Thread: What Does It Mean to be 'Mature'?

A little essay I wrote a while back. I am an atheist, therefore, I base my evidence off - for the lack of a better phrase - atheist principles. I am not saying atheism is correct and religion is wrong, I am merely using what I believe to be the default state of a human, atheism. But I digress. Please if you have dissenting opinions, i would love to hear them and get different perspectives.


When exactly does a child become an adult? People - from laymen to psychologists - have tried for years to place precisely where. Presently, it is trendy among psychologists to claim, likely out of some self-loathing, to claim that mental adulthood is not achieved until somewhere around age thirty. However, there is a problem here that is present in most psychological claims of such an authoritative nature - it attempts to work for most, if not all people yet has no arbitrary, universal conditions.


What, then, can a person do to truly define a transition that must happen to all people at some point in their life? The change must be defined in some concrete sense, by some event which also must occur universally. There are three key points in the lives of human beings universal for all - birth, puberty, and death. Birth defines a being, puberty defines physical adulthood, and death defines adulthood.


The bringing down of death from an abstract to an actual, personal concept is the true marker of psychological adulthood in humans. A child has no concept of mortality; its brain, at an early stage, is simply not inclined to processing the stark reality of death. A child goes through life knowing only experiences - physical or emotional, pleasurable or painful. All of these fall within the realm of life, regardless of what value the child places upon it. A child may lose a beloved family member or pet, but they see that as their own personal loss; they contemplate what it means for them to not be able to see that pet or person again, but cannot (or perhaps are unconsciously unwilling) to realize the concept of death. This loss is merely another experience, the finality of death still eludes them internally. This is the blissful ignorance of youth and the only time that the human is truly an existential being - during childhood, when the only thing that can be fathomed by the mind is life in all its “implacable grandeur”, the human being can live the world unfiltered and without regret.


The transition to adulthood and the willingness to think about death in-depth comes with the expansion of one’s knowledge, though it is not immediate. A child will be educated about the history of the world, be taught of countless wars, know that even great and powerful emperors such as Caesar die - are murdered, even - and yet the concept of death still eludes the child in full. It remains an abstract, something that happens and has happened to people - but never is the child taught to think about what death means for the future.


The concept of death in the future is what ultimately does in the human being. It is common to throw around the idea of an inverse relationship between knowledge and happiness; but all knowledge-derived pessimism is a footnote to one sole realization: that you are going to die. From this point on, knowledge tends to accumulate and happiness tends to decrease; but the lurking cause is ignored in favor of the idea of demonizing knowledge. Knowledge was never the enemy as a child. The cause is this: the realization and personal consideration of mortality mark the apex of a person’s life. From there, all attempts to overcome this cannot bring a person to the same level of happiness which they achieved so effortlessly during their youth.


However, considering death does not happen immediately applying the concept of death to oneself. This too requires much delving. It is one thing for a person to gain enough to realize that he or she is going to die - humans have brainpower enough to realize fairly early that what happens invariably to other people will happen to them as well. However, because growing up alive has desensitized people to death (something often improperly credited to TV or video games), applying the same concept to ourselves is superficial. Our dog may die, never to be seen again, and we may be sad, but death always happens to external beings. One can cope with death as long as one is alive, because death does not affect us in a sense greater than emotion. Applying death to ourselves when death is defined in this manner is superficial and can be glossed over to get on with life.


The apex comes at the point when the human being not only considers death for oneself, but takes death from the abstract concept and considers the material applications of it to the self. This may be prompted by something as psychologically basic as seen a traumatic image, recalling a painful death from years before and applying current knowledge to it - the possible psychological triggers are endless and range from the most basic to the most complex one can imagine. The cause is unimportant - the result is key.


The child (who may be very young or a bit aged but is usually in adolescence) makes an attempt to understand what happens after death, only to find that they hit a mental wall created by the inability of humans to understand what “nothingness” or “nonexistence” is. These exist as words and abstracts in our language, but the child will try in vain to apply human knowledge - all derived from experiences and relations between experiences - to the concept of nothingness, something which cannot even be classified as “something”. It is the absence of all things human, all things living, all things knowable - it is not a thing, and in a world of things, this is impossible to understand. This inability to understand - a demerit to the structure of the human brain - is the most frightening thing of all.


To come from an environment based entirely on positive and negative experiences and to try and rationalize the concept of nothingness in order to accept it - this is the impossible task with which each human being is faced. Because of its inherent impossibility, the end becomes looming, a spectre underlying all subsequent actions. Some succeed in ignoring it, at least for a period of time. Others commit suicide to haste their progression into the nothingness. A final group accepts their condition in a manner not unlike Orwell’s doublethink - they know their fate but push on anyhow. Common in each of these three principal reactions is one thing: the realization that all of life is a distraction.


Assuming that all people must realize the concept of death some point in their life because of any society’s constant exposure to it, and assuming also that all human brains are incapable of fathoming something independent of experiences and the antithesis of life, any stability must come from avoiding the displeasure caused by thinking of one’s own mortality, a crippling effort which leaves one either in tears or desperate anger banging at the base of the infinitely-high mental wall. A person who realizes his or her ultimate fate comes face-to-face with what Camus termed the “absurdity” of the world and of life within its confines. All things seem ridiculous when compared with death: the endless, soap-operatic political games fought between opposing parties in the name of the people, the effort and time put into placing certain utensils in certain places according to established codes of table-setting; everything from the most mundane activity to those of the great importance are sand-castles to be washed away by the inevitable tide of death.


No stability can exist with a society full of people who are constantly experiencing the deep, woeful pangs the heart feels when it considers these things; the world needs distractions in order to keep from falling into chaos - people who realize that all ethical systems are moot, even for the purposes of mutual happiness, aren’t known for being considerate of others. National bromides emerge in the form of politics and sports, but more interesting are the personal bromides and the illogical rationalizations of death that each individual makes.


My writing this is a distraction - between getting my ideas expressed adequately and checking my grammar and wondering what anyone who reads this might say, I have more than enough to think about for my free hours this morning between classes - also times which I will be focusing on my work, not death. I often get overtaken by knowledge of my own mortality at night, just before I sleep. I think about the pure, unadulterated wall that separates me from understanding nothing - but even thinking about death and trying to rationalize it is one step removed from actually feeling the empty, hopeless pangs of knowledge. I can tell myself that all a person can do is pursue hedonism. I can call myself an existentialist and live for the day at hand; but all that, even philosophy, even that which is most dear to me is just a distraction from the fact that my philosophy will one day be taken from me when my cognition has not only failed - but ceases to exist. I can tell myself that I accept that I am employing doublethink - but considering doublethink is, again, removed from considering the truth.


It goes back to a survival instinct, really; hence why everyone realizes this and so few commit suicide, even among atheists: our biological drive to propagate demands distraction in the face of hopelessness, so we pursue religion or hedonism in order to sustain ourselves and our species as a whole. Humanity is genetically programmed with the capacity for knowledge which will lead us down one of the three principal paths in order to fulfill our other genetic drives: attempts at ignorance, suicide, or outright hypocrisy.

Hi Doofy

An interesting read, and well written too. It has me recalling the time I started thinking about death, or rather what happens afterwards. I just became so frightened of missing out on so much stuff, but then again I guess it's fair to acknowledge that we also miss out on so much stuff that happened before our time.

Your theory isn't one I necessarily agree with. For me the transition into adulthood was a gradual process, marked over time by the increase of responsibility in and over one's life. My best friend of ten years died when I was twenty-five, yet that did nothing to advance my maturity or further my journey towards adulthood. I think the two concepts, adulthood and maturity, whilst close in their relationship, are not necessarily intrinsically linked. You can be one without being the other. In my experience one learns to show maturity at appropriate times, and they become more and more frequent as we get older. My biggest step into adulthood was becoming a dad, and yet at the same time being a dad allows us to show a great deal of immaturity at certain times.

And looking at your low number of posts I'll add a 'hello' and a 'welcome to the forums.' Enjoy your time on here.

Scott.

On a personal level I could but won't take issue with you on the matter of when a person becomes mature.

What I will however question is your assumption there is nothing after death.

Oh, and I'm not too sure about this, either:

One can cope with death as long as one is alive

Are you saying one cannot cope with death once one is dead?

Given that xO no longer bills himself as the official curmudgeon, I'll try to fill that position today.

My first problem is your idea that there are 'principles of atheism'. There are no principles of atheism. And the default state of the human being is believer. The evidence for that is overwhelming.

My second problem is wordiness. Your essay, excluding the introduction, is 16 hundred words. In looking at what each paragraph says, roughly three out of four words can be discarded without losing any meaning. The tightening up would make the points stand out, rather than being buried in an effusion of phrases which add nothing.

Your central thesis, that we become mature when we finally recognise our own mortality, is one I would question. I was 63 years old before I realised that I could die, that, indeed, one day I would die. I had spent a big part of my life in a risky occupation and been damaged a few times as a result, but 'dying' was what happened to other people. Then my appendix burst, I was rushed to Belize City where, after surgery, the doctor told me how close I had come to never waking up again. That had an effect that all the near misses of jungle firefights had not had. 'You mean, me? Die?' But the effect was not as you describe.

So did I become 'mature' at age 63? In the sense of recognising, personally, the truth of death, yes. But in other ways, no. I was a responsible adult many years before that, a university graduate, a good income earner, a responsible husband and father, and a skilled craftsman with words and pictures. So perhaps you need to begin by better defining what you mean by 'mature'. And refining your ideas of how individuals faces their own mortality.

You show promise as an essayist, though you need to learn the two words I learnt at my grandfather's knee - 'precise' and 'concise'. Say exactly what you mean, and say it with the fewest and simplest words possible. If you would like a detailed exegetical study of your essay, I will be happy to supply that, though it would take a few days to prepare.

Presently, it is trendy among psychologists to claim, likely out of some self-loathing, to claim that mental adulthood is not achieved until somewhere around age thirty.

That's actually correct. Research brain development. Of course, some people are damaged or fail to learn to use it, but that's another essay.

A little essay I wrote a while back. I am an atheist, therefore, I base my evidence off - for the lack of a better phrase - atheist principles. I am not saying atheism is correct and religion is wrong, I am merely using what I believe to be the default state of a human, atheism.

That would be why people all over the world invented gods?

Originally Posted by Rustgold

That's actually correct. Research brain development. Of course, some people are damaged or fail to learn to use it, but that's another essay.


That would be why people all over the world invented gods?

...and others found Him?

Originally Posted by The Backward OX

Are you saying one cannot cope with death once one is dead?

Well like I said, it is based on my atheistic beliefs. When you are dead, your essence ceases to exist simply because at that point, you don't exist. Scientifically, you cannot even prove that the world still exists after you die. But that is my belief. And to garza, thank you for your intensive feedback. I do agree that this essay is wordy and i don't believe there are atheist principles. I hate using that phrase but i could find no other way to describe it. Well, this may seem hypocritical almost, but i am only still 17. Oh a 17 year old writing an essay about being mature? Yeah right! I have experienced a mere fraction of life and this is the way i interpret life at this point. But that is why i wish to hear other opinions to better shape my overall view of things. I am learning everyday. But aren't we all?

Doofy - At 17 your learning is just beginning, but from the looks of it you are off to a good start. I'm 71 and have to remind myself daily that if I don't keep learning my brain will dry up and role out my ear like a dried pea.

Let me give you this warning. In about two years, say around age 19 or 20, you will wake up one day and realise you already know all you need to know and you are so-o-o much smarter than the old people around you - the ones over 30. Ignore this feeling. It will pass.

Keep writing. Remember the two key words, precise and concise. Add this: Good writing should be clean, clear, simple, direct, and strong. Read Hemingway, Rowling, and Tolkien to see how 'clear and simple' can also be sophisticated and complex.