Valuelessness and the Plastic Personality

Abstract

We have been taught to value advancement, hard work, sacrifice, self-control, and unswerving loyalty to principle. These values, which were so necessary during the period of industrialization, are still those of our parents, teachers, and preachers today, and thus are the values into which we are socializing our youth. But many of the youths themselves do not accept these as the only valid orientations. They recognize that to please adults, and to “succeed” in the world as they have been taught to perceive it, they must believe, or pretend to believe, as their parents do. But among themselves it is often another matter. Value-conflict between parent and child is nothing new, of course. But the present situation is qualitatively as well as quantitatively different. We are said to be a youth-centered culture now, and if so, it is highly appropriate that we are, because youths possess the plastic personalities and role orientations which we all must learn to have in order to survive in the future. Instead of socializing our youths into the rigid and outmoded roles of the past, we should encourage them to maintain and develop their natural flexibility.