“What does it mean to grow up? Why should we?” “What makes life worth living?”
Neiman: The short answer as to why grow up? To stick it back to society or more so to those that control our world. “…because it’s harder than you think, so hard that it can amount to resistance…children make more compliant subjects and consumers.” (WGU 192-193) What better way to sell you a serum, surgery, seminar with a self-help guru that has the answer to your worldly problems, and constant revitalization of programs/movies from one’s childhood than to equate it to keeping someone “young” which seems to be the end all be all for our society. “Being grown-up is widely considered to be a matter of renouncing your hopes and dreams, accepting the limits of the reality you are given, and resigning yourself to a life that will be less…significant than you supposed when you began it.” (WGU 1) With our society framing being that way, it’s no wonder people fear it. But why listen to society when it cannot even DEFINE what an adult is and fluctuates even upon your very locale? Markers such as “leaving your parents’ home, paying your own bills, having successful intimate relations” are landmarks, in some cultures, of adulthood. (WGU 123) This is a narrow view and unsustainable especially in today’s climate of soaring debt, popped housing markets, and hello Covid! So perhaps turn to Kant’s definition of maturity, “the ability to think for oneself.” So grow, go out, travel, educate yourself (whether academically, experiential, or a combination thereof), and get to work! That work, those actions are what give life meaning (WGU 166) and ultimately the “ability to see your life as the whole it has become allows you to see the strengths with which you’ve lived it…” (WGU 204)
Okay okay, I know it’s High School Musical but they did have a glow up after growing up… and you know “Breaking Free”
Kaag: Williams James “wrote for our age: one that eschews tradition and superstition but desperately craves existential meaning; one that is defined by affluence but also depression and acute anxiety; one that valorizes icons…persistently urges, ‘Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact.’” This does not work all the time, not even for me, but even on the harder days it helps me keep going (SSHM 5) Being grown up is not always ideal and has its fair number of trials but to stagnate in immaturity and childhood would be another type of death. Death of your mind and what you could be. James also suggested that “the art of being wise was knowing what to overlook.” (SSHM 172) You have the choice as to what you see, what you learn, how you live and most importantly how you think; “make what we will of life.” (SSHM 171) James’s “maybe” is there for you to explore, make it worth it. So to be an adult is to be “woke” or “a person who has come to recognize the biases and prejudices of previous generations, and continues to grow of his or her own accord, with his or her eyes wide open.” (SSHM 102) Come to terms with your actions and thinking, explore new avenues and own up to them. (SSHM 152)
Anderson: “Like other fantasy-flavored impulses…nostalgia can express itself happily or fearfully, as wishful stage-set charm or they’ve-wrecked-our-stage-set rage.” (FL 429) We cling to the “better” times, the “easier” times; looking wistfully behind us in our Fantasyland. We suffer from Kids “R” Us Syndrome, childlike thinking, need for the instant gratification and we are stagnating in our immaturity. (FL 406) As Neiman referenced in her own work; Rousseau’s paradox: “cannot construct a decent society without a critical mass of real grown-ups, yet we can hardly create real grown-ups within a society to doesn’t want them.” (WGU 125) Society is winning in this front, so like Neiman, let’s stick it back to them and beat the system.
2020 in a nutshell it seems, though sometimes not so smiley.
That rock isn't exclusive to 2020, but maybe Camus was right: we can imagine ourselves happy behind it. "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a [person's] heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
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