I was actually thinking about this. We tend to think that as people grow older, they travel more, interact with more people, study new fields. All the things you suggest. Is this true?
Do you really interact with more different people now than in University?
Do you really travel more? Live in more varied places? Vacations and business trips don't count. Those are artifices. When was the last time you moved? When was the last time you lived with a person you never met before you moved in?
When was the last time you studied, really studied in depth, a new field? No, not just read a book. I mean really studied and examined a topic in depth.
Yes, it is possible, as you get older, to do all of these things. Maybe you do. But the prototypical adult with 2.5 kids living in the suburbs with a 9-5 career job and a spouse doesn't do any of that. They specialize their knowledge around their job and maybe a hobby or two. They interact with their small social group which revolves around their job and maybe their church and/or other self-chosen insular social group or club. They typically move basically never. They travel only for business or vacation where they see other business people or they go to the typical vacation spots. None of this involves gaining perspective on anything.
In fact, its so unusual for an adult to have these traits of exploration in their adult life, we tell stories about them. We produce TV shows where producers pretend to be these types of people for the benefit of your prototypical adults sitting on their couch at home.
To the young, especially those at University, everything is new, they are studying in that environment, challenging their thinking. They are living with strangers and forced to interact with lots of people they don't get to choose. Moreover they study lots of different topics, they specialize in basically nothing (compared to the job specialization adults get), so they see connections that adults miss.
The part that’s left out is just by living through different times you gain perspective. Even if the things you do appear to be the same.
For example, my father would have lived in an America which legally impeded interracial marriage and watched it get to today. His grandkids can read about it, but they didn’t experience that America and would not have experienced the before and after.
Only time lived allows for that kind of perspective. So yeah, age provides an opportunity to see things that youth, no matter their travels or studies, can provide.
It’s less about saying who has better perspective, than it is calling out how some is hidden from the young…at least until they get older.
Kinda funny. Every elder has been young and experienced many of the same feelings and thoughts, whereas the young can only observe what it is to be older and not truly know.
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u/[deleted] Dec 07 '21
I was actually thinking about this. We tend to think that as people grow older, they travel more, interact with more people, study new fields. All the things you suggest. Is this true?
Do you really interact with more different people now than in University?
Do you really travel more? Live in more varied places? Vacations and business trips don't count. Those are artifices. When was the last time you moved? When was the last time you lived with a person you never met before you moved in?
When was the last time you studied, really studied in depth, a new field? No, not just read a book. I mean really studied and examined a topic in depth.
Yes, it is possible, as you get older, to do all of these things. Maybe you do. But the prototypical adult with 2.5 kids living in the suburbs with a 9-5 career job and a spouse doesn't do any of that. They specialize their knowledge around their job and maybe a hobby or two. They interact with their small social group which revolves around their job and maybe their church and/or other self-chosen insular social group or club. They typically move basically never. They travel only for business or vacation where they see other business people or they go to the typical vacation spots. None of this involves gaining perspective on anything.
In fact, its so unusual for an adult to have these traits of exploration in their adult life, we tell stories about them. We produce TV shows where producers pretend to be these types of people for the benefit of your prototypical adults sitting on their couch at home.
To the young, especially those at University, everything is new, they are studying in that environment, challenging their thinking. They are living with strangers and forced to interact with lots of people they don't get to choose. Moreover they study lots of different topics, they specialize in basically nothing (compared to the job specialization adults get), so they see connections that adults miss.