Life stage culturing

I have been re-reading Erich Fromm’s (1900-1980) 1942 book “The Fear of Freedom”. The margins are heavily marked from previous readings. He reckons that modern human beings are no longer automatically driven by unthinking instincts. Instead people have to self-consciously learn how to be in a culture in the world.

There are many possible cultures, and individuals and groups are ultimately free to choose which of them will guide their behaviour. But the freedom creates existential crises which are uncomfortable and thus feared and avoided by most people. I am minded of a phrase from a Sunday newspaper in the late 1960s – “neurotic nihilists living in existential vacuums”. They crucify themselves with the question “Why exist?”

In different ways at different life stages individuals are encultured into believing that some magical myth offers an answer to the existential question. They then have a world view to kill and die for.

The following table and notes outline what I feel to be some of the major elements of the enculturation process. The driving force for the process is part nature and part nurture; the source of enculturation includes parents, family, community and culture; and there are eight life stages.

• The process is circular with maturity creating fertilised eggs – courting and mating rules
• When the source of enculturation is the wider community and the cultural institutions (eg schools), things tend to go well. When the source is the parents and the family there is a chance that things will go wrong because of the idiosyncrasies of individual parents and family members
• Lower animals are born hard wired with instinctive reactions to common stimuli. They do not have to learn how to behave – it is in their genes
• There is ongoing debate about the extent to which human behaviour is governed mainly by instinct (nature) or by learning (nurture) (See http://dodclark.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/nature-nurture-options.html )
• The move from adolescence to maturity is a move from hormones to intellect – discuss!
• Childhood and adolescence are generally rebellious while maturity and old age support the status quo. Variety is needed as the basis for natural selection and therefore adaptation to a changing world
• A child’s world view will have an expanding horizon as it moves through inputs from parents, family, community and the wider culture. It involves belonging within boundaries that range through me, us, them, environment, planet, cosmos. Ken Wilber has theorised a transcendent state of ‘no boundary’. This accompanies the feelings of oneness and inter-being reported by mystics of various times and places (see http://naesaebad.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/expanding-horizons.html
• In many cases the enculturation of the youth is managed in large part by the culture’s good and great. Both Confucius and Ignatius Loyola have been credited with the saying, “give me the child till he is five (or seven?) and I will give you the man”. Modern children are schooled for ten years or more in same age cohorts wearing school uniform and changing their thought trains every 40 minutes when a bell rings.
• Most cultures have ceremonies to help people cope with death
• In many cultures  the post-maturity individuals are a valued repository of learning and wisdom
• Western cultures have increasing numbers of old people many of whom suffer physically and psychologically. Care of the elderly on a large scale is a major contemporary challenge

So life stage culturing makes it possible to avoid developing an existential crisis and a fear of freedom. Belief in myth and magic can be enough to avoid uncertainty and to ensure cohesion. Most people seem to act as if good enough is good enough. That may be (a) pragmatic and (b) the way that evolution works. So who am I when calling for change aiming at some kind of perfection and eternal truth? Like everyone else I am a product of life stage culturing.