Hacker News Reader

Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

Notice that this changes right around the age of puberty. Having grown up quite poor, my hypothesis is straightforward.

Before you are a teenager, the things that make you happy and that you value are largely disconnected from money. Happiness is more about the environment not being pathological more than it is about having material goods. Children invent their own happiness.

As a teenager, it becomes about the mating ritual. In that context, relative material deprivation can have a significant adverse impact on the ability to attract a quality mate. I would expect that in countries where it is relatively easy to change your material position in society would have happier adults than one where there was less opportunity because it gives the person more ability to improve their outcomes on the mate selection front.

View on HN

My anecdotal experience as a suburban American completely supports this explanation. I attended public schools with a variety of income levels represented. I didn't notice I was poor until I was about 13 years old and realized that I couldn't afford fashionable clothes. I would buy the brand that kids were wearing, but I only had two or three outfits. I was astonished that some of my peers would wear the 'cool' brand, but have different clothes everyday.

A major reason why I'm for uniforms. Take all that petty cool clothes envy out of the equation.

Clothing is protected expression. Being "for [mandatory] uniforms" is being "for censorship".

That's a kinda blunt equivalence. What school children wear is so rarely about expressing ideas that the censorship potential of such a policy is tiny. Besides, censorship in the classroom is hardly new, nor is it controversial.

If it's not clothes, it'll be watches, shoes, smartphones, underwear, hats, notebooks, whatever. Uniforms aren't going to stop teenagers in the midst of puberty from competing with each other for status.

If every material thing get removed, you think it will end up as a competition through physical and intellectual qualities ?

Or arbitrary social bullying, like we have today.

I agree. At least it takes "one" of the things out of the equation.

   > As a teenager, it becomes about the mating ritual.

That is an interesting observation.

The mating ritual is about differentiation and perhaps the easiest way to express that is through the application of money (which takes the place of effort). Although I would dispute the assumption of a 'quality' mate. Such judgements are difficult if not impossible during one's teen years given a lack of experience both of one's self and of one's self in the context of another. The entire concept of "cool" is, at its heart, this sort of mating ritual.

That said, I observed that there were many different groups at my high school, each with their standards of 'cool' and thus various ranking systems. Atheletes, band members, socialites, all had their 'most' and 'least' cool members. For athletes (as an example) their physical prowess had little to do with their financial standing[1].

I continue to think that it is important to "catch" emergent materialism in children and to hold it up to the light and show them what it is, nothing. Talk to them about whether or not having the latest phone changes who they are, or changes the way other people are. This is exactly when people start developing a sense of how to measure themselves in the world and if you let them believe that they are measured by what they own, they will have a very hard time ever measuring up.

[1] Or their success fitness as some succeeded in later years and some didn't.

"Quality" refers to the mater's metric (health genes, access to resources), which might not be accurate in our modern post-evolutuonary-pressure human society.

But betting on a rich mate is a pretty good bet that teens make.

   > But betting on a rich mate is a pretty good bet that teens make.

I would be interested to hear how you reason to that conclusion. I ask because there are a number of ways where my experience differs (and granted this comes from going to USC in Los Angeles for my BS degree, and that school has a reputation for having a lot of 'rich teens') My experience there was that the more money a person had the less 'functional' they seemed to be. At the time I attributed it to their having so many things done for them that they didn't have to develop the skills to do things on their own. But it wasn't a scientific study at all, just the experience of growing up with a cohort of similarly aged people over 5 years.

Of course it might depend on the definition of fitness. It was certainly true that the wealthier teens had more opportunities to create offspring than I did :-) By the measure of their gene pool was more likely to continue I could agree.

    >Of course it might depend on the definition of fitness. It was certainly true that
    >the wealthier teens had more opportunities to create offspring than I did

As far as mating fitness, that's actually all that matters. The weight of millions of years of biology are behind that drive. The fact that modern society has abstracted "success" to so many other things is a recent novelty.

I think you're coming from a place of a young adult. Anybody with kids will see it quite differently - there's a lot more to it than mate selection :)

As for kids being happy - they just have near infinite energy to spare. As your responsibilities increase and your infinite energy begins to whither, it's a different dynamic.

Could you expand on your point? I'm a kindergarten teacher and I'm currently doing a developmental psychology course. While there is a lot more to it than mate selection that is very, very important. Erikson said the main task or crisis of the adolescent phase is identity versus identity confusion but developing one's own identity is a necessity for all facets of adult life, mate selection included. The hollowness of most adolescent experience; Go to school, learn what we tell you to, do as you're told, the general high school experience means that socialising is where most adolescent's mental energy goes. Since this is a zero sum game and a very large part of it is mate acquisition I don't see that there's that much more to it than mate acquisition.

Socializing a absolutely not zero sum. Only a narrow form of pair bonding is.

It might also be a false prejudice. I remember a guy who had not much, and could attract girls even without speaking the native tongue. He didn't care and would reach for them anyway, better than other more 'suited' guys.

I still find your pre/post teenage hood split interesting, a lot of things change in one's mind, things get stiffer and more extreme (IMO people are less religious and communautarian), less creative and free.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com