>
> Toss in my favorite: our culture which treats kids like miniature adults -
> foisting off on them all of the responsibilities and lack of regulation
that
> we award to adults in our culture.
Well, childhood, as a special time, is fairly modern, as is the nuclear
family. Beforehand, people worked as part of the family from very young, and
were generally not independant, even as adults. Most people lived in an
extended family, with the patriarch providing quite a bit of guidance to the
other family members.
>
> Fixing this might involve time travel - I think the current widespread
> conception of a "soul", independent of knowledge and experience - is an
> element that lead to this, combined with such fostering social
environments
> such as Victorian England and the liberal 1960's and 1970's.
>
The conception of the soul apart from material experiences dates back over
2000 years. The idea of a tabula rosse (sp) dates back to Roussou (IIRC).
The thought of being who you are from before birth on is mentioned in a
psalm of David.
I think we do have problems with disconnectedness now. But, we are also in
an age where 20 kids a year (out of a population of about 300 million) is
very scarry news for most kids. Teenagers have been violent for years.
1000 years ago, the savage wars were not fought by 50 year old men. :-)
Drawing and quartering is not modern.
Having said that, we should still pay attention to the forces that are
harming our society. Its just that we are much better equipped to worry
about it than we were 150 years ago.
Dan M.
Dan M.
