It must feel like a power move -- to say "I refuse to grow up" is also to say "I can get away with not growing up." That sort of refusal is what a lot of pop culture and advertising has always held up, and now we're realizing how that stance always winds up in pure reaction eventually
This gave me a lot to reflect on. As a young millennial/ old gen Z, I have been long troubled by the imposition to turn everything toward advancement. There is an idea that you need to develop your Human Capital to a certain level and you will be let in to the good adulthood. If that hasn't shown up yet, you will of course stay the adolescent that you are and also remain anxiously hustling. The reality is that your success is more a result of chance and your starting position than anything you can control. Even if young people don't recognize this mandate explicitly, I believe that it operates on us under the surface and makes the decision to remain adolescent an explainable, "rational" one. If your choice is between staying an adolescent or growing up (accepting an adult life at the bottom of the socio-economic strata) then it makes a kind of sense to remain adolescent. You get to maintain the fantasy that you are still developing your Human Capital and that your day will come. You also get to keep having fun and not having responsibilities.
There is fear at the bottom of all of this. Fear of being one of society's losers. We know what happens to the "left behind" Americans and it's not good.
This is a very insightful comment. The material aspect of "growing up" is extremely important. Thinking about this more I'm realizing that it forms one of the unspoken assumptions of my piece--since it's a given that we are consigned to economic precarity and bummer paycheck jobs that can keep us feeling like we're in the just-out-of-college stage of our careers well into our 30s or later, how do we grow up in the meantime? It's exactly as you say, if you explicitly make yourself a continuing work in progress then it's never definitive that you've climbed as high as you can.
It must feel like a power move -- to say "I refuse to grow up" is also to say "I can get away with not growing up." That sort of refusal is what a lot of pop culture and advertising has always held up, and now we're realizing how that stance always winds up in pure reaction eventually
Really enjoyed this. Struggling to put into words why reading is so important to me and you've gone ahead and done it
This gave me a lot to reflect on. As a young millennial/ old gen Z, I have been long troubled by the imposition to turn everything toward advancement. There is an idea that you need to develop your Human Capital to a certain level and you will be let in to the good adulthood. If that hasn't shown up yet, you will of course stay the adolescent that you are and also remain anxiously hustling. The reality is that your success is more a result of chance and your starting position than anything you can control. Even if young people don't recognize this mandate explicitly, I believe that it operates on us under the surface and makes the decision to remain adolescent an explainable, "rational" one. If your choice is between staying an adolescent or growing up (accepting an adult life at the bottom of the socio-economic strata) then it makes a kind of sense to remain adolescent. You get to maintain the fantasy that you are still developing your Human Capital and that your day will come. You also get to keep having fun and not having responsibilities.
There is fear at the bottom of all of this. Fear of being one of society's losers. We know what happens to the "left behind" Americans and it's not good.
This is a very insightful comment. The material aspect of "growing up" is extremely important. Thinking about this more I'm realizing that it forms one of the unspoken assumptions of my piece--since it's a given that we are consigned to economic precarity and bummer paycheck jobs that can keep us feeling like we're in the just-out-of-college stage of our careers well into our 30s or later, how do we grow up in the meantime? It's exactly as you say, if you explicitly make yourself a continuing work in progress then it's never definitive that you've climbed as high as you can.
Great piece
Hey thanks so much