While studying for her licensing exam, Dr. M just came across this passage in one of her books, which she plans on showing to our own brats eighteen years from now. We're both disturbed by the idea that all of our teenage angst was predictable and useless, and deconstructed nearly a hundred years ago:
"Adolescents, with their new powers of abstract reasoning, often spend time constructing grand religious, ethical, and philosophical theories. Because adolescents have limited life experience, these theories are often unsophisticated and naive. In fact, according to Piaget, adolescents are prone to formal operational egocentrism, or a rigid insistence that the world can become a better place through implementation of their idealistic schemes."
Formal operational egocentrism. So that's what that's called.
Abbreviated F.O.E., and pronounced "fooey".
I thought it was abbreviated A.Y.N.R.A.N.D.
Wait, you mean I'm not the only one who read "The Fountainhead" at age seventeen and decided to model my life after Howard Roark?
"Wait, women LIKE to be raped?"
Oh, Fountainhead.
Yeah, at least you didn't try to model your life on Dominique like, um, my friend did.
When I told this story to my co-workers, they were incredulous that we talk about these kinds of things. What do other people do at home?
We talk about cognitive linguistics and Star Trek TNG :p
We talk about facts. Or anyway Gene talks about facts, and in my head I talk about Buffy to myself.