D&D 5E Humans!?

[The Crimson Binome]

On the contrary, in a fantasy story that the myths of the world's creation and ordering are true is generally taken as a given. Those myths are literally true. Zeus really did slay his father, fought a Titanomachy, and there really are Olympians. Thor and Odin really are going to fight in Ragnarok against the frost and fire giants, and live on the other side of the Bifrost bridge.

I've never seen an edition where it was even suggested that minotaurs were the offspring of a human and a bull. It might make for a neat story, in our reality, but it quickly falls apart in any sort of believable, living world, and the world designers knew better than to make it the case. When it does come up, it is usually stated that they are a natural race, or possibly under the effect of a curse.

Magic can do anything, after all, but there's no reason to assume magic as the default explanation for everything. Objects aren't composed of the four elements, but rather, they behave how those objects would act in our real world, where objects are made of atoms. Like Reality Unless Noted. Unless we can use our knowledge of the real world to fill in the gaps of the setting, the designers need to actually design all of the physical laws of the world, which is a lot of work and adds a lot of mental overhead for anyone trying to play the game.

Well, that's my hope. But to get there, we have to be comfortable with otherness in a way that we are not. Simply saying, "Oh, well, The Other is just like us in every way that matters, is not the same as being comfortable with otherness and is in fact rather it's opposite."

It's the difference between a dwarf and a shardmind. A shardmind is Other, and we can embrace or reject its Other-ness for what it is. A dwarf just isn't biologically different enough to bother acknowledging in that way, particularly in a world where Other people exist. If there were no outsiders, dragons, or intelligent undead in the world; then, it might be worth playing up the minor cultural differences between a dwarf and a human.

That's true both in-character and out-of-character, though. A dwarf might see herself as a dwarf, rather than a person, and play up her heritage when confronted with humans or elves. That same dwarf, when confronting a dragon or eldritch horror from beyond space and time, might see elves and humans as kin-folk.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

First, at least at the cultural level, no they don't - though granted, so many things have changed in the last 150 years that you can't put it all down to increased lifespan.

Howso? People still want to be entertained, want to have money and security, want to see and appreciate things that are aesthetically pleasing. The specific details of what is entertaining or what is aesthetically pleasing (or what "money" and "security" are precisely defined as) vary over the centuries, but human behavior in an aggregate sense is very much analogous. If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not avenge? More of us belong to the "decently well-off" demographic than before, but among those of comparable amenities, things are really not that different--and we certainly still have our bread and circuses. I'd like to know what ways, that aren't purely attributable to education, religion, or aesthetics, that current-day humans are that much different from (say) Roman-era humans.

Secondly, you are misinterpreting the statistics here. The vast majority of the increase in average life expectancy is down to the reduced incidence of childhood disease. Even in the middle ages, if you managed to make it to 18, your expected life expectancy was about 47 more years. Increases in the life expectancy of adults has increased far more slowly because the basic biology hasn't changed all that much. It's just are palliative care and antibiotics. And even if we did drastically increase our life, that's not the same as being a species that naturally runs on a slower time.

I recognize that I was using infant life-expectancy rather than adult life-expectancy, but it's still a significant improvement--20 years or so, around a third longer. If you go further back than the Renaissance, it's even more, closer to 30 years. I don't concede that it's not the same as being naturally long-lived though--why is it a difference of kind and not merely degree?

I disagree. Particularly with elves, though there might be some disagreement over just what makes them different, they are almost always portrayed as being different in some way. For example elves in a science fiction setting, see the Na'vi from Avatar with there whole 'we are in physical union and communion with the ecology of our world'. That's a huge difference from being human with equally huge impact in world view.

Given that every edition of D&D (with race/class separation, that is) allows anyone of any race to be a Druid ("union/communion with the natural world") among other things...yeah, I'm still not seeing it. Particularly since this whole communion with the natural world...is usually cultural and not biological (the Na'vi, of course, take it up to 11, but no elves I know of do it). Drow are elves as much as "wood" elves or the like, and they aren't particularly nature-y...a difference in culture and skin-tone and little else.

As for the "they are almost always portrayed as being different"...they're almost always described as pretty to look at and have a different "bearing" or whatever, but beyond that the differences come across as an Informed Ability. That is, everyone just "knows" elves are different, but it's never really shown how they are different. Tolkien, of course, does a great job here...in large part because he actually took the time to invent whole languages and distinct cultures for his races. Elves have a few, very subtle albeit important differences (e.g. humans use magic in more or less the way Gandalf does, knowing and casting spells; elves primarily employ magic simply by doing things, because magic gets woven into everything they do).

In some cases you may be right. But dwarves are often portrayed as having less sexual dichotomy than humans and there are also often the suggestion in some cosmologies that there isn't a near 1:1 ratio between the sexes. Also, almost nobody makes sexuality and romance an important aspect of dwarfish behavior. Imagine a race without sexual passion, sexual politics, or sexual lust of any sort. Just how much human behavior would seem utterly incomprehensible to them?

So...having less sexual dimorphism counts, but having a bloody tail doesn't? The approximate ratio of sexes counts? These are things I would expect to come up rarely if ever in most campaigns. Especially since the kinds of things you're talking about (e.g. "dwarf women have beards, most dwarves are male") has dramatically waned over time...and that's probably a good thing, considering the gender connotations thereof.

And sure, someone whose basal needs are different will be different...as I've said. But other than warforged, all the "common" and most of the "uncommon" D&D races (speaking across all editions, not just 4e or 5e) don't meet that standard. So you've found another interesting axis that flat-out doesn't apply to the races in question. Unless a particular DM decides it does, at which point you're talking houserules anyway, so I couldn't possibly account for them.

Spock is far more bizarre than that. Despite the superficial similarities in the appearance of Vulcans and Humans, much is made in the original series about how skin deep those similarities really are. Spock has green copper based blood, two symmetrical hearts, organs with no human correspondence and those with a human correspondence are located in different places in his torso. Amanda and Sarek were so dissimilar that they couldn't create a child in the normal manner, but had to resort to advanced genetic engineering to create a hybrid of their genes. TOS makes very clear that Spock is alien.

That's...not consistent with my understanding of the situation. Sela, for instance, is a Romulan/Human, and Simon Tarses is a quarter Romulan--it's very clear that this sort of thing is not as bizarre as you make it sound. For Sela in particular, it makes very little sense that extreme genetic engineering is required--she was a consort, a slave, there would be no reason, and it only took a single year for Sela to be born in the first place. The biggest things for Spock are that Doctor McCoy likes to make fun of him, and that being partially human means Spock's emotional responses are even more acute than is typical for Vulcans, so he must be even more disciplined than they.

Basically, the series has never been particularly consistent about this sort of thing, and went out of its way to cast Spock as different for drama purposes, not because of anything actually divergent.

The reboot by contrast makes very clear that Spock - and even Sarek - is basically human. This is a massive regression in tolerance.

...really? I honestly don't see how. It seems to me that removing essentialism and recognizing that, at a basal level, all sentience is the same makes sense. Besides, this has been a long time in coming--in Enterprise, the 31st-century timepod occupant had DNA from almost half a dozen different species--mostly Human, but with Vulcan and a number of others mixed in.

The various orders of sentient beings are here all some sort of 'children' of Illuvatar.

And the various orders of sentient beings in most D&D settings are the children of various divine entities, all of whom are more similar to one another than any of them would like to admit. I don't see the difference.

 

[Hussar]

And how often does this kind of behavior come from players? Elf Buddy is an NPC--or behaving like one. He has the leeway to decide, "Eh, screw it, I can wait it out." PC adventurers are not nearly so sessile--it is boring to defeat your enemies by outliving them. So this seemingly "super-important" element (lifespan differences) evaporates when inserted into the "we're playing a game" context. Especially if the party isn't all long-lived aloof jerks--and the amount of aloofness and jerkness will, again, be much more dependent on culture than race in particular.

There's also the simple fact that Baron McEvilton can establish a lineage, whether biologically or grooming a successor--or simply being replaced by someone nearly equivalent. So even the long-lived, aloof, uncaring Elf Buddy may have a reason to do something. "You are like blackberries. The individuals may die, but the roots linger and multiply!"

Or, to riff on the words of M. Bison: "For you, the day Elves graced your village was the greatest day of your life. For us, it was pest control."


Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?415207-Humans!/page11#ixzz3RU8t1IuE

Both would be fantastic IMO. The elf is either aloof or genocidal. Great. At least it's different. And how does the player reconcile either of these approaches? Makes for great RP at the table.

But, if a player thinks that outliving your enemies is boring, then perhaps that player shouldn't play a race that lives for a thousand years? Which has been my point all the way along. If the player plays his elf the same as if he was human, then what was the point of taking an elf?

And, if we're going to play the "well, they can breed together, therefore they're just all human anyway" card, how does that explain halflings and gnomes who cannot breed with anything else? You've brought up tails, but, then again, Tieflings are far, far closer to humans than any other standard race (other than half elves I suppose). Should teiflings be only distinguished by culture? Kinda defeats the purpose of the race in the game I think since the whole angsty schtick for having demonic lineage is kinda their thing. You even mentioned having different senses. Well, every non-human has either dark vision or low light vision. Is that enough to make distinctions?

Going back to elves for a second. Think about what it would mean for a race that doesn't sleep and can see in the dark. Why would they even be remotely diurnal? Elven cities would literally never sleep. No need for lighting particularly. All sorts of differences arise from basic differences in biology. As Celebrim rightly points out, an overt lack of sexuality would make dwarves really strange. At some points in the game, gnomes could actually talk to animals. On and on.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If the player plays his elf the same as if he was human, then what was the point of taking an elf?

If the player plays his human the same as if he was elf, then what was the point of taking human?

There is no "default to human" rule. If elves have to play up how elf-y they are, then you should expect humans to do the same thing. If a player wasn't going to play that human as obviously an outspoken human who lets everyone know how human he is, then there's no reason to expect any different just because you changed the target of that apathy.

 

[Hussar]

If the player plays his human the same as if he was elf, then what was the point of taking human?

There is no "default to human" rule. If elves have to play up how elf-y they are, then you should expect humans to do the same thing. If a player wasn't going to play that human as obviously an outspoken human who lets everyone know how human he is, then there's no reason to expect any different just because you changed the target of that apathy.

We "default to human" because we, as players, are all human. Well, most of us anyway. Letting everyone know how human you are isn't exactly hard. The tricky part is differentiating your human from the other humans in the game. So, with humans, it becomes all about the culture. And, let's not forget, the non-humans should be playing up culture as well. Of course. But, that culture should be a non-human culture as much as it can be.

Why would an asexual, underground race behave anything like a human? They have no need for light, would certainly not act on human day/night patterns, would eat entirely different foods, because they are long lived and not very mobile, they'd likely develop extreme ritualistic social patterns for virtually all parts of life. When you HAVE to like your neighbour, because you can't move away and you're going to be stuck together for a VERY long time, conflict resolution methods become ritualised and highly ingrained. Terry Pratchett's Discworld dwarves talk about this in a fair amount of depth.

It's not an either/or situation. You should be presenting both culture and species at the table. Human is most likely the baseline because that's how humans are presented and well, we're all human. If a player never makes any reference to the race of his character, I think most people would presume that the character was human. That's just how we're built. If, then, ten sessions in, he announces that he breathes fire on someone, there's likely going to be some surprise at the table. "I'm a dragon born. Didn't you know? It's right there on my character sheet." is a line that I just hate at the table.

 

[Celebrim]

Howso?

I'm having a hard time even believing you have to ask.

People still want to be entertained, want to have money and security, want to see and appreciate things that are aesthetically pleasing....

What? None of those are cultural artifacts of the lifespan of a creature. What I mean is that in every aspect of our culture that is an aspect of our lifespan, we have profoundly changed from 150 years ago, completely inventing new patterns of human behavior. I probably could fill a whole thread with examples if this was something I studied extensively, but just off the top of my head we have invented a whole new category or stage of human life - adolescence. And this stage of life has such a profound impact on who we are that we have a whole subculture around it rites around it and we even do scientific studies proving that indeed physically and mentally this is a distinct stage of life, and yet prior to 150 years ago no one had even heard of it. Most societies accepted a person as an adult by 13, and indeed if by age 10 you hadn't established yourself in a some sort of productive economic role (as an apprentice or domestic servant) then you were greatly at risk of starvation in the reasonably likely event you would find yourself in the next few years orphaned. Most women were married by 13 or 14, and yet today, having invented this new category of life we are as appalled at the morality of an adult - here meaning someone above 21 or so - engaging in sexual relations with someone of say 14. Yet my own grandmother married my 22 year old grandfather when she was 16. I've had modern persons call that "sick" and "despicable" and treat that as a violation of a major taboo, yet merely a few generations ago that was normal.

Or consider the normal social structure. Back when people needed to marry at 15, extended families almost always lived together as a single communal unit. You might have 5 generations of the family living under the same roof or within walking distance of each other. Party yes, this is the outcome of increased wealth and mobility, but its also the fact that a 15 year old girls mother, the grandmother of her child, might have been 30. To part for a few years might well be permanent. There was a much greater continuity between generations and greater sharing between them. The entire 'youth revolt against the older generation' thing we treat as normal would have been basically impossible at an earlier time when you were entering adulthood at 13 and into a job at 10. Again, my grandmother was continually sending me letters about what a terrible hardship it must be for me to be separated from family, and my father grew up in a household where his oldest sister had a baby the exact same age he was. That sort of mingling of generations was normal.

Culturally we keep pushing back the age of adulthood even further. There is some evidence we are pushing now for a second adolescence of some sort up until 25 or 29, and then you enter adulthood. A mere 3 or 4 generations ago, a child of 10 could not wait to assume the mantle and trappings of adulthood. Now, a man or woman of 20 fears them and often desires to postpone them as long as possible.

Culturally this is bizarre and alien from the perspective of almost every human that has ever lived. And yet I think it is but a tiny shadow of how bizarre to us a race that actually lived 1000 years would be. One hundred years ago we could divide life in to 2 or 3 distinct stages - youth, adulthood, infirmary (bracketed by birth and death). Now, we have at least 4, and think of each as involving a significant rite of passage and change of perspective. Imagine how many someone that lived for 1000 years might have. We don't even have the vocabulary for it. We can't even discuss it without inventing a language. And consider that with human lifespans, lots of things seem permanent to us that we unconsciously think of as unchanging - rock formations, trees, rivers, nations, etc. persist basically unchanged for human lifetimes. We know intellectually that they aren't permanent but rarely do we get to observe it. To an elf, even most trees are passing things, rivers change their course visibly over lifetimes. The elf has very visible evidence of the impermanent and changing nature of just about everything. It's not just that you are living longer compared to humans. It's that you are living longer compared to everything. The human impulse is to try to fix nature into place and leave it unchanging - say channelize the Mississippi - because well, with our short lives its only natural to want some degree of constancy. With a long life, you know its pointless.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm having a hard time even believing you have to ask.

Hey, there's no need to be like that. It was a genuine question.

I probably could fill a whole thread with examples if this was something I studied extensively, but just off the top of my head we have invented a whole new category or stage of human life - adolescence.

This was hardly an invention of the past 150 years. It's been a natural progression tied to the development of the middle class and the transition from feudalism to mercantilism and then capitalism. Also, it is false to claim that the age of majority went totally unchanged prior to the last few centuries. During the early medieval period, yes, there was essentially no "transition" between infancy and adulthood--children were either non-persons, or (roughly around ages 10-14) adults-with-little-experience. By the 11th century, however, legal ages of majority in many places were 21--the age at which someone (usually the male heir but not exclusively) could inherit property aka the right which defined free persons, at the time--and by at least the mid-1400s, this meant people who could vote (the "40 shilling freeholders"). This remained pretty much constant for the entire medieval, Renaissance, and Victorian periods--in the US, the voting age was 21 until just the past century.

There has long been an idea that, even if someone were expected to be responsible for themselves, they weren't persons with the full suite of legal rights until they achieved a higher age. To say that we "invented" adolescence from whole cloth is an exaggeration...to say the least. Yes, we conceive of childhood and adolescence differently now--much differently!--than the peasantry did a thousand years ago. But (a) the difference is primarily cultural, (b) it very much coincides with the expansion of economic opportunity to a larger fraction of the population (as I said above), and (c) it isn't nearly as dramatic as you're characterizing it to be.

Yet my own grandmother married my 22 year old grandfather when she was 16. I've had modern persons call that "sick" and "despicable" and treat that as a violation of a major taboo, yet merely a few generations ago that was normal.

The "modern persons" you're talking about need to rethink their positions. This is not only legal in most civilized nations (with parental consent, in some cases), but it wouldn't even be violating consent laws if they had had a physically intimate relationship. Marrying at 22 is hardly unusual; marrying at 16 is young, more or less bare-minimum in modern times, but hardly a profound transgression. (Also, it sounds like they stuck it out for the long haul--good on them.)

The entire 'youth revolt against the older generation' thing we treat as normal would have been basically impossible at an earlier time when you were entering adulthood at 13 and into a job at 10. <snip> That sort of mingling of generations was normal.

Sure, that's a very different experience than what we have now. How is it a difference of personality? That's the word that was used, after all. We're talking about enduring aspects of a person's identity, not about the degree of separation that inspires a feeling (or mood, at the most) of homesickness. With the existence of magical communication, it's trivially easy (in comparison to...anything prior to the last century) for a fantasy character to get a message to someone if they have even the foggiest idea where that person is, and the level of "technology" is, again, a cultural thing rather than a biological thing.

A mere 3 or 4 generations ago, a child of 10 could not wait to assume the mantle and trappings of adulthood. Now, a man or woman of 20 fears them and often desires to postpone them as long as possible.

Hyperbole, and not even fully accurate. Often, a child of 10 did not want to assume that mantle and trappings--they had to because it was the only way to make sure the family survived. And there are still plenty of modern teenagers who cannot wait to escape their parents. My sister, for example. "Fearing" the change? Hardly. Most kids are thrilled with the thought of the freedom they'll get--especially if they haven't had to get a job prior to 18. The "fear" usually only settles in once they realize they can't go back to all the lovely things that childhood had...which I have no doubt many a medieval person felt too, now and then!

Imagine how many someone that lived for 1000 years might have. We don't even have the vocabulary for it. We can't even discuss it without inventing a language.

That's...no, we absolutely have vocabulary for it. You just did it yourself (though I cut it out). I could even make a solid, if modern, analogy: To an elf, things like trees and rivers (but not things like mountains, coastlines, forests-as-a-whole, etc.) are like musical genres, or even individual popular artists, possibly actors as well. You can't see them changing moment-to-moment, but anyone who pays a moderate amount of attention can see the patterns. Do we decide, "Eh, it, music will change in 10 years, there's no point in writing this song now."?

And against your claim of the "not seeing the permanence of nature," I respond with both the things I've already said and more. The stars might, barely, perceptibly change within a single elf's lifetime...but a number of astronomical phenomena that recur well beyond a human lifetime would occur many times for an elf. All sorts of cyclical things would happen, over and over and over again; this is a perfectly reasonable justification for a belief in the uniformity of nature, a belief that while things may change, they always return to what they had been or something indistinguishably different. And then continents and climates, in general, would remain unchanged, as would mountains--deserts could change, but that would be slow enough to be akin to a tree for a human--you come back a couple centuries later and "man, things changed while I wasn't looking!"

Now, with all of that said? It honestly sounds like you, and others, seriously want people to never play non-humans. I have to maintain a persona that is actively outside the experience of human beings, at all times, invasively inserting as many possible points of divergence, just to be allowed to play a Dragonborn or a Tiefling in your campaign? Sorry, not interested. I play games to have fun and experience interesting stories, not to have someone tell me that I'm not making my pretend elf pretend enough.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

Now, with all of that said? It honestly sounds like you, and others, seriously want people to never play non-humans. I have to maintain a persona that is actively outside the experience of human beings, at all times, invasively inserting as many possible points of divergence, just to be allowed to play a Dragonborn or a Tiefling in your campaign? Sorry, not interested.

To each their own, but expecting people to play roles in roleplaying games is not wildly outside the realm of the expected.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Both would be fantastic IMO. The elf is either aloof or genocidal. Great. At least it's different. And how does the player reconcile either of these approaches? Makes for great RP at the table.

But, if a player thinks that outliving your enemies is boring, then perhaps that player shouldn't play a race that lives for a thousand years? Which has been my point all the way along. If the player plays his elf the same as if he was human, then what was the point of taking an elf?

Players are active participants, so solutions that depend on "sit around and do whatever" are innately disfavored--acting like they're completely equivalent to more active approaches is silly. And I think it's disingenuous in the extreme to say that you're okay with people playing what they want, only to turn around and say, "If you think doing nothing about problems you face isn't a good idea, maybe you should stop playing the things you like." And people can play things purely because they like them. I love Dragonborn (hence why I mention them). I enjoy thinking about things like, "How would Dragonborn design a prison differently than other races, since many of them could destroy the bars of a normal prison with enough repeated breaths?" But I'm not going to delve deeply into "Okay, how does my character having hatched from an egg, rather than being birthed, make his psychology irrevocably alien to all human experience?" I'm open to, as I've repeatedly noted, linguistic and cultural quirks, but deeper levels than that sound very, very much like excessive labor getting in the way of me enjoying the game.

Should teiflings be only distinguished by culture? Kinda defeats the purpose of the race in the game I think since the whole angsty schtick for having demonic lineage is kinda their thing.

Hardly. Do you ever partake in any Japanese media? Japanese culture, at least on the traditional side, still bears a pretty heavy anti-foreigner bias. People of dual ancestry--that is, Japanese+something else--can really struggle in Japan, both at school and in adult life. That sounds to me like precisely the kind of thing you'd want to associate with Tieflings--and it allows us to have a commentary on intolerance without nasty finger-pointing or the like. And cultural stigma for what you look like is hardly new to humanity.

You even mentioned having different senses. Well, every non-human has either dark vision or low light vision. Is that enough to make distinctions?

Going back to elves for a second. Think about what it would mean for a race that doesn't sleep and can see in the dark. Why would they even be remotely diurnal? Elven cities would literally never sleep. No need for lighting particularly.

I recognize that this is a grey area, but for me that's nowhere near significant enough. Darkvision, at least in the editions I'm familiar with, lets you see some fixed distance (usually 30'-60', as I recall) with slightly inferior clarity (monochrome). Beyond that, the world is just as dark to you as it is to anyone else, as I understood it. This will have some minor implications for things like crime rates and the like, but D&D DV/LLV doesn't implode the day/night division, and it certainly doesn't mean Elven cities wouldn't need (to say nothing of want) light. Darkness is there and it's still noticeable, but it's is less of an impediment; that's all. We don't need to speculate or exaggerate about what DV/LLV do, because they're mechanically defined, pretty damn precisely even in 5e (which is unusual, given its heavy commitment to "natural language.")

Compare this to the examples I gave (not having eyes at all, possessing telepathy), and I hope my meaning becomes more clear. Darkvision slightly improves a sense we humans already have. Being blind is clearly an altered experience of reality (and the blind, like the deaf, have their own culture as a result!). Similarly, being telepathic or able to sense temporal distortions, possibly echolocation too, are all sensory modes which are truly outside our understanding--we are the "blind" there, so I would expect cultural responses to possessing those powers.

All sorts of differences arise from basic differences in biology. As Celebrim rightly points out, an overt lack of sexuality would make dwarves really strange. At some points in the game, gnomes could actually talk to animals. On and on.

Kay. What dwarves have an overt lack of sexuality? I've never heard that mentioned in any fantasy game...ever, actually, unless the dwarves are actually golem-like constructs (which essentially makes them Dwarf/Warforged, and I already conceded that warforged require some extra thought anyway).

Why would it be weird that gnomes can talk to animals, when there are spells specifically for that task?

To each their own, but expecting people to play roles in roleplaying games is not wildly outside the realm of the expected.

I had thought "giving some real thought to verbal and behavioral flourishes" was "playing a role." I hadn't realized I have to invent an alien psychology in order to do it, for a non-human. Are you suggesting that roleplay requires the latter?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The entire 'youth revolt against the older generation' thing we treat as normal would have been basically impossible at an earlier time when you were entering adulthood at 13 and into a job at 10.

I know I already replied to this post, but a friend of mine just mentioned a quote you might find interesting on this subject.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

This is from the play The Clouds, which is a satire...of Athenian intellectual fashion, written by Aristophanes in 423 BC. It's a mockery of Socrates, so it's not an actual description of real behavior--but it's proof positive that even 2400 years ago, "teenage" (or at least "childhood") rebellion was at least conceivable, and not totally beyond the pale like you've suggested.