Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age, by Susan Neiman (WGU)
Please add two or more questions from the Introduction/Part One, and respond to one (yours or mine or classmates') in two or more paragraphs... before Tuesday if possible. We'll try to cover everything essential by 7:30 each week, going forward. If anyone has more to say we'll reconvene after a break. Those who need to leave can do so with a clear conscience.
- Do you think of growing up as "a matter of renouncing your hopes and dreams"? 1
- Do you like the "well-meaning Uncle's" advice? Or the Rolling Stones'? 4
- Is Kant right in "What is Enlightenment?" about why people "choose immaturity"? 5
- If distractions, especially "since the invention of cyberspace," are "literally limitless," is Enlightenment in Kant's sense a realistic goal for most people? 9
- Do you agree that it takes courage to think for yourself? 11
- Is travel necessary for growing up? 13-16
- Is Larry Summers wrong about language-learning? 16
- Do you believe the best time of life is between the ages of 18 and 28? 20
- How innocent should childhood be? What do you think of the way French children were raised in the 17th century? 24
- Do you wish you'd had a Samoan childhood? Do you think tests in school prepare you for life? 27
- Is it bad to be WEIRD? 32
- Should philosophers pay more attention to child-rearing and parenting? 36
- What do you think Cicero meant by saying that philosophy is learning to die?
- Do you feel fully empowered to "choose your life's journey"? If not, what obstacles prevent that? 37
- In what ways do you think your parents' occupations influence the number of choices you'll be able to make in your life?
- If you've read 1984 and Brave New World, which do you find the more "seductive dystopia"? 39
- Are we confused about toys and dreams? 40
- American moral philosopher and author, Susan Neiman, talks us about why we have been tricked to think we are happiest when we are young and why it is we need to grow up. Watch the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeNQV... Institute of Art & Ideas
- Do others make the most important decisions for you? 41
- Do you "make a regular appointment with your body"? 42
- Do you trust anyone over 30? 45
- Is it "reasonable to expect justice and joy"? 49
- Are you "committed to Enlightenment"? 51
- Do the passions for glory and luxury make us wicked and miserable? 53
- What does it mean to say there are no atheists in foxholes? Is it true? 54
- Was Rousseau right about inequality and private property? 55
- Should philosophy be taught to children, so as to become thinking adults? 57
- Should children "yield to the commands of other people"? 61
- Should parents "let the child wail"?
- Are Rousseau and Kant right about the true definition of freedom? 62
- Is Rousseau right about desire? 65
- Did Rousseau's abandonment of his children discredit his thoughts on child-rearing? 69 Or show him to be a hypocrite for saying no task in the world is more important than raising a child properly? 72
“What is Enlightenment?” (1784)
by Immanuel KANT (1724-1804)
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to
use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self imposed when its
cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! 1 "Have courage to use your own understanding!" - that is
the motto of enlightenment.
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion Of men, long after nature
has released them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes,)2 nonetheless gladly remain in
lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It
is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my
conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I
need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The
guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it
that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as
very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and
having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the gocart
to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them,
should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few
times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid
and usually frightens them out of all further attempts.
Thus, it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all
but become his nature. He has even become fond of this state and for the time being is actually
incapable of using his own understanding... (continues)
Here is some lingering thoughts I had while reading;
ReplyDelete1. In your opinion do you think sociability in a manufactured reality helps or hinders a person in maturing? (10)
2. Do you think that Kant was truly "mature" as he lacked experience in traveling (due to daily routines and never leaving his hometown of Konigsberg)? (14)
1. In the broadest sense, all reality is "manufactured" by our minds and the culture we collectively create. But in the sense indicated here, a reality "determined from afar by private parties that have a material interest" in distracting us from the more immediate and important realities of our direct personal experience--people like the moguls of social media, the creators of Facebook and TikTok, Google et al--I'd agree with Neiman's implication that a lot of our "sociability" is indeed a hindrance.
Delete2. He wasn't mature in that way, nor were many of his peers. Travel can be broadening. It can also be distracting, as Emerson said.
“Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting identical that I fled from.” Emerson
DeleteI do want to add a word in defense of Kant's routine, and the peripatetic way of travel. Kant's daily perambulations up and down the avenues of Konigsberg allowed his mind to "travel"... he wasn't laying literal eyes on distant landscapes, but he was definitely traversing the world of ideas. Neither is a substitute for the other, but both may be forces for maturation and enlightenment. (Thus spake the peripatetic!)
I love that you pointed that out Dr Oliver! Traveling takes on various forms and in that sense, even though he did not take long journeys he was able to traverse the world of ideas.
DeleteI love that you pointed that out Dr Oliver! Traveling takes on various forms and in that sense, even though he did not take long journeys he was able to traverse the world of ideas.
DeleteBut on the other hand...
DeleteAfter this year-plus of going nowhere in lockdown, I'm very excited to be goin' to Kansas City (and Ottawa KS) in a month! Remote/virtual zoom conferences are also no substitute...
I do not think that growing up means renouncing your childhood dreams or hopes. If the dreams you have as a child are grounded and able to be accomplished, I believe that you do not need to renounce your ambitions to grow up. When growing up, your dreams may become more specific. For example, as a child, I had four goals; The classic goal of any little girl; to be a singer (I sing best in my car), a lawyer (because my mom said that I was phenomenal at arguing my case, I got payback with my daughter ), a neurologist ( to serve those in need), and finally, I wanted to be a teacher (because I thoroughly love to learn). Mind you, I got to an age where I could think about and compare which career path would be best suited to me. After getting my associate's in psychology, I opted to become an educator because I never did renounce or abandon my love of learning. As an adult now, the specifics of my goals tend to lean more towards disabilities and advocacy.
ReplyDeleteGood point: childhood dreams can be refined and re-channeled without being renounced and abandoned. My largest but very vague early dream was to make a difference in the world. I didn't know what that would look like then, and the process of maturation eventually taught me that fame and fortune were fleeting. The difference I've made, if I've made it, has been in raising children and educating students. I'd like to believe I've achieved the dream.
DeleteThere are some dreams, though, that must and should be abandoned in deference to reality and in service of a realistic pursuit of happiness. I dreamed as a child of playing major league baseball. Nope.
And then there are the dreams others have for us. We definitely need to abandon those, unless they become ours too. The world is full of unhappy people who successfully pursued their parents' dream of their becoming doctors or lawyers. My dad's veterinary clients used to ask me if I wanted to grow up and be a vet like him. Nope again.
I didn't begin dreaming of an academic career until I was launched on the path leading to it, in Grad School. Sometimes the dreams come to us.
Do you agree that it takes courage to think for yourself? 11
ReplyDeleteThis question made me automatically think about the polarization created by media manipulation inherent in thinking along political lines today. I think about relevant arguments that I make about fairness in society or relevance of human rights in our present day and I am concerned that the reactions that I usually see are canned. By canned I mean that I get the exact same pre thought out argument made by another person by several people. For instance I will make a statement to somebody at my family and they will give me the same argument that someone at work has made almost verbatim the week before. Another instance that I see is that people choose to seek me out for argument on a particular thing that they've heard on the radio or as part of a television program because I seem like I will take an adversarial view and they are prepared. What I have noticed is that if the conversation doesn't go the way they expect they will say what if or what about and change the subject to something they have more of a prepared dialogue with. I have come to the point that I have to explain the scientific method and what it means to ask a question, research, predict, experiment, and either prove or present another theory. We don't necessarily have the right answers or the truth and we don't have the expectation of truth in our news and other media.
For me religion was important when I was younger because I understood that within my faith I could find the answers to all the most difficult questions. As I grew older and started questioning who and why religious texts were written. It became important for me to say that I couldn't trick myself into believing in something that I didn't understand. To me understanding the truth about man-made religion is something that is difficult for me to relate to people in both my family and around me that feel like I am amoral or just evil. For me religion is wrong and abusive to children in that it creates a false reality of the world in which they live. At the same time if I were to relate this fact to children in our society it would mean that I was the bad guy. One of the hardest conversations I ever had was when I had to tell my mother that I could not be a Christian because I could believe in something that I did not understand.
Yes, canned or pre-packaged or potted political positions are rife in our public life now. But we can't blame that on "media manipulation," that implies an inherent incapacity to think for oneself when imbibing information (be it accurate or "fake") from whatever source. We really must hold ourselves and one another accountable for what we say and think.
DeleteI've had my share of those difficult conversations, and have tried to explain to uncomprehending friends (who sometimes then have become former-friends) and family (who were stuck with me) that it's merely a mark of critical circumspection not to assert either belief OR disbelief prematurely. George Santayana called this attitude the "chastity of the intellect," others call it agnosticism, or critical thinking, or rationality... Whatever it's called, it just means thinking for oneself on the basis of evidence and logic. It's "not thinking with your gut," as Carl Sagan put it in "The Demon-haunted World." We have to believe it's a democratically-universal ability that happens in our time to be sadly neglected. I have to believe the neglect can be rectified in time, if we teach our children well.
To me growing up means asking the difficult questions and answering them honestly. Does her question "Why Grow Up?" mean give up on those difficult questions?
ReplyDeleteNo. It implies precisely our responsibility to ask the hard questions and face reality squarely. She's not posing the question rhetorically, she's asking and answering it straightforwardly: we should grow up because that's what it means to be enlightened, educated, mature, responsible, adult. And in a Kantian spirit, she thinks it is the crucial condition of our worthiness to be happy.
DeleteI put two post on here that disappeared. Again. The first gave me an error message.
ReplyDeletemake that three.
DeleteSend them to me directly, I'll post for you. But it looks like you're able to post. Are you using different devices?
DeleteYes, it may have something to do with Google
DeleteDoesn't everything?
DeleteUnderstanding value in one’s possessions is different than just collecting toys as she states. I consider toys part of growing up. I considered learning to fix a flat tire being responsible and part of growing up. Is this enlightenment?
ReplyDeleteGive us a page reference for that, please. I don't think she means to deny the appropriateness of toys in childhood. There is, though, in a consumer-driven culture like ours, a tendency to treat the acquisition of material goods ("toys") as a sufficient mark of "success"... and that's unenlightened.
Delete“The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word 'success' - is our national disease.” William James (to H.G. Wells), 1906
DeleteI don't have the book with me right now, but I still believe in value in possessions however it is getting more difficult to find in the marketplace of today.
DeleteWhat is getting more difficult to find?
DeleteAnyway, I'd agree that there is great value in some possessions--particularly those with a connection to loved ones or precious memories. Most of my possessions, though, seem to fall into the categories of "clutter" and "ephemera"... I just cleaned out my Little House out back, and despite hauling a truckload of former possessions I am still afflicted with Too Much Stuff... Delbert McClinton's song expresses my predicament perfectly.
But I did also unearth some possessions that hold great value for me... http://jposopher.blogspot.com/2021/05/spring-cleaning.html
Delete"Even when they do not lie, they did not tell us all they could have; they want to shield us in the wrong ways and fail to protect us in the right ones." (p. 2)
ReplyDeleteDo you agree or disagree with this quote?
What are some examples that could serve as support for this argument?
Yes, I agree that my elders (with the best of intentions) kept too much from me--too much of the blind ignorance and hatred of so many in our world, too much of how my birth into relatively privileged circumstances as a white male skewed my total understanding of social reality... They protected me from material want, but not from an unthinking sense of entitlement that others were not able to take for granted. That wasn't willful on their part, I don't suppose it even occurred to them. That's what's "systemic" about the inequities in our society, they're mostly beneath the radar of those they advantage.
DeleteIs Larry Summers wrong about language-learning? 16
ReplyDeleteReferring to his comment regarding his belief (or lack thereof) of learning a second language, I do not agree with him. Summers proposed that it was a waste of time that could be better utilized by taking time to learn a secondary language. I strongly disagree, especially when taking into consideration the topic of enlightenment.
Language is such an intricate and cultural-exposing entity, that in taking the time to learn another language, one is also learning specialized parts of another culture. This learning will expand not only verbal skills, but it will also help understand another's perspective and cultural reference point. Deeming a secondary language a waste of time is not conducive or supportive of taking the time to make yourself aware and knowledgeable of things not yet known to oneself. That fact in and of itself shows little to no willingness for personal enlightenment. In my personal opinion, Summers statement is a bit narrow-minded.
He's dead wrong.
DeleteHe actually said the time could be better spent "maximizing something quantifiable." Ick! What did Obama see in him, besides a pedigree?
You're very charitable. I think Summers' statement is shockingly low-brow.
1. I knew virtually nothing about Rousseau until reading this week’s selection. At first, I felt his arguments were interesting and compelling… until the, not one, but two bombshells about his views on women submitting to men (p. 67) and him abandoning his FIVE children to French orphanages (p. 69). After that, I struggled to take Rousseau seriously and cringed at what I view as hypocrisy and “do as I say, not as I do.” I was glad to see Neiman address these issues but I still rankled at her wording of “give credit where it’s due… he’s [Rousseau] been called the inventor of childhood itself.” I guess my question is, how does one remain objective (or can one?) when faced with such disparities between the man’s writing/philosophy and how he actually thought and lived his life? Again, I appreciated Neiman’s thoughts on that, but I personally found it hard to get past.
ReplyDelete2. I wish Neiman had elaborated on what Rousseau might have meant in his thinking that “love between men and women could be the cornerstone on which a decent society might be founded” and “instead of religion, Emile is prepared to find his salvation in love.” (p. 66) Is it because, as the author says, “erotic love, at its best, dissolves the tension between human desires?” or because love is one of the purest emotions? But even if it’s the purest, it’s also one of the most complicated. I thought the mention of that was interesting, but would have liked to learn a bit more about Rousseau’s thoughts—how we can build a decent society based on love?
1. I'm with you. I've struggled to appreciate the philosophical genius not only of Rousseau, but of so many others whose thought represents a genuine contribution to human enlightenment but whose actual lives are shocking in their distance from the ideals their expositors defended (Heidegger and Nietzsche, for instance). This is a real test of our maturity, isn't it? To recognize both the actual and the ideal, and to give up on neither?
Delete2. I've been thinking a lot about love lately, not just in the erotic sense but more broadly in the way Cornel West talks about it (I've been re-reading "Race Matters" and "Democracy Matters")... “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public... I have tried to be a man of letters in love with ideas in order to be a wiser and more loving person, hoping to leave the world just a little better than I found it.” West spoke of this is the lamented, languishing Stone: "Power Is Everywhere, but Love Is Supreme"...
IN The Stone...
Delete"I’m pretty Augustinian about love, just as I am about power. Which means that you can have love of power, love of pleasure, love of honor, love of king, love of queen, love of nation, love of race, all of which can be deeply reactionary forces. So any time you talk about love, you’ve got to be very clear about what your objects are. If you love the truth, it is qualitatively different from all of those.
Love of beauty is that love that has to have a universality. It’s grounded in a particular tradition, but it has to have a universality, a scope beyond the individual — the family, the clan, the tribe, the nation. And of course, given the ecological crisis, it’s got to be beyond even the human, in some sense.
So the love that I’m talking about is usually a love that leads toward crucifixion. I mean, this is what Jesus understood — that if you’re really loving, in the deepest, broadest sense, one, your capacity is always inadequate, so you’re always needing growth, maturation and development.
But the other, narrow love, usually has the power to snuff you out. Augustine was fundamentally right — if you’re going to love, why not have the broadest, deepest, self-emptying kind of love that embraces everybody?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/opinion/cornel-west-power-love.html
Do you feel fully empowered to "choose your life's journey"? If not, what obstacles prevent that? p. 37
ReplyDeleteI would say that I feel “partially,” or even “mostly” empowered to choose my life’s journey, but I wouldn’t say “fully.” I think a lot about how behind I feel when choosing what I want my life to be like. I daresay that most of us don’t really know what we want to be when we grow up until we ARE practically grown up, and even then, some of us are prone to changing our minds frequently. Any level of empowerment that I do have has only developed as I quickly approach middle-age and sometimes it feels like I’ve wasted many years just trying to figure things out. Yet, I recognize that I’m also ahead due to my privilege of being born a white person into a stable and loving home with no major health issues, with access to an education that I took full advantage of, and absent any sort of abuse or trauma as a child. So maybe I’m breaking even?
I recognize that the obstacles that prevent me from being able to say that I feel fully empowered, are mostly self-imposed. My indecisive nature for one, that causes a hesitation to committing fully to just one life’s journey—there are so many paths to choose from and I don’t want to miss anything—I truly hope reincarnation is a thing. Fear and a sense of overwhelm also hinder me from having that fully empowered feeling. Fear of time running out and second-guessing decisions come to mind. It’s a double-edged sword that empowerment comes with age, but with age comes less time to be empowered. “The fact that human beings begin potentially endless journeys that are arbitrarily cut short, that we are endowed with abilities to undertake projects – be they loves or works – that cannot be fulfilled in one lifetime, can seem the most monstrous cosmic joke.” Indeed.
"sometimes it feels like I’ve wasted many years just trying to figure things out" - I think this is a pretty common, if not universal, feeling. I certainly spent more than my share of time in the wilderness, finally figuring out what I wanted to do when I grew up. I try to remember, especially when thinking of my children, that the time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. Not entirely, anyway. We all have time enough to die, as the old song says.
DeleteI was looking ahead yesterday in Neiman, to the passage where she mentions the 75 year-old who's "still engaged in becoming the person he wanted to be, and his life was full of meaning that he hadn't found before"... That's who I hope still to be, a decade hence. The thought of ever finally figuring it all out, with no more questions to ask or meanings to discover, is actually kind of depressing.
I don't know about reincarnation, but I do agree with the spirit of Thoreau's remark when he left Walden: "I left the woods for the same reason I went. I had more lives to live..."
As for the cosmic joke, I choose not to see it as monstrous but as (at most) tragi-comic. I always sign off my courses with a favorite New Yorker cartoon: "The end is near," announces an apocalyptic sign-holder. "Yes," says another, "but what are your goals?" That's the attitude I want to take with me at the end.
“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”
DeleteAnd then: "Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star." Which to me means that although my personal projects must conclude, there is still more life to be lived by others of my kind.
Or as Wm James asked rhetorically, nearing his own personal end: "What has concluded, that we may conclude in regard to it?"
My two questions from Why Grow Up?: What is Enlightenment?
ReplyDelete1. Do what our parents do really influence the number of choices we are able to make in our life? (pg. 37)
2. Why should we turn to the Enlightenment and further, how do we become committed to Enlightenment in order to understand the world and improve it. (pg. 51)
2. I think Neiman answers this one succinctly and well. There really is no better option for us, to improve our world, than to exercise critical intelligence and the fundamental principles of scientific inquiry and self-correction. Science is imperfect, as Carl Sagan said, but it's still our best tool.
DeleteHow do we become committed to wanting to understand the world in order to improve it? I guess that strikes me as a pre-Enlightenment question. Living in the modern world as we do, it seems to me we're reflexively and collectively committed to that project already. I don't understand the mindset of those who say they're not. I know there are such people, nihilists and cynics and misanthropes, but they're outliers, out of step with the zeitgeist. Aren't they?
1. Do what our parents do really influence the number of choices we are able to make in our life? (pg. 37)
DeleteWhen I first read this question, I thought "They made choices for me when I was young, but now I am making my own choices." As I thought more about this, though, the more I realized how incorrect I am. Many or all aspects of my life are the results of choices my parents made in the past.
I live in Tennessee because my parents moved us here. I came to MTSU because it was close to home, and also affordable for both me and my family. I am dedicated to my education because I enjoy it, but also from the heavy influence of my family.
The path I am on in life is based on what I have experienced. All of the experiences occurred because of decisions that were made by my parents when I was young. They may not be directly making decisions for me now, but each decision is influenced by those past decisions.
1. Not so much as in Kant's time, when it was practically unheard-of for "the son of a barely-literate saddle maker" to become a professor... But MTSU continues to graduate countless first-generation students, something we remark on because it's still relatively unusual for the children of non-collegians to receive degrees. Socioeconomic legacies do generally still circumscribe a young person's anticipated latitude of achievement. But of course there have always been ambitious persons who strove to achieve more than their forebears. In the modern "First World," as Neiman notes, it is really and ironically only a small elite (like the British Royals) who are literally deprived of choices. And Prince Harry and Meghan have lately challenged that.
ReplyDeleteI would say that even enlightened parents can constrain their children's perception of educational and vocational possibility, through the attitudes they express etc. My own parents were entirely supportive of my decision to study philosophy, for instance, but I've heard from many students who wanted to do that but had been strongly discouraged by parents.
Questions from Why Grow Up?
ReplyDeleteWhat is Enlightenment?
1. Throughout this section, the comparison of the relationship between the government and constituents is compared to that of parents and toddlers. Governments prefer "passive subjects to active citizens." In today's society, it seems as though people are more active and willing to speak out against or in support of the government.
What part does technology play in this modern relationship? Is technology the main reason people are now more active in society? If we were not able to obtain the large amounts of information from technology, would our society be as active in politics or would it be more similar to the pre-technology times?
2. Rousseau argued that children should be raised "apart from society." Many parents are eager to have their children be involved in the society with hopes of becoming more educated. Would children raised apart from society be considered 'weird' or 'strange' in today's time?
3. "If you restrict information, people will eventually long for it; if you provide them with a glut they will simply want the noise to stop."
How is this statement applicable to today's media? How often does the media restrict the information we are receiving? Are they providing too much information? False information?
1. I'm not sure people are generally more engaged and informed. Clearly there are vocal partisans, frequently ill-informed and full of irrational conspiracy-minded fervor, whose presence is impossible to miss. But I think we're still a society of relatively-silent majoritarians. Technology can either exacerbate what's bad about that, or fix what's broken. Which way will we go?
Delete2. Rousseau meant "apart" in the free-thinking and exploratory sense, I think, with a greater degree of self-direction in their education... but he didn't propose literal sequestering. We're in society now, there's no ultimate place "apart"...
3. To me it's not a question of information being restricted, but of it not being judiciously analyzed and reflected upon by most of the voices we encounter in "media"... which no longer just means professional journalists. We're going to have to be responsible for separating credible from "fake" and not count on media authorities to do that entirely for us.
DeleteDo you "make a regular appointment with your body"? (pg.42)
ReplyDeleteKant experienced two events that allowed him to depart from his routine and daily walk. "This routine makes for easy snickering" (Neiman, pg. 42). If we do not make the time, we can neglect our bodies in the long run.
Personally, I do make appointments with my body regularly. This is something that have started within the past month. I go to the gym every night, and it something that I look forward to! I noticed that I was stressed most of the time and needed an outlet. Along with this, I have made it a daily habit and have noticed differences in my body and diet. Even if you are unable to go to the gym, you can even just make it a habit to walk around your neighborhood. In the long run, you will see the positive affects in your life.