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Is it just me, or are 40-year old "adolescents" kind of terrifying?



It would probably be fair to call Henry “aimless.” After he graduated from Harvard, he moved back in with his parents, a boomerang kid straight out of a trend piece about the travails of young adults.

Despite graduating into a recession, Henry managed to land a teaching job, but two weeks in, he decided it wasn’t for him and quit. It took him a while to find his calling—he worked in his father’s pencil factory, as a door-to-door magazine salesman, took on other teaching and tutoring gigs, and even spent a brief stint shoveling manure before finding some success with his true passion: writing.

Henry published his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, when he was 31 years old, after 12 years of changing jobs and bouncing back and forth between his parents’ home, living on his own, and crashing with a buddy, who believed in his potential. “[He] is a scholar & a poet & as full of buds of promise as a young apple tree,” his friend wrote, and eventually was proven right. He may have floundered during young adulthood, but Henry David Thoreau turned out pretty okay. (The buddy he crashed with, for the record, was Ralph Waldo Emerson.)

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/01/when-are-y...


44 year old successful programmer into the latest tech (Elixir/Phoenix) and gamer into the latest games (Overwatch, Fallout, etc.) here. No kids (adds to my "immaturity," I guess), live with a girlfriend. A little offended/saddened at your comment, actually. Tech ageism at its finest, I guess.

You'll eventually figure out that as you age, it's just your body aging mainly. You will continue to learn things and get "wiser," but your personality is immutable data, basically. I first noticed this at my 20-year high school reunion... I grew up without Facebook so this was the first time I had seen many people in 20 years... and I didn't recognize many of them (usually the ones who gained a bunch of weight... note, I did not)... until I looked into their eyes, and/or until they cracked a joke or said something, and then suddenly it was like OMG THAT IS THE SAME EXACT FUNNY PERSON THEY WERE IN HIGH SCHOOL, clear as day.


> A little offended/saddened at your comment, actually. Tech ageism at its finest, I guess.

Think we may be a bit quick to jump on the parent commenter.

If an "adolescent" is someone still financially dependent on their parents, then I think most of us would agree there's something not quite right with that situation at 40-years old.

If it means being a responsible adult (a loaded phrase), but partaking in hobbies we enjoyed back in our teens, then who cares?


You're right, the term requires some clarification perhaps.


Generally tech ageism runs in the other direction.


Tech ageism runs against younger people? Since when is this?


No? It runs against the outward signs of maturity, like looking older, not wanting to stay up all night writing code and playing ping-pong, having a family, and so on.


That's what I was originally suggesting, since the original comment was about older "adolescents" being creepy


You shouldn't be down voted, but you should probably elaborate on your feeling here a bit better.


I meant as a mass phenomenon. For most of history, an 18 year old was a fully grown man, capable of military command, albeit inexperienced.

Now we are mass-infantilizing those men in their most fertile years.

(Rare mavericks we've always had, of course, and a few may turn out enormously 'lucrative', so to speak, for society.)


From immaturity straight to infertility.


The world makes much more sense when you pretend that every person is a child, regardless of how many candles on their cake or wrinkles on their face.


As far as nature of humanity is concerned you pretty much make that argument, we are guided on so many levels by our adolescent evolutionary complexity that shaped us and don't even realize it for the most part. When people understand the collective "we" with all the culture and societal playground and think that means they know themselves it is misguided perception. It easy to think that we are in control, that we know how we would react in particular situations in life because we can project it with our simulation of reality by our mental capacity. In many ways it's an illusion albeit useful one. Self deception is a tool, it's powerful one at that, it allows you train other people to serve your purpose, spread ideas that might benefit the humanity or might benefit your own wealth. That's way we have a choice to be a cult leader or debunk pseudoscience. Our minds are to malleable to external ideas and that makes us a dangerous species capable to start wars, revolutions and tyrannies of the chosen few.


We're not all that bad.


No. I can't imagine how a person living a life with no impact on mine could terrify me.




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