We need to make adulthood more desirable
artofmanliness.com
artofmanliness.com
Also having children changes things quite a bit for all adults.
I wish this article was longer.
Agree on both accounts. To the first point, I had a lot of friends and hobbies before having a kid and it feels that I'm slowly losing control of my time to the point where most of it is gone and I only have like 2 hours to myself. 4 if I want to be sleep deprived the next day.
Two hours of free time to yourself is horrible. The fact that it's expected doesn't change that it's a horrible answer.
We need to reduce the amount of time we spend at work. Ironically, the best way to do that is to spend your early years working 24/7 to try to get wealthy enough that you can spend 4 hours a day doing meaningful work.
Sadly, for the absolute majority even a partial "early retirement" is unachievable regardless of how much or how hard they work
... And have the elder siblings help take care of the younger, but I don't know if that's acceptable at all nowadays in the West or if that's one way to get the CPS involved.
It's way less aplicable because people move so much. Nowadays, not many people live around (say within 1 km distance) their extended family, whereas in pre-modern times it was the absolute norm. What's more, grandparents often lived in the same house and children were raised by multiple adults and not just their parents. The burden on parents was way lower.
I doubt most parents get two hours of free time though.
There's no point in being mindlessly productive at all times.
Saying as someone whose been there
But you actually said "2 hours is plenty to get stuff done if you don't goof off". Now you're changing it to "2 hours a day gives you plenty of time to goof off."
2 hours a day is 14 hours a week. What I'm saying is that goofing off for 2-4 hours a week still gives you 10-12 hours a week to get a lot done.
But if you need to goof off for an hour per day (as many do feel they need to), then there are likely underlying reasons - problems in your life causing distraction, procrastination, etc. If you can address those reasons, you'll get more time to do fun work.
The book The Now Habit addresses similar themes.
I went to a pretty intense university to study computer science with a baby. I had zero free time. It was 100% class, study, kids, and barely any sleep - for FOUR years!
All the people I know who do great things? Zero free time. They work like animals to fulfill dreams and responsibilities.
The people I know who do great things? Seriously, they have free time. They have kids and don't feel bad about spending time with them.
Maybe college isn't the best example for what the real world is like.
Now that I've become an empty nester I have more time to myself than I probably ever had in my entire life! And I have great kids who've turned into awesome people that I can visit and enjoy doing things with.
I would argue you reap what you sow. Put the time and work in now and enjoy the fruits later in life. Don't worry about silly things such as "free time."
2 hours also seems like a lot more than it is, in part because people severely underestimate how much "free" time they had before.
For example, they think they are working from 9-5, but really, most people do lots of little things during that time - browse reddit, whatever.
That time also now can get eaten by kid stuff - scheduling, signups, etc, especially if you have 2+ kids.
It's also rare that it's a single block of 2 hours.
tl;dr: it shouldn’t be time consuming.
So between two people, one is occupied with a kids almost all the time.
> Newborns can’t even move from where they are!
You're right, I was implicitly assuming that you wouldn't leave the baby to just cry because that just sounds cruel to me.
Quite a big caveat here. I’d never let my 1 week or 1 month baby cry at night (or during the day) and in any case, he started sleeping well without any sleep training.
Isn't there a quote from Sir Roger Scruton that goes like "Beauty was taken away from the people and now it's being sold back again as a luxury"?
Now, what was your point again?
The point is exactly that: nice things (especially in the public arena) don't have to cost much - and this cost doesn't have to privatized.
The places to live, by themselves, have all the infra we need. The problem is the lack of local jobs.
So, I'm sorry if you are disappointed because I am not giving you a "reason" to state that life in suburbia is so bad. All I can say is that I have (briefly) lived in the Boston suburbs and I've lived in cities of many different sizes before and - looking in retrospect - no place gave me a sense of hopeless dread as much as Newton.
Yes, of course my first statement was "subjective" in the sense that it can not be formally measured or defined.
Thing is, just like "beauty is subjective" but we all can still find things (and beings) with qualities that transcend time and cultures to the point of considering it objectively beautiful, there are some aspects of living in "traditional" urban environments that will never be replicated in American Suburbia, which makes life in Suburbia objectively worse.
What "this" do you mean?
This thread started because of a claim to the effect of "you can only have nice things if you pay for it", as saying that life in the suburbs is "ugly" because it is more cost-effective in comparison with big American cities. That is what I was responding to.
You came after and now you are demanding some "logical" way to establish what's better... what for? My point was only that even (relatively) poor places can be better than suburbs. And yes, "better" in subjective ways. I did not start this claiming I have key metrics that "prove" how life in suburbs is so horrible.
> You need to stop looking at this with emotion
Why?! We are talking about what we value when deciding where to live. Don't you take your emotions in consideration when thinking about this?
> and apply some critical thinking.
If I were applying "critical thinking", I'd be giving you the laundry list of "reasons" against North American suburbia: the car-centric dependency, the "soccer mum" culture that exists because kids can not be independent and are not able to do anything without a parent driving them around, the absurd zoning laws that makes all houses stupidly big and expensive (not to mention ugly), the lack of a "third-place", the classism of most suburbanites, the ever-growing expansion that it requires to keep cities financially solvent...
But this was not what my comment was about. I don't even want to get into this discussion because it is as boring as the people who will try to nitpick and rationalize their life at suburbia...
You clearly have a lot of emotion as it relates to suburbia. Is this politically motivated perhaps? That would explain the vitriol.
- When I don't give "reasons" to explain my distaste of American suburbs, it's "completely subjective".
- When I do give "reasons", it is "vitriol" that you want to dismiss as "politically motivated".
You are acting like someone called your baby ugly, but you really can't argue because you know deep down it's true. In situations like these, it's better to just own it and say that you love it anyway instead of trying to find ways to discredit those who said what you didn't want to hear.
Have a fire in my backyard, because I don't have one Watch my kids ride their ATV around the yard Watch the kids play on the swingset in my backyard, or the trampoline Let the kids run around the neighborhood Wash my car in my driveway Work on my car in my driveway Take a tablesaw out of the shed to make a cornhole set Play cornhole in my yard. Watch the kids play in a sprinkler in my back yard Go stimming in the neighbors pool next door Watch the kids ride a bike outside Not put in a new drivers side window because it gets broken every 6 months Not worry about having a place to park my car Not hear sirens all night long Light fireworks off in my yard Let the dogs around around in my yard *Put a zipline in my yard
If you feel so inclined to respond to those, I'll add more for you. I lived in a city for a while. I got mugged, my car was constantly broken into, at least 1 person dies every from a gunshot wound, many more are wounded. I can't just send the kids to go play outside. Parking is a bitch, and before you jump on that, cars are never, ever going away. I will always own a car.
You must know deep down that you're trying to shove your personal preference down others throats and claim your preferences are objectively better than anyone else.
Not only is it quite arrogant, its very strange. You like living in a city, that's great. I don't, that's great. To try and claim that it's OBJECTIVELY better is the stupidest fucking thing I've come across all day. I never ONCE claimed suburbia was better, not once. I don't have any reason to jam my preferences down your throat.
None of the negative things you mentioned about city life are "transcendental". They might be common in USA cities, but these qualities are far from universal.
IOW, if your baseline is a shitty city, of course the suburbs are going to seem like a good deal. But have you ever considered what life in a good urban space might be like?
> claim your preferences are objectively better than anyone else.
No. What I am saying is that your basis of comparison is very limited and that you were robbed of the opportunity to experience something better. To make an analogy, you want to engage in a "Budweiser vs Miller Lite" argument, while anyone that had the chance to try "proper" beer will tell you that such an argument is pointless.
To repeat: the argument in the beginning was about "taking the beauty away and selling it back as a luxury" in relation to suburbs vs big cities and "having to pay for nice things". My comment was not against "suburbs" as a matter of preference, but merely to point out the historical, FACTUALLY BAD post-WW2 urban development in North America which destroyed its cities and gave people no other choice but suburban sprawl.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...
Is this genuinely how you imagine life in the suburbs? You don’t think anyone socialises here or takes part in any culture?
There were coffee shops, bars, restaurants, and the occasional movie theater among the suburbs I grew up in, sure, but they were all spread out and far away, tucked into little strip malls along the main roads - not really part of the neighborhoods people lived in.
I grew up partly in a suburb of New York. The towns around there date back 300 to 400 years, and feel like it. There are walkable town centers with coffee shops and train stations etc.
I also spent a few years in a suburb of Dallas. It was considerably newer, and wedged between a couple of highways. Everything depended on cars.
As I’ve moved around, I’ve seen lots of other points on the suburban spectrum. But for sure, the connotations of “suburb” are nearly uselessly vast.
Yes. From past HN threads, I've come to realize that "suburb" is so undefined that it can mean pretty much anything. We all agree Manhattan isn't a suburb and that remote agricultural land isn't a suburb either. But aside from those, everything else in between is someone's definition of suburb. So it's difficult to talk about it as it could mean any kind of place between those extremes.
From what I hear, time begins to return as they reach some amount of independence around 4-5. If you have more than 1, that’s a pretty big window.
That said, my daughter is incredible, and the issue isn’t that I don’t have any time. It’s that I choose spend as much of it with her as I possibly can.
When I get there, I can see a Walmart, a BestBuy, six pizza places, two dentist offices, three chain sandwich shops and a couple of grocery stores.
Everything I need. Nothing I’d ever be excited to go to. Plus I have to get back into the car.
I’ll just stay home in silence. My neighbours do too.
Having suburban neighbors constitute one’s close friend group is obviously possible, but it would be almost entirely a matter of luck. One has very little control over who their neighbors are, and limited ability to survey a neighborhood before deciding to move in.
I submitted the link because it was the first time I saw this "elephant in the room" clearly defined and identified - not because the article proposed great solutions. Anyway, the author will see the traffic spike.. Let's wait for a longer article.
Really? Is there such a medical condition as "elephant blindness," because I can't see it.
It's unclear to me what the author thinks adulthood is, why we need it, why people aren't (or don't want to) be adults, whether we suffer some kind of societal adult deficit, etc.
This article's message is effectively "you kids get off my lawn - and stop being kids, too!"
I'm not reading that at all. My reading of the article is: "Being an adult sucks." It doesn't really talk about kids at all, and if anything seems like a defense of youth being 'stuck in prolonged adolescence'. The important paragraph (imo):
> For many, adulthood means trading a life entirely devoted to learning for one in which you only read (maybe) two books a year. It means swapping a full schedule of sports, clubs, and music lessons for having exactly zero hobbies (unless watching Netflix counts). It means going from hanging out with peers for the bulk of each day to (maybe) seeing friends a few hours a month. It means shifting from experiencing plenty of firsts to being stuck in a hamster wheel of thousandths.
The author describes a valid “problem” in many western societies:
That many youths are not eager to take over the reigns and responsibilities of adult life. Arguably “western” society suffers from a lack of generational “handing over” of the many important roles and functions that a complex society requires to persist and build a successful future. That however, is probably a whole debate on its own.
IMO, these things count as signs of adulthood: Having a stable relationship, building a family, building a business or being engaged in your community somehow.
In essence giving and contributing, instead of (only) taking and benefiting from society. Kids are allowed that, adults have to be pillars of society.
I know this sounds conservative, but it isn’t. Its just the only way a society can work and persist. The OP argued that we should make adulthood more attractive. I agree. Depending on where you live, life as an adult can be worthwile. I find that the key ingredient is community and social bonds.
Adulthood grants you freedom and autonomy over your life. Childhood is highly variable and you often have very little control.
I went to a decent public school in the US, a lot of the teachers I had were dumb if not cruel. It was like spending a lot of time doing busy work in a prison run by the least successful adults of the previous generation.
Great teachers made a difference and were outliers, but were rare. I’ll take being an adult and having control over my life a thousand times over being a child that has to wait until they can be free.
One of the privileges of adult life is leaving work at the office. (I know not every adult does this but every adult has the option.)
* If you can afford it
* If you don't have to take care of dependents or parents
* If your boss isn't an asshole and allows it
* If you have the time remaining to actually do anything
There's many kinds of work that are required of adults, and the consistent low key worry of ending up on the street or starving.
It’s still unfairly skewed of course by the initial starting point and highly dependent on IQ (or if you don’t like IQ however you consider varied innate ability).
Still, all things equal having the agency is better than not.
There’s also just way more uncertainty about the future and future success etc.
I find working adult life way less stressful and a large part of that is the autonomy and independence I have over it.
All the money in the world couldn't convince me to go back to trying to take care of so many adults with such a limited set of resources as I experienced in my childhood.
To me, agency is everything. If you don't have the resources to enforce your boundaries, they don't exist, so childhood is entirely luck of the draw.
As an adult, I get to say, "No," to things and have that matter. Things may not go exactly as I'd like them to, but I have options, and that makes adulthood infinitely better than childhood ever was.
A weekend is barely enough to calm your mind down, 5 weeks holidays a year by far not enough to actually relax. Some people save a year or more to waste 12 hours going somewhere and trying to enjoy one week of pseudo luxury so they can say themselves they are so relaxed and far from work now.
I do code for a living, but maybe 20/52 weeks a year (plus a hour per week of support). I spend weeks doing mindless stuff without wasting a thought on work. And it's the most free I've felt ever since being a sentiment human. Not only can I play whenever I want, I can afford to play what I want to, my child me would be proud I guess.
What I am actually trying to say is do whatever you can. Get a 4 day week, try get a free afternoon once a week at least. Time really is the most valuable thing. And if you are a creative spirit you will be surprised how much more productive your free time can get once you have time.
The majority of my income comes from different smaller projects, I can afford one dying. The other thing that gives me peace is being me is actually relatively cheap. My house is cheap, I don't own a car, I enjoy nature more than clubbing these days, monetary bad months don't leave a huge dent.
Only a fool would assume responsibility when there's no benefit or requirement to do so. This is the society we've created for people. They're only just using it to their advantage, and I can't blame them.
Instead of drinking, driving, voting, etc... Being conveyed at an age perhaps there's some other meaningful metric that could be used in combination with a minimum age.
One idea I've considered, but not fully, is the idea of being able to vote only if you pay taxes. The adage was "no taxation without representation" but what we've constructed is "representation without taxation" in a large portion of the population.
Despite all the uproar over anything federal in the US, governance is still primarily at the state and local levels. Since nearly everyone pays some sort of state or local tax (income, sales, property, etc...) Voting would remain intact for nearly everyone at the level that really matters. The federal level it would not be as the number of tax payers is a lot less because it's primarily income based.
Obviously this isn't a fully fleshed out idea, but putting an incentive to monetarily participate in society needs to be strong one. With no skin in the game, so to speak, you have no incentive to consider both the collective good with your own good.
I am highly supportive of reforming both the tax code and the requirement to exercise of responsibility instead of just rights, but this approach definitely does not feel particularly thought through, as you call out.
>>perhaps there's some other meaningful metric that could be used in combination with a minimum age
I take issue with this statement. It’s such an American take to say that we need to reward all responsibility monetarily or meaningfully.
A lot of time taking on responsibility for something is a privilege that you’re granted by a community, and you get a feeling of fulfilment and sense of meaning/community out of it.
Replacing that human feeling with money a lot of the time cheapens it and makes the whole thing transactional.
At least that’s how I read it.
The reward doesn't have to be only monetary, but honestly? Actual responsibility is stressful when the cost of failure is high. It can also cost lots of time
Responsibility isn't rewarding by itself to me - the things you've mentioned as intrinsic rewards can be achieved without it
Maybe if I am ever financially independent and bored with everything else in life I'll rock that way to fill the void. Not before that
[1] >paulriddle on Nov 16, 2019 It's funny how carefully you're stepping around financially rewarding people who do the work. It's like you know your status does not allow you to own the money generated, so you're settling for owning the results, the process, the method, the responsibility, the all. You are weak.
So no, replacing money with feel good benefits is not good enough. Most importantly it causes a problem where you're tied to a particular benefit if it is important.
You cannot really have a community when people don't have enough to eat or place to live. Even more so, when some cop will arrive and force you out ignoring that community if you don't pay.
It is also hard to build a community when you work 40+ hours a week, as people tend to be drained and need serious alone time to rest, especially if their work involves constant contact with others.
I agree with your overall point about rights without duties.
Teacher: Why are only [veterans] allowed to vote?
Student: It's a reward for doing government service.
Teacher: No. No! Something given has no value.
Teacher: What's the moral difference between a civilian and [veteran]?
Student: A veteran accepts personal responsibility for safety of the body politic, defending it with his life. A civilian does not.
When it comes to wealth, you are not guaranteed to ever make enough money to pay taxes. You could go your whole life not being allowed to vote.
You legitimately don't see any problem with this?
There's a huge swath of people who are unemployed, disabled, or otherwise unable to work. There's people with criminal records who effectively are barred from most jobs. There's entire towns where the factory that employed most of the people went out of business and now everyone is unemployed, unless they move- which they can't because their homes are now worthless and they have mortgages.
You're talking about taking away the voting rights of all of those people because they're too poor for you. Bad luck on their part, not being born to privilege.
And of course you don't even see where this goes next. Once you start to take away the voting rights of such people, they have no ability to fight as you keep going, as you take more away from them. They have no votes, no voice, no ability to stop those with power.
I cannot imagine a more sociopathic, heartless idea than the one you've just proposed.
I would refrain from calling someones idea sociopathic, when left unelaborated. I've theorized myself with the idea of having only people that pay taxes vote, or rather, having representational democracy an opt-in system via taxation. Currently there is no way to opt out of taxes, and the things you get in return are rather slim privileges and benefits.
I only have a shallow understanding of the form of democracy that the US employs, but what impression I have of it, is that representational democracy is just a facade when big corporations have the budget to push their agendas via lobbying.
When I think of people championing for the unprivileged, I can only think of the civil society (NGOs) as having a direct effect. If the world had in place something more akin to liquid democracy, I would have better trust in the system. Do you think that currently democracy is working, when we can pull up recent examples, like a few select people having the power to make abortion illegal?
So because you're so poor you don't pay taxes, you don't get to vote? What if you don't believe the laws are fair and that's why you're too broke to pay taxes? Oh well, your voice will never be heard.
> With no skin in the game, so to speak, you have no incentive to consider both the collective good with your own good.
This idea that how much money you make shows merit and how responsible are and that you have "skin in the game" is completely absurd. Everyone who lives in this country has skin in the game. How much money you make doesn't imply merit and worthyness to vote. A rich person paying capital gains taxes as their only taxes isn't a better person than someone working multiple minimum wage jobs.
The results of elections can affect everyone. They can put us at war for example. They can affect the environment you live in and your quality of life.
Also, how would this even be implemented. At the local level what if you pay sales tax? Do you show a receipt to vote? At the federal level what if you pay taxes but you're so poor you get it all back? Is it that you paid taxes to begin with that gives you the right vote? Do you have to net lose money to the government. Can I just donate a dollar to the federal government and call it a federal voting tax, then be able to vote?
Anyway, I honestly want to know what problems you're solving by treating poor people like felons.
If your only stake is, my vote can be used to get me more money with no perceptible downside to me then I'll always vote more money. This is the situation the poor is in currently. Why would they not vote for more subsidies? They literally have no downside to wealth redistribution.
My point wasn't about finding a way to punish then, but you encourage them to not be in that situation. That's all. Just as the OP, enter adulthood.
I've seen some variant of this on HN recently, proposing ways to TAKE AWAY voting rights.
(The last time that sticks in my mind was someone saying you should only be allowed to vote if you do so under the guidance of a sanctioned organization like a non profit social organization!)
After all the progress in voting rights during the last century, it is disheartening to read people seriously proposing taking rights away from people.
The point of this post is that I think it's wrong to assume we can perfectly define a system of privileges and rights because it's so wildly inconsistent in everyone's understandings. We debated such things for literally thousands of years with some fairly prestigious minds and the best we can do is just try to fix the issues introduced by previous attempts, and that is getting more and more difficult each year. Worse, monetary influence acts outside of the societal system and the desire for improved revenue/profits has undue power over that of an individual participating in society.
How exactly do we define or quantify a proper amount of responsibility and privilege? How do we define the proper threshold of such things? How do we explain comparisons to other societies where the threshold for such privileges is far lower or even non-existent, and they _don't_ have the troubles that are prognosticated during discussions on social policy?
Society is a very tricky subject I think and the fact that collectively humans have been debating it since we figured out how to communicate to each other tells me it's not such an easy issue to solve, and more like something you just need to constantly be revisiting and fixing/improving.
Societal judgements on responsibility is wildly inconsistent and I find it exceptionally challenging to even refine a lot of privileges and responsibilities that a given individual has. I'm relatively successful in a technical career; I take on a lot of responsibilities (person management, policy making, judgment calls on constant grey-area situations), and I'm not sure what privileges I actually have that many of my staff or that a sandwich maker at a corner shop doesn't have in most cases. I have more money, sure; socially, I'm more respected because it's a "respectable" position, I have more opportunities because I tend to meet a lot more people in places of power who see results and want the results. But is that actually my privilege or is it the choice and privilege of others who grant it to me? That is, can I actually enact such privilege or is it exposure to opportunities that others wouldn't get? What exactly is privilege in practical terms, not dictionary definitions?
Conversely, the sandwich maker arguably makes more people happier and society better on a day to day basis than I do; a lot of my job is telling people either what they did wrong or just flat out "no", and that leaves a lot of people unhappy, while not really making anyone else happier. After all, I didn't really make their lives better directly, I just fulfilled a role in a process which has a neutral outcome for most people. Isn't the sandwich maker far more important in their role in society than I am? Is this responsibility on their part that they bring more overall good to society by working a difficult and low-paying job? What exactly is responsibility in practical terms, not dictionary definitions?
I'm not just trying to muddy the waters with semantics; I think these are real things you need to consider if you want to start a discussion to attribute privilege to responsibility since there is a very wide gap in understandings here and often I can't really fault the logic.
My personal take is that society at large works because collectively most people realize it doesn't and by all means it shouldn't, and that society requires constant maintenance and evolution to keep it running. Don't forget the classic xkcd[0] about modern software dependencies, as I think this is a fairly apt comparison for society. One of the ways that technology _does_ address this is that it constantly evolves, and the former pillars of society end up becoming vestigial and eventually dropped.
In society, much happens the same -- previous "givens" that were logically and heavily debated by some pretty smart people end up being completely dropped as new advances come.
> "representation without taxation" in a large portion of the population.
The issue I have with this is that the opposite is also true -- governance without representation is increasingly becoming more and more common for reasons that have very little logic behind them. In the US anyways, a few grams of weed in many states is enough to remove your representation. Having a lower class job or not enough money is enough to remove your representation. Living on the wrong side of the street after rezoning a district is effectively enough to remove your representation. Laws I consider to be woefully outdated/misinformed or laws that are actively hostile towards populations are a far bigger concern for me than "are the lazy stoners Bob and Alice responsible enough to vote on issues."
And I don't think the answer is some council that arbitrates and thinks on these things, as it seems our willingness as humans to worship such entities is just too built-in, and furthermore, I think it's not really reasonable to claim that we can have objective systems in such a matter. The US Supreme Court is under fire for this right now (and has been from basically all ideologies for awhile), and they're suppose to be the highest court in the land [1] that are practiced and careful logicians and reasonable persons. The US still has complete worship of its constitution and its authors, despite the fact that mostly the constitution was a brainchild of a few individuals, and they borrowed a lot of it from earlier works. The original intent of design to change and be rebuild/revisited was attempted to be done with amendments, but even that has a glacial pace, with the most recent amendment taking 202 years to come to fruition [2].
Even if we did have a perfectly working council that was constantly, it doesn't really address the fact that so much of society is influenced and controlled by non-governmental entities. Remember, it as an abhorrent idea for most employers to hire people who use recreational drugs besides alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine. The horror stories of what might happen were paraded around for decades, right up until a global pandemic happened and suddenly the workforce vanished, and suddenly all those stoners destined to destroy society seemed to be acceptable candidates to drive trucks. Seems the stoners have been doing pretty alright with their new jobs and none of the doom and gloom came to be, and arguably it was good for society that a lot of these services kept working. But this wasn't legislated or governed societal advancement, this was that revenue lines wouldn't go up if businesses didn't change their minds. Corporations having "rights" is a very strange concept to me, as I'm not sure what responsibility they actually take on that contributes back to society; an exchange of services is not a responsibility, and demonstrably throughout history, businesses and corporations have fought for the _right to not be responsible towards certain persons_, and many times they won. Nevermind that corporations are awful at judging what is a needed responsibility as we saw during the pandemic (think of how many "essential workers" had to go to work during the early parts, holding advertising signs and wearing costumes for shops that no one could go to anyways)
It's wrong in my opinion to think about this in terms of quantifying contributions and required responsibilities versus privileges, because when we see what actually happens and how society actually works, there is not even a passing correlation between the two, with extreme power imbalances and responsibilities and privileges that fall far outside the realm of government and society.
[0] - https://xkcd.com/2347
[1] - I'm not interested in discussing Supreme Court decisions, so I'd rather people read this and just agree that the court makes contentious decisions, perhaps by design.
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Unit...
Positive encouragement only works so much. Eventually there much be a consequence that is used as encouragement. Both methods work toget to build up a better overall tomorrow.
I don't know the correct answer but the current methods do not seem to be working.
For full disclosure, I dream of Star Trek Space Socialism (post-scarcity), basically a world where yes, society ensures a minimum standard of living, but it's a pretty okay standard of living. A home with 4 walls + a roof + hot water, access to information, food, and no need to worry that this safety net gets removed.
I've been poor as hell in the US (lived on eggs and rice in creative ways for many years), I've been rich as an oligarch in Eastern Europe, but my lowest point defined what I really wanted/needed, and I want this for everyone. I want a world where you just don't have to worry about the basics of life and instead focus just on what you want to. And it's a pretty good base-level living.
I grew the most when I didn't need to worry about the basics, and I ready thousands of stories of the same, so I can't help but think this is the way to get society in a good spot. There will be freeloaders, sure, but I don't think it's statistically more than the current system enables. :)
People age into adulthood on their own. I really don’t understand this attitude of enticing folks to grow up
Dressing up 'privileges' is just a 50c excuse for people in hierarchical positions to go to do whatever they please in the attempt to 'advertise' the value of adulthood. It's going to be summertime for the promoted.
This will go poorly and the spill-over from misbehaved 'adults' will make adult-looking responsibilities less relatable. As we've already seen with Boris Johnson's covid parties and whatever else. That pattern of public discontent with loose behavior among the upper crust will continue to cascade down the hierarchy until we're all upset with project managers wasting time and killing relationships. The system falls apart and we leave it's "adulthood privileges" in the trash.
The article is short and is written like a statement of intent, not an honest attempt forwarding an idea or promoting conversation.
It'd be great to research and promote alternative adult lifestyles, where you don't need rich parents or be super lucky, but that may require some hard work and dedication to build. For example, the prospect of becoming a digital nomad could be definitely more interesting for teens than turning into a typical hardworking suit.
https://childfreefriendlydoctors.com/ is a resource for those folks.
The one thing I learned most is that these people value their time. And with a relaxed mind and plenty of time come great ideas. Obviously most had luck or at least some business experience before they went nomad, but everyone had those small or big ideas and time to make them reality, and for a lot it just worked.
If you start looking closely you'll find them anywhere, people who by luck and dedicated work found _their_ way to survive in this society.
So many people knock the 9-5 office worker and honestly, I think it's a really sweet gig. I used to work warehouse jobs, and when you went to work, you worked. I contrast with my life now where i wake up, make coffee, flip on the computer, code and take some calls for a few hours a day, it's great!
At some point kids are going to have to make decisions on necessity, not desire. Based on hunger.
Today we are told that any discomfort is unacceptable, and you are owed living a life without it.
I think a lot of "adulting" is rejected because it comes with downsides. And more and more people seem to demanding no such downsides. They are owed cherry picking the gains, with no requirement for any of the work for it.
E.g. take this comment, where this person is saying "someone else" owes them all financial compensation for a child, and on top of that they deserve a living wage salary to just be a parent:
We are like chimpanzee babies that do not mature into chimps, instead we mature into these weird big-headed talking hive apes. Um, the point is that remaining young is a large part of how humans became human.
What we need to do is create a more Sesame Street-style sane and healthy environment.
What we call "adulthood" is the stress and trauma of dealing with physical constraints from which we protect children. Now that those physical constraints are largely gone (thanks to science and technology) the remaining constraints are mostly leftover logistical glitches. Ergo, life should get easier, the responsibilities less onerous, and people should remain young at heart.
I think that the word you're looking for is neoteny: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny
"You're a scholar and a gentleman."
The one thing adulthood brings is money. That's really the big thing. But its best use is to be saved so you don't have to continue the "adulting" thing, so it's all a bit circular.
My friend group from college is split nearly 50/50 of people who "made it" and people who didn't. One half has jobs, girlfriends, cars, etc. The other half lives with their parents working part time, smoking weed, and playing video games. The second half seems a lot happier than the first, to be honest. However if (God forbid) were they ever to get into an accident, or have some medical problem, or need to do major repairs on their houses, or finally find someone they want to settle down with - there's no money to pay for that. And then they'll probably not seem as happy. Recently I asked a few people if they would be interested in a summer vacation to Europe, and the most common response was "I wish I could go but I can't afford that." Not very fun.
People use to walk a lot more and do a lot more menial labor. It probably wasn't very "desirable". Now I drive everywhere and 99% of what I buy is made with machines. That's a lot more fun... Until the global warming hits. There is no free lunch.
This is not to say we can't try and improve things. But for the foreseeable future life won't always be rosy.
I suppose I’m an outlier (aren’t we all) but most things I have to do, I like to do them. My job is an extension of an immensely satisfying and enriching hobby. If something breaks, it’s interesting to attempt to fix it. Having a choice AND not having one are both, to me, liberating in a sense. I’m a hands on person when I can be. The things I don’t like to do I often give them to family members or friends who do like to do them. Is there an air of petulance over needing to do things from time to time? Sure, but that’s normal.
Perhaps it’s to do with facing death, or seeing close friends and family pass away, or relinquishing a part of your time and energy to your kids, or seeing people change for the worse over time. But if this is what adulthood is, then whoever thinks so has not even begun to question what life is all about.
But this is a sliver of contemplation, it is not a be all end all to things.
In my frustration, I opened the front page and it's even worse.
I often learn more reading HN comments than the article that is being discussed.
I'll give you an example, I have a friend of mine whose parents take good care of him. They all have a great relationship, so it's fine for him to live with them well into his thirties.
I've also met the reverse, someone who has a horrible relationship with their parents but still live with them well into their twenties, even after the parents repeatedly try to kick them out. After a ton of thought, and a bit of emotional maturing on my part, I stopped feeling sorry for these people. If your parents no longer have the capacity to care for you, figure something else out.
You don't have a right to sit up and demand someone take care of you. This is my biggest red flag with dating, if you feel that level of entitlement to your parents, you'll feel it towards everyone else.
My childhood was a living hell of evictions and other chaos, the best day of my life was when I got my first apartment. I couldn't wait for adulthood because instead of waiting for these grown ups to the side to pay a cable bill before rent, I could make those choices.
I think everyone should strive to move out in their early twenties, and I won't really go out with someone who doesn't have their own apartment and a job.
Luckily since I left LA, I've had no trouble meeting fantastical folks with great careers. Most dating/ socializing advice is absolutely useless since it won't mention how important location is.
Met the first girl I've ever gone out with for any significant amount of time, and I no longer had to drive.
But you have to be the one who makes this choice. I had to stop using social media since I'd have jerks tell me I was the problem. No no I'm just not compatible with LA.
Even LA used to be a much better place to live, in my early twenties. It was still affordable and people are nicer. You can still find a two bedroom in Chicago for $1,500, within walking distance from a metro line.
Good luck finding a two bedroom under $3000 within distance of a Metro line in LA, and finding a job within walking distance of another Metro stop.
Why would I do a ridiculous money churning move like that if I don’t have to? Why not instead work and save until I have enough to confidentially and financially save for a house?
You're not wasting money, you're spending it on learning how to become an adult. Plus you'll be more open to moving to different cities, which is much much easier as a young adult than it is as an older person with obligations
From my understanding it's simply a lot owed to culture. When I was in my early twenties, Americans tended to buy a house (with the attached mortgage) much more likely because it's a thing you do. In comparison here in Germany, NOBODY (except with very rich parents) would get or even buy a house. Also no one would give you the money for the mortgage in the first place. (Compounded by the fact that we'd typically finish university later than Americans would have their master's, don't even talk about a Bachelor's). Especially in the city, living with your parents until after uni (so around 25-28) was completely normal. Exceptions like going to a different city and getting an apartment notwithstanding.
Once you have to pay your own rent, you quickly understand how the world works. When it comes to dating, I've never had a good experience with someone who was past 25 and wasn't independent.
I got my first apartment when I was 19, and for the most part, I've been on my own ever since.
The typical person I've met who's 30 or whatever and lives with their parents, has a massive entitlement problem. They're simply owed things. Their mom's being mean because their mom wants them to get a job.
This doesn’t make sense to me cause you can still live at home and pay rent. That’s a reality for many Americans.
> The typical person I've met who's 30 or whatever and lives with their parents, has a massive entitlement problem. They're simply owed things. Their mom's being mean because their mom wants them to get a job.
It seems you have this notion that anyone still living with their parents at that age doesn’t have a job rather than having a job and saving money for an actual house.
I'm not meeting people who are living with their parents so they can save up enough money to buy a house.
Again, this is just based off of my experiences. One of my own uncles never moved out or did anything with his life, unfortunately there's just a lot of people like this.
I have had a very unique life, and according to the lessons I've learned I'm extremely selective of who I'm around. If you're in your late 20s or 30s and you live with your parents, I'm going to have major doubts about your maturity. This is fine, not everyone is going to be attractive to me, and vice versa.
The biggest issue is when you deal with someone who's used to having mommy and daddy take care of them, they'll want someone new to take care of them. I've known guys like this, I've known girls like this.
There's no doubt in my mind that living independently is necessary for someone to grow up, and that too comfortable a life removes the desire to be independent.
Simply not buying this argument, it's nowhere near necessary - maybe it's just a good reality check for people who weren't really independent or 'grown-up' before.
It was bizarre to see the popular media make him out to be somehow a "alt right misogynist fascist".
I found he has well articulated and interesting points of view, and there were a lot of women who appreciated his message to young men, as they'd be dating this cohort of men.
I think a lot can be taken with a pinch of salt, but to see the reaction against rather mild conservative viewpoint showed I think a problem.
That said, what reward does Peterson say these men should get for their adoption of responsibility? Does it entitle them to any rewards?
Peterson often talks about the realities of capital, referring to the "Matthew effect" and the dangers of "disenfranchisement of the people at the bottom", making the Left essential in his words.
I believe he offers it as an antidote to a life dearth of meaning.
This is the crux of TA. It's encouraging us (adults) to live in such a way that makes adulthood look worth pursuing.
It really can be tempting to waste adult years on things that won't matter next month. I know I'm guilty of foofing away a lot of my adult life on inane web surfing, for example--if only because I wasn't thoughtful and determined about focusing my relaxing time towards better goals. Just a little self denial (sleep or read a book instead) would have yielded exponentially better results.
I don’t get why we have to make a life of adult freedom desirable to anyone else
You don’t have to apply, your time will just come up
What adulthood always promised, and delivered, was choice. I wouldn't have to be in situations and around people that I didn't want to be and around. Mostly.
I can't say about having kids, not having any. If you hate it, you're probably doing it wrong, or maybe the rewards are deeper and more spread out, and when you really think about it, you think "it was worth it."
What privileges? There doesn't seem to be a whole lot that changes when you hit 18.
that's freedom of choice fo'ya.
And then, after hats I got what I wanted, and it was great, but over time I realized that was it, this was I had been planning for and now that I got it that's it. Now I've just kinda stagnanted, I ended up well economically, but every other part of my life has faced severe regression, including physical and social health. I have the time, and the resources now, but not the environment.
Mom didn't want to be a "mom", and dad fucked off when I was 5. They should have considered abortion, but they are protestants.
Childhood has no autonomy where adulthood gave me more freedom, I will never go back.
edit: 80+ year old's in conservative Europe
So no, they generally didn’t have access to consequence free sex like we do.
Of course going back to the 60s “free love” was a major thing. Maybe you’re referring to some time before that?
Edit: ah I see, 1940s in especially conservative parts of Europe. That I have no idea about.
Yet another reason we should be protecting sex workers more and prosecuting them less. I think a lot of the negative acting out we see in young men would be dramatically reduced if they had more safe, legal options here.
You can’t make unnecessary/unenjoyable responsibility desirable to people who see through it.
Life is what your make it. I just turn 40 and my life looks nothing like the description of adulthood the author does.
It is all about choices, if you decide to have a house, 2 cars and 2 kids, yes... it may look like that.
I don't get it. You can still do those things as an adult. In fact, it's easier, because you don't need the cooperation of your teachers or parents. You can just do whatever you want.
If you're an adult, and you haven't got any hobbies, and you want hobbies, just take up a hobby? I honestly don't get it.
Why would the current youth want to become one of them?
Also, youth is not launching into adulthood because they simply can't have certain privileges that older generations have, like owning a decent house.
Why become something if you only get downsides?
Unless you still believe in the american dream, I'm pretty sure we can agree that the increase in housing prices makes it exceedingly difficult for young people to buy a house without a significant inheritance.
TL/DR: make X more fun so people want X (X being adulthood)
Also - is the entire premise even true? Do people not want to become grown ups? Actually I think this is inevitable. Maybe the author comes from a proviliged pampered background but anybody else will have to pay the bills which makes you responsible for that and is pretty serious and tends to make people also mentally pretty serious. So, I don't know what that guy even intends to communicate.
To me it looks like the author is trying to push his Art Of Maniless brand and last week he didn't know what to write about. Then he coughed up this half cooked piece of tofu ...
The notion of "adult," has an intrinsic inferiority in the sense it's from the perspective of what children and dependents believe about men and woman relative to themselves. It's an important distinction, because if you see adults as others and can't admit to yourself that you are a man or a woman, it's likely because on some level you still identify as a dependent - if not in a specific relationship, then to society at large. (Arguably, some even moralize it where to be an adult is to submit to being a dependent of society.) Acting as an adult is something one does for the reflected approval of others, and it is relative to the perspective and aspirations of children. Discomfort from talking about men and women directly is indicative of how disconnected we are from our true and natural identities. (If you believe nothing is true or natural and take Derrida's view that everything is an artifact of language, I'd ask if you've thought about what made choosing that belief so appealing.)
Adulthood itself is a concept that is the actualization of personhood - an abstraction that includes corporations, higher primates, zygotes, and imminently some lines code. Imo, adulthood is unappealing because it has become poor substitute for concepts of manhood and womanhood. By including these non-human entities, personhood itself is a diminished and low bar.
The common insult I see in public discourse is that a man is a baby or a child, and the person wielding it truly believes these words are powerful. The insult is lobbed as though the implicitly maternal lens of criticism and shaming someone as a baby has meaning to actualized men and women. Actualized men and women by definition have developed an internal locus of control, and a level of self acceptance and awareness where criticism from a rando saying they are being a bad dependent doesn't even register. When you pull it apart, what adulthood means to most people is the ability to internalize supervision and the values of a broadly social supervisor. What's worse is that this kind of transactional adulthood yields some truly psychotic moral licensing in the form of, "I've taken all the humiliations and done what was expected of me, and now it's my turn." And you can still be a good person when you act on this belief, because compared to a corporation or a primate, you're still doing pretty well.
In this sense, "we" don't need to do anything about adulthood. "You" and "I" need to take responsibility for ourselves first, and then for children and other dependents, then by becoming good men and women we become our brother's and sister's keepers. This is all to say, the framing of adulthood is part of the problem. When someone occasionally admonishes me to be "an adult," I typically respond, "thanks, I'm a man," and the people who get it, get it, and the ones who don't, I just don't remember.