1. Distinguish between pain and suffering.

2. Identify key features of suffering, including social and psychological isolation.

3. Apply 'witnessing' to the alleviation of suffering.

4. Specify what limits and facilitates compassion

Unit 6Section 1Exercise 1 A culture of youth

The following contains excerpts from a 2003 Washington Post article called “The strutting season,” written by Washington Post staff writer, Libby Copeland. You can read the article in its entirety by clicking on the link: http://www.njguido.com/index.htm You might also want to browse the website to get a tour of a particular brand of youth culture. Read the excerpts, browse the site, and answer the study questions.

Every Saturday and Sunday, they make their way to this club, where disco balls glitter and the dance floor is as crowded as a chicken house. The music is so loud it’s like a dentist’s drill in your mouth. Moo and many other guys take off their shirts, offering the glamorous guidettes an eye-level display of countless man-nipples. Here, rock-hard pecs are a sort of pickup line alltheir own.. Moo always brings a digital camera to take pictures for his year-old web site, which he hopes will transform the term guido, an ethnic stereotype, into shorthand for all that he loves: youth, beauty and flash.

The guido lifestyle is not made for wives and children, or other things that get in the way of fun.

That this is a lifestyle only for the young seems to be clear to Moo, who acts like he has to get all his partying in now before it’s too late.

One day at lunch, Moo says, “I don’t like downtime. Downtime stinks.” He’s drinking an Amstel light after finishing some sort of spiked mango srink. “You know what’ll really give me an anxiety attack?” he starts telling about this time he was walking past a California Pizza kitchen.

“And outside I see about five baby strollers and I’m like, “oh, my God.’ That makes me crazy. I don’t ever want to get old. That’s my worst nightmare.”

What is the guido without the bloom of youth—without his bachelorhood, his boundless bravado, his beauty?

Study questions

1. How does the life represented in the so-called guido culture compare with a current or past phase of your own? What do you think about the newspaper article/excerpts?
2. What values are expressed in this culture, specifically regarding the experience of youth vs. age? How might readers from another culture view this lifestyle? Try to identify some of the factors that contribute to this society’s ‘culture of youth.’