discipline and punish (was: Christian love)

[Lawrence]

Wojtek Sokolowski, you seem to have a lot of anger that you aim at the young. I find this disturbing. Aren't there
other targets in society that would be more deserving of your rage? The young have no money and no power. Why be
angry with them? Why not be sympathetic toward them?

Of teenage identity you wrote, "It is a nauseating blend of silliness, skin-deep shallowness,

 hyper-conventionalism, conformism, consumerism, anti-intellectualism and

 intolerance of any deviations form the norm." Actually, I've known a lot of great teens who have a lot of
intelligent things to say about their lives, their environments, their parents, and their peers. But even if I
didn't know these people, or even if we agree that such teens are the mature exception to the general rule, so
what? Your main complaint seems to be that teens are immature. Yes, obviously. When is a person supposed to be
immature, if not when they are young? Dewey once wrote that he had no patience for those adults who were angered by
the immaturity of the young.

By the way, "It is a nauseating blend of silliness, skin-deep shallowness,

 hyper-conventionalism, conformism, consumerism, anti-intellectualism and

 intolerance of any deviations form the norm," comes close to how I describe middle America to my foreign friends.
Of course, I'm partly kidding when I say it.


>
> Then I suggest that tomorrow morning you go to your nerby mall and count
> the number of teenagers engaged in the following activities:


> > yakking on a cell phone
> buying clothing
> buying CDs
> eating junk food
> browsing silly magazines for teenagers or
> hanging out withe their friends engaged in these activities.
>
> Then go to your Pathfinder store and count the number of teeneagers there.
> If there is none in your state, go to Borders and count the number of
> teenagers who stop in front of the social science or philosophy section -
> or if none stops, count the number of teens in the whole bookstore.  Then
> report your observations back to us.
>
> PS. Teenage identity is one of the most obnoxious creations of the
> advertisement/entertainment industry - almost as obnoxious as christianity.
>  It is a nauseating blend of silliness, skin-deep shallowness,
> hyper-conventionalism, conformism, consumerism, anti-intellectualism and
> intolerance of any deviations form the norm.
>
> wojtek
>