Anthropologies of Age

I unearthed a rather thought provoking blog while on a rather mundane google search of "panda names."

I think this is someone I'd like to meet, though of course because meeting people from the internet is creepy, someone I'd like to meet in a strictly neutral, strictly hypothetical non-threatening pocket dimension, free of the dual burdens of awkwardness and judgmentalism.

The quality of thought changes when you know you actually could meet someone, someone who's not just a nebulous text-spawning "person on the internet." If I went out and took Metro lines so and so, I could meet him... You know when something is "based on a true story," it's a better story? And so it is.

I think he's smarter than me also. Not smarter necessarily IQ-wise (I couldn't judge, but I wouldn't be surprised) but just in the "Oh, I never thought of that," category, a certain level of self-awareness. Maybe this is the difference between old people and young people, what "maturity" is. (Asking me to define "maturity" is like ... well... Blind people don't dream in color, from what I've heard. When people who are born blind are asked, "Do you wish you could see?" they say, "How could I wish it, when I've never known it?") It's only a theory I have; my actual contact with people outside my age group is rare. More anthropological fieldwork on my part must be done.

Unfortunately, whenever I talk to anyone older than me, it's within a hierarchical context: parents, relatives, teachers, bosses, "superiors"¹ even informally. In the case of the blog, I have spontaneously been handed the revelations, stripped of formality and rank, of someone older than me, but not old enough to be "old." You can tell, I think, just from the writing style- reading things by people older than you is like dropping a pebble into a deep pool, watching it sink, and watching the ripples. I can't explain why. It just is.

When I was younger, and my parents kept using the "when you're more mature" line on me, I thought rebelliously that, surely the consciousness of a twenty year old and the consciousness of a forty year old were similar? Your IQ does not improve so much after a certain age. If education were the issue, then a ten year-old public school American brat would be more "mature" than an 80 year old peasant from a third world country. It's not so much about family status and responsibility either- there are thirteen year-old wives and avowed bachelors to the grave. Between age 10 and age 20 a person goes through revelations of seismic magnitude, and compared to that, I didn't think the mental difference between someone, say 25, and 45 was a difference in "maturity" so much as a difference in physiological, economic, social conditions.

That was a theory, and theories can be disproved.

I know I am smarter now than when I was twelve. Smarter than when I was eighteen. How it happened and the nature of this "wisdom" is a mystery. At any age, you dwell within your consciousness. All of the world, for its great size, can be encompassed inside my head, and vast as the universe is, it cannot be bigger than my mind.

So. I enjoy watching thoughts bloom...

Sorry for the two philosophy-babble posts in a row.

¹ Except for lower-class adults. Un-PC, but true. Consider: My boss is "Dr. Mitch." The janitors at Harbor are "Sheila and Lynette." My dentist is "Dr. Miyamoto." My school bus driver was "Bobby." The esteemed culinary expert cum tv celebrity is (the honorable) "Iron Chef Kenichi." The food services employee working the dining hall cashier is "Valerie." Us young'ns are taught to address adults (I'm a "college girl," emphasis on "girl," hence not a "real" adult) as superiors, but if forms of address have any social implication, then what am I to think? I still find addressing adults by first name abhorrent. Sometimes I will call the janitor "Ms. Sheila."

On the Nature of Youth

St. Augustine said, with whatever authority can be conferred upon dead saints, that people, even while they sin, even in the state of their own wretchedness, reach out to God. No one murders for murder's sake, for evil's sake, for the black abyss that claims them after death. People kill and execute other acts, for greed, for glory, for the sake of a woman, for the countless things that they believe life worth living for. Greed, ambition, lust, all of these sins yet at their core strive for comfort, joy, power, rapture, love, all of the things that are the essence of God who is every goodness.

However you regard St. Augustine, I have hope, while others have despair, for the youth and the future of the world. While parents, preachers, and politicians shake their fists over video games, music videos, teen sex, drugs, piercings, youthful disrespect, degeneracy, the general decline of Western Civilization, whatever it is these days that draws fashionable old-timey criticism, I look upon the world with the restless hope of the young, and because I am young, have the luxury to dream.

We play our violent video games, destroying aliens and saving the world because we dream of valor. We watch our thuggy rap tv in defiance of compliance, brown-nosing, softness, compromise and complacency. Through harsh lyrics about pride and strife we seek integrity. We do our drugs like the cloud-seeking shamans of old in pursuit of epiphany and rapture, visions of colors and stars and music. We have sex at sixteen hoping to know the pinnacles of love, this great emotion that shakes the axles of the world. We wear gang colors to know the meaning of loyalty, family, and sacrifice, to take a bullet for a brother, to do jailtime for a sister, to understand the meaning of strength. We bring guns to school in hope of immortality and recognition, because as Machiavelli says, if we have not love, then fear will do.

At school, with clear backpacks and metal detectors and security guards, the first thought of adults should not be, "Does he have a gun?" At the CD shop the first thought should not be, "Is she going to shoplift?" When the news reports a vandalism or a theft, the first line should not be, "Authorities think teenage hoodlums did it."

At the school they should say, "Hello, Sitting-By-Yourself-In-The-Corner, what's your name?" because the best way to stop a killer is not to take away his ability, but his intention. At the shop they should ask, "What sort of music are you going to make?" or "Excuse me, can you help me reach that box up there?" Perhaps if she is expected to help instead of expected to harm, she will. In the news, perhaps the story should be, "Members of local high school pitch in for children's hospital."

When we ask, "How should we live?" we want answers. When we ask, "How should we love?" we want answers. When we ask, "How will I find the meaning of valor, honor and faith?" we want answers.

"Don't do drugs and stay in school," is not an answer.

There is not one teen who does not dream. If we dream in the wrong places, wrong though they may be, wicked though they may be, at least we dream.

We want to change the world; give us a way to do it.