The Screaming Void, and Other Dangers upon Becoming a Teenager
If you live in a strong society with certain rites of passage intact, well…more power to you. For most people in this modern world, teenage years are understood to be a time of tribulation. I’m not talking about hormonal tidal waves and only-semi-developed-prefrontal-cortexes, either…though I’m sure you’ve heard all about that. I mean an over-the-edge and into-the-abyss epic loss of innocence, that many adults aren’t properly prepared to talk about. But, why should that be? What is this loss of innocence, actually? What does it mean? And, what can you do about it? I propose to you that reality is a lot stranger than you have been led to believe. There are fundamental, irreducible mysteries to life that don’t get systematically addressed in our society anymore (only anecdotally and confusingly), which shape the terms of our existence. When you were a younger child, you navigated some of these mysteries naturally with grace and aplomb because your perceptual gates weren’t as f...