This is a bit indirect but basically the review I long-planned to write about Into The Wild as mentioned a while back. Without a doubt this story is personal to many of us, certainly to my experiences overseas before coming home. In theory, it explains a great deal about the famously migratory Kiwi Youth.

Age tells Youth it is of no worth. For a while Youth tries many things to get this external validation. Seeking self esteem, Youth tries to prove self-worth by witnessing it in motion and in some cultures enjoys the benefit of a ritualised 'right of passage.'

Land Diving young men in Vanuatu- a right of passage (ODT reports that this has become a tourist spectical)

Lacking this ritual, driven and intelligent youth devises its own. Youth seeks fights, risks, dangers, hardships but surviving these mysteriously never fills the void. Unwilling to check the origional premise, efforts are redoubled and redoubled again until Youth either disengages from the pursuit or 'the wild' kills him as he tries.

You'll see this in much of our literature as a theme, always concerning young men.

Survival under these conditions depends on a race between the self-exposure to escalating risk and one's philosophical mind. If Youth does not disengage it will die trying.

If Youth does survive into Age without giving up the premise then, in grief and inferiority at having failed the test, it will of course re-transmit the external validation mantra to a new generation of Youth. This usually happens.

(Trueman Show, on TV last Friday. The Creator is desperate for Trueman to 'buy in' to the myth he has created at great effort.)

The other possibility for Youth is that philosophy reaches a simple but heroic conclusion...

"If my aim is to prove I am 'enough,' the project goes on to infinity- because the battle was already lost on the day I conceded the issue was debatable"- Nathanial Branden

Age lied.