The author focuses on USA, but I’ve seen the exact same thing happening at least in my chunk of Latin America. Act II was considerably shorter, but the process was the same.
Religion protects young people’s mental health
It is not the religion itself, but the presence of a community strictu sensu, the sense of belonging, and the third places. We’re social beings and the churches spent 15 [?] centuries calling dibs on those, at least in Europe and the Americas; the dirty bathtub water (religion) was flushed out alongside the baby (third places).
Governments also played a huge role screwing over with your sense of belonging - because your feelings towards your local community compete directly with ones towards “your” country. And yet you don’t get that sense of “I’m among my peers” from the later, only from the former.
Edit: another thing that occurred me is that socialisation of a household is mostly done through the housemate. Kind of hard to do it when both parents work; and yet it’s essential for the maintenance of a local community.
Really well written and excellent thought provoking comment!
Over time what happened to the old religious third spaces? Disused? Converted into something else?
Mostly disused, I believe. For example, sometimes the local parish invites the neighbourhood for church festivities, but barely anyone goes, not even the Catholics.
I’m also placing my bets that the ones still going are less engaged with that third place than before - based on the invitation banner, as it lists the dishes that will be served. It means that nowadays the church buys food for the festivity, it isn’t a potluck any more as it used to be.
And yet the old church is there… just emptier.
The edge case result of that shown in the russian youth, bordering on satire: https://thenewtab.io/vovlech-v-vojnu/ (you’d need an auto-translator)
That’s awful. It’s a government looking at that bored youth, who lacks a third space, and instead of fixing the problem, using the problem as a weapon. Throw in some incentive (easier access to uni = promises of a better life) and it’s a recipe for disaster. Eventually the war against Ukraine will end, but their militaristic mindset won’t - and the youth is now a bunch of old guys supporting a more militaristic government. (I guess Putler doesn’t care - dead by then anyway, right.)
And they still won’t get a sense of belonging from that. It’s still not creating a community, out of “people living near each other”.
Frankly I’m surprised that the govs here in Latin America didn’t have the same idea. Or perhaps they did; and failed - because Nothing Fucking Works® here.
(Thank you for sharing this link, by the way. It’s directly related to what I said about governments.)
(You are welcome.)
From what I understood, it’s done only to affect\involve their parents and relatives without any long-term plans. The official putenjugend was created 10+ years ago and after some PR generally flew under radar. This wave started only after the average Vanya started to question the geostrategical masterplan around summer-autumn of 2022, and when army started to need more brothers and dads to serve. I don’t know if it makes it worse, but it sure makes it look more cynical towards kids and overall short-sighted. The latter may be for the better though.
I don’t know the specific term, but yeah, if they knit their self-worth around the rod of the battle banner, they form a codependency to that movement and feelings they’d eventually lose. Not to say they also skip classes, don’t socialize with their peers, miss out on many stuff they would hardly get back. Let’s hope they’d have less time to get used to it (:
It’d sure take Nothing Fucking Works over the Universal Bad Example.
