Feed and Adolescence
I
thought that the article was very thorough on discussing the different effects
the ideas that we have about adolescence have on us as a society. One part that
I particularly liked was when the article first starts discussing the book “Feed”
by M.T. Anderson. The author says that in that book, characters, society in
general, has fallen under a spell of sort of an infinite adolescence. The ideas
we have about adolescents, that they are impulsive, casual, stupid, lazy,
unable to think for themselves/sensitive to peer pressure/group think- well,
ALL the characters, young to old, are pretty much representative of all of
that.
Personally, I think that adolescence can be a
great time of growth and learning- but it was interesting to me that- part of
the idea of what happens in “Feed”, is that this growth never really is allowed
to happen. I think that adolescence, and some of the ideas we have about it can
be beneficial, the idea of experimenting with different things, growing a
higher need for a “private life”, increased freedom/independence, can be good
for transitioning from one stage in life to another- from child to adult. But
that is not what happens in “Feed”, and what we are left with is like a land of
lost boys waiting for direction- waiting for what to think- from their very own
Peter Pan, the Feed, - which reaffirms that THIS is all they need- that the
feed can take care of them- as long as they leave everything up to the feed-
submit.
This leaves us with a very single
minded society, a very timid and easy to control society. They have never
learned to think for themselves, to question things, and so, the Feed can do
whatever it is that they want. When the highest ranking, most intelligent members
of a society are incapable of thinking for themselves then there can be almost
no hope of having checks and balances- of having a voice. And maybe they are ok
with that for now, but what if some day, something very wrong happens-
something to which they SHOULD object(already kind of there with the lesions
but…)… they have never transitioned into “adults”- fully into themselves- they
really wouldn’t be able to say what they would want clearly because… it wouldn’t,
potentially, have developed clearly even to them as an individual.
What I just wrote reminds me a ton
of a story I read called, “Harrison Bergeron”, where society, in a claimed attempt
to make everyone equal and happy- eventually forces everyone to function within
a lowest common denominator- one that is just not capable of understanding what
is going on clearly enough to rebel. That is sort of what is happening in “Feed”,
only its more gradual, insidious, less obvious. But they are weighed down and handicapped just like the strong people and the dancers in "Harrison Bergeron", not by physical means, but by their own lack of development- by the effects of the Feed.
Anyways. I liked what the article said about “Feed”. I liked
that it talked about the book as sort of representative of a society that never
transitioned out of adolescence. It says to me, that adolescence is important-
as a stage- that there might be many different ideas about what exactly
adolescence is, but many of the ideas that we have about it can prove
beneficial as long as we recognize that it isn’t the desirable end stage.
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