Do go on. I am interested. What are your thoughts about children prior to puberty. I don't see the development of the prefrontal cortex by age 25 as that big a deal as long as the individual doesn't deviate from the norms of what you call socialization.

My perspective of how I have lived my life over past 60 years is that I have been too agreeable and tolerant and although this has meant avoiding confrontation, I have been taken advantage of. I am not at the extreme of this, as I also know people who are even more willing to please and I see myself pushing them around. My approach has always been ‘virtue is its own reward’, and through work and community service I perform I have tried to live by this. Now I see these as being social indoctrinates, rather than an innate capacity for good in myself. I want to be socially judged as being a good person and well liked. However, I am also not interested in social small talk, so I volunteer in a bar so I can be productive in a sports oriented group, without having to stand around for hours making small talk. Its taken a while, and people regard me as slightly eccentric. Its not that I don’t like people, in fact I do, and easily engage in deep meaningful conversations, however these have limits once I have learned as much as I can from the other people. I am the person who at parties will find the bookcase and find that books interest me more than small talking the other guests.
As a result of these realisations and I have becomes far less tolerant, and though I still perform community work as I have for many years, I serve my own needs far more. I still enjoy mentoring and helping people, but as much of my community work deals with the public, I am often appalled by how thoughtless and ungrateful people can be, and their sense of entitlement about what someone doing community work owes them. In my mind I made an excellent citizen, paying taxes, obeying the law, as virtue was its own reward, I gave as much as a I could. I used to mentor new employees in corporate business on my own time, asking that all I wanted in return was for them to mentor two others in their time, so that society would progressively become better, first in our company and then in society – this is a pay it forward type concept – and you note how concepts like these get publicised – because it would be great if everyone else behaved unselfishly.
I have also changed my ideas on the roles and equality of men and women in society over the past couple of decades. I assume from my well educated mother and not having sisters, I grew up with a sense that women were somehow special, and generally had less advantages than men, when they probably deserved more. However I was puzzled by the fact that men who had the most control in society , lived shorter lives, committed suicide 4x as often as women, made up 90% of prison populations, were more likely to be homeless, and died violently more often. If men were in control how come women got more of these significant benefits? Once again I think there is a social indoctrination at work based upon power dynamics between all sectors of society, men and women, children, adults, the aged etc, all trying to get the best for themselves and get others to contribute as much as they can.

Posty - Your post comes close to what I am trying to understand when an individual goes through socialization while trying to maintain individuality or the socialization vs individualization problem.

This only seems like a problem that children or teenagers face when confronted with sexual maturity.

We have been social far longer than we have been human, with the common ape ancestor split 6-8mya, if we regard sexual reproduction as social this began over 1billion years ago, and while there are some quite advanced species that are asocial, like polar bears, leopards and cheetahs, they still socialise for sexual reproduction and raising their young. I mention this to show how deeply social we are and although we get socialised by our specific social environment, it has also evolved over countless generations of ancestors. Despite this most animals and plants still do their best to stay in control of their lives, even at a cost to others. This is expressed either by doing something to stay alive or reproducing. This means that the social/individual dynamics run far deeper than simple social constructs. Puberty signals the point where sexual reproduction becomes possible and instead of just trying to keep alive as an individual, we are now trying to replicate our DNA through the process of sex.
Having said that from birth we imitate language , accents, moral values, fashion before we have any awareness. I believe that many ideas about individuality are fostered by society. Consider the movie industry, people watch an average of 5 movies each year, movies provide escapism from everyday life, and a strong theme in films is individuality winning against social indoctrination. There is usually a sense of a good little guy/gal winning against a big corporation, this seems to inspire people and movie studios deliver the escapism we require. Most books read are similar, the general junk fiction tries to reassure people life has meaning and good and truth will prevail. This is of course pure bullshit, good and truth are just social slogans, and social constructs themselves. Aside from humans they don’t exist in other animals, yet most of our fundamental behaviors and motivations are the same ones we see in animals.

Now, I agree with this; but, it neglects to mention the fact that children are extremely malleable. At that age, a great deal of plasticity is in play. I believe that this is an important factor in professing my 'hope' about children.

Agreed that children and people are malleable, and I see the following questions arising
What does success look like? How will we recognise and define a perfect child? What will they behave like? Law abiding, obedient, and productive citizens? Doing unto others as……Turning the other cheek…..? These are reasonable but still difficult question questions to answer but the next question is even more difficult.

Once we have the perfect picture of the perfect child/adult, what perfect mechanism do we use to achieve this? After all the existing education and civic systems are (in theory) supposed to produce educated and productive citizens. Communism, socialism, fascism, Nazism, nudism, religion all these have been set up my various individuals and groups to achieve some utopian human society, but as far as I am aware none have been perfect, in fact far from it. This means its not a new idea to try and mould society, George Orwells 1984 and Animal Farm, Huxleys Brave new World are well known caricatures of what society might become. History consists of nothing but people trying to promote their own selfish interests or those of their group. The concept of the group has changed dramatically in the past 50 years. Womens rights, sexual orientation and identity, racial equality, childrens rights, animal rights, disabled rights, mental health rights and many others have meant we have expanded our concept of the ingroup whose well being needs to be promoted. Its still a work in progress with plenty of bumps along the way, but we can expect that human society and life will continue be defined as what is important and whose needs should be promoted. This means their must be a cost to individuals and sub groups, I cant see how tradeoffs can be avoided through this process.

Also note that malleable does not have to be limited to our minds, we have already been moulding human and animal bodies through selective breeding, medicine, IVF and now we are getting into proactive gene manipulation. This means that not only are we likely to greatly extend life expectancy but we can manipulate the unborn, either before procreation or after, but certainly before they are born. Since all this is being done for the greater good, we should promote it? I am being facetious here, however this process is not stoppable by conscious process. The first IVF baby was a major scandal, now it raises no comment. The first heart transplant raised moral questions, now we think nothing of it and do lungs, kidneys and will end up doing brains. We have cloned domestic animals and will certainly clone humans at some point. All this will only stop if an asteroid hits us, or we nuke ourselves, otherwise its unstoppable and we will adjust or moral standards (as we have always done) to help it on its way.

What an exciting time to be alive.

No doubt, most humans have some degrees of conflict with other humans, we have many dependencies on others and often positive needs.

A social mask is necessary, we use clothes for this reason, we deny sexual and bodily functions or wrap them up in acceptable ways. In fact anything we hold private is part of social masking. We use the mechanism of joke making to allow us to address some of these no go areas in a mostly well managed process of comedy, but even here we violate the boundaries on multiple subjects. It reduces to the truth and fictions we create to protect ourselves and others from these truths. Some people are quite comfortable with two or more faces, politicians are used as good examples but anyone who wears clothes is just hiding facts that we all observe for ourselves but not able to tolerate for most others. Since you struggle to put on various social faces, imagine that we also fart in company, but silently so as to conform, and clothes give a semi permanent social face, hiding our bodies, bodily habits, thoughts etc. Even acquiring a language and accent from our early years becomes a social face and identity, while it’s a conforming mechanism its also a social mask that we show to rest of the world. Imagine if we developed personal language expressions? Aside from the communication issues, it would prevent us from forming tribes and groups that are important parts of our social masks.

My psychologist once told me that the ego is a dominating force that compels us to act on our behalf. Yet, I am not dominant by nature. I find it hard to find reasons why I would want to feel dominative towards other people. Furthermore, there's nothing about me that wants to manipulate other people, and there's nothing in me that is prone to manipulation, because I have a keen mind in sensing such things, and I don't value anything apart from my peace of mind.
Most people want fulfillment, some get it by dominating, or being dominated. Ultimately social interaction requires a tradeoff with our individuality and its needs. Hierarchies in social groups appear universal across all species. Individuals rarely win this with taking a beating at many stages of life or compromising individual needs.


I think we tend to idealise children, partly because it’s a biological imperative, and also because we see their lives as simpler and less challenging as ours, because they have no idea the consequences of being adult, of growing old, and in some cases of our mortality. (I say some cases because youth does not protect you from accident or death, just ageing).

You did not say what age of children you endow with these attributes. I have four adult daughters and work with kids of various ages. No question they are different in may positive ways to adults but are still selfish and generally thoughtless. Teenagers go through a stage of self centricity, boys differently to girls, and show many negative attributes as well as serious consequences at this stage. I understand their neurons get pruned during puberty to provide resources to sexual maturity, so brains don’t work that well. By 25 the prefrontal cortex is mostly developed and then they realise their parents do know a bit, and they grow up and start learning about life.

Children receive massive amounts of indoctrination from schools, fashion, parents et al, so they are able to integrate into society and hopefully become productive, obedient, and law abiding citizens.
Even our idea of individuality is perhaps the most telling and fundamental forms of social indoctrination – that we are free willed, autonomous individuals. Only by this indoctrination can people spend their 3 score and 10 without slashing their wrists or someone else’s. People and there are a visible minority that stand out, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche etc etc some of whom went mad due to the struggle against social indoctrination because they had some degree of awareness. Humans have been social far longer than we have been human, society needs to avoid fractures caused. Its natural to crush any member who risks fracturing the integrity of society

Difficult question without knowing more about the person or specific circumstances. If you are interested I will give you my perspective on this as it has affected me