thread: 2005-08-30 : Coming-of-age Fantasy for Adults
On 2005-08-30, Neel wrote:
It's not the only thing that does, of course. Love does. But sex and violence, that's what adulthood is made of. Sex is obvious, but violence too: how many stories have we heard that go "...so I took a baseball bat to him, and he never laid a hand on me or my mother again"? That story is about manhood.
I think that is exactly a story about adolescence. See, a child is someone who is fundamentally dependent upon others to maintain the moral order, and takes it as a given. A child transitions into adolescence, when they learn that this isn't automatic, that they have to be the people that ensure that the moral order of their community is upheld. You get adulthood when you learn how to deal fairly and honorably with the Other—the people who are outside your interpersonal community. It's emotionally colder, necessarily, because now you're dealing with people you don't have a connection with, and you're stuck with operating based on principle rather than emotional connection.
An interesting point of comparison is the psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of the development of moral reasoning. He divides moral reasoning into 6 stages, and tracks how they evolve. Children are typically at stages 1 or 2, and during adolescence and early adulthood people learn to reason at stages 3 and 4, and occasionally some people hit 5 or 6.
Now, the really interesting bit for rpgs is that simply listening to moral judgements doesn't change the level at which people think. Instead, you need to find a situation in which reasoning suggests something different from moral intuition, and you have to figure out how to resolve the contradiction....
This makes VB go "there is a man in the story..."
But check this out: adulthood isn't the same thing as manhood or womanhood, morally speaking.
This makes NK go "Who?"
Seriously, I don't get your little headline. Unpack please?
I think I get your extended comment, though I can't generate any emotional agreement -- growing up in a caste-conscious family has left me hyper-suspicious of any non-universal moral notions. That's my baggage though.
This makes VB go "the unnamed 'he' is the man."
A man, a woman and a boy are in an initial situation. The boy takes action, resolving the situation into a new one. That's the story. So ... is the boy now a man? Is the man still a man? Was he ever a man? What is the woman's role in creating their manhoods or lacks thereof? The story doesn't define manhood, it's just about manhood.
This makes VB go "...and also, about non-universal moral notions..."
...I intend to provoke you to create and enact non-universal morality, so look out!
This makes NK go "I've never..."
...found a non-universal morality that wasn't a fancy way of rationalizing the sentiment "It's okay to hurt those guys because they're not really people," but I guess I have faith in you.
This makes SLB go "The problem with Kohlberg..."
...is that his schema of moral evolution proceeds from his own ethics. What about virtue theory? What about W. D. Ross? What about, fer cryin' out loud, any consideration of non-Western philosophies?
