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Parents

Your parents probably love you and want the best for you. They will not understand you completely, but they almost certainly understand more than you think. I, like many people before me, was amazed at how my parents, who when I was a teenager seemed to knew nothing, had managed to attain so much wisdom so quickly, by the time I was in my mid twenties they had become really quite wise.

There is no rule that says you must fall out with your parents or you must reject all their values.

Age, experience, corruption. Ignorance, innocence, naivety.

Age brings experience, loss of innocence, corruption of ideals, a sense of reality. Growing older does not necessarily mean growing wiser, neither does it necessarily mean that you lose anything you had before. Innocence and ignorance are synonyms. Just like liberty and licence. Both pairs of words mean the same but people use them to create a very different response. Whenever anybody talks about the innocence of the young try thinking ignorance.

Do not value innocence, virginity and youth too highly, EXCEPT YOUR OWN. If you are still a virgin consider that you will always remember the first time, that memory will never leave you. Make it a good one, make sure you respect your own motives.

Most of your sexual partners for most of your sexual acts will be middle aged, get used to it, become easy with the concept. One day you will wake up next to somebody who is middle aged and they will be your life partner. Do not spend your entire life fixated on having sex with teenagers, you are extremely unlikely to manage to do it. I know a man who has always lived his life fascinated by women in the Baywatch age group. He is now approaching fifty, living alone and has a rather sad life. It is better to have a real sex life and a fantasy one than spend your life trying to live the fantasy.

An orgasm is just an orgasm. It can only be so good. So many people who have got an otherwise wonderful life manage to find unhappiness in a constant quest for the perfect sexual act. Just try to have good sex regularly and bad sex never. Perfect sex is a myth, chasing a myth is a sure route to unhappiness. The quest for the perfect orgasm is one of the things that drive serial killers on. It is a very unhealthy idea to pursue.

Virginity is of no massive value. What is important is your self respect. Having sex just in order to be able to say that you have had sex is a very poor reason. Sex is very important.

Casual Sex

Casual sex is a strange phrase, think about

flippant death,

nonchalant marriage,

haphazard killing

or blasé conception;

Casual and Sex don't sit well together.

Having casual sex when both parties know that there is no underlying motive except temporary relief of sexual urges is one thing, if only one of the partners is aware of the casual nature of the act then it is exploitation, regardless of the age of the participants.

I am in favour of sex before marriage. That means I support people who expect to get married having sex. Sex is a vital part of a healthy marriage, there is always a chance that otherwise compatible people will find that they just don't don't hit it off sexually. It is far better to find that out before a marriage than after. People's sexual appetites differ. Some men demand sex twice a day as a minimum. If such a man was married to a woman who did not enjoy sex (a small but significant minority don't) then an unhappy marriage is a certainty. In the modern world the availability of efficient contraception makes a sexually active period of betrothal a reasonable proposition. Cohabiting is optional.

I do not support the conception of children outside marriage. All children deserve the best possible start in life, two married parents who live together and are comfortable with each other give a child the best chance of a happy childhood. That ideal scenario is not always possible, but to say that it is not always possible is a million miles from saying that it should not be the ideal we should all aim for. That would be like saying that because not every shot fired in war will hit the enemy we need not bother to put sights on infantry rifles.

Partners.

There is a popular myth that there is one special person for everybody. This is utter claptrap. Think about it, how could there be a mechanism that created matching and suitably opposing attitudes in disparate people with the intention of joining them up one day. That is not the universe that I live in. A belief in some form of fate is a human universal, common to all societies and all times; but it is still baseless nonsense. The reality is that everybody exists on a series of bell curves, some people are so far over to one extreme that they will get along with anybody, and for them a happy marriage is a certainty. Others are over on the other end of the curve and will find a reason to be unhappy with any possible partner. Most in the middle are capable of having a happy married life as long as they meet one of thousands of suitable people with enough similarities in attitudes, upbringing and experiences plus a suitable degree of flexibility.

You can reduce your chances of having a successful marriage by one of the following moves:-

1] becoming very rich

2] being very poor for more than a few months at a time

3] having a career rather than a job

4] thinking that you deserve a happy marriage

5] expecting too much

Life is not a film, or a novel. There is no happy ever after. A wedding is not the end of anything, it is the start of a long term relationship. Do not expect your life to follow anybody else's plot. Or your own.

It is not a coincidence that California has one of the highest divorce rates in world, it is not caused by the climate or the divorce laws, it is caused by colossal expectations. Californians believe they have a right to be happy and the right to have a perfect marriage. In the third world divorce is much less common, poor people do not expect to be happy, they stick together because they have a working partnership. I suggest you learn from that, marriage is a wonderful partnership if you work at it and do not expect a fairy-tale happy-ever-after life.

Divorce is a great institution to allow unworkable marriages to be dissolved, but many marriages that end in divorce could and should be saved.

Stop being so credulous.

We, as a species, owe our success to a combination of curiosity and credulousness. No child could possibly learn all it has to in order to grow up without being extremely open to new ideas. Dangerously open. Children learn at a phenomenal rate. If I think what I have leaned in the first 18 years of my life compared to the second there is no comparison, the credulous child learned a tremendous amount more. However, if I had remained as credulous I would have been in big trouble, all those foundations of learning would have been wasted without the gift of analysis and revision. Since I became increasingly analytical in my thinking I have been able to put that enormous amorphous blob of knowledge, ideas, rules and concepts into use.

Do not assume that an idea must have some value, that the solution to a complex problem lies in a middle way. Sometimes, often, there is simply a right explanation and a wrong one, or many wrong ones. No matter how appealing an idea is it is more likely than not to be TOTALLY WRONG, offering no insights only dead-end reasoning that leads you astray.

Much of both western and eastern folk medicine is based on totally spurious logic such as "like cures like"; if a herb looks like a part of the body it is nature's way of showing us it is a medicine for that organ and that every plant on Earth has been put there for a purpose; man's purpose. All those ideas are total nonsense. Plants often contain chemicals that we can use as medicines but they have developed them for their own uses. Many common plants contain huge quantities of mild poisons that are of no use to us. If nature is so marvellous why did man have to wait for an accidental contamination in a laboratory petri dish in order to discover antibiotics? Where is the common cancer-shaped weed that cures common cancers? What shape is the plant that cures syphilis? What disease does grass cure? It must be something common because Mother Nature made so much of it.

Astrology, phrenology, wicca, alchemy, Feng Shui and the rest of the branches of ancient and/or new age learning that arrive fully formed, by-passing the usual scientific channels are a snare to be avoided. If it seems to contradict scientific rationalism then the rational thing to do is to seal it off behind a quarantine wall until it can be evaluated by the appropriate experts, not for every amateur trend follower to start treating it as on a par with western chemistry or cosmology. Do not give corrosive and flaky ideas equal status with science.

If an argument does not hold water on a fundamental level then it is of no value. I remember being 17 and reading a CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) pamphlet and thinking that every argument it contained was bogus and flawed but supporting the cause because I didn't want to die! That was a crazy position, logically I saw no way in which an act of unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain would help prevent a nuclear war but I supported it on illogical gut feeling. A few days later I realized that if I couldn't even imagine a favourable scenario following the implementation of such a policy then supporting it was crazy. I respected the fervour of the CND position but without a coherent idea of where the policy would lead and how its aims would be achieved supporting it, or even not opposing it, was madness.

No matter how much you respect people and how strongly they support any issue you owe it to yourself to question their suggestions. If an idea doesn't work in practice then it is the theory that is wrong, not reality. If an idea doesn't even work in theory it is dead in the water.

Stay curious

Keep asking those awkward questions all the time. Why is the sky blue? Why is democracy a good thing? Why should I feel like Chicken Tonight? Who is giving me this message, why, and who is paying for it? Is it worth an extra week's income to have an extra 15% in processing speed? Do you really need to spend the equivalent of a whole year's income to own a car? Do I really need a car?

Is Britney Spears attractive, to me, or am I just reacting to what everybody tells me I should like?

Never switch off your brain, if you do, somebody else will jump in the driving seat, and they never act entirely in your interest. Don't trust anybody. Take all advice with a very generous helping of scepticism. Just because a stupid idea comes from a friend, teacher or a rock hero it doesn't mean you should take it in. I have found wise advice from all kinds of people; my parents, teachers, employers as well as the more usual sources. It does not matter how stupid, old fashioned, prejudiced, young, uncool or "establishment" somebody is they can still have many worthwhile ideas. Treat all thoughts, ideas and suggestions as equal until you can evaluate them.

Never judge the value of a person's idea by the person themselves. Think about Bill Gates, what a dork, but he is a very bright man. Think about Stephen Hawking, if you saw him on the street you would imagine he was thinking about having Alphabetti Spaghetti for tea or not pissing in his pants when he is actually one of the top intellects of our time. Judge ideas on their own merits.

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Youth Culture

Much of youth culture is bound up with the mixture of self confidence and total panic that is inevitable in that stage of life. It is all very shallow. You are not a young person, it is a meaningless point of identity. Reject it now, save yourself the bother of doing it later and feeling guilty about it. Once you pass 25 nobody cares for "your generation", you are judged on your own merits. Youth rebellion is a phase that western young people have gone through since the mid 1950s. Some sad people try to stay at that age, forever rebelling against parents long dead. Did you feel part of a great gang of five and six year olds, all with a common bond and common desires when you first went to school? I didn't. Why should that group of children suddenly become one mind ten or twelve years later? It is a ridiculous concept.

There is always somebody behind every youth culture and sub culture in whose interest it is to keep the whole process going. Record companies are one obvious candidate, nobody makes records as a non-paying hobby for very long. The music press is constantly reinventing the whole phenomenon to make it seem vibrant and new. The music media, like MTV, are constantly keeping the pot boiling too. Can you really imagine someday the major executives of these multi-million dollar enterprises saying to each other "this isn't fun anymore, let's go and get a proper job instead, let's close down the company." They can't afford to stop. They might have started years ago for a good reason, they continue for the money.

No matter how crass the ideas in the youth culture are there must be one, there is money to be made. Your rebellious urges make money. Why do you continue to rebel against the targets they aim you at? Don't be manipulated, don't reject what you are told to reject. Make your own decisions.

Do not reject anything just because you happen to be between 5,000 and 8,000 days old and everybody tells you that such behaviour is expected of you. If you want to be truly yourself then be yourself. Don't "just do it", that is a registered trademark of Bottled Youth Rebellion Inc.

From my perspective, between being a teenager and being the father of teenagers, most young rebellious movements and subcultures seem laughable and very sad. They are all extremely pretentious and most of them are recycled from the past. You do not express your individuality by exchanging one uniform and bunch of ill thought out ideals for another. There is no value in being different for the sake of it.

“I like this music because I'm a Goth.
I dress in black because I'm a Goth.
This is what Goths do.
We are expressing our individuality,
being Goths...
doing what Goths do, all of us, being ourselves...”

That was the kind of nonsensical statement I got in response to asking my friends at University why they dressed in uniform and looked like recently reanimated corpses. Just change "Goth" to punk, rocker, hippy, mod or raver and it sounds the same. Youth rebellion against conformity by conforming.

The big problem that you have is that you don't know who you are or what you want. You cannot even be sure that you really like what you think you like. Most people in their thirties and forties look back to what they did in their late teens and twenties and cringe. The music I told myself that I liked when I was younger is now rather embarrassing to me and I have softened my antipathy to a lot of the pop music that I hated with a passion. I have also decided that basically I don't care about music. I see no reason why music should be important in my life. It certainly should not determine my politics, my clothes, my friends, my thoughts and my identity.

If anybody ever asks you who your favourite band or performer is just go and tell them to get a life. Never swallow a whole portfolio of work and say you like it all. Find something to dislike in even the best album, it helps keep your feet on level ground and stops you from being a fanatical zombie.

Feel free to like what you truly like not what you want to be seen liking. When you grow up you will realize that you were a gullible trend follower, it is better to be wise to that when you are young, you will love yourself more.

Don't swallow the idea that because you are young you must get into music. Look around on the Internet today, "MP3" is second only to "sex" (and Britney Spears) as a search string! Forget the music, it is just noise, it has no power over you, free your mind from the tyranny. Explore life, don't just be a music consumer.

Why should music be the focus of youth identity?

I suspect this is just a consequence of most western homes having one TV set of a reasonable size but every teenager's bedroom having its own hi-fi system. You get sent to your room and there is a limit to how often you can masturbate.

Music is powerful. Too powerful. When mixed with the raging hormones of the young it is a chaotic force, powerful but not controlled. Like a hurricane. Put any old bit of third rate poetry to an appropriate beat and you have an anthem that could start a war, a craze or a tour of three continents grossing $30 million.

Distrust all music, especially any music with words or a title! You can find yourself singing along to a song and slowly absorbing the message later. Or singing along for years spreading that message like a symptomless carrier, never taking in the message yourself. What do you do if you like the message but hate the music, or the opposite? Separate them out. Music is music; trite, shallow and meaningless. Enjoy it if you want to but never surrender to it or subscribe to it.

Music is a very powerful meme amplifier. I can still hum along to "Onward Christian Soldiers", a hymn I learned as a child. It has a driving marching beat that matches the heartbeat of a brisk march, it stirs the blood and uplifts the mood; although I totally reject every sentiment it stands for.

Music is worse than a drug. A drug changes your perceptions, music changes your thoughts, and it stays in your brain for ever.

No matter how much you think that you like music do you trust anybody to have control of this ten lane mega-highway that goes straight to the lizard part of your brain, deep below rational thought? Pouring in information faster than you can filter it. That music stays in there. You know how hard it is to get an annoying tune out of your head, why do you then let any tunes go in? RESIST!

"If it's too loud you're too old" is an old T shirt slogan, leave it on old T shirts. Loud noise can damage your ears permanently, there is no pleasure to be gained from it, growing deaf before you reach thirty is nothing to be proud of. Music peddlers make jokes about it, "going deaf for a living", this is supposed to bring out a boyish coy grin. Save your ears for later, you might find something that is worth listening to even at medium volumes.

Since you were a child you have been receiving the message that "young people like music" you have internalized it so much that you may no longer be aware of whether or not you do like music. Nobody ever asks young people "Do you like music?" they only ask "what kind of music are you into?" The message is clear, you should care about music, you are expected to. But why should you do something just because it is expected?

Not caring much about music is not an option young people are presented with. Of course you must care, the only question is what do you choose to care about. My advice is to feel free not to care. Control your music, by all means enjoy it, but never let any music control you.

Teenagers are expected to rebel against particular targets and accept other messages like sheep. Rebel against conformity, conform to the rebel stereotype. Become a consumer of the music industry and the teenage clothes industry and the teenage shoes industry, and the teenage food industry and the teenage media. Rebelling is good, as long as you conform while you do it. Get Wise! Neither rebel nor conform, just be true to you.

The Death of Cool

One of the biggest things young people will have to learn is the idea that there comes a time when it is no longer possible to be cool. Only a tiny handful of people over 30 are seriously cool, about ten on the whole planet. This uncool fate awaits you too. You will find that the time comes when it does not matter what you do you can never be cool, only sad and old.

Some people can carry this transformation off without too much difficulty. Some people can become adult and uncool at an early age (William Hague passed this stage at about 14).

Fighting against the irresistible tide is a bad strategy. Go with it. Grow up and reject the idea of being cool before life strips it away from you.

Life without cool is great. Just be yourself and enjoy whatever you really enjoy. Trying to hold on to your youth makes you a laughing stock. There are men of seventy or so now in nursing homes with Fonz style Duck's Arse hairdo, grey wrinkled tattoos and sideburns who think they are cool. Reject cool now before it is too late.

By the time your generation gets to the nursing home stage the prospect of care for the elderly will be severely damaged by youth culture. Can you imagine what the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or Blink 182 and their fans will look like at 70? All those tattoos will be flaccid, grey and ugly. The body piercings will have left ugly sagging holes. They will have been deaf for years. They will be an embarrassment to everybody.

Don't get tattoos done. A girl of 19 I work with has one of a rabbit on her generously proportioned melon-like breast. When the pert melon becomes like a sack of potatoes what will the rabbit look like? Roadkill.

Impartial Advice

Nobody is giving you impartial advice. They all want you to buy their product, use their service. Your teachers want you to consume the services of teachers. They tell you that the courses they offer will benefit you. They may believe it. The courses benefit the teachers, they employ teachers, that is their purpose. Everybody likes to think that their contribution to society is worthwhile, so they describe to outsiders the benefits of their actions. This is always, without fail, bullshit.

“The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters.”

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

Life

It is not everything that it is cracked up to be, but it is everything, it is better than the alternative.

You know on an intellectual level that you are mortal. But underneath you know you will live for ever, nothing can harm you. Face up to reality; you will get old, frail and worse, you will no longer be cool.

I know that giving this advice is like pissing in the wind but try to remember, you are mortal, death is not an option, it is a certainty. The "I'd rather be dead than old" line sells T shirts, jeans, records and drugs. Don't buy it. Be true to yourself not "your age group" they would trample your face in the mud if they chose to. They will grow old too. Many will talk about what they did, how stupid they were, what risks they took. Try to be sure that you live to regret your youth a little bit, but not too much.

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Drugs.

If you are over 10 years old and have spent most of that time in a modern western country you know:-

1] Many drugs are illegal

2] Many illegal drugs are potentially very harmful

3] Many drugs, legal and otherwise, are very addictive

and, paradoxically,

4] It is expected that you will probably ignore all this and take them anyway

Starting smoking cigarettes is the first step. You do not enjoy it, you know is harmful and you know is addictive. You are truly on the slippery slope. In comparison heroin is an easy step. It stands a reasonable chance of killing you the same as cigarettes do, it is similarly addictive but in contrast the first time you take it you enjoy it.

The idea that cannabis is the gateway drug, the start of the slippery slope, is laughable. It is tobacco. In the UK, of the people who have never smoked cigarettes a mere 3% have tried illegal drugs.

Cigarettes are not fun to smoke. They are addictive and they are an acquired taste. If you think that you really actually enjoy cigarettes for the taste ask yourself how many cultures smoke any substance that is not a drug. The only non-drug smoking materials are those designed to wean you off cigarettes. If people enjoy the taste of tobacco smoke where are the tobacco flavoured drinks, biscuits, air fresheners, body sprays, mouthwashes, chewing gum, soaps, and ice cream? Mint is a nice taste, you can get it in cordials, candy, chewing gum, condoms, foot sprays, mouthwash, ice cream and biscuits. Tobacco smoke without the nicotine is not worth having. It can be a taste that is easily acquired as long as it comes packaged with a drug that is known to be significantly more addictive than any opiate. You did not enjoy your first cigarette, you endured it.

Cigarettes do you no favours. They curb the stress their own absence creates. The classic pattern of any addictive drug. Smoking cigarettes has nothing at all going for it.

Giving up smoking is not that hard, I did it at age 25 with no problems. My grandfather smoked up to 100 per day and then one day he decided that they were doing him no favours. He just gave up. He lived past 80 and enjoyed every day of his life. My tip for giving up is to do it when you have a cold. Smoking when you have a cold is proof that you are an addict. Just don't start again. The physical addiction is very powerful but short lived. After a week your body doesn't want any more nicotine.

The only reason I ever started was to learn how to smoke so that I could smoke cannabis properly.

I would suggest to anybody else that it is perfectly possible to smoke cannabis without learning on anything as dangerously addictive as tobacco. It is perfectly possible to enjoy cannabis without ever smoking. The active ingredients in cannabis are soluble in both fat and alcohol, and if it can survive the heat of a glowing ember in a joint it can survive in an oven, you can take this drug without smoking. Cannabis is a good drug. I can recommend it, in moderation. But don't smoke. The main problem I have with it is getting hold of it without becoming involved with criminals. I have made four "drugs purchases" in my life. I got one paracetamol, one acid tab with the acid sucked off, one pizza crust in a paper bag and 1/16 of an ounce of hashish.

No safe drugs

There are no safe drugs if your idea of drug taking involves being under the influence of a drug more often than not. Cannabis can kill you by acute poisioning (there was a case reported in Britain in January 04). Persistent use of cannabis is linked with mental illness, although to what extent the causation runs from the drug to the condition is unclear, but whichever way the causation runs it is a good idea not to take cannabis all the time. No drug is safe taken all the time. No drug should ever become bigger than you. If people around you start to associate their personal identity with any particular drug then it is time you got out of their lives for your own protection. Addicts and constant users of any mood or mind altering drug are losers and arseholes. Many teenagers are quite capable of recognizing the fact that drinking in the morning and all through the day is sad, antisocial, dangerous and pathetic and yet they somehow see taking cannabis in a similar way to be different. It isn't. If you are losing more than 100 hours per month to extreme intoxication of any drug then you have a problem, you are a problem.

Drugs should never be a substitute for having a life.

It is one thing to clear your To Do list and relax for a few hours by taking cannabis or getting drunk, it is something else again to do the drug first then decide nothing needed doing anyway.

You know that heroin and cocaine are dangerous, expensive and addictive. Do you really need to be told not to get involved in them? I will credit you with enough sense to take my advice, hard addictive drugs have nothing to offer but addiction and a life dominated by the need to find money to buy them. Of course they are very satisfying to take at first, if they weren't nobody would ever take them. Don't waste your life on them. Addiction can happen the first time you take them or it can sneak up on you. I am reminded of those scenes of wildebeest crossing the river and being eaten by crocodiles. They see the crocodiles, they see the crocodiles kill and still they try to cross. Don't follow the herd on this one, please.

“The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of their blood. ”

Logan Pearsall Smith

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

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