Lost in Transition Quotes

“The major first point to understand in making sense of the moral reasoning
of emerging adults, then, is that most do not appeal to a moral philosophy, tradition, or ethic as an external guide by which to think and live in moral terms. Few emerging adults even seem aware that such external, coherent approaches or resources for moral reasoning exist. Instead, for most emerging adults, the world consists of so many individuals, and each individual decides for themselves what is and isn’t moral and immoral. Morality is ultimately a matter of personal opinion.”
― Christian Smith, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood

“-- not far beneath the surface appearance of happy, liberated emerging adult sexual adventure and pleasure lies a world of hurt, insecurity, confusion, inequality, shame, and regret.”
― Christian Smith, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood

“It is not possible to devalue the body and value the soul. The body, cast loose from the soul, is on its own. Devalued, the body sets up a counterpart economy of its own, based also on the laws of competition, in which it devalues and exploits the spirit. These two economies maintain themselves at each other’s expense, living upon the other’s loss, collaborating without ceasing in mutual futility and absurdity. You cannot devalue the body and value the soul — or value anything else.

—Wendell Berry, quoted by Christian Smith et al”
― Christian Smith, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood

“I don’t need a whole lot to be happy now. You want to have a roof over your head, to have a car, to have Internet. You need to have Internet, that’s just, there’s just no other way. Like your house is not really actually a habitable house if it doesn’t have Internet. You could live without water or trash, but not without Internet.

-- young, Emerging Adults interviewed on their lifestyle.”
― Christian Smith, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood

“Another, more basic reason is that even being able to know or define in the first place what hurts or helps other people often itself requires reference to certain moral standards and understandings of what is good and bad.”
― Christian Smith, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood

“The crucial distinction that these emerging adults are missing is the difference between the basis or reason for some moral truth and the effects of living according to that moral truth. Right moral living should normally have certain positive, patterned effects, at least over the long run. But that does not make those effects per se the reason why those things are morally right in the first place. If they are indeed morally right, they should remain so even if they sometimes fail to have those effects.”
― Christian Smith, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood

“The good we advocate is not to never judge anybody or anything. The good, rather, is to carefully and reasonably judge (weigh, appraise, discern
and perhaps appropriately critique) all things in life – but always with an awareness of one's own fallibility, openness to learning and an interest in all moving closer to the truth.”
― Christian Smith, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood

“many in the social sciences like to think of themselves as “value neutral.” We don’t particularly believe in that. We do believe that social science should do its best to avoid distorting biases, to prevent ideologies from skewing its findings, in order in the end to describe and explain what is true about what is real in social life. But note that that depends not on “value neutrality” but on its opposite: on value commitments to truth, scientific integrity, accountability, and so on. Those are nothing if not values driven by beliefs in what is good. Good science is thus always based not on bracketing or setting aside particular human notions of what is good, but rather on an absolute commitment to particular goods, like telling the truth, being willing to be shown to be wrong, etcetera.”
― Christian Smith, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood

“Young people need to be loved, to put it as plainly as possible. They need to be engaged, challenged, mentored, and enjoyed. They, like every human being, need to be appropriately cared for, no matter how autonomous and self-sufficient they may think they are.”
― Christian Smith, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood