Interwebs

I spend an alarming large portion of my life browsing the vast spaces of the Interweb, basking in its unending depths of stuff. Sometimes I even find good thought provoking articles (they are my favorites).

The Cult of Clean
We've become a nation of grime fighters, and there's growing evidence that we're sacrificing our safety and our sanity to sanitization.
By Carlin Flora, PsychologyToday.com

From that article my favorite quote is:

Significantly, our dreams of disinfection parallel the rise of anxiety in our culture. After analyzing anxiety levels measured among young people in 1952 and 1993, psychologist Jean Twenge of San Diego State University concluded that levels of anxiety in today's average teenager are equivalent to those in patients treated for a psychiatric disorder 50 years ago. Other studies have documented the rise of anxiety among college students and adults.

It was definitely not the focus of the article, but led me many more thoughts and observations.




A few days ago I found this:

Red Sex, Blue Sex
Why do so many evangelical teen-agers become pregnant?
by Margaret Talbot

And there I focused in on this:

Some of these differences in sexual behavior come down to class and education. Regnerus and Carbone and Cahn all see a new and distinct “middle-class morality” taking shape among economically and socially advantaged families who are not social conservatives. In Regnerus’s survey, the teen-agers who espouse this new morality are tolerant of premarital sex (and of contraception and abortion) but are themselves cautious about pursuing it. Regnerus writes, “They are interested in remaining free from the burden of teenage pregnancy and the sorrows and embarrassments of sexually transmitted diseases. They perceive a bright future for themselves, one with college, advanced degrees, a career, and a family. Simply put, too much seems at stake. Sexual intercourse is not worth the risks.” These are the kids who tend to score high on measures of “strategic orientation”—how analytical, methodical, and fact-seeking they are when making decisions. Because these teen-agers see abstinence as unrealistic, they are not opposed in principle to sex before marriage—just careful about it. Accordingly, they might delay intercourse in favor of oral sex, not because they cherish the idea of remaining “technical virgins” but because they assess it as a safer option. “Solidly middle- or upper-middle-class adolescents have considerable socioeconomic and educational expectations, courtesy of their parents and their communities’ lifestyles,” Regnerus writes. “They are happy with their direction, generally not rebellious, tend to get along with their parents, and have few moral qualms about expressing their nascent sexuality.” They might have loved Ellen Page in “Juno,” but in real life they’d see having a baby at the wrong time as a tragic derailment of their life plans. For this group, Regnerus says, unprotected sex has become “a moral issue like smoking or driving a car without a seatbelt. It’s not just unwise anymore; it’s wrong.

Sorry that was so long. But it’s a long article that I found quite interesting. And that quote there I liked it because I’ve been trying to puzzle together my own psychology for years. And frankly, it’s not going so well. However that quote led to some insight.

Happy reading.