I wrote: >>If we can ever figure out the solution [to intergenerational communication], stuff like cigarettes and body piercing will disappear.<< Doug asks: >And what's wrong with body-piercing? to use a technical term, it's yucky. I don't have anything intellectual or moral against it. My reaction is purely visceral. Especially tongue studs. Otherwise, I see nothing wrong with piercing because if done right, it doesn't cause permanent damage. Perhaps pen-l should debate these issues, along with branding and cosmetic amputation. >>My impression, based on a woefully inadequate knowledge of anthropology and sociology, is that teenage rebellion is a relatively new phenomenon, or rather that teenage rebellion used to be channelled in other ways.<< >And what's wrong with teenage rebellion? I wish today's youth - young people today, I tell you! - were more rebellious, not less.< Nothing is wrong with teenage rebellion per se, just as teenage rebellion per se isn't automatically good. (Consider the skinhead movement.) But somehow teenage rebellion was channelled better when it went into the anti-war movement during the 1960s and early 1970s than when it involves buying ciggies or nihilism to spite us elders. Rebellion seems a better phenomenon when it doesn't shut down communication with the elders, just as the elders' deploying of their "exalted wisdom" is better when we don't lord ourselves above the youth, pretending to always know what's inside their heads and what's best for them, which also shuts down communication. in pen-l solidarity, Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html
