A Fresh Challenge




Absolute                             -                      Probability
Analogue                            -                      Digital
Ideal                                    -                      Real
Simple                                -                      Complex




When I was young I had a tendency to generalise from any convincing account or philosophy that I came across. I was always tempted into believing that I'd found the truth - the right viewpoint, the correct philosophy, and so on.

But in time, it would fade in importance or be put into perspective by another viewpoint. I began to see that, no matter how convincing they appear, each person only holds a partial viewpoint. And that's when things got really complicated...




Immaturity is an essential element of health at adolescence. There is only one cure for immaturity and that is the passage of time and the growth into maturity that time may bring.

Immaturity is a precious part of the adolescent scene. In this is contained the most exciting features of creative thought, new and fresh feeling, ideas for living. Society needs to be shaken by the aspirations of those who are not responsible.

Advice to society could be: for the sake of adolescents, and of their immaturity, do not allow them to step up and attain a false maturity by handing over to them responsibility that is not yet theirs, even though they may fight for it.

... we may surely think of the strivings of adolescents to find themselves as the most exciting thing that we can see in life around us. The adolescent's idea of an ideal society is exciting and stimulating, but the point about adolescence is its immaturity and the fact of not being responsible. This, its most sacred element, lasts only a few years, and it is a property that must be lost to each individual as maturity is reached.

Triumph belongs to this attainment of maturity by growth process. Triumph does not belong to the false maturity based on a facile impersonation of an adult. Terrible facts are locked up in this statement.

One of the most exciting things about adolescent boys and girls can be said to be their idealism. They have not yet settled down into disillusionment, and the corollary of this is that they are free to formulate ideal plans.

Let the young alter society and teach grown-ups how to see the world afresh.

[D.W. Winnicott]
Playing and Reality ('Contemporary concepts of adolescent development and their implications for higher education'), p.198, 199, 201, 203



The modern Western ego feels pride in the strength of the young, mature man. Eastern consciousness proudly shows the old man's wisdom.

[...] I am afraid that the old man's wisdom tends to become hardened.

[Hayao Kawai]
Buddhism and the Art of Psychotherapy, p.87




In our youthful years we respect and despise without that art of nuance which constitutes the best thing we gain from life, and, as is only fair, we have to pay dearly for having assailed men and things with Yes and No in such a fashion. 

Everything is so regulated that the worst of all tastes, the taste for the unconditional, is cruelly misused and made a fool of until a man learns to introduce a little art into his feelings and even to venture trying the artificial: as genuine artists of life do. 

The anger and reverence characteristic of youth seem to allow themselves no peace until they have falsified men and things in such a way that they can vent themselves on them - youth as such is something that falsifies and deceives. 

[Friedrich Nietzsche]
Between Good and Evil, 31



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