Very true. Rites of passage are hard to come by and I think that’s a huge problem. Young men need to prove themselves. The military exploits that need.

American society has blurred, and later removed, the line between child and adult. In nearly every culture, there is a rite of passage. From that point forward, the qualified human is treated as an adult. Prior to that time, they witness their peers taking on adulthood, and exhibiting the responsibilities of being fully human. For people in the US (and maybe other regions of "Western Culture"), between the ages of 12 and 26, people are treated like a child while being expected to act like an adult. There are a whole host of problems this creates. One example I saw a few years ago, was a parent referring to their offspring (who was in the news for a violent act) as a child. The man was in his early 30's. We know from various studies and experiments that humans tend to act in the way they are treated. If an entity (group or individual) treats someone as incompetent, that person will tend toward greater incompetency. If you treat your child as a responsible human, they will gravitate toward greater responsibility. This follows along with why Rockefeller encouraged the current public education system. Students are put in a tyrannical dictatorship, instead of being taught how to think and act for themselves responsibly.