Science nerds keep us from growing up

The experts are at it again, but in this case I tend to agree with the findings. The findings suggest that western peoples are becoming increasingly immature and that is because societies value "whiz-kids" and encourage us to remain mentally childlike in order to do our jobs.

So says a British a psychiatry professor. Dr. Bruce Charlton of the University of Newcastle says that we stay in school longer than our parents, and far longer than our grandparents. At a later time we bound from job-to-job rather than settling into a career. Consequently, we are costant adapting to new roles, new technologies, new homes and new friends. That is, those who are mature enough to actually find a home of their own, rather than bunking with Mom and Pop until they are damn near fifty.

All these trends force us to avoid growing up, Charlton says. "In a psychological sense, some contemporary individuals never actually become adults," he continues. "Whiz-kids dominate mainstream culture."

Using scientists as an illustration, Charlton suggests that outside their labs or classrooms they sometimes tend to overreact, fail to understand non-scientific topics, or just seem a bit goofy. In other words, Charlton is suggesting The Nutty Professor is not really such an exaggeration.

A character like Gil Grissom on CSI exemplifies this perfectly, in my esteem. Brilliant mind, brilliant at his task, and an utter failure as a grown-up human being. He has no real friendships, and is like a schoolboy when faced with any opportunity towards a sexual relationship, and speaks in tiresome aphorisms rather than engage in genuine conversation with another human being. His counterpart, Sara, is even more juvenile. She is a middle-aged woman who pouts like a schoolgirl when things don't go her way. She has even fewer adult social skills. It's never been made clear whether we are to respect these people for anything other than their lab skills. On the other hand, dear old Lennie on Law&Order was a full-fledged grown-up.

Charlton goes on to say that humans have always had initiations that marked the point where we reached adulthood. Until recently, people finished school, they got jobs, married, and had their first babies at about the same age as all other young adults had their first babies.

No more. Among educated people, marriage and child-bearing are often spread out over two decades. Furthermore, we increasingly obsess about youth, and he cites that we consider the highest praise we can give an older adult is that he or she is so youthful (youthfulness being seen as a virtue) rather than being venerable and wise, having acquired the sagacity of genuine adulthood.

I was speaking to a female acquaintance the other day; somebody I'd known since she was a teen, and hadn't seen in quite a while. She told me she had just become a grandmother. "How can that be?" I said. "You're a lovely young woman. Grandmothers wear shawls and smell of lavender. At least my grandmother did." She laughed.

But, it is true. We encouraged childishness to persist. An employment organization in my community, of which I was once a director had a special youth-oriented job seeking and training category, open to young people between the ages of 16 and, wait for it -- 29! Twenty-nine isn't youth! I would have been mortified to have been considered a youth at 29. At 26 I was English department chair at a large high school. In that I wasn't an anomaly. I owned a home at 30, and had already been married and earning my own living for years and years.

I'm not saying that makes me better, but it did make me, at least in some respects, an adult and wanting to do adult things. The thought of living with my parents at that age would have chilled my blood. Would have chilled theirs even more.

We had a basic rule at my house. Once you had education sufficient to be able to keep yourself, then "don't hit yourself on the ass on the way out the door."