Rites of passage

Never having been someone who is really conventional, well, that is what I like to think!

Anyway, never having been someone who is really convenional, many rites of passage have gone unmarked in my life and for me in the lives of those who are the closest to me. As age, and some would say, wisdom, is coming upon me, I reflect on some of these ideas.

Yesterday was my nephew's 18th birthday and it was not his birthday exactly which has lead me to do some research but something he said in a facebook entry.

Depending on the society and culture  from which one comes, becoming an adult is marked at a different times and in different ways. For many, these rites are at puberty and during adolescence and are:

"often quite brutal in nature, requiring novices to endure starvation, mutilation, infestation, radiation (from the sun), and other insults, from which not every member survived.  In a way, it was a culture's system of "quality control," to ensure that those who were admitted to the adult role in that society had the specific attributes needed by the community (e.g. strength, endurance etc.). " (http://thehumanodyssey.typepad.com/the_human_odyssey/rites_of_passage_around_the_world/)

In today's industrial societies things have often changed and the rite of passage from boyhood to adulthood takes other forms and often has very little to do with the real change from childhood to adulthood, that is to say, becoming independent and supporting oneself. However, these rites are still important and are still intrinsically linked to tradition and the idea of rites being for ' women only' or 'men only', and that we belong to one of these groups.

So one really important rite in Britain when a boy reaches 18 is to 'buy his first pint for his dad in his local pub'!