Mr Smith starts from the observation, which few would dispute, that adolescents are slowerto emerge into adulthood these days: they study for longer, they depend on their parents forlonger and they marry later, if at all. The world of real work they eventually enter is not theworld of stable, long-term jobs that previous generations knew. During that long transitionthey have unprecedented freedomfrom unwanted childbearing, for exampleand noparticular reason to rush into commitments of any sort. Moral boundaries are less clear thanthey were; many young adults have been taught not just to tolerate other peoples views andbehaviour but to see them all as equally valid.
史密斯先生从观察开始,观察表明如今的年轻人进入成年期的速度较慢,这一观点几乎没有异议:如果条件允许的话,他们求学的时间长,依靠父母的时间长以及结婚晚。他们最终的工作并不是上一代人认为的稳定、长期的工作。在这段漫长的转型时期,年轻人享受着前所未有的自由,例如,不用考虑生育,没有理由去仓促地做任何承诺。道德的界限也不太清晰;很多年轻的成年人被教育不仅仅要忍受他人的观点和行为,而是平等正当地对待他人。
In every age the transition to adulthood is aturbulent time. The message here is that in todaysworld there is much that is fun, free and promisingabout this stage of life, but a dark side of apathy,confusion, loss and grief is less readilyacknowledged. The book focuses on five areas: howyoung adults make ethical decisions; what roleconsumerism plays in their lives; why they drink somuch; why they have sex so indiscriminately; andwhy, despite optimistic claims that Barack Obamaawakened young people in 2008 as John F. Kennedydid their parents or grandparents, they are in fact disengaged from civic and political life. Theanswers in the first area foreshadow most of the rest. What is striking about the responsesto a whole string of questions probing how these young people deal with moral issues is howfew of them seem to grasp what is being asked. Murder, rape, bank robbery are seen as wrong.But what about cheating on exams, cheating on lovers, even driving drunk? They talk aboutwhether they might be caught, how their friends would react, how they themselves might feel.Where it is a question of others questionable behaviour, a standard answer is that it is up toeach individual to decide for himself. Very few seem to think that right and wrong are rooted inanything outside personal experience.
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