Socially when you become self sufficient and are able to take care of adult things like finances and housing and transportation on your own. Sometime that is before or after the legally defined cutoff, but for most people it is fairly close. Yes, even people who live at home and go to college can be adults if they are able to do common adult things on their own without requiring their parents or other adults to do it for them.
Being curious and empathetic for example has absolutely nothing to do with age or adulthood, because those are behaviors that many adults have. Especially the ones who go into science, or teaching, or research, or medical professions, or anything that tends to have life long learning as part of the process.
That’s a very strange line… but in that context I don’t think what we’re saying is very far apart
I say “there are no adults” because no one knows what is going on. Everyone is improvising, no one has all the answers
But people often put on the trappings of an adult. They tell you they understand the world and are in control. And that’s not a bad thing. But sometimes they wear it so hard they convince themselves
The people that convince themselves, those are the people who have stopped growing. They have decided what the world is and how it works, they think they know what is going on… But they don’t. No one does. They’ve just stopped changing. They don’t challenge their beliefs, they become fixed in place relative to society
There are no adults. There are people who can fill the social role of an adult while still changing, and then there’s people who believe they already understand everything
Socially when you become self sufficient and are able to take care of adult things like finances and housing and transportation on your own. Sometime that is before or after the legally defined cutoff, but for most people it is fairly close. Yes, even people who live at home and go to college can be adults if they are able to do common adult things on their own without requiring their parents or other adults to do it for them.
Being curious and empathetic for example has absolutely nothing to do with age or adulthood, because those are behaviors that many adults have. Especially the ones who go into science, or teaching, or research, or medical professions, or anything that tends to have life long learning as part of the process.
That’s a very strange line… but in that context I don’t think what we’re saying is very far apart
I say “there are no adults” because no one knows what is going on. Everyone is improvising, no one has all the answers
But people often put on the trappings of an adult. They tell you they understand the world and are in control. And that’s not a bad thing. But sometimes they wear it so hard they convince themselves
The people that convince themselves, those are the people who have stopped growing. They have decided what the world is and how it works, they think they know what is going on… But they don’t. No one does. They’ve just stopped changing. They don’t challenge their beliefs, they become fixed in place relative to society
There are no adults. There are people who can fill the social role of an adult while still changing, and then there’s people who believe they already understand everything