Fraternities and sororities do hazing in a way that’s closest to the rituals described in the books (and the warm welcome to the group afterward).
My impression is that the passage into adulthood is quicker and more definitive in traditional societies. In my circle, you might graduate high school and leave home, which is the biggest change, then college is sort of a transitional stage where you’re fed and housed communally on someone else’s dime, then you transition to working and finding your own place to live some years later, and then maybe establishing your own family some years after that. All of which gives us more freedom—of what to study, where to live, what kind of work to do, whether and whom to marry—than we would have had in villages where that was all pretty much settled by age 20.
I guess the idea is that we prolong childhood/adolescence but direct it or protect it less. This can mean “a fulfilled, self-directed 20s and 30s and beyond”, with runway in becoming yourself, or “a nightmare of bad decisions and unlucky circumstances that you have to pay for for years, inhibiting your freedom”.
Building agency (the ability to secure your own well-being or liberty) is important, and supporting people in their development of agency might best be done by saying “You are supported, be good at interdependence, not independence.” (And then providing them good people with whom to be interdependent.) People need to make their mistakes in order to develop agency, but social and physical environments that are less dangerous foster that without injuring or killing people, and more supportive environments make injuries less serious so that they don’t get worse.
I think a “Western adult” is into independence more than interdependence, and so initiation into Western adulthood is “being thrown to the wolves”. But “being thrown to the wolves” is the name for when the initiation takes its bleak form, and there’s probably a different name people would use when the process goes more or less smoothly and successfully.
Fraternities and sororities do hazing in a way that’s closest to the rituals described in the books (and the warm welcome to the group afterward).
My impression is that the passage into adulthood is quicker and more definitive in traditional societies. In my circle, you might graduate high school and leave home, which is the biggest change, then college is sort of a transitional stage where you’re fed and housed communally on someone else’s dime, then you transition to working and finding your own place to live some years later, and then maybe establishing your own family some years after that. All of which gives us more freedom—of what to study, where to live, what kind of work to do, whether and whom to marry—than we would have had in villages where that was all pretty much settled by age 20.
I guess the idea is that we prolong childhood/adolescence but direct it or protect it less. This can mean “a fulfilled, self-directed 20s and 30s and beyond”, with runway in becoming yourself, or “a nightmare of bad decisions and unlucky circumstances that you have to pay for for years, inhibiting your freedom”.
Building agency (the ability to secure your own well-being or liberty) is important, and supporting people in their development of agency might best be done by saying “You are supported, be good at interdependence, not independence.” (And then providing them good people with whom to be interdependent.) People need to make their mistakes in order to develop agency, but social and physical environments that are less dangerous foster that without injuring or killing people, and more supportive environments make injuries less serious so that they don’t get worse.
I think a “Western adult” is into independence more than interdependence, and so initiation into Western adulthood is “being thrown to the wolves”. But “being thrown to the wolves” is the name for when the initiation takes its bleak form, and there’s probably a different name people would use when the process goes more or less smoothly and successfully.