Immaturity Level Rising in Adults 862
Ant writes to tell us that a Discovery News article is exploring the old adage, "like a kid at heart", which may be closer to the truth than we would like to admit. New research is showing that grown-ups are more immature than ever. From the article: "Specifically, it seems a growing number of people are retaining the behaviors and attitudes associated with youth. As a consequence, many older people simply never achieve mental adulthood, according to a leading expert on evolutionary psychiatry."
Resignation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Adult Resignation
To Whom It May Concern:
I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult.
I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of a 6 year old again.
I want to go to McDonald's and think that it's a four star restaurant.
I want to sail sticks across a fresh mud puddle and make ripples with rocks.
I want to think M&Ms are better than money, because you can eat them.
I want to play kickball during recess and paint with watercolors in art.
I want to lie under a big Oak tree and run a lemonade stand with my friends on a hot summers day.
I want to return to a time when life was simple.
When all you knew were colors, addition tables and simple nursery rhymes. But that didn't bother you, because you didn't know what you didn't know and you didn't care.
When all you knew was to be happy because you didn't know all the things that should make you worried and upset.
I want to think that the world is fair. That everyone in it is honest and good.
I want to believe that anything is possible.
Somewhere in my youth...I matured and I learned too much.
I learned of nuclear weapons, war, prejudice, starvation and abused children.
I learned of lies, unhappy marriages, suffering, illness, pain and death.
I learned of a world where men left their families to go and fight for our country, and returned only to end up living on the streets... begging for their next meal.
I learned of a world where children knew how to kill...and did.
What happened to the time when we thought that everyone would live because we didn't grasp the concept of death?
When we thought the worst thing in the world was if someone took the jump rope from you or picked you last for kickball?
I want to be oblivious to the complexity of life and be overly excited by little things once again. I want to return to the days when reading was fun and music was clean. When television was used to report the news or for family entertainment and not to promote sex, violence and deceit.
I remember being naive and thinking that everyone was happy because I was.
I would walk on the beach and only think of the sand between my toes and the prettiest seashell I could find.
I would spend my afternoon climbing trees and riding my bike.
I didn't worry about time, bills or where I was going to find the money to fix my car.
I used to wonder what I was going to do or be when I grew up, not worry about what I'll do if this doesn't work out.
I want to live simple again.
I don't want my day to consist of computer crashes, mountains of paperwork, depressing news, how to survive more days in the month than there is money in the bank, doctor bills, gossip, illness and loss of loved ones.
I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, the imagination, mankind and making angels in the snow.
I want to be 6 again.
Laugh or Cry (Score:5, Insightful)
Does this surprise anybody? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a reason people are suing everybody, there's a reason tobacco companies have been losing so much money in courts; we're like a cuontry of 8 year olds, always pointing at somebody else in the back of class that through the paper airplane.
That said, I think we're going to see a turn around with the generation in college right now, less divorces, less stupidity because it seems that more and more young people are sick and tied of the bullshit.
It's all about definitions (Score:5, Insightful)
A "child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge" is probably adaptive to the increased instability of the modern world, Charlton believes. Formal education now extends well past physical maturity, leaving students with minds that are, he said, "unfinished."
and
"By contrast, many modern adults fail to attain this maturity, and such failure is common and indeed characteristic of highly educated and, on the whole, effective and socially valuable people," he said.
So it looks like his definition of 'maturity' coresponds to my 'boring old fart', which, at the age of 53, I hope I'm not.
youth culture killed my dog (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot posters especially tend to overstate the value of youthful flexibility and forget what evil little pricks children often are.
Part of maturing is learning to handle the fact that you are part of the world and that you don't always get what you want. Adult temper tantrums are increasingly viewed as the way to get things done, a vicious and childish response to being balked is hailed as being "forceful" and "practical".
It's a symptom of the cause, (Score:5, Insightful)
But the real cause of bad jokes is that people are as desperate as ever to be well liked. I blame that on the growing culture of sexual presumptiveness in our society. You can't just go up to a stranger and start conversing with them usually without her/him thinking your up to something, no matter how natural you are (unless you have a reason to be talking). People in general are paranoid, presumptive, and take themselves too seriously. They have nightmare stories in the back of their minds from 'Unsolved Mysteries' that tell them never to talk to strangers because they will rape and kill you!
At least, that's the way people are in my town. I dunno about yours.
Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
I think part of the problem might be that people are not forced to grow up and take responsibility at such a young age as they were before. I am now living in Africa but comparing my experiences to when I was living in the West I see this every day. Many children here have to take serious responsibilities in life from a young age. Perhaps they have to look after whole families or simply go out and find food every day for themselves. Regardless, when speaking to some of the young people you find that they are relatively mature.
Perhaps in the West people are too protected and hence don't need to grow up. Many people by the age of 18 have never gone to bed with hunger pains. They have probably never had a real job. They are probably given an allowance from their parents that they can go and waste on useless luxuries. The kids in the West are pampered and spoilt. No wonder there is a trend towards immaturity.
A way to deal (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wants to be six again? (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer a world where I have greater control over my freedom, where my education is in my own hands as is my destinty. A world where I can paint watercolors any damn time I feel like no matter what I'm wearing and while I am aware of nuclear weapons I can also dismiss such vapid fears casually to enjoy a warm summer day.
Being an adult is awesome if you just follow the golden words of Paul McCartney and let it be!
Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, sorry.
The friends of mine who HAVE had to take responsibility at a young age, who HAVE gone to bed with hunger pains (and not out of choice) are far more immature and unable to take care of themselves than those of us who were children until the age of 18. Being introduced to hardship doesn't cause one to grow up faster -- it causes one to stop growing and start muddling through, even if they're not ready.
If you look at the rate of war, murder, and general chaos, you'll find that those regions of the world where children are not allowed to mature before being forced to act like adults are far worse off than places like the west. While I won't argue that western children are "spoiled" far more often than their african counterparts -- I think I'd rather my children be spoiled than broken.
Responsibility is key (Score:5, Insightful)
I myself am happy to maintain a child like outlook on life but I also take responsibilities and commitments and relationships very seriously. Perhaps it is the erosion of serious relationships in society (and that could mean anything from partners to very close friends) that is tainting other aspects of life for some people.
This topic is producing a lot of childish replies (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does this surprise anybody? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, they are deliberately killing people. Or put more accurately, but lengthily, they knowingly lied about the medical risks and addictive qualities of cigarettes, portrayed them in advertisements as cool, including marketing that was deliberately designed to appeal to children, and, as if all that wasn't bad enough, they knowingly added ingredients which are very toxic and purposefully formulated cigarettes that are even more addicting than they naturally were!
Not gonna happen. The reason is that your lament is millennia old. Seriously. There are writings from ancient Greece and Rome that read exactly like the cranky old man of today, who decries the awful state of the youth "these days". If you want the divorce rate to go down, the number one thing you can do is to make it so that the middle class is strong and vibrant, and that people have great financial security and physical health. If you, on the other hand, make it so that both members of the married couple have to work long and hard just to scrape by, how can you possibly be surprised that the stress of daily life will have a detrimental toll on their marriage?
Wishful thinking made by someone who clearly hasn't turned on a television in the last 20 years. Just as it had always been, youth culture will reject the rigid demands of old coots like yourself. Just like always, there will be a segment of the youth who will be very responsible and upstanding. And just like always, life will go on and a whole new cadre of old coots will spout the same old nonsense about how the "youth of today" are worse than ever, just as it has always been for thousands of years.
Re:Resignation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I just have to find somebody to clothe, feed, and house me while I indulge myself.
bs (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh my God!!!! Adults don't think about money any more! what are we going to do?! Don't tell me wars will soon be over!! Quick, you, "leading expert on evolutionary psychiatry", give me some aderol!!!
Old fart maturity? (Score:4, Insightful)
Being mature doesn't have anything to do with being predictable, boring, let-me-read-my-diary old fart or being playful, childish, fun and sometimes impredictable and impulsive.
As long as I accept the consequences of my acts let me play all I can and enjoy simple things and not worry more than I have to.
Re:It depends (Score:4, Insightful)
So something like: If you can't deal with society's rules, you aren't socially mature. If you can't succede in modern jobs you aren't intellectually mature. If you cannot find happiness in life you aren't emotionally mature. That kind of thing. That we don't defie it as some traditonal lifestyle to meet, but rather as having a good life in the world as it is today.
Also an interesting thing about the childless it is it perhaps a new kind of maturity that we have to accept. There is a limit to the number of people we can have in the world, that's just a simple fact. It would seem we are already pushing that limit too far. Well, it will eventually solve itself via things like starvation, but I think a better idea might just be to procreate less. Given the number of people who decide that they want to have more than two children, it is socially repsonsible to have no children. That is, of course, not to advocate everyone goes childless, but there's something to be said for those that don't have kids.
I just don't think that the definition of maturity as "Living your life like the last generation" is a useful one.
Burden is an illusion (Score:5, Insightful)
What weight? Is there a physical cinder block upon you? Put it to the side then. All other weight, especially mental weight, is chosen by you. You are the one who decides if weight of your imagining is dragging you down or something to stand upon.
The point I am making is that being much older I have had many more experiences and am able to enjoy them in ways a six-year old is not, as I can enjoy more esoteric pleasure just as much as splashing in a puddle (alluded to in the words of the musical Chess with "The Queens we use would not excite you"). My higher level of awareness also leads to greater ability to experience joy. While it is true that also means a greater ability to experience esoteric suffering, I would not give my far vaster scope of ability to simply feel more just because sometimes there is pain. There was pain when I was six as well so what would be the difference except that by opting to stay six forever I would wish myself to be enclosed in a box.
Have you ever read Flowers For Algernon? There is a reason why that story is a sad tale instead of a joyous return to a blissful state of ignorance.
Re:Haha (Score:2, Insightful)
Doing what you must do, before doing what you want to do.
Doing the right thing, especially when no one will ever know.
Knowing that your actions and words affect those near you.
Realizing that like it or not, every word and deed has a consequence; often unforseen.
Understanding implicitly that in spite of the previous two items, the world does not revolve around you.
Re:To that I say... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nu-uh! You're a poopy-head!
Re:Laugh or Cry (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a reason why most stand-up comedians are people with a hard personal history.
Humour, cynicsm, sarcasm... all defence mechanisms.
Re:Resignation. (Score:2, Insightful)
For Chrissake, it even mentions his desire to be a child again, like that phoney Michael Jackson.
========
Ignorance is empty, meaningless bliss.
Re:Stolen from Tom Waits... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's obvious from the posts here that about two people RTFA before posting. What the article is basically saying is that flexibility of mind is essentially a childhood trait. Societal pressures are forcing people to retain a more and more flexible mind with the result that the mind does not reach a "mature" state with side effects "including short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness." Although I'd really question that last bit "a sense of cultural shallowness." Academics often complain about this so called modern phenomenon, but don't provide any statistics to back this up. I claim that this idea is patently false. While there may be certain literary, musical and artistic works that were once held as great art which are being largely ignored today the fact is two generations ago the vast majority of people had no hope of being exposed to these works of art and culture, it was simply the elite (I.E. wealthy) who really had a chance to experience them. I feel that there are more people interested in and actively participating in deep culture now than were 100 years ago. You just won't find them if you sit in your ivory tower, you have to go across the street to the art galleries and coffee houses to find them. You won't hear great musical innovation on the radio, but have to go to small seedy bars and clubs to find the musicians pushing the envelope further and refining and expanding the art, just as you did with the jazz greats.
One important question to ask is whether "maturity" in the for the article talks about does not come, or if it simply sets on later than it used to. If maturity does not ever set in, then I could see obvious negative effects. However, if it simply is taking longer for people to reach maturity, that would mean a world of a difference. This means that people have more time to gather data and obtain different opinions before their general world view is cemented. It may also mean that in times past, people were forced to suddenly mature before they were actually ready resulting in a mind that is not as fully developed, similar to how a fruit that is picked when still green and force ripened in transit will not taste as good or be as nutritious as one picked fresh when ripe. One very likely cause of delayed maturity is having children of your own. Having children often forces people to adopt a mature role, but these days it makes more and more sense to delay having children untill the economic security that comes with a degree and experience in the workplace has already been achieved. Untill that time a person is free to live for the moment a little. And acting a little immature (I.E. seeming like a fun and interesting person to be around) really is in itself a necessary ingredient to courting a mate to have that first child with.
That said, I would probably find the paper that the researcher is writing to be an interesting read. I might question some of his conclusions and even research methods, but it's still an interesting concept and one worth thinking about.
Re:Not sure about this guy's definitions (Score:2, Insightful)
"Oh no.. i dived off the edge of bridge and cracked my head open because i didn't check first for things in the water.. it's not my fault somebody didn't put a sign up, it's the councils fault! Yeah.. let's sue them!"
Or in politics where the politician is NEVER at fault, it is always someone else.
Re:Resignation. (Score:5, Insightful)
I find this to be a rather appalling abdication of responsibility. Which I suppose is the entire point.
Re:Resignation. (Score:5, Insightful)
I just want to say I hate shit like this.
This chain-letter bullshit is all the same. On some ultra-shallow level it seems great, and sentimental, but with 3 seconds of thought and usually two sentences in it becomes obvious what trite crap it is. Whether it's wanting to be 6, or learning everything you need to know from your dog, or whatever other BS that gets mailed around it all sounds like it was written by the same person on a Robotussin binge. Just awful stuff, horribly written and with no intellectual value whatsoever.
On a less general note, if you want to be 6 again, fuck off and go be 6. Work in a factory, it's got about the same level of responsibility. It doesn't sound like somebody whistfully remembering childhood, it sounds like a man-child that doesn't want to contribute to society because it's hard.
Now, before you ask who pissed in my Fruit Loops, nobody did. I have a sense of humor, and am usually a pretty carefree guy. This type of "humor" just manages to push almost every last button I have. The only way it could get worse is if some sadist let George Carlin have a whack at it, with lots of Jeff Foxworthy-worthy lists, some booger-eating references, and "fuck" every 4th word to make it sound adult. When are people going to realize that guy's a hack?
Re:Responsibility (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It depends (Score:3, Insightful)
If it was reversed then civilization would have been much further ahead by now.
I remember being six... (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of "wishing to be six," I want to learn to be a adult that thinks like a six-year-old. I want to be able to deal with problems in a responcible manner, but still understand the fun of silly hats. I want to understand that there are bad things in the world, but still meet the world with smiles and a it-will-work-out deminer. We have the misconception that we must be cyical adults just because we have reached a certain age. I'm going to be a kid forever!
Oh, and remember, if you became 6 again, you would have your teenage years to look forward to *shudder*
Re:Personal position (Score:2, Insightful)
Well I think that's because of our daily life. Humans tend to follow different patterns which they think bring some kind of "order" to life, and those people who think in a really different way are usually treated as "freaks" by society.
It's not due to human nature that adults lack sense of wonder, but a human behavior because he/she once learnt that thinking and acting in some particular way you can get better results.
Now, it's really hard for me to define what "maturity" is after saying that. Isn't it just a learnt human behavior ?? and if it is, how can we judge people by that then ??
cheers
Oh I agree ( Was Re:Does this surprise anybody?) (Score:4, Insightful)
You hint it right on the noggen; the number of so-called adults who seem to have the maturity of a child seems to be an increasing phenomenon in our society; I just look down the road and on the news; the 'everyone elses fault except my own' syndrome. There are people on the benefit having children, knowing full well they don't have the funds to pay for the associated costs, we have couples having more children than they can afford, then demanding that the tax payer for the bill for their lifestyle choice.
All this is actually a biproduct of our modern day welfare state, and the nanny state complex which people have adopted, that we shouldn't take responsibility for our actions, because good old nanny state will always be there to whipe out bottoms, and stop us from doing moronic things.
Regarding smoking, the health issues have been known for over 60 years, if people CHOOSE to live under a rock, and REFUSE to take in the information that is readily out there, who is to blame? I don't blame the cigarette companies - they're like any other company, make their product look sexy, close over any possible health issues, and keep on pushing.
If you're going to blame cigarette for the associated health costs of smoking, why not allow people to sue fast food companies who fail to put warning labels and advertise that if their product is consumed in excess, it could cause health problems? why not extend it to the confectionary and snake food companies? heck, why not put a big sticker on cars that warn that due to the bad driving of others, you could possibly die!
Honestly, it is getting to the point where I ask, when are people going to take responsibility for their actions - that is the cornerstone of being an adult, making your choices and accepting the consequences of those choices.Re:It depends (Score:3, Insightful)
The world isn't over-populated. Some parts of the world are overpopulated. I believe Japan has recently been experiencing negative population growth, and Australia is predicted to in the near future. That is why, in Australia at least, they introduced new tax breaks for new parents - because, especially as people live longer past retirement, there are not going to be enough people to keep the country running to the same standard as it is now.
Of course, compare that to countries like China, with its noted overpopulation problems, or India (not exactly sure on that one; India is heavily populated, not sure if it's overpopulated). It seems to me the countries that have large populations are generally those where it is beneficial for the family unit to have a large number of children (generally agricultural societies). In Western societies, having children is more a case of personal desire, rather than economic desirability. Therefore fewer people opt to have children, and those that do have fewer children.
I don't think it's some sort of global population "invisible hand", I think it's simply people doing what they feel is best for them. The effect that may have on the local, national or global population is incidental, not the cause of the phenomenon.
Re:Does this surprise anybody? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The fact that that was modded "insightful"... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maturity (Score:4, Insightful)
I see two definitions (Score:4, Insightful)
The other definition (and I feel the more relevant one) is the responsibility factor. I would say "accountability" works better than "responsibility," even though responsibility is how everyone is refuring to it. As for this, I feel it is definately true that people aren't accountable enough. People (in America at least) seem to be told to watch themselves, and people stop looking out for the guy next to them. We all affect each other, and we all need to be accountable for that. NO PERSON IS AN ISLAND.
The trick is to take the best of both worlds. Enjoy a good pie fight, but have the courtecy to help clean up
Re:Does this surprise anybody? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, and guess what? They were right. Those civilizations really did become decadent and were supplanted.
Re:Resignation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most insightful part of the post.
My gripe lies here. Sure it's great to pass judgement, tell people to get over it (or themselves), but why the sourness? What's wrong with the carefree attitude? I see the jelousy behind the reasoning. As you said, you're a pretty laid back kind of guy, but somehow this pushes your buttons. It pushes the buttons of everyone who has worked hard to get where they are. They have worked hard by the mantra that power (through money, friends, charity, activism, etc) will make you happy. It usually will, but there are other ways.
Immaturity is another way. You could call it hiding from the world, or laziness, but it is another valid way. The real argument against it (which you failed to highlight amongst all the whinging in your post) is that it ill-prepares you for the world, that when you wake up to yourself, it will be harder to survive. I disagree. It ill-prepares you for your world. Any change in lifestyle is hard, and the same applies to the transition between living a mature lifestyle and leading an immature lifestyle.
An immature adult has the luxury of being oblivious, of enjoying simple pleasures. Sure they accumulate very little, but who cares? I don't. They take nothing from me. They don't. It takes very little to keep them happy when they enjoy such common, simple pleasures. You do, which is a shame, since you have nothing to lose, and it does them no charity. People with your attitude are spoiling their dream, not helping their future.
That said, the post above was a little trite.
Re:Kohlberg scale and selling/war? (Score:2, Insightful)
mental maturity? (Score:2, Insightful)
I dare claim that whomever came up with the term 'mental maturity' was mentally immature enough to come up with a better term.
I mean, a man/woman is physically 'mature' when all the reproductive organs have fully developed and the person is capable of human reproduction.
Are you mentally mature when you start thinking about sex more then your gameboy? What?
I say the entire term 'mental maturity' is popular marketing speak for 'total nonsense'...
Re:What is wrong with being child-like (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you've ever seen two 6 year olds fight over a useless toy both of them will forget in about 2 hours?
Have you've ever seen a 6 year old go into extreme crying/temper tantrum mode causing fustration to their parents (you know, the ones who feed and love them) just because they can't get a small shiny colourful package of candy?
Sometimes 6 year olds don't have it right.
Re:It depends (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately the dumber you are the more kids you have, all the dumb people I know have multiple kids, all the smart successful ones have none.
Surely it depends on your definition of success and not everyone works towards the same goals in life. If sucess is having a big house, international holidays and a fast car....then you might want to forget about the kids. However, for me success is having a happy family. I much prefer to spend days playing with my children than staying in some luxury resort. So in that way when I have children I am successful as I am achieving my goals.
I have a friend who has 12 children in the UK. It seems extreme but I have never seen a family who are as happy, polite, well mannered and as educated. I don't think it is true that the dumber you are the more kids you have. The parents of these children are like walking encyclopedias and have knowledge of so many things in life. They are also generous and peaceful. I would say they have been successful in life. But the father drives a mini-bus rather than a sports car (he has to with 12 kids).
Re:Resignation. (Score:1, Insightful)
Society can bend over backwards and shit up its nostrils. I don't contribute to society. I only work for the money, and that's because fuckin' society forces me to.
Seriously, people, if you're deluding yourselves into thinking you have to "contribute" anything to this fuckin' world, you ought to put a shotgun to your head and blow it off. Nobody ever asked you if you wanted to be born at all, you're put into a world you have no hope of ever changing, and you should CONTRIBUTE to it?
The friggin'world can die of AIDS. Fuck it.
Re:Resignation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does this surprise anybody? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be in favor of tort reform if the monetary damages were limited but if found guilty the doctor or the CEO went to jail. You know hold people personally responsible for their actions and decisions.
It will never happen of course. They will limit the monetary damages and also make themselves immune from any other punishment too.
Re:Does this surprise anybody? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've read those Greco-Roman documents... but the problem is that they say the youth is horrible, and the post you're replying to says that the youth is good and that they're going to turn things around and make it better.
In my experience, the reason both parents have to work so hard and scrabble is usually because they are financially irresponsible. My boss and his wife barely make it by each month, not because they don't get paid enough, but because they have almost $30,000 in credit card debt, on top of a mortgage, car payment, etc. I can't speak for the rest of college students, but examples like him and like my father were enough to make me tired of the bullshit, like the above poster wrote, and I'm going to do my best to be financially responsible to the extent that I can live comfortably on the same thing other people barely get by on.
Re:Haha (Score:3, Insightful)
Doing what the boss above tells you and never question it.
Accepting that everything that the boss/media tells you is the right thing.
Knowing that your place in life is to earn as much money as possible by any means so you can spend it on shiny things.
Realizing that anyone not confirming with these rules are evil or misguided.
Understand implicitly that the world revolves around those that tell you what to do.
Unfortunally, what I wrote is only half a joke. Too often maturity is seen as becoming a cog in society and do/think what others tell you.
Indulgence? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is enough food in the world to feed every human on the planet, though hundreds of people starve to death every day.
There would be enough shelter in the world too, if we only looked after what we had and built things to last.
Practical clothes can be churned out by machines in a matter of seconds, if we set them up and tell them to do it, yet much of what is worn in the so-called first world is made by hand by people leaving in poverty conditions in less-developed countries.
One can say similar things about medicine, education, the natural environment, and a host of other important issues.
What's the common thread among all of these shortcomings? A lot of adults haven't grown up, and still suffer from greed, selfishness, and other negative emotions. With the resources and technology we have available to humanity today, we could provide for every human being on the planet, and we could all work only 20 hours a week.
If you're an adult who has grown up, please consider what you can do to help. Make a small donation to a charity that supports someone less fortunate than you. Change something in your life to be a little more environmentally friendly. Volunteer a couple of hours of your time to a good cause. Have the courage to vote for a someone who stands for these values, even if they have no chance of getting elected (this time), and tell everyone why you voted that way.
The more people grow up, take some personal responsibility for the state of the world, and do their small part in improving it, the better life will be, and there's really nothing indulgent about it.
Or we could just say "Yeah, whatever" and make it someone else's problem. Not that that would be childish, or anything.
Re:It depends (Score:2, Insightful)
I would guess that with careful use of new technologies (like genetic engineering) and moving some of industries off planet, earth could support something like 20 billion people. In fact it is unlikely to even see 9, and no one is sure where the population will level off once it starts shrinking.
In fact as all of our economic systems have evolved to cope with growing and not falling populations, it is not clear that we can cope with decling populations at all. Look at the political paralysis about funding retirement shemes in Japan, Germany and the USA. We might see a very long worldwide depression once the big two pops (India and China) start to decline as well, but as most of the readers here will most likely be dead, I guess it doesn't matter much.
Re:Resignation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does this surprise anybody? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course there is. That's because you constructed a straw argument. A known, unhealthy habit which contains known addictive poisons was compared to a normally healthy food doped with poison.
Unfortunately they can vote... and sue (Score:3, Insightful)
If you look closely, you'll see that those who protest the loudest about "self-expression" are usually the most conformist, but their conformity is within their own group. They will claim that weird hair, tattoos, and body piercing are about expressing themselves and they don't care what other people think, but here is what puts the test to their lie; All (or most) of their friends will also have weird hair, tattoos, and body piercing. They would never wear a plaid polyester leisure suit in front of their friends, precisely because they do care what their friends think and they have a need to conform within their own social group.
When these folks have an idea to express other than senseless reflexive nihilism, I'll be listening. But I'm not holding my breath.
Re:Indulgence? (Score:5, Insightful)
If everyone on the planet only worked 20 hours a week, and relied on technology and handouts for food and clothing, there would be no technology, no clothes and no food.
6 year olds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wasted energy competing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of society and culture is wasteful and useless if your goal is to live and be happy.
Re:Oh I agree ( Was Re:Does this surprise anybody? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are other aspects of our culture that dilute personal responsibility. Corporations, by design, insulate managers and shareholders from actions they benefit from personally. We're okay with that, though. No problems there. But if an INDIVIDUAL avoids responsibility, suddenly western civiliazation is in dire trouble. If a corporation files bankruptcy so the shareholders don't have to ante up to pay the debt for the entity they own, we don't bat an eyelash, but if Joe Sixpack declares Chapter 11 then we get all concerned about the state of humanity.
Government habitually hides behind secrecy to avoid responsibility. Where is the hue and cry? Why is it only the morons on Jenny Jones who get our contumely?
Dreams and responsabilities (Score:4, Insightful)
Being friendly and joking with people is not the same as being immature.
Being serious all the time and totally giving up one's pleasure in life for the sake of family, community or just to be like everybody else is not maturity, it's being a drone (in my opinion, a sheep).
Real maturity is achieved when one achieves the level of self-confidence needed to outgrow the "fitting a mold just because thats what one is '(not) expected to do' behaviour" and one finds out it's possible to balance responsabilities and fun without beraking the first or giving up the second.
Unfortunately, our society is designed around the expectation that most people will "settle down", and become "hard-working family men/women". The push is constantly there to be a nice little drone, work hard to make money, buy loads of stuff that don't really make you happy (consume, consume, consume), become what your neighbours expect you to be and expect the same back from them, accept that you're just another average working stiff, accomodate and don't make waves.
BTW: Dressing up in a specific style (geek, retro, necro, whatever) to "make a statement", "be different" or "cause a reaction" can be just as much a form of "trying to belong", "accomodating to a sterotype" or in general "being relative to others" as wearing a suit for work - ask yourself "am i dressing this because of who i am or because of who i want to be?". Clothes are a tool - dressing a certain way can help you progress to certain aims, and it's what you are aiming at that matters, not what you wear.
Because it has to be done (Score:5, Insightful)
Man I would hate to see your toilet, though you neighbours can probably smell it... I, on the other hand, still watch cartoons, still throw paper airplanes, but when I 'have to' do something I don't like to do, I fucking do it.
Re:Indulgence? (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think that? It is pretty easy to demonstrate that a large portion of North Americans do that now. The other 20+ hours per week is usually sunk into entertainment and comfort rather than necessities.
One telling quote from the article: (Score:5, Insightful)
"People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact."
So yes, childlike wonder and flexibility are good for learning new stuff, and tend to follow with a more dynamic society. The consequences of it are that people are going to be unbalanced, rash, irritable, and childish.
There is a guy I work with. He's in his mid-30s, and generally a nice guy. However at times (typically six or eight times a day) I want to scream at him, "GROW UP!!! Take some responsibility for what you're doing!!!" However, I don't. Now there are three 'maturity' issues at play here.
1) His lack of self-responsibility is immature (lack of responsibility)
2) My instinctive reaction is immature (ranting and raving like a kid)
3) My actions are mature (either nothing, talking to his manager, or talking to him professionally)
I bring this up not to prove my maturity (there are a lot of other cases that aren't so complimentary to me
In a modern workforce, I would expect that maturity equates fairly close to professionalism, and I can definitely say that I've seen a decline in professionalism in the last decade or so. Outside of the workplace, it's a bit trickier. People with kids who try to hard to be their kids' best friends and refuse to apply any discipline are a target, but it's a hard line to draw cleanly. Similarly, one poster mentioned that he and his wife have decided against having kids, because they're not done being kids themselves. This personally strikes me as a bit selfish (a fundamentally immature behaviour), but at the same time they seem remarkably mature in their immaturity.
At the base of it, I put a lot of the blame on pop culture and society. We venerate and idolise people who embody every negative aspect of immaturity (actors, rock stars, etc.) and naturally come to not only forgive but accept and rationalise their behaviour. At the same time, we know that getting stoned and trashing a hotel room is wrong, so we don't emulate them--however, the bar has already been set, and it's sitting in the mud. We have such a LOW standard of behaviour to exceed that an average eight-year-old is a more mature person than the stars who show up in the tabloids.
Society's final anti-maturity shot is the entire 'hide your age' industry. Makeup, surgery, and clothes are all designed to avoid aging, because aging reminds us of death. We're a culture so terrified of death that we'll spend billions to shove it under the rug. Unfortunately, that leads to consciously NOT acting like we think grown-ups should do, but rather as kids.
I could also mention a lawsuit-happy culture discouraging people from taking responsibilty for their own actions, but that would be another page of text, and this post is long enough already.
Maturity means responsibility. Taking responsibilty for your own life and your own actions, as well as acting responsibly and dealing responsibly with the actions of those around you. It is my personal belief that it doesn't necessarily preclude doing frivolous or foolish things when appropriate, but that historically it was never considered appropriate for adults to do such things. (Anyone remember Mary Poppins?) One exception has always been academics--the image of an absentminded or childlike genius professor is an old one indeed. In contemporary society, immature behaviour is allowed for all adults, and even encouraged. The new marque of maturity will be one who behaves in a mature and responsible fashion (a) when necessary, and (b) when desirable, but not necessarily (c) when not needed.
Maybe it's really a weakening of true maturity, but as long as (a) and (b) are achieved, I can happily deal with a society that has accepted (c).
Re:What is wrong with being child-like (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Burden is an illusion (Score:1, Insightful)
The burden caused by a mortgage and bills are not an illusion. They are quite real. And they are not something you can 'stand upon'. They are a necessary evil required to keep your quality of life at the level to which you are accustomed. This quality of life was set when you were young, say.. 6 perhaps? So to have the equivalent life of a 6 year old, you need to put up with these burdens. And even then you're not 100% of the way there becuase you now lack an over-seeing protective guardian that will physically pull you out of harm's way. But I guess that benefit would come with a loss of freedom, so most people opt not to choose it.
Bread and Circuses (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Myspace (Score:4, Insightful)
("ppl"? give me a break... You are on SLASHDOT. Sorry.)
Interesting hypothesis, crackpot research (Score:4, Insightful)
People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence...
Again, I ask, what is the "research" described in the article using as a control or baseline? This is never discussed -- and it sounds like this "research" is nothing more than an elaborate opinion-piece. TFA even use David Brooks as a kind of "reference." I enjoy David Brooks, even if I don't always agree with him. He is a respectable social commentator and pundit, but he is ultimately a professional opinionist, not a respected psychological researcher.
Also, can someone help me out with this quote from the article:
Charlton added that since modern cultures now favor cognitive flexibility, "immature" people tend to thrive and succeed, and have set the tone not only for contemporary life, but also for the future, when it is possible our genes may even change as a result of the psychological shift. [bold emphasis mine]
Genes shifting as the result of a psychological shift? WTF? It was my understanding that genes needed a bit more than "psychology" to change. Are these guys implying a Lamarckian evolution based not even on physical characteristics but somehow "attitudes affecting evolutionary physiology"? With little snips like this, it makes this work seem very fishy to me, bordering on crackpotism.
Anyway, while the basic hypothesis has merit, the research the article describes doesn't seem to demonstrate or prove (or even have the ability to demonstrate or prove) the proposed effect.
Re:One telling quote from the article: (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with that statement but disagree with the premise that one needs to be childish in order to adapt to a changing environment.
You define the problem in vague terms, generalize it to society in general then propose a solution based on a false premise.
Your argument is taking the general form of many of the comments:
I observed Problem A once, therefore the problem with society is problem A. Problem A seems be getting worse in recent years. I blame Problem A associated group with the increase in Problem A. If only we could get Problem A associated group to understand that they are cause of society's decline, then they would stop and society would stop declining.
For instance:
The problem with society is that people don't discipline their kids anymore. When kids aren't disciplined they don't learn boundaries and think they can do whatever they want without consequences. This is why crime is getting worse and society is falling apart.
It just seems to me that some people are doing a lot of finger pointing and blaming of things which may not even be problems. Blaming other people and the inability to accept other people's behavior doesn't seem very mature to me.
Create Immature Adults through Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm reminded of an ex-girlfriend who seemed to me to over-react to situations. I was puzzled until I realized that she was acting as if she were a character on a television program; where drama is important. We may have a couple of generations now doing the same thing.
Nice work.
Re:Indulgence? (Score:3, Insightful)
There was a time where most people worked 80 hours a week farming, and relied on a non-market system for distribution of goods.
Somehow we go to a point where we could work 40 hours a week and live much better than surfs ever did, and still progress at a much faster rate. There is no reason, with constantly improving technology, that we shoulnd't be able to get away witth working even less.
The trick is to make sure that a decent portion of the profit goes to the producers, instead of fuedal lords or CEOs.
Re:Laugh or Cry (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree wholeheartedly (Score:5, Insightful)
As an adult, I am subject to a wider variety of feelings and emotions than a 6 year old. Being an adult is more subtle - we gain access to joys that a child couldn't even understand. When you're six, you know happy, sad, fear, hungry, tired. As an adult you also can experience bemusement, irony, sarcasm, terror, bliss, longing, melancholy, and a host of other things that make the experience of just living through your day more deep and meaningful. Your mental palette is larger. Yes, it means you can be hurt or suffer in larger ways than a child. But you can also rise above them in ways a child could not. The game is bigger, so the rewards are bigger.
And speaking of the palette, food is an excellent way of describing the difference. As a 6 year old, all you crave is candy. Big ugly blocks of sugar. As an adult, you're complex enough to tell the difference between good sushi and bad. Really expertly done fresh sushi with fresh ground wasabi and some nice sake on the side is sublime, and that's the joy of it, and a child could never understand it. Think of how many things there are like that.
Another good reason - look at what you would have to go through today. At the risk of sounding like an Auld Farte, think about how bad teenagers have it today. All the good music is gone. Pepsi decides what is cool these days. You have three choices basically. Stupid thumping gangsta rap whose only function is to shake your car's quarter panels, bubblegum crap pop, or Nu Metal where guys with long hair get up in front of the mike, blast the distortion and whine about their relationships.
And you can't do anything fun or dangerous in this bubble-wrap world we've made. As soon as one kid gets hurt doing something it gets outlawed or regulated past the point of any fun whatsoever. How many childhood memories do you have where you were experiencing both big fun and mild danger at the same time? Are their any stories you have about your childhood that you haven't told your parents yet because you don't want to give them a heart attack? Kids today will never have those kinds of vivid childhood memories. We've outlawed them.
If God All-Mighty came down from the clouds and told me he would be willing to make me a six year old again, I would politely decline. I've got it better now than I've ever had it, and I feel genuinely sorry for children born in this time.
Re:6 year olds? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, no. It's not the kid's fault that he/she is crying but that's not necessarily what upsets people. People are upset because 9 times out of 10 the parent is ignoring the child that is having a fit rather than:
A: Calming the child down
or
B: Removing the child from the area
Both of these things are what parents should do in order to show a little consideration for the general public. Your kids needs trump your own, but they don't trump everyone else's.
Re:Indulgence? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course not. It would take at least a 72 inch to be worth that.
Does buying a first generation Blu-Ray burner really compensates for commuting 2h/day every day?
Actually, I walk to work as it's across the street. If I had a 2 hour commute, then I'd probably have to start actually killing people on my way to work.
Does getting a SUV instead of cheaper car really compensates for not going on vacations for 3 months to a paradisian island?
3 months of anything wears pretty thin, really. I've done it. After a couple weeks, you kinda want to go inland a bit. You can pull off the beach thing only for about a month before you need something else.
Oh, and BTW, railing on SUV owners is very passe nowadays, man. It just shows that you're one of the new enviromentohippies of this day and age, and that you really don't have to be taken seriously. Anybody who is unable to recognize that SUVs have their uses and place in society is generally not somebody worth listening to.
Buying stuff is a means to and end.
Working is a means to an end.
No.
Buying stuff is a method of acquiring the stuff you want.
Working is a means of actually getting shit done.
In my experience most people could work 2/3 or even 1/2 as many hours as they do now and still have the same level of living that that have now
In many countries that would be 30 or even 20h/week.
Well, hey, I don't know about you, but I get great amounts of enjoyment out of my big screen TV, or my techno-nerd toys, or my quality vehicle (not an SUV, admittedly). I like to use products that work, which isn't always the case with generics (although some do indeed work well). I like to dress in nice clothes. I like to have nice vacations on the beach. What's more, I like my job. I get enjoyment out of doing what I do.
So, from my perspective, you're basically suggesting that we all use substandard products and live joyless lives in order to actually work less.
So you'll have to forgive me, but I just don't think your argument holds a lot of water.
Re:Indulgence? (Score:3, Insightful)
If everyone actually produced and stopped over-consuming and not working or just "working" by pushing money around, we'd all be able to work just a few hours a week.
Instead we have many people causing hundreds of us to work producing just for them maintaining their extravagant lifestyles.
Although you could call this "Creating jobs", since you are only producing for the sake of one individual (or, more generally for "Luxuries") you really aren't creating technology, food or clothing so a HUGE segment of society could just stop working and we'd still be producing enough of the basics for everyone.
The problem at this point becomes distributing it--Capitalism is not an appropriate solution for the case where people don't actually need to work because a society is overproducing. It does not work when there is only an hour of work a week for everyone but many people would choose to work more, it just falls apart--so instead we have a lot of "Made up" jobs that don't actually produce but just make some other non-producer's life even easier.
Re:Burden is an illusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Calvin and Hobbes I don't take as a great example. Calvin is emotionally unstable, creates a lot of problems for those around him, and doesn't strike me as being particularly much happier than the other characters in the story. Hobbes makes an interesting foil; he's often used to underline the silliness of Calvin's destructive behavior. He's much more mature than Calvin, gets along with others better, and doesn't harbor nearly as much anger. Calvin may be the protagonist, but he's not the hero.
Winnie the Pooh was written for children, so the characters are naturally going to be very childlike. However, I don't see a single life lesson that comes from Pooh which can't be applied in adult life - indeed, Pooh's easygoing attitude is something I see in adults far more often than in children. I don't have kids of my own, but at least in public I often marvel at how strongly they can fixate on small, inconsequential objects, which strikes me as just about the last thing Winnie-the-Pooh would ever do. I'd say that, of all the characters in the Pooh series, Pooh and Christopher Robin represent the attitudes and ways of thinking of children that I've met the least well. Far more often, they remind me of Rabbit or Tigger.
Really, if I had to say anything about Pooh's character, I'd say that he represents the patience and equanimity that are the best qualities of well-mannered adults, and that he was made somewhat dim in an effort to counteract his otherwise overhwelming wisdom in an effort to keep the character entertaining, as well as to make it easier for children to relate to him.
Re:Indulgence? (Score:3, Insightful)
There once was a man who made his living by waking up in the morning, fishing until he caught enough to feed his family, taking it home to cook, and spending the evenings talking with his family.
One day, a rich man saw what he was doing and told him that, if he would just fish a little bit longer so that he could catch more fish than he needed, he could sell the extra. If he saved that money, he could buy a boat. With a boat, he could catch more fish, until he had the money to hire others to run the boat for him. Then he could live a life of leisure and do anything he wanted with his days while he paid others to catch fish for him.
The fisherman thought a moment and replied, "If I could do anything I wanted today, I'd get up and fish all morning. Then I'd go home, eat a good meal with my family, and play with my wife and children the rest of the day."
Re:I agree wholeheartedly (Score:5, Insightful)
The subtleties of maturity beat the thrills of immaturity anytime. The world is a complex place, and I love the complexity of it. The best taste in life is bittersweet, with only enough sweetness to prevent the bitter from being bland. It's no surprise that diabetes is on the rise. People have lost the palate for strong tastes. Even fibre comes in a pill, as if eating raw oats and bran is some sort of trial too harsh for people to bear. The world is divided into simple primary colors and basic binaries: red and blue, left and right, liberal vs conservative. Only the caricatures that pass as media personalities fit into these categories. The world is just not that simple.
It is revealing to contrast the tone of public discourse 50 years ago to what it is today. Ronald Reagan abandoned formal rhetoric for folksy chat, and now we're stuck with it. G W Bush got elected by appearing to be just a regular guy--at some point, people forgot that you don't want just a regular guy as your leader, you want the best and brightest. Distrust of intellectuals is at an all time high, because it takes work to understand what they're saying. But democracy takes work, every single day.
I've always suspected that the main point of "family values" and all of these exhortations to "think of the children" are just scare tactics to turn the world into the largest nursery in history, where you cannot even have an adult conversation, and where kids aren't even allowed to play unsupervised. Can you imagine a childhood where you have to make "play dates," where it is no longer possible to just walk anywhere? Thanks to media scaremongering, parents see the world as a frightening place with a child molestor or Satanic cult member lurking in every playground. The fact is, your kids are about a hundred times as likely to get killed by a car as they are to be kidnapped. But that doesn't sell soap.
Even God has been turned into the cosmic wetnurse, who will rapture us up, clean our nappies, and dry our tears. ID promises us the fantasy of every child; that we are the center of the universe, that it's really all for us. Since you're saved by faith alone, you don't have to do jack, just show up at the mega-church for the show and listen to a postmodernist drivel which is equal parts fairy tale and new-age glurge. You gotta hand it to them, they know their market. Why stop at frying your pancreas with candy, when you can get diabetes of the soul too?
Re:Resignation. (Score:3, Insightful)
I want to go back to a time when I wasn't allowed to make my own decisions, or spend my time in the fashion that pleases me most. Back to a time when just about everyone else in the world had the authority to tell me "no", sometimes for good reasons, sometimes simply because they knew I couldn't fight back.
I want to go back to a time when an angry mother would haul off and beat me with a rolling pin, or force open my mouth and pour a bottle of tabasco down it, all in the name of "discipline".
I want to go back to a time when children would sometimes torture each other for no particular reason, engaging in childish evil simply for the sake of being evil, while adults shrugged it off as "kids will be kids". Back to a time when adults naively told each other that it's impossible for children, those little darlings, to be cruel, vicious monsters.
I want to go back to being at the mercy of a drunken father who spent so much of his paycheck on booze that there often wasn't enough left to cover the bills, much less buy basic necessities. And with that the constant screaming fights between parents who couldn't stand one another, yet didn't know what else to do except try to live with one another.
I want to go back to a time when religion was rammed down my throat, and any attempt to repudiate the house gods ended up with a furious parent shoving a bar of soap into my mouth to "wash it out".
I want to return to a time of never knowing whether a parent would actually come home that day, especially after one of the regular marital blowouts, and being afraid that they'd never come back - or sometimes, that they would.
Yep, I want a return to fear and misery and despair, to destitution and hunger, to hopelessness. I want to return to a time when I had no control whatsoever over anything at all in my world, and when others did whatever the hell they felt like to me because I was too small to fight back. I want to return to the world where every day I prayed I'd grow up just a little bit faster, so that I could become an adult that much quicker and get far, far away from my own personal and very real hell.
Sometimes, people forget that the happy middle-class childhood envisioned in Hallmark-style e-chainletters was something enjoyed by only a tiny minority of people on the planet. The rest of us weren't quite so lucky.
Max
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
Human societies (note the plural) are not young. There have been many trials and errors of different ways of organizing society from simple hunter-gather societies to urban industrial societies. Over the many generations, a certain wisdom gets distilled about what works and does not work. You might think of it as a form of social evolution where useful behavior/ideas are selected (i.e. socially encouraged or rewarded) and harmful behavior/ideas get non-selected (punished/discouraged). The selection of good behavior can range from a mild form such as being considered trusted as honest to stronger forms such as achieving higher social status and privilege . The non-selection of harmful behavior/ideas can range from strong forms such as criminalization to milder forms such as shunning or scolding. This selection of good behavior is transmitted to the next generation as a traditional social moral
So what you will find is that traditional mores are adopted because they served some social good. Now the traditional mores that most people dwell are those involving sexual behavior. So, lets talk about that. First consider the social goal (i.e. "the Good Thing [tm]) that you want to encourage. In most societies, it has been protecting and providing for the weakest members of society, the children. Most societies, through trial and error, have determined over the generations that best way to provide for children is to have a strong and stable family where at least both parents are available to support the children. Sexual behavior, obviously has a strong impact on families from the actual conception of children to the drama and turmoil that follow adultery. Consequently, social rules in this area revolve around those dedicated to discouraging behavior that would undermine families or lead to children without support. So these social rules were not adopted to sexually repress people or crimp their fun, but to protect the weak.
No obviously, some past traditions have either outlived their usefulness or were never useful at all (such as racism). Perhaps they were based on pure superstition or the way of life has change sufficiently to render them obsolete. But more often than not, neither is the case, because they are usually about human nature and human nature does not change.
As far as hypocrisy and religion goes, just because somebody does not follow his own advice does not mean the advice itself is not sound, it just means he is weak and imperfect. And most of the traditional mores that are incorporated into religion can stand on their own. The bible may say "don't commit adultery" and "don't murder", but adultery and murder are bad ideas independent of the bible. More likely than not, the ideas were incorporated into the religion, because they were good ideas to begin with, rather than being pulled out of thin air
So to reflexively reject social convention, just because you can, really is a sign of immaturity. As I stated before, its really just adolescent rebellion (and hubris), to think you are smarter than the several thousand generations before you.
please don't be a parent (Score:3, Insightful)
Once it happens, you have to live with it. The parents who allow themselves to be controlled by a screaming fit are the ones who will get screaming fits. The kids wants control. The kid isn't stupid. If screaming makes you cave, then screaming is what you will get. It's training a kid to scream whenever he gets annoyed.
Re:Resignation. (Score:3, Insightful)
If profanity turns you off that strongly, maybe you've got your own issues. The moderation wasn't ironic, you're just unable to deal with strong language. I stand by every curse in my previous post. That chain-letter is bullshit. I think bullshit is a pretty succinct word that puts the general idea in people's head with a minimum of effort. As for the "fuck off", I absolutely stand by that, I'm sick of these people having responsibility, shirking it, and it's left to me to pick up the pieces.
As for anti-moderation, your insightful mod is baffling me. I suppose it's for your assertion that profanity is a sign of anger "issues" but the main point of your post, that I was being immature, is completely unanswered. I fail to see how "no, you're immature" is insightful, and invite you to provide the insight that you've already been modded up for.
Re:Does this surprise anybody? (Score:3, Insightful)
Good question.
What's wrong with killing someone? It's often a necessary thing to do. Opinions differ on whether it's legitimate.
What's wrong with just beating someone up instead of killing them or suing them? What's wrong with just taking what you want instead of hiring a lawyer to do it for you?
Those other things are illegal, which means that a bunch of guys got together and decided to substitute their authority for yours. But illegal is not the same as wrong. Ask Anne Frank if you're confused on the difference.
What's wrong with suing someone? When you sue someone, you are attempting to take something from them, by force, against their will. That's inherently wrong. It has been decided that it be allowed in this special circumstance, with many special protections placed on the process. Those special protections have been eroded (by lawyers and politicians, for profit) to the point where they are inadequate.
The process is a lot more like stealing or extortion or kidnapping for ransom than it used to be. With the current rules, it's simply unjust. That's what's wrong.
Re:Indulgence? (Score:3, Insightful)
We no longer have a production problem. The first world produces way more than it needs. It has so much excess production capacity that we can use a large percentage of our productive capacity to make luxury items. The biggest problem facing large corporations is not production - it is convincing people that they want/need the lastest gadget. Think about it, if one, or even half, of the worlds car manufacturers just stopped making cars would their be a car shortage? At worst the price of new cars would go up a bit.
If fact, in rich societies marketing departments spend most of their time inventing "new" things or new reasons for people to buy more crap they don't need because all the neccessities are so cheap there is very little profit to be made. Look at all those new "swifter" products (new fangles brooms and mops with lots of disposable parts that need replaced often). A broom works fine and lasts for 10 to 20 years. But they have invented the "swifter" so you can run out and buy those nifty sheets of paper refills it uses.
Re:One telling quote from the article: (Score:3, Insightful)
"I agree with that statement but disagree with the premise that one needs to be childish in order to adapt to a changing environment."
I didn't mean to make that claim--from what I gather, that's one of the arguments the original article (not the one on Discovery Channnel's website) put forth, although not necessarily as a hard fact. Personally, I wouldn't state that at all. I think that childlike attitudes towards learning and the environment may lead to better and faster adaption to a changing environment. Childish behaviour on the other hand, often accompanies such an attitude but I would say isn't necessarily a linked event. The former allows the latter for the most part, but doesn't necessitate it.
As for the cop-outs you mention, I was pointing to a number of individual examples, but trying to avoid claiming them as sole evidence for my hypothesis (and really, that's all it is). The examples serve to illustrate what I feel in my gut--that yes, we are getting less mature, and society is encouraging it, either implicitly or explicitly. However, I have to state something that in retrospect wasn't clear enough: We are all responsible for our own actions. Regardless of how Nike would like 40-year-olds to behave, it is our own choice if we behave maturely or not. My example with a coworker was exactly that--my instinct was to react to immaturity with more immaturity, but I consciously chose to not act on that instinct.
So now if we're all ultimately self-responsible, then how can we point fingers at society? Society--ANY society--defines out background, and our "normal" behaviour. Fifty or five-hundred years ago, it simply wasn't acceptable to behave like a bratty four-year-old at the age of 30. Therefore, the default action was to behave maturely. Thoughts and actions follow each other, so we arguably would have been more mature in our thinking in a more mature society. Simply put, it's more difficult to be mature in an immature environment, that is an environment that promotes and sells immaturity.
But ain't no one who can make you behave immaturely if you don't let 'em. YOUR maturity (or lack thereof) is YOUR responsibility. MY maturity (or lack thereof) is MY responsibility. What the media packages and sells to us is OUR responsibility to accept or ignore. If any of my blathering is to suggest a solution to the problem, then this is it: Behave well for yourself, those who depend on you, and those who don't. And yes, do have fun.
Re:Burden is an illusion (Score:2, Insightful)
Misery is a choice. It's *all* a choice. I fail to see anything at all wrong with retaining the good stuff of youth, coupled with the experience of age. Old men I know are always moaning "if I had the energy they have with what I know now.."
Re:Resignation. (Score:3, Insightful)
Insightful? Cutesy-kind-of-funny, maybe, but not insightful. Sorry to be a cynical adult, but there are many 6-year-olds in this world who have real problems that make their life hell. They have adults or older children in their lives that beat them or abuse them sexually, or they don't have enough to eat, or there's a war going on around them.
This sentiment of, "I want to be 6 again," only makes sense if you were fortunate enough to grow up with a good family in a decent place. Some people would rather die than go back to their childhood. While I'm at it, the laundry list of "adult problems" above is pretty fucking weak too. If mountains of paperwork and gossip are among your biggest problems, then your life isn't all that bad.
Seems to me that this chain letter^H^H^H^H^H^H^post is the sort of thing one would expect to hear from an immature adult that thinks the world owes them a cushy life.
Easy Work Around (Score:5, Insightful)
Become a parent. Then spend lots of time with your children.
Re:Explaination (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitter?
No. It only sounds that way because of the general paucity of irony in the world.
I think of this as an optimistic viewpoint.
What I'm saying is nobody is pathetic -- or at lest nobody needs to feel pathetic. And if you don't feel pathetic, then the contempt of others is a waste of time. It's the person who is disturbed by others who don't measure up to his values is closer being pathetic than the object of his scorn. If the only way you notice other people is to scorn them, then the person who doesn't notice other people at all is better off.
The example I used was chosen to be the most conventionally contemptible one I could come up with. Apparently it hit some moderator a bit close to home.
Chosen burdens (Score:3, Insightful)
A mortgage is determined by what you choose to buy, where you choose to live. Some choose to live without a mortgage by saving enough to pay for housing outright or wandering the earth with a backback.
Mortgages and bills all represent payments for things you have chosen, and in at least one way they are indeed something you can stand upon for they are all tools for establishing good credit in order to acquire larger loans in the future - if indeed that is your choice.
Nothing is inherently wrong with choosing the life of a large mortgage and some debt over the life the monastic wanderer. Just don't think fate handed you that mortgage any more than it put the backpack on the pack of the wanderer.
Let me tell you a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
"Ah, do you remember when they captured us and took us to a concentration camp?"
"Oh yeah."
"And how they wanted to take us to the gas chamber?"
"Aw man, how can I forget that?"
"And then there was this bombing raid, explosions everywhere and we ran through a hole in the fence? And they chased us with dogs and we hid in the swamp for a week?"
"Oh yeah. Man, those were the good times."
Well, admittedly, childhood usually isn't _that_ bad, but still, everyone remembers the good parts, but never remembers the annoyances and frustrations. Or remembers some sanitized rose-tinted version of them. I suppose it must be some mechanism of the brain to stay sane.
But if I'm to really remember childhood, and without even going into the parts that were due to my parents being... well, completely unfit to be parents, it wasn't _that_ idyllic anyway.
E.g., take school alone. I could read since the age of 3. In fact, I could read and write in two foreign languages by the time I got into school. I could calculate a transformer or solve other physics problems up to that level. (I guess I must have asked something like "why is the sky blue?" and my parents, god bless their totally nerdy souls, gave me a physics book.) And yet there I was in school required to write a page of oblique lines or loops. Or to write a page worth of the letter "a". How boring is that?
And that's just one of many issues.
On the whole, I'll go and say I'm actually a _lot_ happier as an immature adult than I ever was as a child.
_Now_ I can actually do what I want. If I want a chocolate, I can go buy a chocolate. If I want to buy a doll, I can go buy a doll. (Or The Sims, which is one hell of a doll house simulator.;) If I want to stay up late playing with it, I can jolly well stay up and play with it. Back then I had a ton of people who knew better what I should be doing, what I should be thinking, what I should be saying, etc.
As for Calvin and Hobbes, or Winnie the Pooh, they're not written by a kid. They're written by an adult, and through rose-coloured nostalgia glasses _and_ from second-guessing the "enemy" at that. They see "man, this kid never listens to a word I say", or "man, he's throwing a tantrum again when I'm trying to teach him proper manners", and from there they go and paint some image of the kid being completely care-free and living in some imaginary wonderland. They don't however, see the frustrations like being treated like a brainless idiot. Or the frustration of that "teaching manners" meaning "Moraelin, say 'hello' to the nice lady?"... again... in front of 10 strangers and 2 of my friends. Or about a hundred other little issues.
In fact, I'll go and say that all that seeing the kid as a care-free brainless _idiot_ is just... selective confirmation. People start with the preconceived idea that the kid is inherently retarded and unable to ever comprehend adult logic, and from there remember every detail that confirms that, but conveniently forget the details that don't. Or acts like they're some one-in-a-million occurance that's surely just a freak accident.
And let me also say that a lot of the time, "adult logic" _isn't_. Adults are just as good as kids at rationalizing backwards from what they'd like, to some half-arsed unconvincing "facts" to justify it with. E.g., they start from some pre-conceived wish, like that they want to go camping or fishing (bonus points when it's just to fit in some group, not because they actually like it), and from there work their way backwards to some half-arsed justification, like that shivering in a tent in the rain builds character or that fishing is some kind of valuable RL skill. (How? What for? Exactly in which situation can one possibly catch enough fish with a fishing rod to support a family that way?) Even when they actually do have a point there, they're so convinced that you're an idiot and can't possibly
Re:I agree wholeheartedly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Easy Work Around (Score:3, Insightful)
Seconded! I have three. There's nothing like chasing a playground full of kids around while doing a Velociraptor impression.
(Yes, it includes lifting them off the ground and disemboweling them. In a tickly sort of way.)
Other adults actually feel a bit jealous when I do it. I can only assume they wish they were less inhibited.
Re:Easy Work Around (Score:5, Insightful)
This is definitely true. My father had a "second batch" of children when I was about 22 so I've had an opportunity to watch him parenting from an adult perspective. One of the things that he does REALLY well is to talk to babies and kids without baby-talking. He has real conversations that are somehow at their level, about things they're interested in.
He's also very in tune with their truly being small people, with complex feelings and viewpoints. One of the things that annoys him is when a parent tells an embarassing story about a young child while the child is in earshot. I think he's quite right in his belief that kids are able to tell when they're being laughed at before they can really express that they feel embarassed.
I think paying attention to these things really does a lot to help kids develop, both emotionally and intellectually. My little siblings are two of the most articulate little kids I've ever seen. I think in large part this is because they've been exposed to "adult" talk since long before they could put syllables together. They've definitely been allowed to be kids, but they have also been given a lot of respect as humans. This is definitely something I hope to emulate when I become a father (in about 8 weeks... *gulp*).
Re:Absolutely! (Score:4, Insightful)