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Why are so many adults acting just like children?

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Re: Why are so many adults acting just like children?

#71

Post by shlant »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #59

I have all the paraphernalia of adulthood - a mortgage, a car, a career, a wife, a child (and hopefully more on the way) - but I have none of the mindset, attitude, or even the body language “adults” used to have. Or at least adults from my father’s generation. I do improv on the weekends. Sometimes I produce music. Edgy, electronic stuff. I like to dance and do strange, funny gestures and voices with my kid. Its a r…

from my experience with friends and acquaintances over the course of my life, I have found a trend with people who care a lot about being perceived as adults - they are almost all very unhappy and unfulfilled in their lives. Not sure if this mirrors anyone else's observations.

It seems a lot of people believe the need to be responsible is inseparable from looking like you fit into a narrow definition of what is perceived as responsible.

But maybe I am just observing the result of living your life being concerned about how you look in general and not specifically about adult-ness.

Re: Why are so many adults acting just like children?

#73

Post by evancox100 »

the_other wrote: post #2

I gave up after a paragraph or two. It looked like it was going to moan about people trying to have fun and do some self care. I don’t have time for that. Over time, I’ve come to see many “senior” or “success” behaviours as refined versions of childhood ones. Political sniping, business competitiveness, standard hierarchical power dynamics, etc. These are all “playground tactics” but grown up. I don’t see (many) “suc…

> It looked like it was going to moan about people trying to have fun and do some self care.

That is basically the opposite of what it said.

Re: Why are so many adults acting just like children?

#74

Post by mistermann »

keiferski wrote: post #64

I think this actually a serious issue and I’m disappointed that the comments are mostly defensive. If I had to pick two things that have led to adults acting like children, it would be: - the lack of any real “coming of age” ritual in Western culture. The closest we get is going to college, which has developed into something deliberately removed from adult reality - the slow removal of cultural rules that indicated a…

Not the predominant art form maybe, but I think they could have fundamental importance to a sophisticated culture. A culture that takes memes seriously, that can publicly acknowledge and defend/reconcile itself with truths that memes can so often reveal and illustrate so brutally efficiently (at times, not always) may be much more powerful than one that (often) dismisses them due to triviality / "fake news", or (~secretly) uses them to dismiss inconvenient facts (or, simply doesn't really take them seriously, etc).

Memes, the non-visual ideas kind (inaccurate generalizations, "fact"oids, figures of speech, cognitive norms if you don't mind stretching the definition a bit, etc) play a huge role in human communication, but this is so fundamental that it seems to be sub-perceptual and thus evades our attention and consideration.

Re: Why are so many adults acting just like children?

#75

Post by shlant »

evancox100 wrote: post #73
the_other wrote: post #2

I gave up after a paragraph or two. It looked like it was going to moan about people trying to have fun and do some self care. I don’t have time for that. Over time, I’ve come to see many “senior” or “success” behaviours as refined versions of childhood ones. Political sniping, business competitiveness, standard hierarchical power dynamics, etc. These are all “playground tactics” but grown up. I don’t see (many) “suc…

> It looked like it was going to moan about people trying to have fun and do some self care. That is basically the opposite of what it said.

who knew that not reading an article could lead you to the opposite conclusion of what the article is actually about! But a comment must be made on it regardless. On to the next one.

Re: Why are so many adults acting just like children?

#76

Post by jononomo »

There used to be an "adult movie" industry that was not porn, but was just... sophisticated movies that could be appreciated by an adult audience. But now it feels to me like 30 years after I outgrew comic books the movie industry is trying to get me back into comic books.

Re: Why are so many adults acting just like children?

#77

Post by beardyw »

MrFantastic wrote: post #66
orblivion wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Axe throwing, IPAs, cosplay outfits? Learn to play golf and drink scotch in your smoking jacket like an adult .

Axe throwing is an adult activity. When I was a child I only threw knives.

Hey, I threw knives as a kid, I had forgotten all about it. It was a set of "throwing knives", no idea where from. I also had a properly functioning South American blowpipe. Ah, childish things.

Re: Why are so many adults acting just like children?

#78

Post by DavidSharff »

the_other wrote: post #2

I gave up after a paragraph or two. It looked like it was going to moan about people trying to have fun and do some self care. I don’t have time for that. Over time, I’ve come to see many “senior” or “success” behaviours as refined versions of childhood ones. Political sniping, business competitiveness, standard hierarchical power dynamics, etc. These are all “playground tactics” but grown up. I don’t see (many) “suc…

> I gave up after a paragraph or two. It looked like it was going to moan about people trying to have fun and do some self care. I don’t have time for that.

The author had quite the opposite conclusion:

> The Great Regression isn’t really a regression at all. It’s a sign of resilience in the face of profound adversity.

Just as I was fading a few paragraphs in, one of the straw men (IMHO) thrown out caught my eye.

How had I not heard of Alexis de Tocqueville's 1835 critique, Democracy in America?

If you want to wrestle with someone making a much better form of the argument you (understandably) thought was in the article, check it out: https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/ch4_06.htm

Honestly, you and Tocqueville are saying something very similar at the core. A polite society has a known exploit: not behaving politely. The exploit is used by those seeking to amass power and influence.

The result, he posits:

> It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?

Re: Why are so many adults acting just like children?

#79

Post by trinsic2 »

hoseja wrote: post #61
raydiatian wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, I’m saying “we’re all children”. If you want to complain about adults playing games and wearing bright colours, you also need to complain about adults using armies to take resources and businesses blocking others out of markets. I feel the same, but, this is one of those all or nothing things, and the irony is that our own barbaric origins are holding us back from ‘evolving’ so to speak. We have armies and nucl…

"using armies to take resources and businesses blocking others out of markets" is literally "evolving". Natural selection, baby. It's not pretty. Unipolarity isn't the only solution but it's the most apparent one, and also the most terrifyingly totalitarian one.

Yeah that's a grim way to look at the world. And there are many who are engaging in that mindset.

There will come a time when taking from others because of the unwillingness to be a creative member of society is seen as a curable mental illness.

Re: Why are so many adults acting just like children?

#80

Post by woopwoop »

I feel like the phenomenon of people in their twenties living with their parents should only be attributed to deep cultural currents after we're 100% sure that it's not the exploding cost of housing in the most productive, well-paying metropolitan areas (which also happen to be the most fun places for a young adult to live).
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