The pangs of tough love....

So I'm reading this book called "The Road to Whatever" by Elliot Currie; it's about the crisis facing middle class youth. He does a really good job at dissecting an issue that's been neglected for quite some time.

He gives examples of many adolescents that have been reared in financially stable homes and are facing problems that are always co-related to poverty.

The problems they're dealing with prove that poverty is not a strong co-relation to rebellion and dangerous behaviour.

He sums it down to several social issues that all breed from social darwinism. The most obvious is the selfish phenomena referred to as "tough love". It's quite possibly the most destructive form of parenting. Where parents neglect the child for the sake of their own good ("neglecting" for their own good? I don't get it... That's like saying to your girl..."I'm gonna rape you for your own good....").

They do this when the child becomes "out of control" or "too rebellious" and what the parents do is disown their child by not commincating with them, being harsh and lacking empathy & eventually throwing them out on the street (or sending them to rehab).

Currie goes on to say many of these adolecents only rebel or loose control because they cannot live up to the ridiculously high standards society put out for them. They live to them for a while & eventually burn out. He also goes on to say that, the parents hardly ever acknowledge their child's success' and only criticize their imperfections (if I grew up in that kind of a home, I would have ended up the most ruthless thug on the planet, I am the definition of imperfection....Thank GOD for ma familia).

So, this social darwinism phenomena says that, "if your not the best, your nothing". The whole "survival of the fittest" motif, he claims, has destroyed an adolecents possibility to be just "human".

As well, he notes about the whole, American Christianity ideology which says "a sin is a sin". Whether I've lied, smoked crack or went on a killing spree, I'm in the boat of "wretched sinner"' so alot of religious and irreligious adolecents end up saying "the hell with it, whether I accidentally curse or get smashed, I'm just as bad, so whats the point of trying so hard to perfect?"

This forces many adolecents to completely disregard any potential of them doing good.

I've only summarized a portion of his book, there's so many things and I highly suggest you read his book too. But I would like to end off with the central reason as to why many adolecents are sinking terribly. It is because they've lost their sense of self "human" worth. The idea which plagues modern culture, which is a mix of social darwinism and some really bizarre form of Chrisindom says in this society that you either sink or swim; because sinking is just much easier when all the odds are against you, what do you have to loose.

Never loose your sense of worth, you, as a human, share the same value as everyone around you; priceless.