Teenagers - The Next Generation

The pressures of parent expectation, peer pressure, media intrusion and consumerism to name a few, mean that in society today, children more than ever are under pressure to conform to an ideal – an expectation that in most cases is contrary to their individual inclination. These societal pressures can differ significantly in weight depending on geographical location. For example, in Africa and other third world countries, family pressure and the demands of a strict traditional values have the greatest weight, while in Europe and North America, consumerism and media intrusion have the greatest weight. The common factor, irrespective of geographic location, is that all teenagers feel societal pressure of one kind or another. And how does this pressure affect the psyche of the teenager? It does so by making its presence known in certain anti-social behavioural traits, labelled mental and emotional disorders by science. This is an unfortunate mistake, because in labelling these behavioural traits as disorders, an intrinsic negative attribute is associated to the teenagers attempt to deal with their reaction to societal pressures. The consequence of this is that rather than focus on ways of understanding the reason behind the teenagers reaction to societal pressures, emphasis is directed at ways to remove the reaction itself. Thus, people are misled into believing that these so-called disorders are abnormal and therefore must be eliminated.

This is not the way to go. If these behavioural patterns are observed to cause the teenagers a lot of discomfort then in addition to focusing on understanding the reason for the discomfort, emphasis should also be placed on looking for ways to alleviate it. To achieve this, it will be necessary to understand whether these so-called disorders are symptomatic of poorly understood processes of the Mind In other words, are they to be expected? If we accept that there is a lot that is still unknown about the workings of the Mind then it is obvious that these disorders must be behavioural manifestations that stem from the workings of these unknown aspects of Mind.

Why is it important to understand the cause of the disorders? It is important because many of these disorders are directly responsible for many of the myriad problems in society, examples being crime, poverty and joblessness. This puts a lot of pressure on the system, thus limiting the potential for growth – ironic given that the system itself is responsible for creating and propagating the societal pressures in the first place.

In tackling this problem, the first point to understand is why the behavioural manifestations cause so much discomfort to the teenager given that it stems from processes of the Mind that are natural. The discomfort stems from the conflict that arises as the teenager tries to balance his/her experiences with social expectations of what he or she should experience. In other words, it is the expectation of society that gives rise to the tensions within the teenager. The tensions in turn manifest physically as the so called emotion/mental disorders, examples of which are, anxiety, paranoia, schizophrenia, anorexia, etc.

And so how can this be solved? The answer is simple. Remove the source of tension between the expectation of the individual and that of society, and one removes the mental/emotional disorders. How can this be done? Well, by focusing on delivering the right education and training to the individual in particular during the formative years of adolescence since this is when they are undergoing transition from childhood to adulthood and are thus very malleable. Doing this will arm the individual – in this case the adolescent teenager, with the right tools to; first, achieve separation of the self from the external environment and second, to learn how to accept and examining the self without fear or prejudice. To do this, the teenager must be taught to embrace all experiences without fear. This is the first step. The next step is to learn how to use the realization of these experiences to map the psyche of the self. This is crucial in learning how to uncover and indeed come to terms with all aspects of the Ming and body – both known and unknown. Having done this the individual has now accepted the self fully and is now in a position to plum the depths of his or her potential. The third and final step will be to achieve harmony between the self and the group by expressing the realization of the self through the group/system, i.e. the group becomes the vehicle for expression for the individual at all times.

To summarize, majority of the problems we are experiencing today in society are due to the tension that arise from the inability of individuals to express themselves in the face of overwhelming expectation of the group (society). In order to eliminate this tension, emphasis must be placed on educating the individual to face and embrace all experiences without fear or prejudice. Learning how to do this can be most easily achieved during adolescence because the teenager at the most receptive. The only environment that will be conducive to achieving this goal is an environment that is totally transparent. From this it becomes obvious that the principle of transparency is essential not only to all aspects of human life, but also to all aspects of society itself – government, business, institutions of learning and so on. This is best way to facilitate balance in society and harmonious growth of both the human being and the system.