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Adulthood, Age, and Modernity

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There was a really good, but increasingly off-topic discussion on the feminism thread about what it means to be an adult so I decided to start a new thread.

 

Many of you correctly pointed out that adulthood is kind of a bogus construct. I would add it's a very awkward one insofar as it is largely defined by what it is not: you aren't a young person anymore, but you aren't elderly either. The article that sparked the discussion talked about what being an adult meant decades ago, and how that definition has eroded over time. Some of you rejected the ideals that structure our ideas about what an adult is. I don't believe I'm in your camp.

 

I think despite whatever problems, contradictions, and hypocrisies might exist within the category of adulthood, I also think there are ideas perhaps worth salvaging. For example, adulthood implies the capacity for reinvention of the self. You were one thing before, and now you are something else. Everyone that goes away to college gets their first taste of this, for example. When no one knows who you are, and you don't have the historical baggage of who your family is. Similarly, it also implies the capacity for autonomy. One of the problematic things about sexism and racism is how it tries to deprive individuals of autonomy. So a racist calls a black man "boy", men refer to "girls" instead of women, etc. Who gets treated as an adult becomes a political issue. Obviously this is also why the idea of an adult becomes a problem. Thorny issues.

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I haven't been reading the feminism-thread so this point of view may have already been discussed:

 

Seems like since none of us are actually autonomous (we are completely dependent on civilization), adulthood would just mean "the age suitable for labor". 

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I was recently startled to find that, contrary to what my feelings tell me, I am in fact very different now, in my early thirties, than I was in my early twenties. I was confronted with people of the latter age, and found them so demandingly, physically present, enthusiastically vapid, that I suddenly realized I might have become older than I used to be.

 

But an adult? No, never.

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One of those markers I find interesting is how people have represented children through eras. Victorian era paintings have children proportioned like small adults. 

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I feel so aged just by the past year really, compared to how I felt in college. I've spent the past year mostly unemployed, trying to do freelance work and sort out a way to live with my girlfriend so we don't have to be long distance any more. Towards the end I was also working an internship so it was tough juggling work and moving like so many juggling balls... Two I suppose.

 

The point is, I think life situation is the defining feature of how mature or adult you are, because you can either match up to the demands that life is throwing at you or flub things and make a mess. I've done both this past year, and it definitely feels shitty to flail instead of managing it all.

 

I also think that liking dumb things is a totally separate issue, because the Thumbs make dumb jokes all the time, but that doesn't mean they can devote a large segment of an episode to a frank discussion of serious issues in the industry. Being silly and acting immature isn't what makes someone irresponsibly immature, it's the lack of mature response to your responsibilities that does.

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I think trying to say "This is what adulthood looks like" is a bit thorny. Reinvention of self can happen any time in life (through necessity or choice) and autonomy is a weird consideration since there are kids that get thrown out of the house or just have absent parents/parents they have to take care of. I've met my share of teenagers who fit your adult qualities. They've reinvented themselves and are completely autonomous, but they're just homeless kids. Not adults. On the flip side, there are people who are incapable of reinventing themselves or being autonomous -- they might have a disease, mental or physical, that acts as a barrier to these things. That doesn't make them any less adult.

 

Adulthood is like obscenity for me -- I'll know it when I see it.

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I read about half of the linked article before it annoyed me so much I had to close it. I did check some of the comments first and they pretty much confirmed what was bothering me so much. The article writer was somehow trying to link popular TV shows and feminism to showing how adult development has become stagnant, but many comments seemed to link this hiccup in development more to the death of job stability, the decreasing value of the average workers' wages, and student loan debt. All of these link to this preparation that people in the United States should become this centuries old idea of someone who is well educated and then brings home the bacon for decades on end. Routine and the complacency with it is adulthood to me. Except no one can get a fucking routine anymore because of all of this economic turmoil. To act like TV characters has really had some kind of impression on who we are is silly to me.

 

Also the article in question was starting to rant about how women are the majority voice of singers today, except it's silly because all of these major feminist singers we idolize are all still record label puppets. The people who write their lyrics, music, direct their music video, organize their tours, do their art direction are all predominantly men and mostly the same men. I don't know why we have to look at the disgusting top 40 Clearchannel deals as some kind of change for the better. You really just have the same 4 or 5 producers or writers holding credits on that list "competing" against themselves.

 

Just seems like the article is written from the perspective of someone who is really comfortable and only frame of reference in life is what is immediately on the radio or cable TV. Annoying.

 

I'll submit more than anything being needed at a work place and being able to provide to a family is what makes you feel like an adult, not that you go home in the evening and watch F-Troop on TV when men were men.

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I don't disagree with your breakdown there, but the author is a professional Film/TV critic, so attempting to use that as a lens makes sense (though I agree it is ultimately a flawed way to look at it and ignores a ton of factors). 

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Yeah, I agree that you raise important points about economic and other factors transforming how we think about adulthood. However I disagree that looking at things like representations in books, films, TV, music, games, etc. is a flawed way of trying to understand these sorts of transformations because I do think these mediums do reveal something about the worldview of the people making them. In other words, these narratives don't control how we think about these concepts, but they do act as a mirror that let us see these concepts plainly. That's why we talk about things like sexist representations in games right? The issue isn't that the games are making people more sexist, but that they reflect sexist views that we've inherited from our culture.

 

I think the Victorian era is a really fascinating example of a massive transformation in how people understood family, gender, and the different between adult and children. This was in large part because of the impact the industrial revolution was having, but we're able to comprehend that change thanks to representations in novels and other forms of entertainment (poetry, popular song, theater, etc.).

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I don't think the article is saying culture created the current crisis in adult; it's just the product of all the economic factors you've listed.

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The biggest change in myself that makes me feel adult is that these days I'll occasionally do shit I don't feel like just because it needs doing.

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We also discussed that Slate article here. I said:

 

 

I just skimmed that article too, and she does say that adults should embarrassed reading YA fiction, but specifically the "realistic fiction":

 

Quote

 


These are the books, like The Fault in Our Stars, that are about real teens doing real things, and that rise and fall not only on the strength of their stories but, theoretically, on the quality of their writing. These are the books that could plausibly be said to be replacing literary fiction in the lives of their adult readers. And that’s a shame.

 

So she's not referring to Hunger Games, Harry Potter etc., and I guess the point is that these are books written for teens about the experience of being a teen in a didactic, exploratory manner that shouldn't be of worth to the average adult.

 

I still think that article that Chris tweeted last time we had this discussion, about how adults should be ashamed to read HP on a plane or whatever, was bullshit, though.

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I don't disagree with your breakdown there, but the author is a professional Film/TV critic, so attempting to use that as a lens makes sense (though I agree it is ultimately a flawed way to look at it and ignores a ton of factors). 

Oh... I suppose that would make more sense.

 

 In other words, these narratives don't control how we think about these concepts, but they do act as a mirror that let us see these concepts plainly. That's why we talk about things like sexist representations in games right? The issue isn't that the games are making people more sexist, but that they reflect sexist views that we've inherited from our culture.

I don't know, I think if they do reflect how we as a nation see these concepts, then they are only disproportionately reflecting the feelings of a certain demographic, much how I feel video games are. Besides Clearchannel radiowave trash which is supposed to be the most progressive of them all, a lot of the shows listed require a cable package, and an HBO package to boot which I feel like reflects a life of a privileged white male who had parents who did well. These things are less expensive now, but watching all of these movies either in theatres or rentals through the 90s and early 2000s was also an expensive feat. I mean they used to need proof that you paid your utility bill at least twice recently to get a Blockbuster card.

 

I would also surmise that this popularity in young adult fiction, mostly the fantasy kind, is both a combination of a need for escapism and a failed public school system where your quality of education is dependent on the amount of property taxes taken from the houses around you. There is a certain reading level needed to crack open even Huckleberry Finn. No joke, even in my high school if you weren't in what they called K Level classes, you were watching the movie versions of Scarlet Letter, Tale of Two Cities, or Hamlet.

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I would also surmise that this popularity in young adult fiction, mostly the fantasy kind, is both a combination of a need for escapism and a failed public school system where your quality of education is dependent on the amount of property taxes taken from the houses around you. There is a certain reading level needed to crack open even Huckleberry Finn. No joke, even in my high school if you weren't in what they called K Level classes, you were watching the movie versions of Scarlet Letter, Tale of Two Cities, or Hamlet.

 

I know very well-educated people whose fiction intake is almost entirely YA, so the quality of education has nothing to do with whether you appreciate YA or not.

 

I don't think reading YA is a big deal, especially if you look at some of the sci-fi and fantasy that people have no problem with adults reading. From what I've read, Harry Potter and the Hunger Games have more to say about the human condition than the Dresden Files, but no one says that people reading the Dresden Files are uneducated for reading it. Forgotten Realms books don't use symbolism nearly as well as His Dark Materials, but no reasonable person is going to say you're a moron for having read them. There are a ton of YA novels with writing of higher quality than Robert Jordan produced, but no one is going around saying that if you read the Wheel of Time series, it's because you weren't taught how to appreciate good writing in grade school. That kind of elitism doesn't do anyone any good. People just like what they like.

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Which is why I said it's both escapism and quality of education. Just because you know people who are well educated doesn't mean my opinion of the matter doesn't count.

 

But really, this whole conversation is just, "What I think," so there's no way to conclusively say anything.

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I think, also, YA fiction seems to be more willing to tackle ethics and morality, because they operate on a more surface level where they can safely marginalise the complications. We live in a society that ethics is vastly more complicated, in part because we don't treat harmful acts as either the sign of unfixable moral decay or as unfixable mental decay, and in trying to express the complexity of that position, adult fiction (and adult works) often punt on discussing the philosophy of the situation.

 

We also have a goddamn lot more stories than we used to, and they're more complicated than they used to be. Many historical stories operate on the level of young adult fiction, but use allusions and references that were pop culture at the time but require education to grasp these days. We enjoy stories because they reinforce the culture of the tribe in ways that make sense to our brains, and they stretch what the tribe sees as possible. (Cue Neil Gaiman's quote about fairy tales telling us not just that dragons exist, but that they can be beaten.) There's a common thread through many successful civilizations that they start to tell stories about characters who use their brains to get what they want, and while their clever plans don't always work out, they pretty much always work against the strong, mighty character. People like stories about good and evil that have a clear moral stance, and it doesn't have to be brilliant.

 

I wonder what the appeal of young adult fiction would be if ethics was taught in primary school. Most likely the books would just get more sophisticated.

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my observations on being an adult at 20 are:

 

1) it is super hard

 

2) other adults still like to treat me like a child regardless of my responsibility's or maturity.

 

3) ugh

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my observations on being an adult at 20 are:

 

1) it is super hard

 

2) other adults still like to treat me like a child regardless of my responsibility's or maturity.

 

3) ugh

 

In 10 years, you will be shocked to realize how much of a literal baby you were at age 20. I am not casting aspersions on your maturity or comportment. I'm saying in a decade you will look back and stare at your past self agape.

 

I wonder if there's a point in growing older where people many years your junior still seem to be contemporaries or adults to you.

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So I went to a friend's housewarming party last night, and late in the evening I was chatting with a gentlemen I'd just met that night.  Something came up that referenced his age, and I realized that we were the exact same age.  Up until that moment, I had assumed he was 5-10 years older than I was.  I was suddenly curious how people see me, if I'm perceived as being an "adult" in the same way that I was perceiving this guy to be an adult because I thought he was older than I am. 

 

Funnily enough, the A.O. Scott article also came up at this party (many of the people there are current or relatively recently finished grad students, so the concept of adulthood is kind of on their mind). 

 

I don't think I've ever really felt like my age, usually I feel much younger and less mature, less adult, than my age would indicate.  Part of that is also that most of the people I hang out with a significantly younger than me, since a big part of our social circle either works or is in school at a university, there are always new young people coming into the larger group of friends. 

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The Slate article isn't saying some YA is bad while adult genre fiction is good; it's arguing that any fiction that prizes storytelling over introspection is not useful. Fiction is uniquely good at providing that kind of insight to its readers. YA is good at introducing that concept to younger people who just lack life experience, but once you've lived a few years, it's better to read fiction that takes a more complicated look at those issues.

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I too was at a house-warming last night, and knew no one except the person who was moving in, a long-term very good friend of mine. The others there were all people from her work who I did not know at all. I got along well with everyone, but was constantly asked why I'd only had one drink, and the explanation that I had to drive home and go to bed at a reasonable hour because I'd finally got my sleep schedule right and didn't want to fuck it up again was baffling to people. These people were all in my age range (I'm 26. I'd say the party was all in the mid-twenties range.) but as they all worked at the same coffee shop, did not worry so much about getting a full night's sleep and so were baffled by how much importance I placed on this. I went home when everyone else was drunk enough that I could slip out quietly.

 

I feel like I'm in a weird middle-spot with regards to adulthood. I have two circles of friends, both the same age, who are vastly different. I did not get much outside funding for my academics, so paid for school through working full-time or close to it in customer service for the duration of my two degrees. The people I met at these places (movie theatres and coffee shops) I have remained friends with and still all very much act like "young adults". The people I went to high school with and stuck with for a board game night are also great friends, but due to being the kind of people who can succeed in academia without having to worry too much about it, are now talking about buying property and career things. This means that on Monday at games night I'm talking about things that are shockingly grown-up (mhm. Yes. Insurance, wot? Property values. mhm.), while on Friday I get a phone call to go act like an idiot kid and will enjoy doing so. I've started to feel like I'm too adult for one group of friends and not adult enough for the other. As a teacher, having the summer months off means that I get into all sorts of dumb situations with the young-minded crowd as well. Those are the months when I have an embarrassment of time, and so am free to be young.

 

And that's what it comes down to for me: I'm an adult when I need to worry about how I use my time. I don't have to do that two months of the year, so I'm not an adult during the summer. Having seen what other teachers (up to and including those who are nearly at retirement) get up to during the summers, I don't know that I ever will be. September through June, I am an adult because of how much I need to budget my time, but in that budget I keep maybe a night or two a month when I can be young in order to not lose ties with those who facilitate my acting stupid during the summer. During the summer, I don't give a shit about my schedule and can do whatever, so I become young again.

 

And yeah, GraysonEvans and Badfinger, it doesn't even take 10 years. I was already looking back at my 20 year old self at 25 and thinking "Man, I honestly did think I was a grown up then, didn't I? I was fucking DUMB." and will now nostalgically look back on that time period with friends by saying things like "Man, remember when the most difficult thing in your life was that your manager at your mindless retail job was kind of a dick? That was awesome." Not to say it's not hard when you're going through it, or that you're wrong to feel accomplished for getting as far as you have. You should be legitimately proud of these things. The problem is that life continues to get more complicated until (I am desperately hoping) you are able to settle into a rhythm in a career and start using that stability to bring the rest of your life in order. Having hit a point where I am now able to peek into the world of adults who have their shit together and know that five years ago they were what I am now, I'm starting to feel like I can make it, but I know that I've still got a while to go before I'm there. I feel like I'll be able to claim stability when I'm about 30, and know that I'm incredibly privileged to be able to do even that. Further, given trends in life, I'm also sure that when I'm 30 I'll be looking back at present-day me and thinking "Shit, I was naive." 

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I hope that there's some kind of cut-off on that, and that I don't look back on my whole life when clinging onto my final years and think 'WHAT A MORON'.

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I always think I'm dumb and have never grown up so I win.

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The Slate article isn't saying some YA is bad while adult genre fiction is good; it's arguing that any fiction that prizes storytelling over introspection is not useful. Fiction is uniquely good at providing that kind of insight to its readers. YA is good at introducing that concept to younger people who just lack life experience, but once you've lived a few years, it's better to read fiction that takes a more complicated look at those issues.

 

I'd strongly disagree with the idea that fiction is uniquely good at providing introspection. I've gotten so, so much more out of non-fiction when it comes to stunning ideas that challenge how I see the world; I read fiction for the stories precisely because there's better options if I want my brain stretched. I think wanting stories is just fine, there's value in storytelling.

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