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Yeah, times have changed. I went to school in the UK, Germany, Hong Kong, Chicago - mostly boarding school in the UK. When I was a kid (5-13), our principal form of entertainment was "go outside, do whatever". This usually entailed building fortresses out of junk, which usually involved deep excavations, traps that could actually kill (sash weights suspended in a tree, with tripwires, anyone?), and construction high up fir trees with "found" supplies. We used to go boating (on this neat lake full of totally lethal floating islands of rotted vegetation), unattended, and nobody thought anything of us taking a pile of unexploded mortars from the school fireworks show and sticking them in a bonfire. 7 year olds. Smart enough to know to run like hell and lie behind a dip in the land. People got hurt all the time, with everything from broken bones to cuts and grazes to the occasional airgun pellet in an unfortunate place. The school matron was a very busy woman. Once a year, the school had an organised "paddock war", in which everyone would arm themselves with whatever they could lay their hands on (cricket bats, improvised clubs, slingshots, etc.), and go beat each other senseless. Not sure this is quite the same picture, but it was a very effective way to get the pent-up aggression of 250 7-13 year old boys out in a single sitting, and not something that would happen today. The headmaster, an old submarine captain, used to take a group of the older (10+) boys out on a ramble into the woods, always to a new spot, and would then just either leave us there, with our task being to get all of us back unscathed, or play hunter-killer games. Retrospectively I have a feeling he was actually sneaking off to have a drink in the woods, but it was a great experience. Every single person with whom I played at that school is an entrepreneur. Every single one takes risks, wins, loses, and while their weltanschauungs vary hugely, from liberal to authoritarian to conservative to socialist, there's a common thread of willingness to try anything - that anything can be done - so long as one is willing to attempt it. The same school is now co-ed (no bad thing, but has been used as the "reason" for change) and has done away with the outdoor play, having replaced it with a sterile, monitored, playground. And we wonder why people are increasingly sheltered and closeted, with increasingly small worlds, with increasingly small sets of symbols with which to associate, and increasingly small ranges of thought. We took away childhood and replaced it with a life of infantilism. |
That one is more about you and your selection of friends. Your whole generation is not composed of entrepreneurs although they all played freely.