Rights of passage are dead. Nobody does them. Drop your teen in the forest and when they return they are men type of thing.
A right of passage makes a person confront themselves in such a unique way. It changes you. When you are solely responsible for your life and you prove to yourself that your capable of defending it.
While some merely survive such experiences, some thrive.
Prison has become this place where one goes and emerges a man. Either you leave this place more of a man or more of a child. Though it is more likely one emerges less mature. Take a child and drop him in the lions den, usually he gets eaten. It is a rare few who emerge leaders of that pack.
Gangs use prison as training ground for mental and physical training. It is boot camp for Nationalist groups like the Skinheads and Aryan Family, MS13 and their rivals, Nortenos. Unfortunately, this may be their only rights of passage.
The Boy scouts is a great place to do rights of passage like things. But it is only taken seriously in a few areas in the country, usually rural areas. So this leaves room for creative improvement. Perhaps an entrepreneur could capitalize on this need. Take people into a wilderness scenario and set up something that is somewhat ritualistic. Symbolic of crossing from a former self to a new self. Maybe that is not the end all be all solution, but its an idea and far more than I have heard anyone else suggest.
I know that when your resolve is tested and you have to force yourself to think about your own mortality, it changes your level of confidence as a decision maker in your life.
What if people became healthy men and women before prison...novel idea.
With Love
Jeff Utnage
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