WHY DO SOME YOUNG ADULTS DROP OUT?

In August 1998 ABC "Prime Time Live" ran a heartbreaking special report on young people who had dropped out of college and out of promising careers completely, to join a religious cult of "garbage eaters" who live in the streets of several major cities. Typically, they refused all social contact with their parents, families, and friends from their "before" lives.

Why do talented young people drop out?

There are two major motives. First, a person may feel that he or she cannot "succeed" in competitive mainstream pursuits without giving up their rights to speak and think for themselves; they may feel that their minds and names are being used for the agendas of others. Second, a person may feel that he or she cannot "succeed" without unfairly taking advantage of the labor of others. In the case of the "garbage eaters" cult and many others, the people settled into "monastic" religious disciplines where supposedly there are "simple" answers to questions about right and wrong.

In a few cases, people might have fallen into traps while seeking employment. In the 1970's, a friend actually spent a weekend with the chanting and camping out with the Moonies ("no more concepts," etc.) in search of a (scare, then) teaching job, but he came back.

The history of many of these cults and life stories is interesting. In some cases, there seems to be a "charismatic" figure in charge, although the "charisma" would be hard for most people to see.

I think that in a lot of cases, the "dropouts" have bought a rationalization (whether "sweet lemons" or "sour grapes") that covers their own fears of or exposure to failure, particularly should circumstances really force them to fend for themselves. If you don't enter that chess tournament, you can't get beat! (You can "quit while you're ahead.") But many of them may also resent a cultural bias in Western thought that tends to see people, not just "as people" or as "living souls" (I borrow my own father's language) but as objects that take on meaning only when compared to others in some competitive and often physically visible, corporal context. Again, chess provides a paradigm: an exercise in demonstrating personal superiority over another person!

The Roman Catholic Church has an answer for men and women who don't want to "compete": the priesthood, and the convent. In any case, should anyone contemplating such a drastic personal change stumble upon this page, I hope that he or she will think through his or her motives carefully.

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