Fractal

Fractal Imagery in a Fractal World

Most of us have seen it. Fractal imagery is everywhere. Fractal imagery is the high-tech video version of a collage. A bunch of video images are screened together in rapid succession, often to evoke an emotion or a memory. For instance, there is a car commercial that is out now, and when the person touches the car all sorts of images flash through the persons mind instantaneously.

The word fractal comes from the same root as the word fraction. The idea being that we are only getting a part of something if something is fractal. Fractal imagery can often just be a fraction of a second of a movie. But in our culture, it is not only pictures that are fractal. It is our whole world that is cut into little pieces. Especially the world that our teens live in.

Think about it. Many of our teens live in families that might seem fractal in nature. Mom and Dad have split. Mom has remarried to Stepdad. Stepdad had two kids from a previous marriage. Mom and Stepdad then have another child together. Dad was a little older than Mom. He had a child out of wedlock before the teen we are speaking of was born. He is now living with another woman, but is scared to jump into marriage again. Mom's house is fairly structured and discipline is important to her and Stepdad, but at Dad's place about anything goes. This is the fractal family that many teenagers live in. Situations are only likely to become more prevalent in the future.

A teen's social life and world is also becoming more fractal. It used to be that each school had one popular crowd, and everyone wanted to be connected to that crowd. As a youth minister, if you reached the "cool" people, everyone would follow. High schools are much more fragmented today. There may be some folks that are more popular than others, but it is much more important to belong to "your group" of 10-12 people, and to be loyal to them. The deal is, that often you have to move in and out of different groups during your time at school. For instance, lets imagine a teen who is an churchgoing honor student, and he plays soccer. That student has to move through his AP classes with one crowd, his soccer team with another, and probably half of his other classes with another. Then, he has to decide who to eat with at lunch. Now, think what it would be like if the student in the social situation that we are describing here was also in the family described above. Imagine then, that this student comes to the First Church downtown where students come from at least 4 different high schools. Yet another group to move through.

This fractal world would be a lot for an adult to move through, much less a 16 year old boy. In his brilliant book "All Grown Up and No Place to Go" David Elkind describes a phenonmenon called the "Patchwork Self". He defines the Patchwork Self as "a sense of self constructed from the simple compilation of feelings,thoughts, and beliefs appropriated from others" (p.21). How can teenager avoid this when she has to take on so many roles, and put on so many masks just to survive emotionally and socially? Is it any wonder that young adults are either staying at home or returning to home until their mid to late twenties to figure everything out? Our fractal society has created a fractal world full of teens that have fractal identities.

Now what??