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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Fri. 08/04/06 07:31:10 AM
   
   

"Analysing the Jiminy Cricket Generation"

Matthew Mehan interviews David Bosworth at MercatorNet, Aug. 2:

.... What's missing all too frequently, for the various reasons I noted before, are the parents themselves, as well as the extended families and stable neighbourhoods filled with lifelong friends, who together once supported parents in raising their children. What's missing increasingly in our society is a confident understanding of how the responsibilities and associated behaviours of children and adults ought to differ and how being the best possible parent differs from being your child's best friend.
What's present in their place are a widespread fear of and contempt for ageing, an over-investment in what I call the bogus expertise of self-help specialists, and a confusion between workplace roles and domestic ones. What's present — nearly omnipresent — is an entertainment economy whose invasive commercial messages convey the same themes as Disney's Jiminy Cricket: that (so long as we purchase the right product or advice) fate will be kind and our dreams will come true out of the blue; that ours is an existence in which it is both plausible and ethical to believe that "no request is too extreme." ....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Fri. 08/04/06 07:31:10 AM
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