At 20:48 05/04/01 -0700, you wrote:
(KH)
>> But this is taking me away from the main point of this discussion. I
>> disagree with Ed. I still think that the rioting youngsters are just using
>> Kyoto, WTO, TNCs, GM crops, etc, as pretexts. They just happen to be
>useful
>> alibis. Worthy though those causes may be (or may not be), it's clear that
>> the youngsters have no intellectual arguments to bear. So they have a riot
>> instead. Their main purpose is still that of wanting to draw attention to
>> themselves, to be noticed, to be let into the adult world.
(EW)
>Keith, the kids are searching. Some are looking to fit in, others to make
>the world fit better, and still others out to have a good time while they
>can. I've just spent two days at
>Whistler, the huge ski resort north of Vancouver. There, I ran into all
>kinds of kids, working as waiters or at whatever else was going when they
>weren't snowboarding or skiing. Many had English, Australian or whatever
>accents. I suspect that these kids were "timing out", neither protesting,
>nor trying to fit in, nor, for the time being doing anything but having a
>good time. More later.
The difficulty about this discussion is that the youth of today has become
as segmented as the adult world. The above bunch of travellers is a
significant phenomenon in the modern world. We've already mentioned the
segment which takes to demonstrating as an important "adult" activity.
There's also a workaholic segment in the Ivy League universities (and in
the "Top Ten" in the UK) who are keeping their heads down for a few years
while they gain their doctorates and MBAs as entrance certificates into the
adult world. A FWer recently drew my attention to a recent article in
Atlantic Monthly which described this at Princeton. (Now that stock markets
are sliding, they'll be even more workaholics!) There is yet another
significant segment in the developed countries who kill themselves. In
America, suicide is now the third highest cause of death among 15-24 year
olds -- and this group of desperate young people (usually males) is
becoming significant in England, too, particularly in youth prisons. This
may be considered to be a sub-group of an extremely sizeable segment of
young people -- those half-a-million or so who live in the 1,500 so-called
"sink housing estates" and who are illiterate, have no chance of a
worthwhile job ever, and who lead a life of crime and harrassment before
settling down into a life of complete apathy and dependence on social
security. (In one ward in Liverpool, only 6% of the population bothered to
vote in the last city council elections.)
Ed is more analytical than me and in his above paragraph has pointed to a
particular segment of young people whose adventurousness is surely to be
commended. I tend to generalise, to try and find fundamental causes that
can account for the many highly-demarcated segments of young people. My
view is that the main reason, as Putnam has drawn attention to ("Bowling
Alone"), is the breakdown of local community. This seems to be occurring
right across the social spectrum, whether in sink-estates or in well-heeled
suburbia. But there's yet another more fundamental reason behind the
breakdown of local community.
I'm one of those who are strongly in favour of globalisation of trade
because this, rather than protectionism, is the best way by which
undeveloped countries can pick themselves up in the fastest way and advance
to higher standards of living. However, globalisation also accelerates
specialisation of skills and, because jobs are increasingly no longer to be
found locally, catalyses the breakdown of community and a lack of obvious
"initiation routes" from teenagerhood to adulthood.
In the West, the lack of these initiation routes means that young people
rely on their peers within large cities, large universities, large
characterless housing estates, etc, in order to validate themselves, rather
than on the adults in their original childhood locality. Reflecting the
adult world of work and the plethora of entertainments and activities on
offer, these groupings are highly specialised, some constructive and
creative, some merely a nuisance, some downright dangerous (one group has
been discovered in England whcih had Sarin-type toxins similar to the one
that poisoned people on the Japanese Metro).
And exactly the same phenomenon of community breakdown is now occurring in
the poorer countries. Besides the "pooling" of young people into
well-demarcated peer groups within the large cities and universities, much
as in the West, there is an additional phenomenon which is highly
destabilising. I refer to the pressure of migration, particularly of young
people, from the poorer countries to the richer countries. Something of the
order of a million young people a year are already illegally entering
Western Europe from Eastern Europe and Asia, and the same is happening in
America on a similar scale. It is almost certainly unstoppable because
migration is now being increasingly organised by Mafia gangs which are
finding it more profitable than drug smuggling. The authorities are failing
to prevent illegal immigration in just the same way that they have already
failed in the case of drug-smuggling (lower street prices suggest that
something like 90% of drugs get through). People-smuggling is probably
somewhat more difficult because people are larger than packets of drugs,
but there can be little doubt that people-smuggling will steadily increase.
So, even though on balance I think globalisation should proceed, it's also
going to produce immense problems in Western countries.
Keith Hudson
___________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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