The only qualification for adulthood in this culture seems to be living long enough to get there. The things we think of as “rites of passage” are mostly empty, sentimental, and nostalgic gestures, because no one believes that they make anything of the young person. They are rubber stamps, not alchemy. The teenagers don’t ask for the rites of passage and don’t seem to need them any more than the culture seems to need the teenagers. The events of excess are a reward for getting there, nothing more.
