Why Grow Up is a book written by Susan Neiman she talks about how we grow up and what she thinks we need to do as we grow up. She starts the book off with what is enlightenment and says that you are committed to enlightenment if you are committed to understanding the world. She says that philosophy’s greatest task is to point out the range of possibilities to us. Some of the main point throughout the book she talks about is how she thinks that when we are young it is the best time to learn things like music and languages. She also mentions that one of the best ways to understand where you came from and appreciate it is by traveling. When she says travel, she is not just talking about going somewhere for a quick vacation. She means that you need to move there and immerse yourself in the culture of the place you travel to. In this blog post the main thing that I will focus on is her last chapter of the book. In this chapter I will reflect on what she says in the book and brings up some new thing in reference to Kant and some other ideas.
In the last chapter of this book, she talks about how we are fed these mixed messages. She says “We’re besieged by mixed messages. Half of them urge us to get serious, stop dreaming and accept the world as it is, promoting the picture of adulthood as capitulation to the status quo. The other half blast us with products and suggestions that are meant to keep us young.” (Page 180 WGU). I think that this is very true especially in today’s world of social media. I think that kids today are fed these images of twenty-to-thirty-year-old as influencers, so they want to be like them. We can see this by where these little kids shop. A few months ago there were stories about how ten-year old were shopping a make-up store like Sephora. We can also see this in the way that these make-up shops are selling all these anti-aging and anti-wrinkling creams and serums trying to sell to the older people to “keep them young”.
She also says in this chapter that maturity cannot be commanded it must be desired. She says that we can offer persuasion for maturity by presenting models that are more compelling than the ones we now know. I think that this is very true, and that maturity cannot be commanded from someone. I have an older brother and sometimes when I am with his friends, I wish I could just teach them how to be mature but unfortunately, I cannot. I think that some ways to show people persuasion to be mature would be to show them where you can go in life with maturity.
Something Neiman says is that Kant believed that philosophy was not just for a privileged few but something that was the very nature of reason itself, so it is natural for all of us to think about it. He said there was three questions that philosophy is an attempt to wrestle. These questions are: what can I know? What should I do? What may I hope? He goes on to say that they can be reduced to what is a human being. I think that the first three questions are a good way to look at philosophy but not that they all condense down to what is a human being. I think that these three questions are something that everyone should ask themselves at one point and time during their life.
Neiman talks about Neurath’s boat. She talks about how “as your judgment improves, so will your ability to learn, travel and work in ways that minimize the pitfalls we saw. And that the more you learn where you can, travel freely, find work you cherish, the better your judgment will be.” She goes on to say that ideally, we can develop good judgment from either watching good judgment and copying it or watching bad judgment and doing the opposite of it. I think that these things are true, and I have personally been able to gain better judgment form watching others.
Neiman says that people between the ages of 18 and 30 are constantly being told that these are the best years of your life. But then goes on to say that in fact those years are the often the hardest years. I think that is especially true in today’s world. The hardest years that most people will have will have been their 18s to 30s. I think this because in today’s world the amount of money you must make compared to how much you need to live is crazy. Just the gap for how much a house is to how much you make is absurd. I think that these years are the hardest right now because of all the financial stress you are put through these years. This is from college to owning a house to maybe even trying to start a family.
Susian Neiman answers her question why grow up in this last chapter by saying “The short answer is: because its’ harder than you think, so hard that it can amount to resistance. The forces that shape our world are no more interested in real grown-ups than they were in Kant’s day, for children make more compliant subjects (and consumers.) in pointing this out Kant was careful to point out the ways in which we collude in our own immaturity: thinking for yourself is less comfortable than letting someone do it for you.” I think that this is a great way of answering this question and that the world doesn’t really care about you other than as a consumer so you should try and do the most with is no matter what anyone says.
In conclusion this book tries to give answers to the question “Why grow up?”. It does this by giving what it looks like to grow up then untimely answers the question of why grow up. I think that this book was a great read and would recommend it to anyone who is struggling with growing up or what it looks like to grow up. I like how she ties in Kant’s philosophy to this chapter more because I think it helps answer these questions she brings up.
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