logicp_writings/new/Young_People_choice.md

Young People and Choice

Remember the Pepsi Generation? The corporately instructed young people were granted rationale for feeling as though they were part of something new. Daring to be different and reject conformity. Isn't that what being progressive is all about? Do young people believe themselves to default to such a mentality?

Surely, most adults expect that of them, extending from the belief that it would have described themin their own childhood. Would that not necessarily be the case, or do some people grow more open minded with age?

I suspect that the permitting of new ideas in one's older age requires scrutiny, established structures.

Progressive Minds hold Progressive Viewpoints

It sounds reasonable to assume that progressive viewpoints are held by newer, younger, more open minded people who are best able to adapt to change. They don't mind jumping into the unfamiliar and allowing strong changes to our way of life.

Choice

Young people don't generally believe or feel that they have the power of choice. They believe that when they become adults, this is what is granted to them.

As a child, what seems to be the granting of the power of choice is when they are able to model adult behaviour. This might be in the form of gaining access to that which is restricted to adults, or being able to have an opinion which one would assume to be predicted to have come from an adult. Even having the opinion at all might and raising the potential of being placed in the adult category as a result is itself reason-enough for one to set about having an opinion to assert.

So, in this sense, persuading children to form an opinion and to mould the opinion into the one which matches your own interest is not very challenging to understand. You simply need to appeal to their sense of adult-mediated empowerment, and have them believe it endows them with an expression of transcending child-associated limitations.