Ashis Nandy

While societies which have built upon the traditions of hyper-masculinity have conceived of adulthood as the ultimate in the human life-cycle because of its productive possibilities, many of the older cultures of the world, left out of the experience of the industrial and technological revolutions, refuse to see childhood as merely a preparation for, or an inferior version of, adulthood.

Ashis Nandy (born 13 May 1937) is an Indian political psychologist, social theorist, futurist and critic.

Quotes

Traditions, Tyranny and Utopias: Essays in the Politics of Awareness (1987)

• For those who dare to defy the given models of defiance.
  • dedication, p. vi

• While societies which have built upon the traditions of hyper-masculinity have conceived of adulthood as the ultimate in the human life-cycle because of its productive possibilities, many of the older cultures of the world, left out of the experience of the industrial and technological revolutions, refuse to see childhood as merely a preparation for, or an inferior version of, adulthood. Nor do they see old age as a decline from full manhood or womanhood. On the contrary, each stage of life in these cultures is seen as valuable and meaningful in itself. No stage is required to derive its legitimacy from some other stage of life, nor need it be evaluated in terms of categories entirely alien to it.
  • p. 40

• It has been said in recent times that alternative visions of the human future must derive their ideas of spontaneity and play from the child. Implied in this very proposal is the tragedy of Western adulthood which has banished spontaneity and play to a small reservation called childhood, to protect the adult world from contamination.
  • pp. 40-41

• Younger children do not often have the option of breaking out of the social or educational traps set for them. Their physical, emotional and socioeconomic vulnerability does not give them much chance of escape and they have to play out the institutional games devised for them. In many societies, by the time they gain social and economic autonomy, it is already too late for psychological autonomy; they continue to carry within them the passions, hates and loves of their earliest authorities.
  • p. 64

• Childhood has become a major dystopia for the modern world. The fear of being childish dogs the steps of every psychologically insecure adult and of every culture which uses the metaphor of childhood to define mental illness, primitivism, abnormality, underdevelopment, non-creativity and traditionalism.
  • p. 65

• Perfect adulthood, like hyper-masculinity and ultra-normality, has become the goal of most over-socialized human beings, and modern societies have begun to produce a large number of individuals whose ego-ideal includes the concept of adult maturity as defined by the dominant norms of the society.
  • p. 65