Re: [xmca] crisis at age 17

[Ivo Banaco <ibanaco@gmail.com>]

This is great stuff Andy!

I hypothesize that this crisis in all its dimension is somewhat latter
today. Based in anecdotal evidence I would say that in occidental world the
crisis of arriving to adulthood, the responsibility of "taking up a place in
adult society" occurs when one enters in the working environment of business
in all its demanding. Particularly has one notice a conflict between a
formed concept of the world and a dis-identification with the new
perceptions received from the working structures operating. Something like a
zone of discomfort created by the difference from the "ideal" concept and
the "real" forcing new adjustments in the self concept and the development
of new projects/activities.

Ivo

PS: Like your quote Quote for the Day: It is only after profounder
acquaintance with the other sciences that logic ceases to be for subjective
spirit a merely abstract universal and reveals itself as the universal which
embraces within itself the wealth of the particular – just as the same
proverb, in the mouth of a youth who understands it quite well, does not
possess the wide range of meaning which it has in the mind of a man with the
experience of a lifetime behind him, for who, the meaning is expressed in
all its power. Hegel, The Science of Logic (1812);

PS2: still have to find time to review your book "An Interdisciplinary
Theory of Activity". Five stars is given***** (apart from a not so
good Immanent critique of Piaget thought and tradition, which I found
unfair, it sounded like a matter of taste not of a real immanent
critique...)



On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 5:59 AM, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net> wrote:

> In the passage to which David Kel kindly drew my attention, Vygotsky
> basically says that he has not yet figured out the nature of the Crisis at
> 17, or more precisely really, the crisis which marks the End of the
> "transitional period" and the passage to adulthood. But reading on, I think
> he is being too modest.
>
> We all know from T&S that thinking in concepts is not attained until
> adolescence. Well, the first half of Volume 5 of the LSV CW has a collection
> of articles on the development of the Mental Functions in adolescence which
> make his point much clearer. It is not just that thinking in concepts does
> not arrive until adolescence, but **thinking in concepts is the leading
> neoformation of adolesence**. That is, conceptual thinking reorganises and
> restructures the emotions, attention, self-consciousness, will - everything.
> The psyche of the youth becomes a concrete concept.
>
> At the conclusion of the chapter on "Development of the Higher Mental
> Functions during the Transitional Age," Vygotsky caps it all off with a
> 3-page discourse on Hegel's /Science of Logic/ as a metaphor for the
> development of the human personality. He does this of course, not directly,
> but by means of quotations recycled from Deborin, Lenin and Engels, all of
> which highlights those passages of Hegel where Hegel talks of the
> personality as a concept, and the arrival of adulthood and entry into social
> life as corresponding to the Concept (the 3rd book of the Logic). Pity
> Vygotsky died so young.
>
> All the writers, including those whose work xmca has just been discussing
> under the heading of moral development, seem to agree that the crisis which
> marks the end of adolesence is the very act of taking up a place in adult
> society, choosing a vocation, or as I would say, adopting a project(s).
>
> In the excellent and very helpful chapter of Mike Cole's book on Child
> Development, chapter 16, which deals with this period, we find descriptions
> of the struggle of the youth to establish an identity. This happens,
> according to Vygotsky, simultaneously with them forming a concept of the
> world, shaped and instantiated by their activity as part of some social
> class. In just one passage, Mike refers to this as "self-concept." Usually,
> in this period of individualism, we call it "identity," but self-concept is
> a far superior conception of oneself-in-the-world, I believe.
>
> So it seems to me that the crowning concept of Vygotsky's theory
> development of the human being is the development of the person as a
> concept, aka and identity or self-concept, inseparably from an ideological
> view of the world instantiated by participation in a project, be that a
> profession, a family or a political or religious movement (including
> divergent selves in different domains, different projects). It is the way
> this enormous step, from childhood dependency to active responsibility for
> procreation both biological and phylogenetic, which hangs like the Sword of
> Damocles over the youth, at just a time when their entire physiology,
> interests and psyche is being totally disorganised by the arrival of
> sexuality. These are the facts that make adolesence such a stormy and
> troublesome time.
>
> Any thoughts?
> Andy
>
>
> ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org wrote:
>
>> With regard to its form, the logical has three sides: (a) the side of
>> abstraction or of the understanding, (ß) the dialectical or negatively
>> rational side, [and] (?) the speculative or positively rational one. (EL §
>> 79)
>>
>> I pulled this off of this website:
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/seminars/paulhegel.htm
>>
>> I dare say that this is the 17 year old's crisis and consequently becomes
>> an individual's synthesis of life, meaning and all that.  As Bob Dylan
>> wrote, "I was so much older than, I'm younger than that now."  At 17 a
>> person has been provided the world's potential without any consequences (for
>> the most part, of course there are exceptions) and has yet to embark upon
>> their practical life.  Consider the soldier as poet, the scientist as
>> mechanic, the engineer as lumberjack and perhaps this is a bit of insight
>> into the 17 year old's crisis.
>>
>> comparing apples to oranges?
>>
>> eric
>>
>>
>>
>> From:        Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
>> To:        David Kellogg <vaughndogblack@yahoo.com>
>> Cc:        Culture ActivityeXtended Mind <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> Date:        05/19/2011 01:10 AM
>> Subject:        Re: [xmca] crisis at age 17
>> Sent by:        xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>> Mmm, I think that is c. p. 154 LSV CW v. 5.
>> I'm getting to that shortly,
>> thanks David
>>
>> Andy
>>
>> David Kellogg wrote:
>> > Andy:
>> >  > I think if you look at "Imagination and Creativity in the Child",
>> > where Vygotsky comments on the work of Ribot, you will find something
>> > apposite.
>> >  >
>> > Vygotsky, L.S. (2004). Imagination and Creativity in Childhood/.
>> > Journal of Russian and East European Psychology. /42 (1) 7-97.
>> >
>> >  > Ribot, who wrote that if man truly honored its great originators,
>> > there would a statue of a child in every Hotel de Ville in France,
>> > believes that at roughly age seventeen, every youth sacrifies
>> > imagination to realism, and this is the condition for entry into the
>> > work force.
>> >  > Vygotsky strongly contests this idea, both because he sees no
>> > contradiction between imagination and productive labor and because he
>> > believes that it is both preferable and more possible for art to
>> > saturate life than vice versa.
>> >  > David Kellogg
>> > Seoul National University of Education
>> >
>> > --- On *Wed, 5/18/11, Andy Blunden /<ablunden@mira.net>/* wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >     From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
>> >     Subject: [xmca] crisis at age 17
>> >     To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>> >     Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2011, 5:46 AM
>> >
>> >     On page 196 of vol. 5 of LSCV's CW, Vygotsky refers to a crisis at
>> >     age 17. I don't know of anything more he said about this crisis.
>> >     Can anyone help me?
>> >
>> >     Andy
>> >     --
>> >
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >     *Andy Blunden*
>> >
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>> *Andy Blunden*
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