an icepick through the keyhole

figmo described the flip side of this coin better than I can, especially right now, but....as an abused child, I may have learned to try to please authority figures, but it was a desire to please that came from terror. When I finally got past that terror, when I learned that I don't have to put up with an SO who hits me when we disagree, when I learned that even teachers and parents are human and can be wrong, I had to find reasons to bother, to try, to work, to succeed within myself once my major motivation wasn't the fear of an asskicking.
I did. Which seems to me to indicate that perhaps there *are* other methods of motivation than fear.

Also, as someone who likes reading about archaeology and history....it seems to me that to an extent the older generation has always thought the younger was going to hell in a handbasket. I used to have a typed-up translation of a letter from a father to his son lambasting the latter for his hairstyle, his poor school attendance, his disreputable friends. This letter was written around the year 2000. 2000 BCE. It was written in cuneiform in the city of Ur (if I recall correctly) in Sumer.