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Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

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Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#51

Post by giardini »

gruseom wrote: post #42
forkandwait wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The classical notion of ecstasis is to be outside oneself, as in the phrase "beside oneself with joy". Heidegger didn't really believe in a transcendent self, as far as my very amateur reading can tell. Rather, I think he was critiquing all things transcendent (yeah, Plato and Kant), and trying to show how things and experience would feel transcendent, even if they aren't. I also think he used a lot of irony -- he…

I appreciate the reply, but I don't know what most of these words mean. I guess the advantage of talking in a bar is that you can get an intuitive read of where the other person is coming from, then line up your personal vocabulary to better match theirs. This makes for more satisfying communication. Online discourse seems particularly ill-suited to talking about anything hard to define.

I'll summarize for you:

Nietzsche was nuts and Heidegger, like some sort of pre-computer age Perl programmer, had extreme difficulty explaining or even, apparently, _understanding_ what he had previously written. Sound familiar? Today philosophers' continue to argue about what they believe Heidegger was _trying_ to say as well as what he said.

If you absolutely _must_ consider any of this further I could do no better than recommend "Why Heideggerian AI Failed and how Fixing it would Require making it more Heideggerian" by Hubert L. Dreyfus, perhaps after a half-carafe of wine. For true inspiration, LSD would likely be better.

Sorry, that's the best I've got.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#52

Post by teyc »

wisty wrote: post #49
teyc wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Formal education is probably the culprit here. It segments young adults into age groups, and then limits the entire days interaction to the same lot of children. You can't define people simply by what year they are born in. Some family environments provide children with an outlet where they end up with a very mature outlook, others don't. The problem with this stratification is that it soon becomes the "norm" for chi…

I'd blame homework, not education in general. Kids have gone to school since Shakespeare's time. But they went home and either helped their dad on the farm, helped their mum do the housework, got a part time job, or read books and hunted crawdads. Now, many people would consider it abuse, forcing a child of 14 to help out at work. Especially if they were only paid a nominal fee. They should be doing their homework, g…

Quite the contrary. It is the availability of massive amount of idle time that creates a demand/outlet.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#53

Post by [deleted] »

giardini wrote: post #51
gruseom wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the reply, but I don't know what most of these words mean. I guess the advantage of talking in a bar is that you can get an intuitive read of where the other person is coming from, then line up your personal vocabulary to better match theirs. This makes for more satisfying communication. Online discourse seems particularly ill-suited to talking about anything hard to define.

I'll summarize for you: Nietzsche was nuts and Heidegger, like some sort of pre-computer age Perl programmer, had extreme difficulty explaining or even, apparently, _understanding_ what he had previously written. Sound familiar? Today philosophers' continue to argue about what they believe Heidegger was _trying_ to say as well as what he said. If you absolutely _must_ consider any of this further I could do no better…

[deleted]

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#54

Post by josephcooney »

hasenj wrote: post #13

It's my opinion that "adolescence" is a new social construct that is not universal and not innate. It's more likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy more than anything else. In older times, teenagers (above say, 14) were considered men, or young adults. They would fight in armies, or even lead them. They were likely to be married and maybe even have children. For all intents and purposes, people of age 16 are not muc…

Re: fighting in armies - absolutely true, hence the word infantry, but not necessarily a good thing (and I know you didn't say it was).

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#55

Post by Gormo »

scott_s wrote: post #28
hasenj wrote: post #13

It's my opinion that "adolescence" is a new social construct that is not universal and not innate. It's more likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy more than anything else. In older times, teenagers (above say, 14) were considered men, or young adults. They would fight in armies, or even lead them. They were likely to be married and maybe even have children. For all intents and purposes, people of age 16 are not muc…

For all intents and purposes, people of age 16 are not much different from other adults except in that they don't have much experience in life. This is demonstrably not true, and even says so in the article. The brains of a teenager are different than that of an adult. The question the article is asking is not "Are they differen?" because we know they are. The question the article is asking is "Is this difference cau…

But in a way, the article is begging the question by presuming that the categories are objectively meaningful. What's a 'teenager' and what's an 'adult'?

If our brains are continuously changing throughout our lives, you'll see differences on either side of any arbitrary cutoff point.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#56

Post by mmavnn »

shii wrote: post #33
forkandwait wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of being pretentious, I would say that what we all yearn for is (Heidegger's idea and vocabulary): "spatio-temporal ecstasis" -- the feeling that our self is expanding into the world, quickly and far. I get it when I learn more math -- I can feel my power or whatever it is expand into world. Teens in a good environment get it when they do their homework -- they know they are expanding and they feel it. Al…

Wow, (at the risk of breaking the anti-meta rule) this is the kind of comment I love and come to HN for. This entire topic has been heavily on my mind for the last few months as I'm transitioning to legal adulthood and am in the college application process. Questions about who and what I am as a person and what I'll do for the rest of my life have been prime things in the back of my head throughout the day, and along…

I found both "Manhood" and "Raising Boys" by Steve Biddulph ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biddulph ) interesting reads. I can't say I agreed with everything in them, but they were thought provoking with the obligatory "that's obvious... why hadn't I thought of that already?" moments of a well written book.

If you happen to be Christian I also found "Healing the Masculine Soul" (Dalby, http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Masculine-Soul-Restoration-Man... ) helpful, but it is both explicitly Christian and theology heavy.

Edit: sorry, posted this in reply to the wrong comment by mistake.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#57

Post by notahacker »

giardini wrote: post #47
hasenj wrote: post #13

It's my opinion that "adolescence" is a new social construct that is not universal and not innate. It's more likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy more than anything else. In older times, teenagers (above say, 14) were considered men, or young adults. They would fight in armies, or even lead them. They were likely to be married and maybe even have children. For all intents and purposes, people of age 16 are not muc…

I must agree about adolescence. Consider the story of Romeo and Juliet. At an age where he has not yet grown a beard, Romeo has killed (at least) two men. He secretly marries his true love (and the Church blesses the marriage). Imagine, if you can, the reaction of parents, churches and schools today to such behavior.

I'd see Romeo and Juliet as the quintessential adolescents - it's a tale of whirlwind romance, gang violence and complete absence of self control on the part of the key protagonists.

Isolated from the context of 16th century Verona and stripped of Shakespeare's poetic flair, the plot could easily be taken from a modern slushy teen drama.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#58

Post by mmavnn »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #2

I was surprised when I learned that adolescence was first described in the early 20th century. That was around the same time children stopped regularly working with their parents in the family business/farm. As a society, parents have abdicated the "final transision" to adulthood to the school systems, but that isn't working, so kids have no clear path to "adulthood" and, instead, wander aimlessly. Personally, I thin…

Had a random moment and posted my pointers as a reply to the wrong parent ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2300374 ).

To reiterate I found both "Manhood" and "Raising Boys" by Steve Biddulph ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biddulph ) and "Healing the Masculine Soul" (Dalby, http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Masculine-Soul-Restoration-Man... ) helpful, although be warned that the last book is explicitly Christian in viewpoint.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#59

Post by notahacker »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #22

I find the thrust of this article fascinating -- it makes sense intuitively. But the following quote clearly sounded over the top: Teens are subject to, Epstein explains, “…more than 10 times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons.” I'd sure like to see some proof of that. Surely teens get a raw…

My alarm was set off by the graph purporting to show laws specifically targeting teens. There's no attempt to put that in the context either of growth in legislation in general, laws targeting adults that ceased to apply to [some] teens. Nor is there any discussion of whether teens would feel "restricted" or see their cognitive development impaired by laws preventing them from being sent down a coal mine 12 hours a day by their parents.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#60

Post by notahacker »

The article is disappointingly short of empirical findings (and there are interesting empirical claims that others have made about changes in the onset of puberty over the last century etc.)

Ultimately I find the suggestion that lack of discussion of adolescence in other societies is an indicator of their adolescents' brain development being different absurd in the absence of any supporting evidence actually related to the brain. I doubt many pre-industrial societies have a word for "feminism", yet would be amazed if someone were to advance the argument that a female perspective on the world only became significant and distinct enough to warrant discussion in the early 1900s - even more so if they were to use it to buttress an argument on female cognitive development.

Consider the alternate hypothesis: little attempt is made to describe and analyse adolescence in non-Western societies because: (i)those cultures are much less inclined to offer teens freedom of choice and expression (ii) those cultures have little interest in understanding the psychological development of teens. Juvenile crime is not a distinct phenomenon if juveniles are subject to (and deterred by) the same draconian sanctions as adults. Teenage resistance to education is not an issue if teenagers are expected to work to eat. Teenage sexuality is not an issue if society treats sex simply a means to procreation and allows the genders to mingle only in the interests of arranging parentally sanctioned heterosexual marriage.

Even if these differences do have a noticeable effect on brain chemistry, I'll happily accept the angst of my teenage years as the price of living in a post-industrial society.

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