Boy, 17, charged with 11 rapes in Montreal

[anart]

Please feel free to elucidate what constitutes the transition from child to adult, in your current view.

Azur, perhaps you can do the same, since you did ask the question.

 

[Telperion]

I'm not clear on this, but if Postman is positing that childhood is not at all biological, then I think he lost his marbles. Also, his whole argument of the need for children to experience childhood for proper development wouldn't even make sense if it was a purely sociological construct.

I'm not sure if Postman iaddresses this biological angle but he definitely is saying that once there was no distinction, or at least a very dramatically different kind of distinction between mature adults and biologically immature adults. The 'garden of childhood' which is meant to sequester children from the adult world that James Emory White refers to is a fairly recent construct according to Postman.

from _http://www.hbci.com/~wenonah/new/childhod.htm

In Postman's view, the postmodern culture is propelling us back to a time not altogether different from the Middle Ages, a time before literacy, a time before childhood had taken hold as an idea. Obviously, there were children in medieval times, but no real childhood, he says, because there was no distinction between what adults and children knew.

Postman's book recalls the coarse village festivals depicted in medieval paintings - men and women besotted with drink, groping one another with children all around them. It describes the feculent conditions and manners drawn from the writings of Erasmus and others in which adults and children shared open lives of lust and squalor.

"The absence of literacy, the absence of the idea of education, the absence of the idea of shame - these are the reasons why the idea of childhood did not exist in the medieval world," Postman writes.

(By the way, another interesting book from Postman is 'Amusing Ourselves to Death', an insightful commentary on the erosion of intelligible discourse in American society. Overall I'm not thrilled with some of Postman's Reaganite views however he does make some compelling points)

 

[Azur]

Vinny beat me to the punch, on the essential points that crossed my mind when reading Shane's post.

if we're talking in biological terms then: puberty?

but also, according to current wisdom, I think there are various distinct (and essential) stages of psychological development during which a child moves away from being merely an extension of 'mother', and develops a sense of self, and then a sense of placing of self within external social context.

There's the biological aspect, when the brain structures stop migrating, and settle in, certain hormones coming online, etc.

Then there's the personality developmental stages. (This is my take on it so far, and I haven't read many studies about this at all, so it is opinion only taken from observation). Personality being the interface to the outside, evaluating feedback, and acting out according to a perceived or real internal need or want. The delineation between need and want and the rationalization involved is a key point, methinks. And then there is the transformation, or rather, the exploitation of fear leveraging the "personality". This is a grey area. Is there a difference between personality and character essence? Where is the dividing line, the thing you can point to in cases where you have a 20 year-old, a 30 year-old, a 40 year-old on up the line in whatever life stage, that in a ponerized environment puts a stake in the ground and flips the bird, ready to die instead of going along?

Most children (still undefined as per age of what that means psychologically) will try to sort out what they see, not having much experience to compare it to, and try to stay safe as a number one priority, relying heavily on whoever has provided for them the most, a sign that they will continue to do so, i.e. trust.

Is the point at which one realizes that they must rely solely on themselves (because what they see has variances with what their champions/guardians/parents/caregivers see) the beginning of adulthood? Is this the point where personality is deconstructed and understood for what it is, an interface? If so, I'd hazard the notion that the western world is filled with middle aged children who have transfered their trust model onto someone/something else. And this transference process is the lynch pin that enables penorization.

So the following, for me, hits the mark with regards to personality versus character essence:

Postman argues that it is the accessibility of 'adult secrets' that creates the 'child-like-adult'. He's basically stating that our inability to hide society's 'badness' to a child until they're mature is the cause of 'the disappearance of childhood'. I think this is where he comes close but misses the mark that the study of ponerology provides. It's not that these secrets are adult, but that they're pathological. These are the influences which hinder proper mental growth and keep children and adults at the lowest possible level of personality development, the psychopathic level (which Dabrowski termed primary integration). Just as there's been a disappearance of childhood, there's also a disappearance of adulthood; in their place is an underdeveloped personality warped by pathology. And this now being a world-wide phenomenon, I would think the degree of each stage of ponerization would be expressed in greater severity.

While this I have a lot of trouble integrating with the above:

his whole argument of the need for children to experience childhood for proper development wouldn't even make sense if it was a purely sociological construct.

Personality development is a WHOLLY sociological effect, constructed for primal reasons at the individual level, initially. And then, whether it is shorn or not depends on the person and their perception of why it is still needed. And the latter, of course, is if one discovers that there is a personality veneer to begin with. And the most probable factor for the need: an environment that requires such a defense mechanism.


It is a huge tragedy that in our society, children learn how to build masks so early in self-defense.

 

[Renaissance]

Personality development is a WHOLLY sociological effect, constructed for primal reasons at the individual level, initially. And then, whether it is shorn or not depends on the person and their perception of why it is still needed. And the latter, of course, is if one discovers that there is a personality veneer to begin with. And the most probable factor for the need: an environment that requires such a defense mechanism.


It is a huge tragedy that in our society, children learn how to build masks so early in self-defense.

These masks probably have some biological aspect to it too. During the periods of brain formation that you mentioned, trauma can alter it's growth to produce 'short circuits' or programed dissociation. Only more severe states are currently recognized by the mainstream medical community, but I think we can see how smaller scales exist.

I intended to write a fuller response but I've been pretty sick lately.