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Lyra,
'twas I that mentioned the "invented youth culture" bit. I chose to leave things open vis-a-vis interpreting that formation as being an invention of the Establishment or otherwise.
Anyway, I'm not sure their is such a monolithic superstructure as "the Establishment."
I mean "the rebellion of youth" is as much a commericial, economic subsystem of european-derived culture as "maintaining the status quo." Think cross-culturally and historically. In most of the world cultures and through most of time, adolescence hasn't been associated with rebellion.
Shit, a lot of folks don't even have an construct of adolescence. You're a child, then you're a grown-up. For women the demarcation line was menstruation, for men it was usually a comparable, artificially induced blood-letting--first hunt/kill, circumcision, subincision [ouch!], etc.
From here on out, speculation ensues:
Adolescence as an idea calcified only with the invention of secondary and university schooling, back in the day when someone decided that maybe people other than monks should learn to read good. The institution of the university was established itself as a sort of hot-house for intellectual innovation shielded from the wrath of organized religion, a proving ground for ideas, from which those concepts that facilitated the governing paradigm of that particular nation could be transplanted and encouraged to grow. Rather, the whole endeavour kind of blew up like the untended contents of the refridgerator, with all sorts of pro- and anti-"Establishment" ideas flowing forth.
The funny thing is, the teachers were the intellectual innovators: only a tiny fraction of the student youth fabricated new ideas, and most simply adhered to an intellectual dogma they picked up. It's the old caveat of the difference between Freud and the Freudians, Marx and Marxists, Socrates and that bloody groupie Plato: the teacher poses the rhetorical question, the student accepts the question as an answer. Verrryyy shilly.
To this day, adolescent rebels are largely individuals adhering to a set of preconceptions and social-address rules invented by somebody else, typically in middle-age. And that's not getting into the drives to simultaneously differentiate and inter-tie oneself with the peer group.... |
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