Immaturity

I read an interesting article today at the discovery channel web site (http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/06/23/immature_hum.html?category=human&guid=20060623110030). Some professor claims that many people do not achieve emotional maturity. The reasons given include the worship of youth culture and, more interestingly, the needs and challenges of the western culture.

His argument goes along the lines that people must maintain the flexibility of attitude and ability to learn of youth well into physical maturity thus locking in these behaviours. The major cause is prolonged education and job shuffling. While these are good things he asserts that the negative baggage of immaturity are also carried forward: short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness.

Does this explain the jingoism and lowest common denominator that our politicians have sunk into? The shift from a time when we wanted the smartest most able leaders to one that uses nice simple words and smile a lot? Is this the reason for the rise in fundamentalist religion? Does our immaturity make us more prone to wanting to believe in fantasy and pre-occupation with immediate gratification?

So many questions. I suspect the answer to all of the above in no. While I agree that many of the well educated people I know exhibit child like emotional development (probably greater than the average population) they also tend to be the group that is most alarmed by the direction that our society is taking.

‘What about you’ I hear you ask. Yes I’ll admit to all the symptoms of having to maintain my need to learn and be flexible. While I fantasise about living some ritualistic ‘wake up and milk the cows everyday’ type existence I know that after a few weeks I would be going out of my brain with boredom. And yes I love new, I can be sullen and yes I hate being told what to do.

So it is an interesting observation but I don’t think I am any wiser with this knowledge. So there poo poo professor man!