What makes a good rite of passage into adulthood?

What makes a good rite of passage into adulthood?

Slaying a savage beast? Memorizing the holy scriptures? Completing 100 textiles? Earning a tattoo? Changing your name to something less childish?

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Losing your virginity?
The simplest and obvious one.

That's not really what adulthood rites were about, though. That's some modern degenerate shit.

A rite of passage entirely depends on the culture that it belongs to.

What's important to the people? What makes someone a respectable member of the community? If religion is really important, that probably factors into it. If it isn't, it might be related to something else.

In highly evolved cultures, generally adulthood rites are more detached and are often ceremonial, or are about showing gentility. In more primitive cultures it often revolves about proving that you are a provider or warrior in a 'traditional' way.

Changing your name to something less childish is a shit rite of passage.

Now, EARNING a new name, that's something that you can really sink your teeth into. Kids have their normal names until they do something that's worthy of being remembered, then someone thinks of something clever and it sticks. It's one of those universal unspoken rites that a lot of different cultures have, though you mostly see it in the culture of war where people are just trying to find something to distract them from all the death.

In general, a rite of passage should have a very clear before and after phase, a pivotal period where someone can note a very distinct change in themselves.

It doesn't have to be short, but it needs to be more than gradual, or at least not seen as gradual. Memorizing texts for example, isn't going to give that sort of shift, in the same way that college or high school doesn't really give that feeling. Part of it is the time, but it's also simply that people don't notice a difference, or acknowledge one.

For an example that does work, compare military service, especially some variant of basic training. It's certainly not short, though not overly long, but there's such a drastic before and after that it can be seen as a passage.

Similarly, earning a tattoo or changing your name is a symptom of the passage, rather than the a part of it. While it can be boiled down to the only element, without some distinct change in the person, the whole thing will feel hollow.

Having slain a beast or completed some task, the boy may then earn a new name or be awarded a tattoo, a sort of reminder that the change has occurred, but to just change their name, say, when they reach a certain age might feel like a passage, but it won't resonate culturally or with the person themselves.

So really, a passage should be some trial that's achievable and related to his task, something non-trivial but at the same time actually a part of the adulthood he's joining.

Bringing down a specific kind of game, building their own house, making their first real sale, it should be something that they are expected to accomplish as adults.

inheriting/working in the family business

In unrelated cultures around the world people often give their babies insulting/silly names so that evil spirits won't want them.

Once they've proven themselves they get a noble name.

It's also an introduction to the whole "true name" concept.

Every child has a secret name whispered to them at birth. Typically only immediate family know or use this name.

Giving out your true name to a stranger is the supernatural equivalent of posting your SS Number, bank account PIN, home address, and phone number on Veeky Forums

In my setting Orcish Society doesn't have birthdays they instead have yearly labors. From a young age one's father would propose a labor of that year, a task the child would be set. Relatives then give that child gifts to help complete that task.

At the end one has The Rite of Lost Things. Where one's father will give you a final task and a clan moniker. Orcish last names have two parts, the clan portion (short one syllable like Bak, Kel, Ung, etc.) and a personal moniker given to them by their father. These have meaning in the orcish tongue. During the Rite they are not allowed to return home, and the last labor often takes years. This causes young adult orcs to wonder the country side laden with gifts, given semi-impossible tasks.

It is tradition for later sons to be given more and more difficult tasks as well.

Those who return failures are normally cast off and forced to enter into the service of the state church. The society is highly religious, so while shameful to a degree, this is also seen as a personal choice for some young orcs. Often these orcs form the church's military arm, and are thus separate from the learned clergy.

How does that sound?

The primitive human knew what was right...
>have an orgy as a rite of passage at your local temple
>working 3 hours a day for survival.
>Having a ocasional fight with the neightbors instead of war.

In a secret chamber beneath the temple are five holes in the wall. Four of them contain poisoned needles and an agonizing death.

If you follow such a suicidal command without question you're too stupid to be a brave, which is why the fifth hole is also trapped.

The correct choice is to defy the command.

>doing my three hours labor
>five guys from the neighboring tribe throw javelins at me
>hit me in the head with a rock when i fall
>they do this until there's only four or five men left in the tribe
>attack village, kill the men, take the women, eat the babies
>mfw occasional fight with the neighbors

Mounting a woman if you're a man.
Nothing if you're a woman.

That one IRL rite works.
Put your hand in a glove full of really painful really angry ants. Their sting can make a grown man pass out from the pain. You not only are not a man, you aren't allowed to even scream.

Pass, and you're a man.

You have to do it like seven times before you're a man. The pain lasts for days.

At least the Boy Scouts were trying to make the kids men in the traditional sense no matter how autistic they appear to be. Those little handbooks have a ton of practical information about outdoor survival etc.

Not like the SJW my little boy loves dresses and his/her pink hair...

Some native South American tribes saw connection between semen and male adulthood, and followed particularly interesting interpretation - they had growing boys suck on the elders (and swallow) to gain the power of maturity. So basically like OP picture minus the badges collecting.

Find a big monster.
You got one? Good.

Now kill it. Bonus points if it's with your bare hands.

Those were Pacific islanders more than south americans.

Boy Scouts have always been pretty damn good at this stuff. Girl Guides too since they were founded a year afterwards by a group of girls gatecrashing a Boy Scout event and demanding that Baden-Powell give them the same respect, which he did since he was impressed as hell.

It's only really since the 70s/80s that scouting's been seen more as a geeky/autistic thing but they're still dong great. The current Chief Scout Bear Grylls has some very impressive credentials including having served in the SAS. Not many youth groups can say they're headed by a special forces veteran.

Scouting taught me all sorts of useful skills, most important of which is how to fry the shit out of shit, and how to build a fire.
The downside of the latter is that I was taught to build COOKING fires. Not fancy pretty campfires.
To date, I have heated up someone's garden wood burner enough for the rustproofing to spontaneously degrade, and the scout group's metal fireboxes all ended up warped by the heating.

Well, the way I see it, Scouts have always been bunch of wimpy queers. Back when young men wilderness survival club did not suck they were actually called Red Pioneers. Or Hitlerjungen if you really are an old-timer.

That's pretty well thought out, I like it a lot user.

O-Onkel Adolf?

Discipline is the instant willing obedience to all orders without question.

Where to begin?

At the beginning?

I'm an Eagle Scout. Took me nine and a half years to earn it, and I wouldn't take it back for the world.

God created the heavens and the earth

>What makes a good rite of passage into adulthood?
Cutting off your topknot and getting circumcised with a flint knife, just like how the Egyptians used to do it.

Actually, didn't he create light before that?

...BURN THE HERETIC

Serious question here: Is it possible for an adult to become something like a Boy Scout?

I never learned how to survive in the wilds or how to sew up a rip in my pants or how to swim or any of that. Is there an adults-only version of the Boy Scouts?

Good work, you just killed most of the population who can follow orders and make a society function.

>Memorizing texts for example, isn't going to give that sort of shift, in the same way that college or high school doesn't really give that feeling.

Google "Bar Mitzvah", you uneducated Millennial.

>Memorizing the holy scriptures?
Yeah.

Honestly you can just look up the merit badge booklets for those things. It's easy as hell to teach yourself with one of those.

Mormons have something similar.

Eagle Scouts sometimes teach adult classes.

The best way to get into boy scouts if you are an adult is to be a father and volunteer as a pack leader/scout master for your kids group.This will force you to either learn the skills from reading the books and training or be under another scout master and they teach you.

Entering an apprenticeship, or some other group-specific initiation.
Leaving a group to which other youths belong (e.g. school).
Temporarily being ostracized from the larger group.
Recitation of text or oral history/poetry.
Ritual bodily harm or marking (circumcision, scarification, tatoo).
Oaths (sometimes ironic or transgressive oaths).
Feat of strength/skill, especially one relevant to local subsistence strategy.
Initiation of an adult relationship (such as marriage) or career.
Death/rebirth metaphors (baptism, etc.)

Two or three will do the trick. Especially if they're dissimilar from each other. So entering an apprenticeship and cutting some ties with your family doesn't have the same impact as entering the printer's guild and taking a solemn oath to get shitfaced every night and kill every cat you come across.

The child will choose, as the first step to adulthood is deciding what kind of man you want to be. But even if you are technically considered an adult don't expect to be respected if your rite is something effortless like traveling a day outside of town and camping until you use up the supplies you brought with you.

Ow about a box O' pain?
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>Is there an adults-only version of the Boy Scouts?
navy

lmao

Essentially this. Depends on what you want of the culture in question.
Some less civilized cultures might involve something like hunting and killing a wolf or something. One thing to remember is that the task shouldn't be extremely difficult or something that inherently results in other people dying.

>Kill a bear with just a knife
Have fun with just three men per generation

>Kill an enemy warrior
So every time a man is born another man is killed. Plus any men that are killed by people who are already men or die of natural causes. How is this concept sustainable?

For uncivilized cultures it doesn't need to involve killing, it could just be taking part in asinine rituals or taking part in endemic warfare. To be a man you have to raid another tribe. Don't have to kill anyone, you could just run over to their village, grab a chicken and fucking bolt. Could also be a big shot and try to kidnap your future wife and probably get stabbed by her father and brothers when they notice you carrying her off.

This. The best soldiers just do their job, if you kill off everyone who listens to dangerous or stupid orders than you will end up with an army that is indistinguishable from an army of cowards.
>I'm not charging over the top of the trench I would probably die
>I'm not going to be the first into the breach that's suicide, I don't care about honour and money
>Wow this war is really shitty, who cares about territory, lets just mutiny

> What makes a good rite of passage into adulthood?
Realizing that becoming an adult means putting away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Shaving the head

What's it like being a pedophile?

Wow, I'm white and even I think half those kids look almost the same.

well it stands to reason they would. Skinny, unathletic, 50/50 with glasses, and generally a bad genetic makeup (visible in the face). In short, losers. This is the only place they can go to safely be with others of their own kinds, since normal people wouldn't join the boy scouts in the first place.