This article was shared by my IIUM debating friends and is a must read. Too many excerpts to quote:
“This is why young kids are like little sociopaths. They cannot conceive of anything in life beyond what is immediately pleasurable or painful for them at any given moment. They cannot feel empathy. They cannot imagine what life is like in your shoes. They just want some fucking ice cream. NOW!”
and
“When you achieve adulthood. You realize that viewing some relationships and pursuits as transactions guts them of all joy and meaning. That living in a world where everything is bargained for enslaves you to other people’s thoughts and desires rather than freeing you to pursue your own. To stand on your own two feet, you must be willing to sometimes stand alone.”
The diagram of growing up
“Modern democracy was basically invented under the assumption that the average human being is a selfish delusional piece of shit. The belief went that the only way to protect us from ourselves is to create systems so interlocking and interdependent that no one person or group can completely hose the rest of the population at any given time.”
and
“To an adolescent, the way they feel about themselves is determined by how well they’re able to bargain with the world. And if they fail to bargain with the world, then they will blame themselves. For this reason, the adolescent is scared to death of rejection or failure. To them, to fail or be rejected is a sort of death because everything they want from the world — all meaning, all purpose — will be denied them.”
and
“It’s this willingness to die that leads to adulthood. Adulthood occurs when one realizes that the only way to conquer suffering is to become unmoved by suffering. Adulthood occurs when one realizes that it’s better to suffer for the right reasons than to feel pleasure for the wrong reasons. Adulthood occurs when one realizes that it’s better to love and lose than to never love at all.”
By this definition, I’m an adolescent.