Rebellion ≠ Independence
It's a pretty standard failing of the young
to assume that disagreement is a demonstration of independence.
But that can lead to a fallacious intellectual shortcut:
I don't actually have to understand the situation
in order to triumphantly prove
that I'm independent of my parents;
all I have to do is to disagree with them.
In fact, real independence requires coming to
understand a situation and then making your decision
without reference to how your parents may have decided.
Sometimes that means you find yourself agreeing with them.
Every generation of young people feels a need to
rattle the bars and to make changes,
and to rebel against their parents.
This is usually healthy, but it can become pathological.
However, the most common and obvious manifestations
are usually unimportant in the long run,
in things like taste in clothing and music,
and part of the appeal for the young
is precisely the fact that their parents disapprove.
So we had the flappers in the 1920s.
In the 1930s young people were dealing with the Depression
and didn't have the luxury of doing this kind of thing,
and in the 1940s there was the war.
But in the 1950s we had greasers,
and in the 1960s there were hippies.
In the 1970s hippiedom led to the freaks,
and that kind of thing hasn't stopped happening.
Modern kids are into strange hair styles,
weird hair colors, tattoos and body piercing,
and among the greatest appeal of all those things
is the simple fact that their parents disapprove.
The 1950s also saw the beatniks.
Beatniks were non-conformists.
They were independent; they were into cool
and jazz and obscure poetry and modern art.
And there was an amazing degree of uniformity
amongst them in styles of clothing,
and in ways of talking, and in attitudes and values;
it was almost like there was some official
“non-conformist” way of dressing
and an official “non-conformist” set of attitudes
and values to which these “non-conformists”
all closely conformed.
There was a lot of ridicule about
their presumption of “nonconformity”.
The beatniks were lampooned quite a lot by Mad Magazine,
for instance. Because, of course,
it was not the case that they were non-conformists.
They just conformed to a different standard.
That basic drive to rebel,
and to prove rebellion by doing things parents condemn,
is something most of us outgrow eventually.
But that isn't really independence.
If you can do those things,
it proves that you are free—in the sense of
not being externally constrained.
It doesn't mean you are free inside your head.
Real independence means making your own decisions
about things without being unduly influenced by
what others think you should decide.
For example, a woman who chooses
to be a wife-and-mother is liberated.
A woman who is forced into that role is not.
What's critical is who made the decision,
not what decision was made.
That's what most of us learn as we mature,
as we outgrow youthful rebellion:
I can agree with others and retain my independence,
as long as I am the one making the decision.
It isn't demeaning, or a sign of slavery,
to feel respect for the achievements of others,
as long as it is you who evaluates
what they did and decides that it is worthy of respect.
Being independent doesn't require you to
automatically reject and condemn everything
ever done by “dead white males”,
or indeed to automatically reject anything whatever.
In fact, you are just as much an intellectual slave
if you automatically oppose everything
that a certain “other” thinks and does as you are
if you automatically support and agree.
For when you automatically oppose them,
you still let them control your position.