We need a new definition of adult. In legal-speak, having adult status means having reached the “age of majority,” which differs in different places. In the US, most states mark that age at 18, one makes it 19, and Mississippi considers it to be 21. In most dictionaries adult means having reached physical maturity, basically, an animal (including, of course, human) that is fully grown.
But there’s that other sense of the word that we use when we say, “Act like an adult.”
That’s where we need some revising. Sure, we generally can distinguish between “acting like a child” and “acting like an adult,” but nowadays, there’s some real fuzziness about that distinction. How so?
In the Trenches of Warfare
During many wars people who could be classified as minors, and therefore as children because they have not reached the “age of majority,” have volunteered for and served in military action, somehow bypassing the most basic requirement for enlistment. In the action off war, those who serve together do not distinguish between child and adult when they face an armed enemy soldier who is shooting at them.
In the Halls of Academia
The halls of academia differ from the trenches of war. Today, academia fosters continued childhood, that is a suppression of mental maturity and responsibility. Nowhere is this practice more evident than the private school where comedian Jerry Seinfeld sent his children. The NY Post headline reads “Jerry Seinfeld rips woke NYC private school — where his kids attended — for allowing ‘distressed’ students to skip class day after election.” * It’s a self-explanatory headline; nevertheless…
The Ethical Culture Fieldston School costs $65 thousand per year. Seinfeld said, “This is why the kids hated it. What kind of lives have these people led that makes them think that this is the right way to handle young people?”
To answer, I respond, “Not adult lives, not the lives of people who have weathered the daily storms of human interactions.”
Have the teachers and administrative staff had no disruptive experiences? Have there lives been so smooth that they might best be described as “placid”? This is the, I dare to say, THE “liberal world,” the “woke world,” and the world unprepared for natural and manmade disasters. It is a mindset that makes a country weak before its enemies, narrow-minded in the exchange of ideas, and narcissistic in personality. And it is above all comic—foolish even—and laughable in its essence.
The Post’s story by Dana Kennedy and Olivia Land reports the thoughts of another former Fieldston parent, Dr. Logan Levkoff: “To say that this is absurd is a gross understatement,” Levkoff told The Post. “Young people need to engage in thoughtful debate, learn to deal with disappointment, and develop resilience. Catering to the ‘trigger warning’ generation is not a successful strategy for life or adulthood. And it’s certainly not the way to develop bipartisanship politically or in our friendships,” she insisted.
Yeah, this is all very obvious to you, I’m hoping. But I don’t know. **
How is it that a comedian, a person whose career evolved from medieval court jesters and even more ancient Greek comedy has come to be the voice of reason? Seinfeld, now subjected to hecklers interrupting his performances with political statements, is a man of common sense, obviously wiser than the staff at the school and at least as wise as Dr. Levkoff. He recognizes the damage done to the process of maturation. He sees the school’s actions as inhibiting, if not preventing entirely, the students’ developing adulthood.
But, as “safe spaces” in some universities reveal, the movement to quash adulthood abounds in America. If this trend continues, we’re going to need a new definition of adult.
*NY Post Online: November 1, 2024.
**Because I really haven’t opened these blogs to comments (which I might do), I’ve had only a couple of comments over the years and on more than 2,000 essays. I might be erroneous in assuming that my readership is “of like mind” on many of the issues I discuss. Not a “snowflake,” I don’t mind differences of opinion or argument tactics as long as they are logical and supported by facts that are not cherry-picked to the exclusion of counter facts.
To borrow from Kurt Friedrich Gödel, I would argue that no argument is “complete” because each rests on underlying assumptions. The argument I make about limiting children’s growth, for example, fails to include that maturation comes at different times and for different reasons in humans. Some mature in spite of their rearing, some because of their rearing, and some because their older lives are as distinct from their younger lives as a processed food and sugar diet is from a strict grass-fed carnivore diet.
But there’s that other sense of the word that we use when we say, “Act like an adult.”
That’s where we need some revising. Sure, we generally can distinguish between “acting like a child” and “acting like an adult,” but nowadays, there’s some real fuzziness about that distinction. How so?
In the Trenches of Warfare
During many wars people who could be classified as minors, and therefore as children because they have not reached the “age of majority,” have volunteered for and served in military action, somehow bypassing the most basic requirement for enlistment. In the action off war, those who serve together do not distinguish between child and adult when they face an armed enemy soldier who is shooting at them.
In the Halls of Academia
The halls of academia differ from the trenches of war. Today, academia fosters continued childhood, that is a suppression of mental maturity and responsibility. Nowhere is this practice more evident than the private school where comedian Jerry Seinfeld sent his children. The NY Post headline reads “Jerry Seinfeld rips woke NYC private school — where his kids attended — for allowing ‘distressed’ students to skip class day after election.” * It’s a self-explanatory headline; nevertheless…
The Ethical Culture Fieldston School costs $65 thousand per year. Seinfeld said, “This is why the kids hated it. What kind of lives have these people led that makes them think that this is the right way to handle young people?”
To answer, I respond, “Not adult lives, not the lives of people who have weathered the daily storms of human interactions.”
Have the teachers and administrative staff had no disruptive experiences? Have there lives been so smooth that they might best be described as “placid”? This is the, I dare to say, THE “liberal world,” the “woke world,” and the world unprepared for natural and manmade disasters. It is a mindset that makes a country weak before its enemies, narrow-minded in the exchange of ideas, and narcissistic in personality. And it is above all comic—foolish even—and laughable in its essence.
The Post’s story by Dana Kennedy and Olivia Land reports the thoughts of another former Fieldston parent, Dr. Logan Levkoff: “To say that this is absurd is a gross understatement,” Levkoff told The Post. “Young people need to engage in thoughtful debate, learn to deal with disappointment, and develop resilience. Catering to the ‘trigger warning’ generation is not a successful strategy for life or adulthood. And it’s certainly not the way to develop bipartisanship politically or in our friendships,” she insisted.
Yeah, this is all very obvious to you, I’m hoping. But I don’t know. **
How is it that a comedian, a person whose career evolved from medieval court jesters and even more ancient Greek comedy has come to be the voice of reason? Seinfeld, now subjected to hecklers interrupting his performances with political statements, is a man of common sense, obviously wiser than the staff at the school and at least as wise as Dr. Levkoff. He recognizes the damage done to the process of maturation. He sees the school’s actions as inhibiting, if not preventing entirely, the students’ developing adulthood.
But, as “safe spaces” in some universities reveal, the movement to quash adulthood abounds in America. If this trend continues, we’re going to need a new definition of adult.
*NY Post Online: November 1, 2024.
**Because I really haven’t opened these blogs to comments (which I might do), I’ve had only a couple of comments over the years and on more than 2,000 essays. I might be erroneous in assuming that my readership is “of like mind” on many of the issues I discuss. Not a “snowflake,” I don’t mind differences of opinion or argument tactics as long as they are logical and supported by facts that are not cherry-picked to the exclusion of counter facts.
To borrow from Kurt Friedrich Gödel, I would argue that no argument is “complete” because each rests on underlying assumptions. The argument I make about limiting children’s growth, for example, fails to include that maturation comes at different times and for different reasons in humans. Some mature in spite of their rearing, some because of their rearing, and some because their older lives are as distinct from their younger lives as a processed food and sugar diet is from a strict grass-fed carnivore diet.
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