The Art of Manliness - #280： Why Growing Up Is a Subversive Act

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast looking around

00:00:19.140 there seems to be a dearth of grown-ups in our culture we put a premium on seeming cool and hip

00:00:24.140 and we'll spend inordinate amounts of money to retain our youthful looks meanwhile being known

00:00:28.900 as mature has become something to avoid entirely as it signifies you become a boring stodgy old 0.91

00:00:34.220 coot as a result we've got a lot of folks in our society who are adults by merit of their

00:00:38.320 chronological age but don't appear or act like grown-ups but what if growing up doesn't mean

00:00:43.400 you have to be boring and lame what if growing up is actually a really rebellious act well that's

00:00:49.300 the argument guest today makes in her latest book her name is susan nieman and she's the author of

00:00:53.240 why grow up subversive thoughts for infantile age today on the show susan i discuss why becoming a

00:00:58.440 grown-up has gotten a bad rap how our culture including smartphones infantilizes us and what

00:01:03.740 the enlightenment thinkers jean-jacques rousseau and emmanuel kant can teach about how to become a

00:01:08.100 grown-up susan then goes on to share ideas of what you can do to feel more like an autonomous adult

00:01:12.620 and why embracing that role is such a subversive thing to do really interesting podcast after the

00:01:18.240 show is over check out the show notes at aom.is slash why grow up where you find links to resources

00:01:23.560 where you delve deeper into this topic susan nieman welcome to the show i'm glad to be here

00:01:36.740 so you wrote a book that i i loved it's really interesting it's a topic that i thought a lot

00:01:41.200 about too um it's called why grow up where you make the case of why people should grow up where

00:01:47.360 you look to enlightened philosophers like rousseau and kant uh to make that case but before we get

00:01:53.060 into those arguments why did you feel like it was necessary to even write a book making a case on

00:01:59.340 why adults or why people should grow up because grown-ups get such a terrible rap um you know

00:02:07.460 the standard view in our culture and and not just american culture it's um certainly in western europe

00:02:13.840 uh pretty much the same is it growing up as a matter of giving up of resigning yourself

00:02:20.060 to uh the world as it is of um losing your dreams your hopes your passions your uh ideals and uh

00:02:32.460 it's a pretty depressing prospect the interesting thing is when i wrote the book i mean you never

00:02:38.680 really know who you're writing for um but if i imagined a reader it was somebody sort of in their

00:02:46.580 late 40s who felt they had to adjust to the idea that their life was basically over

00:02:51.780 and a lot of those people have have liked the book but um i've gotten some of the nicest

00:02:58.140 responses and reviews from people under 30 who have said number one um thank heavens somebody is

00:03:08.700 telling us that uh this is not the best time of my life you know sort of this we have this idea that

00:03:14.840 the time between i don't know 20 and 30 or 18 and 28 is supposed to be the high point of your life

00:03:20.720 and anybody who's over that uh over those years i have yet to meet a single person who would like

00:03:29.440 to repeat them and there's empirical evidence as well that there's no way in which this is the

00:03:35.200 happiest time of one's life but people uh are told that and i can certainly remember in my 20s

00:03:42.620 um feeling that first of all this was not true of me but i would keep hearing oh enjoy the best years

00:03:49.800 of your life and then i would think not only uh you know am i struggling with figuring out who i am and

00:03:57.220 what my strengths are and weaknesses and what i want to do um but i'm also not enjoying the best years

00:04:05.140 of my life you know so it was this kind of thing that you beat yourself with but uh so i i met a lot

00:04:11.560 of people in their 20s who have said thank you for saying this is not the best part of uh my life

00:04:17.440 and that i have something to look forward to that's why i read the book yeah and but besides this

00:04:23.560 narrative that growing up is terrible um and just not fun and you have nothing to look forward to

00:04:29.700 except you know slowly sliding into the grave um you also argue that our modern culture in a lot of

00:04:35.520 ways infantilizes us so it makes it hard to grow so can you explain that how how does modern culture

00:04:41.880 make us makes it makes it hard to grow up sure um let me um just back up a step before i answer that

00:04:48.540 which is um to say look so why if um nobody i have met would like to repeat their 20s i mean you can

00:05:00.240 sometimes say if i knew what i knew now uh you know but uh but we don't so the the condition would

00:05:05.840 be repeat them just the way they are uh they were actually um full of doubt full of um anxiety full of

00:05:16.300 i don't know who i am and um i don't know if i'm going to be able to meet the demands that life places

00:05:21.740 on me i don't know if i'm allowed to make a mistake um there's the view that sort of every decision

00:05:27.980 you make in your 20s is going to be absolutely faithful and you can't turn around so the question

00:05:32.860 is you have all this empirical evidence against the idea that growing up is a long that that the

00:05:40.060 your 20s are the happiest best times of your life um and you have empirical evidence that people

00:05:46.260 actually get happier as they get older so the question is why are we fed this particular view and

00:05:52.540 we're fed it all the time from all the media um and i think it's in order to convince people

00:06:00.840 that they shouldn't expect very much from their lives and they certainly shouldn't demand it so i

00:06:06.580 think in in a complicated way it's a political claim the view that growing up it you know basically

00:06:12.040 sucks um right so then the question so how does the culture infantilize itself um just at the

00:06:22.140 moment you're catching me i normally live in berlin germany but you're catching me in mississippi 0.54

00:06:27.220 where i'm uh taking a sabbatical and working on a new book and uh maybe you're completely used to

00:06:34.560 this everywhere uh in the states but i was just shocked yesterday when i went to get gas um and uh i

00:06:43.560 there was a screen at the gas pump uh i don't know is that something common in now in uh in the states

00:06:51.820 i mean there is no minute of your life when there is not a screen to distract you so so what is the

00:06:59.580 distraction doing okay why of course you can say well um on a micro level um it's uh it's providing

00:07:10.120 advertising and selling products and making money but uh on a micro on a macro level it's making sure that

00:07:18.960 we never have a moment in which we can actually reflect on what's going on and i in in the book i

00:07:27.840 talk about uh what we do with with babies so i raised three kids um and uh you know that if a baby

00:07:37.400 grabs something that it's not supposed to have you left the scissors somewhere or you know whatever

00:07:42.760 um a little baby just needs to be distracted i mean there are two choices okay there and there

00:07:49.100 are authoritarian parents who will hit a baby still uh who grab something they're not supposed to have

00:07:54.640 or that might do them uh damage um but less authoritarian parents of whom i hope most of us

00:08:02.080 are or will grow up to be uh use this other trick which is distracting and with babies it's very easy to

00:08:08.940 distract them you you know stick a bunch of keys in their face or a bright ring or something oh they

00:08:14.720 forgotten all about what they wanted to have as a child gets older the distraction gets more complicated

00:08:23.440 but it's a huge form of manipulation i mean you know it's carrots and sticks and and um if you're

00:08:32.060 raising children you know that uh you you have to use one or the other so um carrots tend to be

00:08:38.720 better but what we have and now i'm not talking about um raising children who are going to uh you

00:08:48.140 want to prevent from doing themselves harm which is certainly in the first uh years of life that is

00:08:55.840 something you need to do but uh talking about a whole society who dazzles us with insignificant choices

00:09:05.860 you know between uh you know walmart or wherever it is you shop in mississippi there's kind of no avoiding

00:09:15.080 walmart an entire aisle full of toothpaste uh or breakfast cereal and of course if you live in a

00:09:25.120 culture like that uh you get used to it it's very interesting to move back and forth between countries

00:09:31.120 because uh the things that you take for granted if you only stay in one place um become actually

00:09:39.300 something you think about if you get a chance to compare it with other cultures which is why one of

00:09:44.240 the things i i strongly recommend in the book as a part of the process of growing up is traveling not as a

00:09:51.320 tourist preferably working in another culture but in any case um you we don't realize how dazed we are

00:10:01.960 and exhausted by the process of um deciding which toothpaste to buy or which breakfast cereal to buy

00:10:10.280 that by the time we get out of the gigantic supermarket we our brains have kind of had it um

00:10:18.340 and we we are so um drugged basically by trivial choices and by the energy that it takes to make trivial

00:10:32.360 choices that we forget that the really important choices are not in our hands um how the world is run

00:10:40.880 uh how uh you know what uh you know what the government does with our tax money what uh you know our

00:10:51.560 representatives do with uh uh you know basically with our lives i mean i'm i i would avoid at the

00:11:01.880 moment talking about the political situation that we're in at the moment because it is so extraordinary

00:11:08.560 and um really defies um defies kind of normal interpretations when i wrote the book i certainly

00:11:18.200 didn't expect that um the white house would look the way that it looks now so i don't want to talk

00:11:23.440 about um you know partisan political choices but about an entire system which keeps us distracted just

00:11:34.160 in the same way that you would distract a little baby with a keychain right and what's interesting

00:11:39.080 when you talk about like these choices that we have as consumers um the insidious thing about that

00:11:44.040 is it makes us feel like we're in control right um exactly we think oh i'm i'm deciding which

00:11:50.560 toaster to buy or which microwave or which app i'm going to download on my phone but then

00:11:55.760 which car to buy which yeah you know smartphone but yeah distracts you from like the stuff that

00:12:00.780 really really will affect your life on a on a big level exactly and it it it gives us the the

00:12:09.080 appearance of choice in these trivial ways without realizing that actually um you know the important

00:12:18.860 choices are out of our hands so so the funny thing is um when people tell you to grow up

00:12:26.100 what they mean is stop thinking about the big questions like you know why do i don't know the

00:12:34.280 numbers uh right now of how many children die every day of preventable diseases my favorite question

00:12:41.820 at the moment because i don't know how to answer it was asked by malala uh and it wasn't given a lot

00:12:49.080 of press um she won the nobel prize when she argued that women should be uh girls should be 1.00

00:12:57.700 allowed to be educated and she you know her life was threatened and nearly lost for that

00:13:02.240 and that was wonderful but when she used the education that she then got to figure out that you could

00:13:10.580 educate every child on the planet for 12 years on the profits the weapons industry makes in eight days

00:13:20.720 this is an extraordinary figure i checked it with a um major economist he said it was right

00:13:27.840 and um that is a the question why don't we do that um is a question that i don't even know how to

00:13:38.520 begin to answer but the message that we tend to get is to you know as we grow up we should stop

00:13:48.180 thinking about these very large questions about justice and hunger and um you know um who runs the world

00:13:59.240 and why and we should start thinking about grown-up questions namely getting a job and figuring out

00:14:08.020 how we're going to buy a bunch of toys and the toys are of course not described as toys they're

00:14:13.980 described as crucial um you know uh tools for becoming an adult and the truth is unfortunately

00:14:21.320 a smartphone and a computer um are in the world we now live in uh tools for becoming uh an adult in some

00:14:30.380 parts of uh this country certainly where there's no decent public transportation a car is also part of

00:14:36.780 that but you know you get you get it's like a reversal um i think malala's question is a really

00:14:45.040 grown-up question but uh and the question of which smartphone to buy which app to download

00:14:52.760 is a pretty childish question in the end but we are taught this reversal so yeah let's let's talk

00:15:00.920 what do you mean by what do you think it means to grow up so you're you're saying that the common

00:15:04.360 idea of being grown up is okay you got to get a house get a job figure out how to buy this stuff

00:15:11.240 for yourself and for your family so they have a quote-unquote good life um and you're arguing well

00:15:15.860 those are actually pretty trivial um so if that's not what it means to be a grown-up how do you define

00:15:21.300 it well let me step back a second i would not say um you know that providing uh for yourself and

00:15:29.000 your family it is is a trivial question of course it's not you know um those are uh those are sort

00:15:38.840 of crucial for being able to to do a bunch of other things it's just that a lot of people get trapped

00:15:44.180 in the idea of what it means to provide for uh themselves and their families and um it tends to

00:15:51.640 mean you know it it overtakes them uh in ways that uh uh it doesn't need to you know i mean um

00:16:03.180 yeah i have a job i um i raised three kids actually by myself so i was the uh sole provider for them

00:16:11.100 after their uh father died quite early and uh i do know what it means to um you know to have to work

00:16:19.380 hard and put food on the table and a roof over people's heads but um first of all it doesn't

00:16:28.620 need to happen as quickly as it's often uh supposed and secondly there are lots and lots of ways to raise

00:16:38.780 a family and put food on the table so um but let me just say that i think there's one thing and it

00:16:46.680 ties into you know this whole question um one way to summarize what i think it means to grow up

00:16:54.600 and it means keeping one eye on the way the world is and one eye on the way the world should be

00:17:04.420 and unfortunately we're often taught to close that other eye about the way the world should be

00:17:10.080 and only focus on the way the world is and uh it's not necessary it's not good for the world as a

00:17:19.700 whole and it makes for a pretty unhappy life so um you know keep keeping an eye on the way the world is

00:17:27.420 um sure you gotta make a living you gotta figure out how to do that somehow um but uh keeping your eye

00:17:36.320 eye on the way the world should be which involves both um uh your own personal dreams um

00:17:46.880 which i actually think is is perhaps the most crucial part of people's education because you

00:17:54.000 don't really know your own culture until you can see it in the light of another you just take

00:17:59.320 everything for granted until you live somewhere else um or i don't know maybe you want to become a

00:18:07.220 musician maybe you want to you know they're a potter there are a million things that people um keep as

00:18:16.280 their own personal aspiration that may not at all relate to um making a living but there's also

00:18:24.620 being engaged in some form of making the world slightly better than it was when you entered it

00:18:34.680 and i think there's a deep human need to do that it can be through beauty i mean somebody who becomes a

00:18:41.300 you know a wonderful musician is is creating beauty that wasn't there before she uh she got there uh 1.00

00:18:47.680 beautiful uh beautiful ceramics beautiful um art of any kind but um i think moving the world a little

00:19:01.200 bit forward is um part of our sense of what it means to be human and the ways in which our culture

00:19:10.920 infantilizes us is by keeping us passive i mean that's the you know i just saw the pump at the

00:19:19.480 at the uh the the screen at the gas pump last night just this is amazing i'm not supposed to have one

00:19:27.160 thought of my own i'm simply supposed to be taking in somebody else's stuff all the time

00:19:35.080 um and uh that means having a being a receptacle basically for um you know other information um

00:19:44.920 most often false information that's blaring at you so that you have no space to be an active human

00:19:51.340 being to think for yourself and uh that is what i think uh part of being human part of being grown up

00:19:58.660 you see this with children i mean it's interesting um basically as soon as they're able to hold a

00:20:04.220 crayon or or um you know make a mud pie children are making something in the world they're doing 0.89

00:20:13.400 something in the world they want to do it um they they don't simply want to be passively distracted

00:20:20.220 so it sounds like being grown up is a matter of balancing idealism with pragmatism sure with that

00:20:26.460 absolutely yeah yeah okay well so let's get to these enlightenment thinkers that you look to

00:20:31.720 rousseau and kant you argue in the book that coming of age or you know becoming an adult

00:20:36.120 um is a problem of the enlightenment uh why do you why is that why is becoming an adult an

00:20:42.800 enlightenment problem so basically before about the 1750 um there wasn't a lot of choice in your life

00:20:52.060 um what you did with the rest of your life um usually where you lived unless you were fleeing

00:20:58.900 a war or uh a famine uh where you lived and what you did was basically where your parents had lived

00:21:09.360 and uh what they did there just simply wasn't uh uh uh for a whole variety of of historical reasons

00:21:19.200 individual choice did not play much of a role in people's lives okay and suddenly again for complicated

00:21:27.240 reasons that historians uh can can go into certainly around the 1750 the idea that you might determine

00:21:36.020 some of the course of your own life you might do something that your parents hadn't done you might

00:21:43.600 live somewhere uh where your parents hadn't lived you might marry someone who your parents didn't pick

00:21:49.940 out for you um all of that became uh began to be open the interesting thing is we don't realize how much

00:22:00.000 choice we have the if you think about who really doesn't have much choice in their lives uh look at the

00:22:06.360 royal family of england you know i mean prince george is very clear what prince george is going to be when

00:22:13.660 he grow up grows up i'm not saying um that one exactly feels sorry for him he'll be raised to expect that

00:22:20.260 certainly a very luxurious life but it's also a very predetermined life um in you know um as

00:22:29.140 part of uh basically a feudal hierarchy that's been left over from pre-modern times so we have certain

00:22:39.160 choices we don't always uh realize how much choice we have but we do have them since you know the last

00:22:48.160 250 years or so and people began therefore to think about growing up as uh as a task as a question

00:22:56.920 um rather than taking it for granted and the first person to to do that was uh the french uh philosopher

00:23:05.080 and writer jean-jacques rousseau who very much influenced uh the german philosopher emmanuel kant

00:23:12.280 and it's interesting because they were both very different stylistically but what they had in common

00:23:17.420 is that each of them came from basically what you'd call a working class family i mean parents were

00:23:24.980 small artisans um it's not clear how literate if they were literate uh at all they were and the idea

00:23:34.560 that either of those boys would become you know one of the leading lines of western thought was not

00:23:42.080 even something that could be conceptualized by their parents um but that is what happened to them so it's

00:23:48.040 not surprising that both of those uh thinkers wrote about the question they also wrote about it of course

00:23:56.600 because they thought um it was also point in time when you were beginning to think about general education

00:24:06.400 uh there were very very few schools uh during the renaissance and early modern period um people of a

00:24:14.040 certain class got tutored at home people uh who were below that class did not but you were beginning

00:24:21.440 in the 18th century to think that uh it was important to educate boys not girls but um at least to educate

00:24:30.120 boys and uh the question was what kind of influence what what kind of influence does education have

00:24:42.480 on the individual person and how does the individual person then fit into or help create

00:24:52.260 uh a political society you know we take all this for granted in the states but actually um

00:24:58.720 thomas jefferson and benjamin franklin all these people were reading enlightenment philosophy all the time

00:25:04.180 and uh the idea that you had to have educated citizens if you wanted to have a democratic republic

00:25:14.100 is um thomas jefferson wrote a lot about it but it was a new idea at the time we sort of take it for

00:25:22.180 granted we should take it more seriously now because uh i don't think we have a citizenry that's

00:25:32.180 educated in you know picking through the uh mass of information to get the um facts picked out from

00:25:44.100 the alternative facts but um in any case this is an enlightenment idea that that if you want to have

00:25:51.620 i mean it's a progressive enlightenment idea obviously the people who did not want to have a

00:25:57.680 democratic uh republic did not want to educate um the bulk of the population but the people who

00:26:05.360 wanted a democratic republic realized you uh if that's going to work and if people are not going

00:26:13.440 to be fooled by um any narcissistic demagogue who comes their way you need to educate them we're

00:26:24.640 going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors

00:26:27.680 and now back to the show so let's talk about rousseau he wrote this book emile um it was a

00:26:33.620 work of fiction where he takes this kid named emile and sort of raises him and takes him through like

00:26:40.100 what he thought was an ideal education to create um you know an adult um can you kind of summarize i

00:26:47.780 mean what are some of the stuff that rousseau thought that children should be put through um in order

00:26:51.900 to become a grown up sure i mean it's a kind of crazy book it's it's totally unique it is fiction

00:26:58.000 but it's also the first child raising manual that was ever written and it also has some um and it's

00:27:05.260 also philosophy but it's fun to read um which is why people should um take a look at it and it really

00:27:12.220 began uh you know every thought about modern pedagogy so let's say right off that rousseau himself knew

00:27:22.120 that what he was proposing was not practical um and uh he begins by saying uh people are telling me

00:27:32.840 proposed what can be done um that's not human nature and he says we do not know what our nature permits us

00:27:40.860 to be because our nature has been um filtered through particular set of social practices

00:27:49.740 so let us here i'm just going to set out the ideal here and the person who does it best uh who comes

00:27:57.940 closest to that ideal will have done the best so um he also begins the book by saying everything is

00:28:05.200 good as it leaves the hands of the author of nature everything degenerates um in the hands of men

00:28:13.060 that's a pretty strong statement but he wants to reverse that okay i mean i'm i you asked you to talk

00:28:19.680 about i don't agree with everything that rousseau says in that book but it's a terribly important book

00:28:23.700 the idea is um to that children are born natural democrats without ideas of hierarchy

00:28:33.920 they are born uh without ideas of authority they are born intensely curious

00:28:43.840 and one should allow them to figure out what they should learn okay so um rather than forcing kids to

00:28:56.320 and everything we uh think about progressive forms of education all began in rousseau you know

00:29:02.420 hit of course at his uh in his day the you know non-progressive education was worse certainly than it uh

00:29:09.060 than it is now but you know kids were supposed to memorize everything said no follow the child's natural

00:29:15.860 curiosity um he actually thought the child should not learn to read until uh he or she was 12 which is

00:29:24.840 getting pretty old but he thought if you if you don't force the child to do anything except

00:29:31.980 through force of natural necessity um that the child would um would grow up being nobody's master and

00:29:44.680 nobody's slave so as an example um you know if uh if you tell a child uh no you can't have a cookie

00:29:54.100 before dinner i'm not saying we should never do this we sometimes have no choice um the child will react

00:30:01.880 often you know um not happily if you tell the child there are no more cookies left has a very different

00:30:11.300 reaction so for example his uh his punishment if a child misbehaves and breaks the window is not to

00:30:21.120 beat him but to say okay you're gonna have to um sleep in a room in the cold now obviously you know

00:30:30.540 again um not all of his suggestions are are possible or perhaps even right but i think the basic idea of

00:30:39.780 of uh that first of all children want to learn they want to be active they want to um be a part of the

00:30:49.540 world and if you treat them with respect they will usually live up to it is a deeply important idea

00:30:58.760 and how did rousseau's ideas you know influence kant you say they're you know different in their style

00:31:06.260 but uh kant actually borrowed a lot or found a lot of inspiration in rousseau it's one of the um

00:31:13.160 the most famous stories about kant so so kant um uh i mean he had a huge amount to do so he was extremely

00:31:23.420 disciplined and he took an afternoon walk every day after lunch for an hour and he was so regular that

00:31:30.640 they say the the people in town could set their watches by him and there were only two times when

00:31:36.560 he didn't um take his normal afternoon walk um the second was when he heard the news of the french

00:31:43.640 revolution but the first was when he heard when he was reading rousseau and he was so fascinated by it

00:31:49.740 that he forgot to um take his walk what kant learned from rousseau was the idea that if you know and this is

00:32:01.160 still a controversial idea but if people are treated decently and with respect they are not evil they will

00:32:11.000 behave decently and uh with respect towards other people okay so the idea that um basically and and this

00:32:23.260 is the way in which which emile is is also a theological book and it was banned by the way it was

00:32:30.900 banned and burnt in paris when it was written he's basically denying original sin he's saying that no

00:32:38.480 you know what um the evil that we see in people is a result of the way that they have been raised and

00:32:50.100 result of the expectations that they're given and a result of the way that they're treated and if we go

00:32:56.460 back to more natural ways of um raising children and living with them um which means doing without

00:33:05.160 ideas of uh domination and uh humiliation um you will be able to raise good human beings now

00:33:17.940 it's often said and that was for kant incredibly important okay and it's been important for everybody now

00:33:26.120 this idea is often um you know it's often um made fun of so you get you know people like david brooks

00:33:38.460 of the new york times but you know all kinds of people will say things like you know well there are two

00:33:43.240 views of human nature one is hobbes and hobbes says that a life in the state of nature is uh

00:33:52.040 oh gosh a nasty brutish and short solitary poor nasty brutish and short okay basically that um

00:34:00.300 people in the state of nature are uh in a state of war and this is often called the more realistic

00:34:07.660 uh position and rousseau people turn their noses up at rousseau and say um oh well um rousseau

00:34:18.640 believed in the state of nature everybody was kind of you know peace love and sunshine and uh

00:34:25.020 unfortunately that's not the case now rousseau did not have that view at all he simply said people

00:34:30.780 in the state of nature are morally neutral okay and what they have is an innate idea of freedom

00:34:38.660 and of action they don't want to be dominated so that if you raise a child um

00:34:44.980 to be as free as possible um and as undominated as possible you can bring her to a you know to

00:34:57.300 become a moral grown-up okay so it's not that children are uh are naturally good or never um

00:35:07.440 never do brutal things anybody who's watched a you know two-year-old fight over a shovel in a

00:35:13.500 sandbox knows that um and and the real point about the the state of nature is we don't know the

00:35:23.740 question is not settled and there's no way to settle it okay we can't go back there i know the

00:35:30.480 evolutionary psychologists um have a lot of hypotheses but it's all just hypothesis okay they're not you

00:35:39.620 you know you will also get in you know various newspapers popular magazines or whatever people

00:35:45.940 will say well evolutionary theory says that our ancestors um you know were altruistic because

00:35:55.180 they hoped to get a piece of somebody else's pie when if they gave uh a piece of their own

00:36:04.100 we don't know what people were like uh 20 000 years ago we we're clueless and rousseau's insight was

00:36:13.680 to say you know what um the state of nature could have been this way it could have been that way we

00:36:21.120 don't know but we do know that what we assume about human nature will affect what we do and affect

00:36:30.760 how we treat other human beings and what kind of a society we build so let's think about what we'd

00:36:40.220 prefer to build would we prefer to build a society in which people were basically respectful of each

00:36:47.180 other basically free um basically not infantilized not in um uh you know not needing to be dominated in

00:36:57.600 order not to kill each other which is basically hobbes view um if we want to work for a just and

00:37:06.560 democratic society let's assume that people are naturally basically democratic because we don't

00:37:16.040 know either way okay and so yeah that was the whole point of emil is you you uh treated your treated

00:37:21.340 the child as a democratic free individual and uh he learned how to grow into that role uh through

00:37:29.380 that pedagogy okay so um let's talk about brass let's bring it today let's say someone's listening

00:37:38.680 to this they're a lot of our audiences are in their 20s and 30s and i know there's a common complaint

00:37:43.760 amongst people you know in that age like they're officially an adult right they're they have a job

00:37:49.520 um they might live by themselves they have their own place but they still don't feel like feel like

00:37:55.440 an adult um what are what are what are some brass tack things people can do to become a grown-up you

00:38:03.260 mentioned travel is one but what are some other things well first of all they should really think

00:38:08.500 hard about what being a grown-up means um the funny thing is uh when i was writing this book um a couple

00:38:18.460 of friends of mine people in their late 60s i guess 70 71 now uh good friends of mine said what are

00:38:27.560 you working on i said a book called why i grew up that said ew that's an awful subject um and one of

00:38:33.700 them said my hero was always peter pan and i thought this was amazingly funny three different people said

00:38:40.160 this to me and all of them are people who i would think of as fantastic uh fantastically realized

00:38:49.260 grown-ups um two of them are professionally successful one is not all of them are very creative

00:38:56.480 all of them are involved in their communities in some one case very political two cases politically

00:39:04.360 active um all of them um all of them uh all of them have children and grandchildren um but did not

00:39:14.160 raise them in particularly conventional ways all of them speak more than one language uh and you know

00:39:20.600 have lived in more than one place and i thought this is i started with that each of them were a terrific

00:39:26.260 model for me of being a grown-up but they did not want to think of themselves as grown-ups

00:39:32.620 because they thought growing up had such a bad rap so um you know i i would say the first thing to

00:39:40.260 think i mean the first comment is growing up is a process and i'm not sure that it ever makes sense

00:39:47.760 to say one is grown up because in a certain sense that would mean that one has stopped growing um

00:39:54.300 and that's kind of the end so so i'm not sure that being a grown-up is an ideal but the process of

00:40:02.220 growing up is an ideal and uh you know your listeners should just know i've met very few people i've in

00:40:11.640 the process of uh after after writing this book i talked to a bunch of people i gave a bunch of

00:40:17.420 lectures and stuff and um only met a couple who said they would consider themselves to be grown-ups and

00:40:25.700 and and they they weren't the they weren't the people most leading lives that that i would like to

00:40:33.120 lead but um the people who i would consider grown-up didn't feel grown-up in that sense either so i think

00:40:41.980 the first thing you need to do is to um you know re-examine your idea of what it means to be a grown-up

00:40:51.680 because if you think what it means is to give up your hopes of having an interesting and adventurous

00:40:58.740 life to always be on one track to not um do something or other to contribute to a better

00:41:07.980 world and you say well gosh i haven't given everything up yet so i can't be grown up hey guys

00:41:14.580 you don't need to give everything up to be grown up that's great i love that so i mean the books

00:41:19.000 you know why grow up i mean so it's like that's the question um you know and we talked about some

00:41:25.380 of the the voices in our culture that say it's you know growing up is a sucker's game right um

00:41:30.560 because it's boring tds and hard it's like why should people grow up i mean what what is your answer

00:41:35.720 like why what what what do they stand to benefit from growing up okay so i mean first of all you're

00:41:41.760 not going to be able to help growing old okay um and the you know so that's the that's the first part

00:41:51.360 of the question um so you might as well do it well right you might as well do it in a way that's as

00:42:00.280 what should i say as fulfilling as possible as meaningful as possible and doing that

00:42:08.160 actually winds up being subversive and see that's what's really interesting about the peter pan

00:42:16.140 question um i that i that i realized when i was talking to to these friends who said you know

00:42:22.980 i don't feel like a grown-up i always wanted to be peter pan these are not irresponsible people

00:42:28.280 at all these are i mean the person who said that is actually uh uh he's uh he's a very uh significant

00:42:37.880 political activist in israel um you know but so so i i thought it was hilarious that he said

00:42:46.520 his hero is peter pan and i think it's a it's a complicated thought but stay with me for a sec

00:42:56.480 um by painting um by painting growing up as as a sucker's game um i think we're because that is the

00:43:13.720 you know the prevailing view i think we are you know encouraged to stay infantile to stay like peter pan

00:43:23.700 okay okay and of course infantile people are much easier to control than grown-ups so um if you

00:43:34.140 actually realize that the subversive thing to do is not be peter pan not to refuse to grow up but

00:43:41.260 precisely to um become grown up in the sense that i've been talking about the sense of thinking for

00:43:50.500 yourself in the sense of being a free human being who is active in the world um you know then you're

00:43:59.340 you're actually doing something that's uh well it's subversive it's adventurous and if all of us did it

00:44:09.760 it would have important uh political consequences fantastic well susan this has been a great conversation

00:44:16.260 is there some place people can go to learn more about your work sure uh i have a website uh s-u-s-a-n

00:44:23.460 dot n-e-i-m-a-n and you can find reviews of most of my books there some interviews just click around

00:44:34.320 it's it's it's pretty extensive well susan thanks so much for your time it's been an absolute pleasure

00:44:39.080 a pleasure for me too great questions yeah enjoyed being with you my guest it was susan neiman she's the

00:44:44.220 author of the book why grow up subversive thoughts for an infantile age it's available on amazon.com

00:44:48.580 and bookstores everywhere you can also check out susan's website at susan-nieman.de where you can

00:44:56.520 find more of her writing and her work and make sure to check out our show notes at aom.is slash why grow

00:45:02.180 up where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:45:05.280 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:45:17.500 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy this

00:45:21.540 show i would really appreciate if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher that helps us out a lot

00:45:25.300 as always appreciate the community support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay

00:45:29.940 madly

00:45:34.820 manly 0.98

00:45:36.740 you

The Art of Manliness - February 21, 2017

#280： Why Growing Up Is a Subversive Act

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript