THE ADOLESCENCE IN THE POSTMODERNISM

CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITIES

 

The following essay of the Bachelor of Psychology Juan Martín Núñez, dedicated to the orientation of the parents in his forming mission of the adolescents, tackles fundamental aspects of the challenges described in his previous work “ Message to our children: prevention of addictions ”. This one has been deserved by a valuable weighting of the Commission Archidiocesana of Minority of the Archbishopric of Buenos Aires on having emphasized his importance as hopeful and positive message for the youth in this epoch of crisis.

 

 

If we advise to parents of adolescents in this so difficult epoch, surely we must bear in mind a heap of factors that I will try to develop briefly in this essay.

It is necessary to begin for being located temporarily: we are in such a rewell-worn postmodernism. In the western culture that basically is characterized by the coexistence of the capitalism, the industrialization and the democracy, the postmodernism sustains in the fund the death of the ideologies - especially the progressives, the utopias - appealing to a pragmatism without precedents that it rides on the explanatory powerlessness of the reason, the orphanage of spiritual values, the political funny activity of conceptions idealistic and removed from the real needs of the people, emphasizing more the image than the platform of proposals; the bankruptcies of the justice that invents charges and chases innocent helpless while it does the fat sight before corrupt guilty but powerful, quite aiming to install a new paradigm: the hedonistic consumption, the pure pleasure mercantilist for few ones, whereas for the great remaining majority only there stays the exclusion and alienation that they go of the hand of the unemployment, the negligible wages, the social desprotection in sanitary, education and safety.

We assist then to a great crisis of credibility of the whole system, which also it includes in most cases to the adolescence, an intrinsically idealistic social group. And this skepticism derives in an ethics without values, where “ everything is permited ”, everything is allowed, anything is good not even villain, nothing is absolute, everything is relative and it depends on the criterion of each one. There is a moral dissoluteness, governs allowing to do, to allow to happen (as he says the tango: “give him that it goes, if there in the oven we go away to find ..”).

There is a saturation of information, the mediocrity and superficiality are entire. Any fashion model or football player speaks about any thing, incited by the mass media to that the drop out and the banality encourage to sell more and with his morbidness they transform the newscasters into real galleries of the frightfulness. They fill us with amusements and gambling houses of any kind, soporific soap operas and series and movies of terrible violence.

The consumerism is supported at any cost. Next to the towns misery, favelas and neighborhoods of poverty there coexist the freeways, the residential countries, the megashoppings, the factories with his pollution and the ecological destruction. Yes, it is how says a tango...”the Bible along with the heather”.

Everything empties of sense, it is already not possible to trust in the only and sure truth. The model - success is wanted to sell to us of “ self made man ” or yuppie American, the Spanish "pasota", the Argentine "chanta".

He is the “ man light ”, diet, decaffeinated, without depth, plunged at a freedom irresponsible, inclined to the corruption. Everything is possible because everything is allowed.

 

An obsession

This has created a sickly obsession: to flee of the healthy limits, of the real values and tasks of the life, of the personal and social responsibility. But it was not free, but at the cost of a great anxiety, desperation and overwhelming sensation of gap that led to the heyday and increase of the neurotic triad of our postmodern time: the violence - aggression, the depression - suicide, and the addictions (drugs, alcohol, mixed up sex, easy money, gambling games, video games, etc).

The man is shut up in himself, each one connected in his house to the great television dummy or the computer; each one inventing his own codes of conduct and values, without assuming personal responsibility in the construction of the common good.

A simple adolescentization of the society is proposed to us. We are submitted to a permanent bombing of rules and slogans been inspired in addition by those partial more difficult and negative aspects of the adolescence: the irresponsibility, the fleetingness and superficiality of the commitment, the undiscrimination, the unrestrained and compulsive consumerism.

 

The youth is proposed as the only paradigm to imitating, one evades to assume the responsibility of the adulthood, everything is sustained in here and now adolescent. Only it imports the present, there is no project (of the Latin "pro-yectum", thrown towards) of future, everything is ephemeral, it imports more the rind, the external thing, the appearance, that the content.

This postmodern irrationality type huckster also is reflected in the personal norms that with arbitrariness each one establishes: there are a pragmatic ethics that presents the closed man in himself, his own values being dictated.

 

Any mention of some absolute external and different it is ignored and lived as a repression of his freedom. The sociocultural thing it is understood as a swarm of customs and values that prevent in certain way any judgment of specific value. The piety, when it is had, is sustained artificial and ritually, forgetting that a faith without works is a dead faith. The fanaticisms and fundamentalisms divide to the human beings and on behalf of God the worst atrocities are committed, from the ethnic massacres, the wars of conquest by the wealths of the soil up to the most bloody terrorist offences.

 

Spiritual dimension

The psychology appeals to a criterion mechanicist and determinist of an easy theatricality: the mysterious one and inasible unconscious it does that we are marionettes of the instincts without some responsibility of our part comes up. Any mishap is enough for to rest comfortably in the couch, to leave that the time happens removing distant traumas and to justify like that our inaction by means of complicated psychoanalytic interpretations that, in his positivism and reductionism materialist, leave of side the most important thing: the spiritual dimension of the man.

Before this global panorama wondering is valid: is this one of that time “ the end of the history ”, as does say Fukuyama?. If this way out, since Humanity we would be lost.

Fortunately still we are many human beings that we make work some neurons still not atrophied by these gigantic swap and try to keep burning a flame of hope that illuminates and guides to the human being in his way; also there are very numerous not governmental organizations that develop cooperative and united activities expiring with this vital function to help the neighbor, clarifying and mitigating this way the pains of his soul.

 

It always seemed to me very wise to emphasize this attitude with a beautiful example of platonic roots: in the mythical and most ancient cavern of the Humanity all its interior is shades and blackness. If I want to evict the darkness, however much I attacked it with bombs, shots of machine guns and mortars, I will not obtain anything.

But it will be enough that it deposits and lights a small phosphorus so that the darkness of thousands of years vanishes and disappears. The light of the spirit wins this way to the darkness of the injustice and the ignorance. This is the way: to educate, to illuminate the minds and the hearts.

 

Before this postmodern abnormality with his social adolescentization, to avoid confusions it is legitimate on the other hand to remember that, although the adolescence is characterized by developments, feelings and often atypical and abnormal conducts, these are nevertheless proper of the age and overcome gradually across the growth and the maturation.

The adolescence, which it commences with the stage of the puberty next to 10 years, is this oscillating bridge that spreads between the shores of the childhood and the adulthood.

 

In the puberty they begin the physical changes more intensive and perceptibly, the development of the sexual capacity, the sexual secondary declarations (hair, change of voice) and a personal boss of psychological organization.

In the early adolescence, already next to 14 years, it begins a search of the emotional balance to overcome this so typical instability (“ student's loves, flowers of one day are ”) and to face a slow definition of the proper identity.

It begins the making of a personal scale of values, although much influenced by the grupal context (there is an opening bigger than the world, than other social interests) for which it performs supreme importance for the parents to accompany the children in the election and knowledge of his nucleus of friends (for example, they are not the same thing “ close-cropped skinheads ” that the environmental young people).

 

The emotional imbalance combines hormonal and psychological factors, since the adolescent lives through three duels or fundamental losses: his infantile body, his roll and infantile identity and his parents of the infancy. Everything changes and starts being seen from a new perspective.

 

This great alteration brings as consequence this mental instability, psychopathic handling, perturbations of the thought, spongy personality, occasional identities, anxiety and depression.

And here it is good to reflect and to rescue then the positive aspects of the adolescence. Although this is a vital crisis, let's remember that the Chinese knowledge represents the word crisis with a compound ideogram: a part represents danger, and another opportunity.

Although this age faces dangers and sufferings, on the other hand it is plethoric in opportunities to be discovered to himself, of to forge a healthy identity, of to purify the highest ideal, of to cultivate the most noble feelings, of to discover the love not only physically but also deeply spiritually, and to begin to give the first steps in the real vocation that will be exercised fully in the adulthood.

 

Family

To make all these achievements possible the family will be fundamental. The parents are the managers, with responsibility indelegable, of helping his son in his existential deployment. The corporal thing is transmitted by means of the heredity, and the psychological thing is prosecuted by means of the education. But the spiritual thing demonstrates only in the achievement of the existence. The family give refuge to the infantile person who cannot exist for himself alone.

The children and adolescents must be recognized as human different beings; they must be respected his rights in his own life.  Then, the parents work for them as models to continuing, showing with his actions the values in which they believe, so what the son believes is what the father does, not so much what he says.

 

The family is the natural community in which the son becomes more and more free, in it is born and is in it educated towards his autocertain freedom. This deployment of the freedom of the adolescent presupposes a gradual development of the independence and responsibility of his conscience, which makes his personal elections possible.

He must be accompanied for the parents (although it is laborious) without choosing for them, but not also falling down in the simplicity of feigning ignorance of the topic.

A just and balanced average term between freedom and imposition is the most difficult task of the parents and the most desirable attitude: neither inattention that produces the dissoluteness or the escapism, nor an authoritarianism that generates conformity, undecision, cowardice, traumas or rebelliousness.

Clear and comprehensive limits which take care and accompany, are essential for the adolescent; and although he sometimes does not express it verbally, he is grateful and needs them intimately, so they are an index of the value and importance that he has for his parents. They are like the guides as which they make possible to the shoot to grow straight up to being an adult tree.

 

Authoritarianism

The authoritarianism propitiates the conformism and not creativity. Before his powerlessness, the son can try to flee or to give up. It can escape across the abandonment, daydream, see excessive television, addictions, or to move back coward and undecidedly of the struggle for the life, feeling completly dependently and incompetently.

 

That's why, the best conduct of the parents has to be to share with the children his ideas, knowledge and experience, to preach more than to impose, to suggest more that to demand.

On having felt recognized, the son feels dear, which stimulates enormously his growth bio-psicho-socio-spiritual. To make him feel his acceptance there must be used the most suitable, more constructive, healthier formulae of communication, respecting his autoesteem, being sensitive to receive his own values, saying to him daily with gestures and words we love it.

 

The speech and the affectionate attitude treat and encourage positive changes and allow to be able to be expressing his own values, reinforce his autoesteem and prevent feelings of little value that might generate in a future bad or criminal conducts.

One must inculcate the son to be delivered neither to the apathy nor to the free time, and that still in the middle of mishaps the best attitude is always going to be the delivery of himself and the service to a cause, to a mission. This is what will give sense to his life and it will be made healthy mentally to allow him to listen to the voice of his conscience, ” the voice of the transcendency ”.

Of course, we see that all these suggestions imply that the parents spend time on his children and this sometimes is not so easy. Time is money, but it happens and does not return any more. The words not said, the caresses not happened in the precise moment, are going to be very difficult to realize in another moment, to capture this situation in the future.

 

We must recreate the poetry, the daily astonishment before the miracle of to see and to feel our children growing  next to us. Quite to his time, in his measurement and armoniously.

Being immersed in the daily struggle for surviving, or fighting to pay the mortgage or to buy the second car (at different economic levels), they can become obstacles that they must be overcome still at the cost of sacrifices. There is no more arduous, awkward and transcendent task for a human being, that to redeem the parents roll and to go a family moves forward. This was and it will continue being a prop of the human, like that evolution of true the fact is that the family is the basic cell of our society.

 

Resurgence

For any more technological advances that continue taking place, it will never be able to replace anything in importance to the human being. There is next the improvement of the postmodernism as incoherent and insufficient proposal that becomes exhausted itself.

It¨s perceptible a spiritual resurgence; four areas of knowing human being will occupy a preponderant and fundamental place in this new century through that we have begun to live: the humanist and transcendent psychology; the education; the philosophy and the religion.

 

The postmodern adolescentization will be replaced by a psychological more adult and integrated vision of the human being, after whom definitively a spiritual destination will be recognized: the supreme good. Of the adolescence his most positive aspects will be rescued and will deepen: his intrepidity, his creativity, his solidarity, his disinterested idealism.

 

In this psychological field, the postulates of Víctor Frankl's logoteraphy will constitute the most important contribution, for to conceive the man as an integrated being bio-psicho-socio-spiritual, with a freedom responsible and faced to the transcendency, realizing the values of creation (act), existential (love, beauty) and of attitude (conduct before suffering, the death), in the search of the sense of the life.

 

The education will be of that time directed to forming the conscience of responsibility, to encouraging the emergence of the intuition in the individual conscience as instrument that allows to discover the hierarchy of transcendent values, by means of which they could take the most suitable existential decisions.

This way, although the traditional values have fallen down, this ripeness of conscience allows equally to the man to discover the only senses of the existence and to fulfill his mission in the world. It will be an education for the spirit, not merely informative.

The eternal philosophical question: “ who am I? ”, it will have response and new and vast fields of knowledge will be opened before the thinker.

 

 The studies on oriental philosophy and compared religions allow to glimpse an increasing approach between East and Occident, since beyond the different cultural conceptions there makes way for itself the idea of the only one humanity, joined by a common destination: to realize his spiritual essence; of which we saw an indication in the Second World Parliament of the Religions celebrated in 1993 in Chicago, the USA with the presence of all most important world creeds, where a model Declaration of World Ethics was approved.

It will be known reliably that the atheistic nihilism, nothing, to anything drives. The religion (of the Latin I will "re-go well together", to assemble) will be less pompous, dogmatic and ritualistic; it will prove to be more practical realizing the orders of the humble carpenter of Galilee (“ for his works you will know them ”) and it will constitute really a bridge of union between the human creature and his creator.

There will be recognized científically the existence of the soul and of God in his aspects immanently in the human and transcendent being in the universe; the religious external differences will decrease and there will increase in every human being the internal personal experience of the divine attributes of light, love and knowledge, together with the intimate conviction of a way of spiritual evolution is journeying, accompanied by the neighbor.

 

The Christian values (essentially good) will be prevailing worldwide; the solidarity and the faith with works will do to themselves meat in each of the human beings and will overcome the weaknesses that could exist in the institutions and his structures.

All this will bring deep changes in the conduct of the man. His life will be reoriented and will re-mean spiritually, leaving behind his egoism and his individualistic emulations. His sights will be more and more high, and this will be reflected in the community organized with an effective social justice that by means of an equitable distribution of the wealths assures a worthy life for all, there will arise altruistic and united goals, straight human conducts and good will at planetary level.

Therefore, it is necessary to assume as parents, the sacrificed ones but also gratifying responsibilities for which this hopeful vision summons us. 

 

                                                                                                                       Lic. Juan Martín Nuñez

Bachelor of Psychology (U.B.A.-University Buenos Aires). Work in External Offices of Medical Psychology of the Hospital of Clinics. Teacher of the Chair of Medical Psychology of the Faculty of Medicine (U.B.A.) and of the Chair of Psychological Orientation of the Faculty of Psychology (U.B.A.) . Participant of journeys, seminars, congresses and courses of specialization. Formation in Compared Religions, Oriental Philosophy and Spiritual Philosophy, Lucis Foundation Argentina-Arcane School England. Two-annual formation Logoteraphistt, Foundation Argentina of Logoterapia. Ph.D. (Posdegree Threeannual) in Logotherapy in Catholic University Argentina-UCA. Master Studies in Psychology University of El Salvador. Cultural Adviser of Mutual Asociation Custom Employees-AEANA. Creator and leader of the political, educational grouping and cultural web site Faro of the Utopy. Member of the Academy of the National Thought. Representative in the Federal District of the Educational - cultural Projects INFOCIBER-ISES and AIKE TO DO MORE of the Institute Salesiano of Superior  Studies-ISES of Rio Gallegos, Province of Santa Cruz, Southern Patagonia Argentina, (with professional contribution in both), developed as a whole with the Worthy Autonomous University of Puebla, Mexico, under the patronage of the CONSUDEC, Superior Council of Catholic Education. Tutor of the Section Psychology of the web page of the I.S.E.S.. Achievement of Design, Writing, Style, Collation and Theoretical Content (psychological, philosophical, cultural, religious) of the Project U.N.E.S.C.O. in Argentina. Lecturer, Essayer, Writer and Journalist (as Professional Collaborator).

E-mail of the Author: lucisterris@yahoo.es