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When do we become adults, really?

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Re: When do we become adults, really?

#91

Post by WalterBright »

tovej wrote: post #88
WalterBright wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pension is an earned benefit. Paying for your own health insurance is an adult thing to do.

You're still relying on the government for it, or a similar institution. Paying for your own health insurance is insane. I would move out of any country that would force me to do that.

A pension is an earned benefit, part of one's pay package, not a free goodie. Welfare is a free goodie. It's a big difference.

Your "free" health care is paid for by you and others. It's so expensive because of that. Healthcare wasn't particularly expensive before the government got involved in it.

Modern governments do indeed treat the citizens like children.

Re: When do we become adults, really?

#92

Post by jadbox »

Nevermark wrote: post #36

No theoretical life stage partitions are correct. Some are useful. Every five years, my life and context have changed profoundly in ways I could never have predicted. I feel like I have lived many lifetimes. I am not sure how I would measure growing up. I could never stay at one level long enough to get effortlessly good at it. My head is too far into the clouds. The stars are so inviting. So I experience a lot of in…

This sounds like a quote from Dune. I feel the same.

Re: When do we become adults, really?

#93

Post by WalterBright »

bdangubic wrote: post #90
WalterBright wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pension is an earned benefit. Paying for your own health insurance is an adult thing to do.

yea I would rather have the insane amounts of money I pay in taxes go to department of defense and I’ll spend X% of my income to pay for my own insurance - totally makes me feel like an adult each 1st of the month when the payment is processed. this is what makes america unique, there are no adults living anywhere else in the universe, just us :)

The problem with the defense budget is if it wasn't enough, losing a war would be far more costly. The pragmatic thing is to overspend on defense, because one doesn't really know where the "enough" is.

I've paid for my own health insurance ever since I became an adult.

If you don't have an HSA (Health Savings Account), consider setting one up. It's a very good deal.

I remember the day I phoned my dad and told him I didn't need any more support (I was in college at the time). It felt good to do that, it sure felt like I'd gone through a door. Interestingly, at that moment my dad switched from telling me what to do to advising me, and became my most trusted advisor.

A free market society is a society of adults.

Re: When do we become adults, really?

#96

Post by decimalenough »

AltruisticGapHN wrote: post #21

I'm 51 now and I feel like I will never be an adult. Looking around I see a lot of broken people, each in their own peculiar ways. Everyone has some coping mechanisms, triggers, and behaviours rooted in childhood. I don't see it in a bad light, I think it is just humanity.

It's not just "broken people", everybody has their cross to bear. Some are outwardly visible, but many are not.

As a high schooler, there was a girl in my class who seemed to have it all: smart, gorgeous, popular, you name it. Then one day, she confided in me her deepest, darkest secret: at the age of 17, she had gone to a neighboring country to get liposuction on her thighs, because she was deeply distressed about not having the "thigh gap" demanded by beauty standards at the time. (This was also the first time I had heard of the existence of such a thing.) Now it's easy to dismiss this as shallow, but to her this was debilitating to the extent that she was willing to put up with the cost and pain of surgery to get it fixed.

Re: When do we become adults, really?

#97

Post by tredre3 »

blueflow wrote: post #46
AltruisticGapHN wrote: post #21

I'm 51 now and I feel like I will never be an adult. Looking around I see a lot of broken people, each in their own peculiar ways. Everyone has some coping mechanisms, triggers, and behaviours rooted in childhood. I don't see it in a bad light, I think it is just humanity.

Child abuse might be a large driver behind dysfunctionality in adulthood, with disability or early retirement as a consequence. There were some big child neglect cases around the millennium, since them, the topic got more attention from researchers. It used to be that traumatised kids got slapped with a ADHD, autism and/or borderline diagnosis and it got called a day. These are "that's just how you are" style diagnos…

> The denial phase is over.

We're in the over-correcting phase, where every person alive is an abuse survivor of varying seriousness.

For what it's worth I'm not a cynical person against psychology, and I read both the DSM and the ICD front to back every time a revision comes out. But with every revision, especially for the DSM, I become more concerned that we're creeping towards the "everybody suffers from a multitude of disorders therefore nobody does" territory which will bring us right back to ignoring people who need help.

Re: When do we become adults, really?

#99

Post by cineticdaffodil »

A adult is a person poisoned by experience. The poison makes you capable to navigate the world easier, but the poison that is knowledge also inhibits and limits you. If you know more about the world or the future, you are less likely to have children. The more knowledge you have the more it limits your ability to move of the rails, do novel scientific discovery, etc. An adult is thus the most information poisoned person in the room, all others are in degrees lesser adult thsn him or her.
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