07-18-2019, 10:23 AM
(07-18-2019, 08:03 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: On the other hand, the tools of entertainment have gotten incredibly cheap, and those disseminate the youth culture. I see no cause to believe that American culture will ever fossilize. I expect that the Homeland Generation will replace the brashness of X mass culture with whimsy much as the Silent did with Lost culture, and that such will still define generations. I also expect the next Idealist generation to chafe under a sanitized, corporate mass culture in entertainment and robotic politics -- not at age 30 but at age 18 or so.
Culture distinction between generations and economic maturity may simply coincide. But let us think of all the child laborers of the early twentieth century: did they mature fast and become self-reliant? Hardly. They were completely dependent upon the owners and bosses, and the parents typically took the money that those kids could not sneak into a candy shop.
The tendency toward more education seems unlikely to reverse. We may see a need not only for technical education to get people into entry-level jobs, but also to get people to learn some liberal arts so that they can seek and to some extent achieve meaning in life. The expansion of K-12 education from K-8 as a norm in America occurred in part as a means of getting ill-paid children out or the workforce when jobs were scarce during the Great Depression. Besides, many employers are finding that subsidizing a college education is one way to retain good, if still underpaid, workers instead of having high turnover -- and having a chance of making those workers better fit a culture that might be less materialistic. Besides, people with more and better education are less likely to fall for demagogues of any kind, Left or Right.
We already see a new life stage unknown in the past: "rising adulthood". During rising adulthood people spend their parents' money, focus on parties and casual relationships without feeling much pressure to marry or to work too much. It is possible the new Prophets rebel against rising adulthood and demand being accepted as full-blown adults at age 18. But it's also possible they opt for another kind of rising adulthood, not party-oriented one but a period of aesthetic and spiritual exploration with only part-time work. Something like I had between the age of 20 (2006) and 31 (2017), but this was only possible for me because I'm from a middle class family. For new Prophets this kind of quarter life crisis might be mainstream.
Being dependent on owners and bosses is not relevant to the definition of maturity, every worker is depended on his boss even if the worker is 60 and the boss is 25.