FAMILY APPRENTICESHIP FOR THE ORANGE ECONOMY
Hello World!
Introducing Our Children to Our Post-Industrial, Post-Geographical, Digital Society
Most ancient cultures practice elaborate ceremonies designed to usher their adolescents across the threshold into adult society. One that stands out for its unbelievably painful rites is the Bullet Ant Initiation by the Sateré-Mawé, an indigenous tribe with little contact with the outside world, located in the Brazilian Amazon.
The initiation goes like this — when boys turn 13, they enter the jungle to find and collect bullet ants (around one-inch long) which a tribal leader then sedates by submerging in an herbal solution. Once they stop moving, the ants are woven into “gloves,” the stingers pointing inwards. After about an hour, the ants wake up royally furious.
And it is at this point that the initiation rites begin.
For 10 minutes each boy takes a turn wearing the bullet ant gloves on their hands. Though the pain takes hold immediately, remarkably few, if any, of the boys cry out. According to tradition, the painful initiation is good preparation for life and demonstrates that each boy will be able to fulfill the duties of manhood.
To become a man, each boy has to wear the gloves 20 times over the course of several months.
The sting of a bullet ant tops the SSPI (Schmidt Sting Pain Index) and is considered 30 times more painful than a bee sting. And aside from pain, the venom also causes paralysis and the shakes, taking a full 24 hours for the toxins to dissipate.
Fortunately for our teenagers coming of age in a post-industrial, post-geographical world, the most pain they are often exposed to is that of separation from their smart devices — devices that connect them to wider circles of contacts than any generation ever before them; that enable them express themselves in a variety of ingenious ways; that offers them a means to develop and practice skills that previous generations would have had to deposit a kings’ ransom to approximate.
These devices some families gleefully bestow on their teenagers at family celebrations — birthdays, confirmation, Christmas.
Yet for some other parents, their reactions are to wrap their kids in cotton and shield them from as much danger and pain as possible, delaying as much as possible their introduction into society.
But in seeking to introduce our children to the world, the essential question to ask is what trail are they are going to be leaving? What mark will they be making on the world?
We need to enable them to start stepping into their role as contributors to society when they turn 10, not 24. I would argue even earlier, when they start wielding the creative tools of our civilization — pencils, crayons, the computer mouse.
Update (25 Sep 2021): PlayWorx is currently on sabbatical.
At present, I am blogging exclusively at The Global Careerist.
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I champion parents of t(w)eens to become intentional in nurturing them as Imagineers, enabling them engineer their imaginative and creative ideas into productive and practical forms, thus empowering them to masterfully navigate and thrive in an Age of Massive Disruption.
I do this by writing a Medium publication, speaking at events and cooking up ingenious ways to spread the PlayWorx Method message of emphasizing nurturing of bold imagination and building of sustained creative capital during the t(w)eens years.
If you are a parent of a t(w)een, I invite you to subscribe to my weekly PlayWorx Insights email and join other perceptive parents who are already benefiting from this ‘front-side seat’ into another way to grow t(w)eens!
