161–170 of 206 posts
I hold that there is one very specific moment that signifies the transition from childhood into adulthood that is universal for all people – the moment you first realize that when it comes down to it, you are the only person who is responsible for you . That eventually, the charity of others will run out and all that will be left is your own reflection staring back at you, at which point you will need to decide wheth…
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He achieved all those things before his illness though. He had financial independence, status, and a career before he became paralysed. This means he could pay for his own nursing, and that's exactly why people see him as an adult. Here's the thing: what people are calling "adult" is nothing other than the traditional definition of "man" A "man" is a person who is independent, powerful, free, makes his own decisions,…
For what it's worth I didn't downvote any of your other comments but I did this one, despite this being the most substantive one in this thread. It feels like you're trying to pick a fight rather than have a useful discussion in the other comments, and in this one pull out a bizarre tangent into the definition of a "man". Maybe internally you and I and the other commenters all feel the same about equality but with di…
What you're calling "bizarre" is some entry level philosophy of gender, bro.
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I was actually laughing out loud because I thought the image of him not feeling like an adult because of his patchy beard was very comical. You (and other posters) are the ones being all touchy. I've got 14 downvotes for pointing out the paraplegic/housewife angle. HN is not too friendly toward basic philosophical inquiries!
I think you were downvoted for using a straw man fallacy. I wasn't saying adulthood was defined in terms of beards. Just that I don't feel like an adult because of my lack of beard. Man, I'd even settle for a great mustache. But nope, nothing.
Are you sure you feel like an adult, or are you talking about feeling like a man?
This isn't a meaningless distinction, and it also doesn't need to be offensive. Alas, it seems if I want to have public philosophical discussions I should go back to 300 BC.
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I'd say that the realization that you are the only person who is responsible for you is only half-way there. I'd say that full adulthood realization is that you are the only person responsible for you, but you are still responsible for other people . The reason I say that is I've know individuals who have taken the first mantra to mean that they hold no responsibilities to other people. That it is, in a reductio ad a…
> but you are still responsible for other people. I couldn't disagree with this any more. I've spent years and years of my life trying to be responsible for other people, trying to make their lives the way I thought they 'should' be -- helping people find jobs, encouraging them to do x/y/z. I'd come into people's lives and it'd be like I walked into an old house: "Let's just fix this here, and that there, and pretty…
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What a thought through objection! Here's a perfect example of the "responsible" Russian culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=438sGy9IE58 This video is not fake - I've experienced this kind of alienation (and even hostility) for over 20 years.
russnewcomer never implied that Russia had a responsible culture. I think you misunderstood his post. For some reason you decided to use his comment as a soapbox to broadcast your own views. Your comment is a non-sequitur (look it up). And by the way, fwiw as somebody with multiple citizenships, including American and Russian, I prefer the Russian attitude. People can have different opinions. ;)
In this case I just opposed to these statements because I thought he had some utopian views of life there:
> It's about when other people become dependent on you.
> I think this is the way that it has long been thought of in cultures outside of the post-Enlightenment West. This was my strong opinion after reading Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, (Russia isn't western like the rest of Europe)
Nothing in Russian culture is "long been thought" about responsibility. You could say it about Japanese or Korean cultures probably - people kill themselves there because of failed responsibilities.
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Not that it excuses any condescension, but it's worth noting that all parents have had experience in both the "don't have kids" and "have kids" camps. When parents talk (complain, whine) about how non-parents have it so easy, what they're really commenting on is the relative change in difficulty they experienced in their own lives when they switched camps, moreso than the difficulty of their life vs. yours.
What does the difficulty of life have to do with being an adult, though? Where does this presumption that "adultness" is correlated with "difficulty of life" come from? Under the same reasoning, those who live in poverty are more adult because life is more challenging difficult for those with fewer resources at their disposal.
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this. i've joked before that parenting 3+ young kids is really just figuring out how to ensure one doesn't get neglected any more or less than the others or that it's switching from man-to-man to zone defense. either way, you reach a point where the time/energy/money required to give your loved ones what they need no longer comes from "you" (your sleep/hobbies/friends), but has to be taken from what you can give your…
I personally have made a lot of decisions oriented around the inevitability of this dynamic. I let friends fall away after they move across town or just otherwise lose the ability to stop seeing me regularly. I've walked away from commitments where I'd lost every single reason why I'd made the commitment in the first place, I don't do this lightly. I've let myself become estranged from family for the sole reason they…