Continuing from the previous post, here are more words whose meanings have been deconstructed.
EDUCATION – The University is viewed as a place to be empowered to obtain wealth and its capacity to control other people. The educated, especially the highly educated in the fields of philosophy, psychology, literature, and theology are seen as those endued with power to influence and control. Knowledge is power; power to oppress. In an example of postmodernism’s irrationality, to be educated in Computer Science is seen as a good thing empowering this young generation to control the flow of information driving the 21st Century culture. The purpose of education is no longer to obtain knowledge but to obtain a skill in order to qualify for a job and gain power.
WORK – A job used to be a thing valued and desired to be kept. Work meant a career in a certain field that you worked in all your working life. My father and my wife’s father worked for their employers their whole working lives until they retired. Today, only 10% of employees have been working for the same employer for 20 years or more. The average number of times to change jobs is now about 11 times, but those born between 1977 and 1997 change jobs on average every three years with a projection of 15–20 job changes in their working life. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, one-third of the workforce changes jobs every 12 months and by age 42 most will have had 10 jobs.
The cultural attitude toward work reflects a shift in meaning from career (staying in the same occupation) to job. There is also a shift in purpose for work. It no longer is a mutual commitment between employer and employee representing a secure source of income for families on into retirement. The focus is not long-term, but short-term. Work is the necessary evil to provide the money to buy what I want now. The latest surveys and reports on Generation Z attitudes toward work
MATURITY – Maturity is no longer valued as representing a source of wisdom that the young need and desire. Maturity means old and old means old fashioned, oppressed by traditions and old ways of doing things that have been repudiated by this culture.
These are some of the words that have been redefined and devalued in this 21st Century. These are the things that help define a culture and help hold a culture together as it is passed from one generation to another. The passing of culture from one generation to the next is another very important process that has been deconstructed and repudiated by the current culture. Rites of passage have been destroyed.
Rites of Passage
Nothing holds a culture together and assures its longevity like its rites of passage. A rite of passage is a ritual event that marks an individual’s transition from one status in the culture to another. Rites of passage serve two purposes. On the individual level, the various transitions ritualized as celebrations are meant to help the person to transition from a helpless baby through adolescence to becoming a responsible adult member of the community. Birth, baptism, confirmation or Bar Mitzvah, graduations, marriage, birth of children, and death are family and community events in a person’s life, all giving significance to the person as he or she grows up and becomes a responsible adult. All of these events, even death, are celebrations of a person’s life giving that life significance all along the way from birth to death. The very first event, birth, is celebrated every year as the person’s birthday comes around and family and friends give gifts and say “Happy Birthday” to give significance and value to the day the person was born. This kind of affirmation is so necessary for a culture to provide for individuals. All cultures throughout human history have had these types of rites of passage giving significance to the human person – until the 21st Century.
The other purpose for rites of passage is seen on the societal or cultural level. For a cultural community to continue existing, the people must reproduce and the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, morals, customs, and traditions that define that society or culture must be instilled into each succeeding generation. Culture is inherited and for it to last the inheritance must be passed on. Rites of passage serve that purpose. The baptism, confirmation, and Bar Mitzvah mark a transition into the religious realm of the culture and mark the beginning of the religious education assuring the religion and morals of the society continue to the next generation. Education of children assures that knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, and customs are passed on to the next generation. In traditional societies, puberty and dating with its attendant sexual stirrings are preparation for getting married and marriage is preparation for reproducing children so that the society continues to be populated. The new generation is raised up to be just like the previous generation because the rites of passage insured the whole culture was passed on—until the 21st Century.
In the 21st Century Western culture, rites of passage are pretty much confined to the part of society that still holds to the Judeo-Christian worldview and that is a very small part of society and getting smaller all the time. With so many babies that are not aborted being born out of wedlock, and so many marriages ending in divorce; with so many youth dropping out of school and the ones that get educated get trained to perform a task rather than educated in the building blocks of life; with religion being trashed; and with being old considered to be a burden to society, people have nothing to celebrate and nobody to celebrate it with. Rites of passage have all but passed away. Where does that leave the young people? The next post shows some ways that youth are fending for themselves.