Brief and Sentimental Intro
When I was 11 or 12, I heard grown-ups speak of a “difficult age” their teenage kids are being through. This age comes with bad grades, scandals, early pregnancies and paternities, escapes, elopes and sometimes jail time.
I got very scared of the “difficult age”, and expressly asked mom, “Please, don’t let me ruin my life! If I start doing anything like that, just lock me in my room or tie”. She smiled and said, “ok”.
She never needed to lock or tie me, though I was quite serious about it. A teen rebellion can ruin someone’s life.
Main Part
And, as a grown-up myself I see a wierd trend of normalization of teen rebellion and of its exportation into a person’s whole adult life. Moreover, benefits of a rebellion are now promoted to nations.
First and foremost, I don’t think that a full scale teenage rebellion is a normal part of growing up. It’s not. If it surpasses occasional mood swings, episodes of annoyance and a class skipped once in a while, there must be some issues with upbringing. Being rude and demanding is not a normal separation, if you ask me. Normal separation implies planning your future life, choosing an occupation and learning how to take care of your room, shoes, pocket money, underwear and hormones. By the age of 18 one is supposed to master things like that, as well as their temper.
Rebelling against loving parents to please a teenage street gang or to imitate your favorite celebrity is a sign of silliness and gullibility, not of independence and critical thinking.
At this point you might be asking why I am writing about it? Why are all these platitudes even here? How is it related to Ukraine, Russia, NATO? Well, I think it is. I mentioned how being a rebel is promoted to nations. I keep hearing bullshit like, “when are Russians going to rise against Putin? Are Russians just serfs who cannot rebel against Putin”, etc.
And I am sure the same message was given to Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Yugoslavians, Ukrainians, Georgians, etc. Rebel! It’s cool, bold, trendy! Everybody at school in the world does it! Don’t be a boomer commie, rebel! And younger people who already learned that being a rebel teenager is right, that this is how you separate from your parents who by definition gave you a lot of trauma, actually rise and rebel against what often is a normal government instead of getting a job.
Often they are inspired by celebrities, influencers, tictokers and other infantile bastards of culture who didn’t learn the benefits of hard labor in time.
I seldom speak of family values, but I do see how at first teenagers are set against their parents, then younger people are set against their country. It’s portrayed as a path towards maturity, while in fact it is an infantile behavior. And a sign of it is inability to look more than 1 – 2 steps forward.
You would ask me, “If so, why don’t Western hipsters and zoomers rebel against Joe Biden or Ursula von der Leyen?”. Good question. I think that the Western culture created safe manageable outlets for its own rebels. They break up from their families and can join one of the false opposition woke groups: LGBTQ+, Environmentalists (Just stop oil is outright childish), BLM, etc. They allow members to vent out their emotions and feel like they are actually protesting against something. Some can stand with Ukraine and Israel. For those who’s IQ is too low or too high there are drugs and meds. And anytime the government can direct these groups against each other or against a common enemy.
I don’t think this system will work for much longer though. It’s doomed to fail.
Image: Darya Trepova, 27, went to jail for a terrorist attack that killed one person and wounded over 40.
The behavioral maladies that you write about are primarily a consequence of prolonged affluence in most First World nations. Prolonged affluence leads to the death of real hardship and the elimination of the natural gauntlet of challenges that youngsters need to experience during their formative years. Nature intends that we face small hardships and obstacles early in life and learn to overcome them, thereby earning self-confidence and self-esteem through tangible life tests. Without these early life trials, children will grow up lost and unsure of themselves. Teenage rebellion is just an attempt to create imagined hardships because it was absent in their early years, and they subconsciously feel this as an absence of self-worth.
But yes, unscrupulous people will seize upon this youthful distress in order to further increase this individual dysfunction and sow the seeds of future societal mayhem. This is pure evil and should be opposed as the worst form of child abuse.
Amen
I come from a family with 6 children. None ever had a typical teen-ager phase.
I also well remember two ‘troublesome’ little boys who came to our house for lunch during the school week for several months due to circumstances. Within two days they emulated the behaviour of my two little brothers (their age) and all their troublesome behaviour had evaporated. Magic.
It is true that many teens have an awkward phase (they’ve grown so fast that their coordination hasn’t yet caught up). Likewise each age has its own challenges: marked shifts in preference, interests, friends, seeking support among your own age cohort instead of your parents. None of this need to be accompanied by failing at life and going nuts or parents/children becoming enemies to each other.
Trust, self-confidence, shame, boys/girls, boundaries — all these things undergo stress and are shaped anew. Breaking the law and enmity towards teachers & parents who take your success in life to heart means you are fighting a losing battle.
What is the allure of teen-age rebellion?
First of all the Western mythological hero who rebels against authority and tradition like every good artist, of course because society (‘other people’) are of course a hellish mish mash of contradictory unexamined stultifying irrational inherited bourgeois conventions, superstitions, and gratuitous hypocritical moral imperatives.
Second, the youth must be inducted in the culture of mass media, taken out of whatever traditional social cocoon they have been nurtured in, freed by the vista’s that open up via commercial music, entertainment, and consumer culture.
Well said, Webej. I have five kids – three young adults, one in senior high school, and a pre-teen – and so far my wife and I are, thank God, batting 1.000 in terms of nurturing normal teenagers to adulthood. Can’t predict how the fifth will turn out yet – lol.
There have been tensions along the way (some attributable to me), but nothing we collectively could not manage. The older four still enjoy our company, as we do theirs! Living by and imparting our Faith to them played a big part, but even the friends they have made – many from unchurched families – are terrific. Like attracts like.
I whole-heartedly agree with Mr. Kummer that the myth of the teenage rebel (oh gosh – the never-ending Boomer tropes I saw all the time as a Gen X kid) is fake. It has never been the norm. Joseph Campbell wrote about the “cinder times” – that awkward time in your late teens when you need to differentiate yourself as an individual – particularly sons from their fathers – but you deeply want to fulfil your part in your family’s and larger culture’s life, not depart from it. This fakery comes from a nihilistic Godless Hollywood/MSM complex that’s been operating since the Hays Code was broken in the early 60s. My wife and I joke about how the typical garbage sitcom or drama is written by 20- or 30-something childless singletons living in NYC or LA. Unfortunately, social media has made this trend worse. The culture war is real.