Juvenile Nation

The Baltimore Sun ^ | 031603 | Paul Valentine

[Archangelsk]

Juvenile Nation
By Paul Valentine

March 16, 2003

AMAJOR outcome of the culture wars of the last 50 years can be summarized in a single phrase: the juvenilization of America.

Its impact, fashioned by Madison Avenue, driven by the TV networks, crowned by Hollywood and bought by our social systems from education to religion to the courts, is so pervasive that the good that came out of those same culture wars is now substantively diminished.

The tendency of American adults to revert to or remain in essentially juvenile behavior has grown like spawn in a petri dish of narcissism, instant gratification and reduced attention span - the social markers of adolescence - all carefully cultivated by the pitchmen of 21st century American pop culture and consumerism.

[Archangelsk]

Yeah, he's right.

[Psalm118]

This is DEEP -and I mean it-

It clearly explains where we've gone and how we got there.

The reminder made by Warren Buffett recently on the subject of derivatives, applies here. "like Hell it's easy to get in, but very difficult to get out".

How do we solve a gargantuan near-unsolvable social and political problem? Slogans somehow are not enough, seems to me.

[TigerLikesRooster]

Re #1

Juvenile mentality also breeds liberalism we see these days. It is not just a nation which is juvenile but the whole industrialized nations. Sad but true.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Good catch.
Lots of this is the outsome of a society heavily populated by the personality types described by Christopher Lasch in "The Culture of Narcissism" in 1979.

[FreedomPoster]

You gentlemen should see this. Amazing it is in the Baltimore Sun.

[fporretto]

The article makes some good points, and some that aren't so good. I would hasten to remind Mr. Valentine that there's no accounting for taste, and that attempts to regulate taste by force of law are in part what got us to where we are today, by triggering the as-yet-unattenuated social backlash of the decades just after World War II.

Maybe I'd have felt more positively toward the piece if he hadn't rung in with the usual lame assaults on video games, popular music and consumerism. But I can't go along with his execration of those things, nor, to a lesser degree, with several others.

Is America a very self-indulgent place? Yes, and thanks be to God for it! We have a higher standard of living, longer and more comfortable lives, fewer intrusions on our individual prerogatives, fewer genuinely downtrodden or unfortunate persons among us, and a more tolerant, generous social morality than any society that's ever existed before. Are some of the exercises of this unprecedented freedom and opulence excessive? Yes, they are -- but in most cases the excesses are self-punishing. Moreover, there's no legitimate way to discourage them except disapproval, and such disapproval should be discriminating, not all-enveloping.

It is noteworthy that Mr. Valentine's repeated thrust is "juvenility" -- i.e., lack of maturity. But "maturity" is a bludgeon-word, devoid of objective meaning except as it refers to the ability to engender progeny. If you dislike someone else's priorities but can't criticize them on objective grounds, it's always possible to call them "immature." But why matters of taste should be subject to judgments of "maturity" defeats me. I still prefer ice cream to Dom Perignon; does that make me a "juvenile"? I'd rather play videogames than watch talking heads on PBS; is that "immature"? Or perhaps merely self-indulgent?

Even the great C. S. Lewis, himself no libertine, puzzled over why "the right wines" and "important books" should displace one's native taste for ginger ale and John Buchan.

The Baltimore Sun was once H. L. Mencken's preserve -- he who defined the Puritan as "a man who lives with the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy." I don't think he'd approve of Mr. Valentine's near-wholesale rejection of so many things that people like, and which cause no harm to others.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://palaceofreason.com

[Question_Assumptions]

It isn't "juvenile" but "adolescent". Children are dragged upwards into adolescence before they are ready for it and then they are trained to progress no further into adulthood. We've decided that it is "cool" to be "forever young" which means that people are no longer trained to accept mature behavior or responsibility. But they flip side is that we are also sexualizing children into adolescents at a younger age.

[RLK]

I've been saying this for decades. The worst part is we have leadership such as the Clintons who are perpetual teenages who have ascended into the social, political, religious, media, and economic structure. There is no core to lead us out. In my opinion, Bush is only a marginal improvement over the Clintons et al.

[Trailerpark Badass]

Add "feminization" to that, and this guy's nailed it.

[Hildy]

He missed the ONE most important contribution to this: RELIGION BEING TAKEN OUT OF SOCIETY.

[Archangelsk]

They wait until they're 40 before they "mature".

Not neccesarily.