Why do western cultures lack rites of passage? It seems so weird that there is no definitive process that makes you a real man or women. No tests of maturity, no displays of strength or honor, no recognition of self-discipline.
Western people just kinda drift about after high school, do college, watch childish movies, and get mocked if they live at home or haven’t settled eventually.
What gives?
 Man-made Horrors Shirt $21.68 |
 Nothing Ever Happens Shirt $21.68 |
Man-made Horrors Shirt $21.68 |
We have rites of passage, they're just all bureaucratic instead of ritualized. Graduations and marriage ceremonies function the same way
Not really.
Marriage used to mean “I am married because I am a man”. Now it means “I am a man because I am married”.
People don’t view degrees as marks of maturity either.
>Marriage used to mean “I am married because I am a man”. Now it means “I am a man because I am married”.
That would make it more of a rite of passage, not less.
How? If the barrier to entry for something is low then it is meaningless
Rites of passage are extended to everyone at a certain age, anon. Did you mean to ask why westerners don't make our kids stick their hand in a jar of biting ants?
Extended is the key word here. You have the OPPORTUNITY to become an adult. It doesn’t mean you can or will be successful in achieving it.
Not everyone is able to marry or receive education, either.
The wast majority of rites of passage are just ritualistic theater, anon. Hardly anyone actually says 'go kill this lion or you're not a man'.
The Germanic tribes literally used to make teenage boys kill a bear to be considered a man
Lol no they didn't. Bear hunting was a dangerous thing to do even for experienced adults in groups, and no community in their right mind would expose every young male in their group to such a risk. Such a group would soon find themselves without any males. At most a young man would be told to take part in a hunt with other, more experienced adults, but that usually happened in places where being a hunter was your only option, and it was more of a case of "Well you gotta start sometime." Extraordinarily dangerous rites of passage are only really a thing in fiction.
Read Tacticus and Caesar
Those frickers killed bears and aurochs to ascend to manhood
>implying I'll ever be able to marry
Thanks anon
Western culture has moved beyond the point of a right of passage having any meaning (it's not just Western culture that no longer has a right of passage) One can get an education, get a job and raise the next generation without a symbiotic write of passage. How would hunting an animal or getting tattoo etc mean one is suddenly equipped to navigate the world? This is something best left for simple tribal life.
>people don't view degrees as marks of maturity
>degree is a common stepping stone to adult career
Maybe you ought to give examples of what exactly you're looking for
Did you never go to college?
Because it's more instinctual. People self-asses and determine if they have really become an adult and the rest of society is also judging them.
Also our standards for this are constantly changing. Having some set rite that occurs when you're 19 doesn't really align with the now growing perception that most guys under the age of 30 are still kind of boyish and young.
Probably just individualism, modern societies don't have the kind of social cohesiveness required for formal rites of passage. There's informal ones like losing virginity, learning to drive a car etc but failing them doesn't have similar consequences to not passing a rite of passage in a tribal society, like getting circumcised as a teenager or whatever.
Trying to kill white people is a rite of passage in the west.
These rites of passage were supposed to initiate the young into the tribe.
There is no longer a tribe in western cultures. Most people live in rootless cosmopolitan cities, seeing hundreds of strangers every day.
Who exactly is your tribe in this situation?
Most people live in suburbs
Oh that’s an easy answer because roughly 400 years ago we evolved past Black folk and Indios who legitimately thought sticking your dick in a bullet ant hill would impress their gods.
It’s part of the reason why you cry o. Twitter incessantly about how your ancestors got BTFO’d into oblivion by white men with machine guns.
Well that isn't entirely true. Although we don't have anything like a test to become an adult, we do have certain ceremonies atleast here in East Germany, we have something called Jugendweihe.
Although even that has been mostly corrupted by capitalism after the reunification into a way for kids to leach money of their parents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_coming-of-age_ceremony
Romans use to have a red toga for children, they could wear a white toga later
Celts didnt bother making clothes for children bevause they would grow out pf them, becoming an adulz meant getting your first pants
There's tons of rites of passage in the western world. Just because you don't have some witch doctor dancing around and spitting liquor in people's faces at your graduation ceremony doesn't make it any less of a ritual.
If you
- didn't lose your virginity by the time you're 18
- don't have a driving license at 20
- don't have (or at least pursue) a uni degree by 30
- are not married by 35
- don't have children by 35
- don't own a house by 40
- don't have grandchildren by 65
- etc.
you're considered some kind of stunted individual who cannot be a full member of civil society. Basically, people look at you as if your some kind of semi-handicapped person who ought to be pitied/ridiculed. Of course they won't outright banish you to the wastelands, but they'll definitely look down upon you, ignore your arguments etc. Basically, they'll treat you in a benign yet condescending manner the way they treat children.
Note not every single rite of passage mentioned above has to be completed. In fact, most people probably haven't. But it is expected to pass most of them. Below a certain limit, the less you've passed, the less of an adult you are.
wtf are you talking about, op? there are lots: . you really just seem too fricking stupid to realize what is and isn't a rite of passage (
)
None of these are rituals anon. Please read the definition of the word.
They are rituals. They're just designed to fleece people, not to vet people.
I'm really sorry anon, but a rite of passage works as an institutionalized ceremony, not as a Steam achievement. I don't think you're cut out to do any serious analysis.
This is like saying 'a videogame is supposed to be fun, therefore XYZ isn't a videogame'.
Rites of passage are supposed to be some kind of public ceremony to introduce the adult world to the new adult and the new adult to the adult world.
The western world instead has a series of false rites of passage that require you to spend money to get what amounts to a temporary pass for provisional membership in the adult world - but you never get to actually join.
So the true 'rite of passage' in the western world is 'have money to waste for decades at a time'.
Exactly. Welcome to capitalism where everything is commodified and people are expected to self-optimize constantly to keep the wheel of ever-increasing profits going.
Of course they are, you stupid homosexual. As I said, you don't need a witch doctor burning chicken feet at an altar to make it a rite of passage.
Example: Graduate from uni, step on the podium to accept your funny document, congrats, you're now part of the adult group of people who can expect more than minimum wage their entire lives. Do you seriously expect an animal sacrifice by the dean for it to count as a rite of passage?
tedious pseud moron
I think you have the definition of Rite of Passage confused with modern Hollywood social requirements.
From Wikipedia:
>A rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another.
From Merriam-Webster:
>a ritual, event or experience that marks or constitutes a major milestone or change in a person's life
How then, is a graduation ceremony not a rite of passage? It's even in the name itself.
Those are not rites of passage, moron.
I know you think you are intelligent and that you just wrote a relevant social commentary but you're an idiot
>spend money
“At last! You are now a man, Aiden!”
>Western people just kinda drift about after high school, do college, watch childish movies, and get mocked if they live at home or haven’t settled eventually.
Technically you had to finish those to be considered contributing member of society, that's a version of "rites of passage".
The childish things are a more modern phenomenon the result of many single parent households and feminist influence
This is 'cultural capitalism'.
You can sell pseudo-rites of passage to people over and over again.
Because they lack everything. Because of progressist liberalism.