adulthood

[Buddha's Penis!]

it came as quite a shock to me when i realized that adulthood does not bring wisdom. my elders are not always my "betters". i find it strange that people can pass through their lives without "maturing", so strange in fact that i can no longer accept the word mature, as the connotation that with age comes knowledge is not accurate.

this unifies my view of the world, but i can't help but feel a bit disillusioned.

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you don't know anything until you know everything.

[MAC]

What an excellent topic.
You are correct 100%.
Age has nothing to do with knowledge.

You know the saying garbage in garbage out?
That goes for understanding as well.
Kids who look at things and bend it all around to purposely hide from the truth grow up to ber adults who refuse to "know" anything.

The word "mature" though, is a reference to haveing thrived over a period of time.
Two trees may be large but you can see by the bulk and scars on one that it is mature.

I'll take the other side of this coin.

Child-like.
Many adults as are child like.
What I mean is they are free in the mind and heart. They are uncorrupted and unbittered. They are pleased with the world and feel at peace as small and helpless creature in the grand scheme of things.
We all should be a little childlike.

Childish.
Childish is about being petty and masking ignorance with temper or catharsis. Its a thing that actually gets worse as you get older. Its about throwing fits and not being able to control your own actions. Its the key to the debate over thought vrs. action.
Being childish is sign of lack of maturity.



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Don't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding.

<IMG SRC="http://www.tyler.net/roguewarrior/images/macsnake.jpg" border=0>

[Koliedrus]

Damned straight! I work with a guy who would be mentally ripped to shreds by the youngest here. In fact, my daughter has more wisdom than he's accumulated.

Let's try not to generalize this into a "you're old so you're stupid" thing. I offer those younger than me the same consideration.

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Oyster-brain in a cookie jar.

[Cruise Director]

My father had a friend that all of us kids couldn't wait to see. He always drove fast and was just a good time for us kids to be around. My dad never liked us kids to spend much time with him and I couldn't understand why. As I continued to grow up, this guy didn't. He was still entertaining to the kids in a "not-so-parent friendly" way. Now I watch him and realize the guy is basically harmless but never uses any common sense. His life is a mess and the only way to deal with that is to regress into childhood. Sad, sad man.

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There was a moment of utter silence before Hell's door flew open.

[Buddha's Penis!]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR>Originally posted by Koliedrus:


Let's try not to generalize this into a "you're old so you're stupid" thing. I offer those younger than me the same consideration.

[/quote]
that was definitely not my intention.
offering equal consideration was my point, in a way. if age doesn't always bring wisdom, then youth can't always bring ignorance. this site is a good example of these things; members range in age, but i usually forget that. i never have any sense of anyone taking what i say with the proverbial grain of salt due to my relative lack of life experience, and the same thing goes for those that are younger than i am.



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you don't know anything until you know everything.

[Lightbulb]

When does one become an adult?

Does the act of passing an arbitrarily assigned figure of revolutions around the sun automatically assign you to a different class of humanity? A class which is responsible, aware, informed?

One of the main failures of our way of life - and one which I believe leads people to comment that 'it's all falling apart' or 'no-one is respectful or respectable any more' - is that we have NO clearly defined, ritualised passage into adulthood. We are left to age, suddenly waking up one day staring into the mirror at a face which is sagging, lined and framed with greying hairs and wearing an expression which seems to say 'how on Earth did I get *here*?'.

Perhaps we need specific, self-created but well recognised systems of determining when we have become 'adults'.

Further, even were we to incorporate a ritualised passage into adulthood into our lives .. why might it stop here?

Why not allow one's development to be measured physically in years, but psychologically in stages; and there must be more than two in our lives.

I remember reading of a society in which age was not measured by the years that had passed since one's birth, but in the number of events in one's life that one considered significant.

That feels right.

[Mattdecay]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR>Originally posted by Buddha's Penis!:
it came as quite a shock to me when i realized that adulthood does not bring wisdom.
[/quote]

Did you realize this at a young age, or recently?

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This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality.
Embrace this moment. Remember. We are eternal.
All this pain is an illusion.

[Buddha's Penis!]

fairly recently, it's been building over the past few years. i would imagine that a kid realizing this would be intolerable.

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you don't know anything until you know everything.

[This message has been edited by Buddha's Penis! (edited 07-23-2001).]

[Mudflap]

<BLOCKQUOTE><HR>Originally posted by Buddha's Penis!:
fairly recently, it's been building over the past few years. i would imagine that a kid realizing this would be intolerable.

[/quote]

<FONT COLOR="Orange">And there's nothing worse than an intolerable kid.</FONT c>

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<FONT COLOR="orange">Even the losers...
Get lucky sometimes.</FONT c>