themselves. They have no higher goals, but meeting their lower goals is significantly more difficult, so they develop a kind of autonomy that enables them to take over aspects of their own lives. It’s also true that Child-adults start off struggling to meet needs, rather than wants. That gives them a power that Adult-children will probably never know.
Child-adults, however, are only autonomous to a point. Because they are struggling to meet needs, they are still reactive rather than active. They may be very impressive to adults in that they function at a high level when it comes to meeting those needs, but they do not direct their own lives. They react and develop according to their circumstances.
Both categories of individual are essentially innocent in that they are not developed enough to really empathize with anything other than their own desires, and can hardly be blamed (although they can be held responsible) for the trouble they cause. Innocence and cruelty go hand in hand. In fact, I’d say that real cruelty is impossible without innocence, because cruelty is not malicious. If someone hurts you out of malice, it’s about you. They’ve got you on their mind. If someone hurts you out of cruelty, it’s because what that person wants is all that they can think about, and your suffering is purely inconsequential. This is why both categories, although they contain adult aspects, are still fundamentally children.
And as a fun filed closer, check this out, which I coincidentally noticed while writing this post. (synchronicity, eh?) If you would like to feel slightly more dead inside, take a look.
My dinosaurs are going to rape you? Man o man…