
Adults are Obsolete Children - zvanness
http://blog.headlinr.com/adults-are-obsolete-children
======
memracom
I've always believed that there are no adults. That is the great secret of
life that everyone should learn when they turn 18 or so. There are no adults.
All those kids that you knew through your schooldays, are still around and
still doing the same kind or vicious things that they did way back when. At
least some of them are, the rest move on and realize that since there are no
adults to look after things, it's time to roll up your sleeves and get to
work, making the world better for kids of all ages from 9 to 99.

~~~
mbateman
"Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're
big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look
just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is,
there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world." Neil Gaiman,
_The Ocean at the End of the Lane_

~~~
entendre
I tip my fedora to you sir.

------
jrs99
There can be a lot of creativity and beauty in banking and law. It's just very
specialized that a poet might not see it. The same is true for mathematics. A
poet might not think that mathematical formulas are beautiful and even be
ignorantly unable to find beauty in formulas and then feel superior when he
goes out and finds so much beauty in the sky.

There are plenty of dull poets out there too that are uninspired and
passionless.

~~~
MarkPNeyer
Agreed. Plenty of lawyers work with their hearts and eschew money. Plenty of
research mathematicians are more interested in padding their publication
record than in mathematics itself.

------
bigtunacan
I'm really wishing there was a down vote option on stories right about now.
Passion and a desire for money are not inherent opposites. Bill Gates, Oprah
Winfrey, JK Rowling, and Larry Ellison are all great examples of passionate
people that achieved great wealth and then were able to help way more people
than most of the rest of us can.

This quote from the article is just plain insulting and ignorant, “Then there
are the others. They have no passion and have deep love for money. The most
common example of this is a lawyer or banker.”

There are a multitude of lawyers that are passionate about many things and
offer their services pro bono to support their cause, whatever it may be.

Bankers can advise people to help them prepare for retirement, create budgets,
make sure they are not over paying on taxes, grow the economy and create jobs
by lending to early stage businesses started by people that don’t already have
a silver spoon in their mouth.

At the end of the day people are just people. Some are good, some are bad; I
would like to believe more good than bad. Some are passionate, some are not;
if they are without passion we can not change them.

------
k0mplex
The attack on lawyers and bankers was unfair. At their best, they are serving
others. Service is as important a virtue as any, and it is one that is
learned. Children aren't born servers; they are born takers. Serving others,
deferring to others, is a sign of maturity. There are virtues in maturity,
just as there are in youth. Service, wisdom, patience. These are just as
important as imagination, creativity, craft. All are rays of light, all
manifest them according to their particular inclination. The important thing
is to shine brightly in whatever path one is on.

~~~
BlackDeath3
> Serving others, deferring to others, is a sign of maturity.

Why?

I feel like "maturity" is such a nebulous thing. Like "professionalism", it
seems to function as a proxy for anything that serves the point that the user
is trying to make.

------
lowglow
“The creative adult is the child who has survived.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin

~~~
zvanness
Beautiful quote! :)

------
hawkharris
The author argues against the pursuit of wealth on the grounds that the
pursuers do not help people.

In fact, being rich is the single best way to help people.

Being rich expands your reach as an individual. It allows you to fund
initiatives that revitalize entire communities: building homes, providing
medicine, contributing to science, technology, arts and culture. Bill Gates
has fundamentally changed more people's lives than a million middle-class
volunteers combined.

If your goal is to help people on a large scale _and in a concrete,
measurable_ way, getting rich should be one of your first priorities in life.

~~~
md224
> If your goal is to help people on a large scale and in a concrete,
> measurable way, getting rich should be one of your first priorities in life.

Or... you could also get a job at a non-profit / NGO / etc. Or you could work
on trying to improve government programs so that the social safety net is more
efficient and more effective.

Getting rich and doing philanthropy is certainly one way to raise money, but
there are other ways to improve the world that don't involve immense personal
gain as a first step.

~~~
return0
Managing other people's money (what NGOs/state do) requires that somebody will
pay that money (taxes etc). Those are not interchangeable roles.

~~~
md224
Not sure what you're trying to say. Are you saying that for NGOs/governments
to be effective, everyone needs to focus on getting personally rich to
maximize how much money they can give via donations / taxes?

------
dinkumthinkum
This just seems like self-righteous, pretentious drivel. I'm only being
honest. Who are you to claim what humans do or do not have value? It is very
_childish_ to act is lawyers and bankers have no value. This just makes a
caricature of the world and those "great men" you cite.

------
magice
_sigh_

I once read that Americans over-estimate children and under-estimate age (and
expertise in general). This shows so well.

Can children enjoy food? Music? Play music properly? Pursuit passions?
Spending days glued to a book? Of course, make it a series of books.
Obviously, I just listed the obvious activities. Can children feel the full
depth of betrayal? Full happiness of unexpected return? Full hopelessness in
face of impossible? Full excitement when attaining things once thought
impossible?

Children are stupid, shallow, short-sighted, undeveloped. They know nothing
save the most primitive urges. They do nothing save screaming for help. They
are, in short, very young humans who need growth. They are neither angels nor
saints, but CHILDREN.

Wake up, please, from your disrespect and overly-spoiling of children.

~~~
ANTSANTS
Children are perfectly capable of all of the things you listed, have you
forgotten what it was like to be one? They're certainly naive, less mature,
less self-aware, not as bright, and so on, but they're still _there._ They're
still _people,_ just an earlier form of what they'll grow up to be.

I don't like the "my little Timmy is a one-of-a-kind snowflake _genius!_ "
trend either, but that idea is easily less harmful than the idea that children
are mindless cattle driven purely by their id. If you treat children like
animals, using only external motivation to guide them, don't be surprised when
they act like them. If you actually _talk_ to kids and try to get at their
real interests and motivations, I bet you'd be surprised at what you find.

------
sean-duffy
> The most common example of this is a lawyer or banker. They craft nothing.
> They care not about who they offer their service to but instead care about
> how much money they will make.

You could say this about almost any profession. There are bankers who want to
give people a chance to succeed, and there are inventors and artists driven
solely by profit. To say whether or not a person can "contribute to better the
condition of humanity" on the basis of their job is very short-sighted. If the
only job someone can get is a dull, 9-5 office job, does that suddenly make
them an insignificant person incapable of making a difference?

------
joe_the_user
Children are great for the wide-eyed sense of wonder.

But there's something more than a little puerile in a society that only values
that particular sense of wonder. A five year old might indeed be more valuable
than me today but I suspect that come because he's far more easily directed by
the candy and the fluffy bunnies.

On my Facebook feed, the cleverest quips generally come from those old and
jaundiced enough to have an ample supply of double entendre and know how to
use them. You can see lots of playfulness from the less-than-spritely and
smooth-skinned then.

------
brianmcdonough
If you look too far into the light, you may go blind.

Hard work and iteration is what led to the creation you speak of: the
Automobile, Electricity, Artificial Light.

Children's creativity is, for the most part, aimless and inconsistent. None of
the men you mention were by any stretch of the imagination, childlike, though
Edison could have been following "the light."

Also, including Ford in your theory, for example, someone who used thugs to
break unions with baseball bats, also does not speak to lightness.

Being childlike is great if you aren't interested in making money and want to
spend your life giving your ideas away, but you'll need a lawyer if you want
to make and keep the money from work you've done to make your ideas a reality.

------
indlebe
>"We are loved by everyone. Money is not a factor"

A very nice childhood so many of us have had, but certainly not the reality
for a large chunk of children who grow up hearing exactly the opposite.

General statements like this point out to me how priviledged many of our
childhoods have been.

------
imgabe
Granted, the sense of wonder is important. But to declare that experience is
worthless is just stupid. All of the examples he cites, great entrepreneurs,
engineers, artists, etc. didn't make their contributions when they were 5
years old, they made them as adults (oh, excuse me, obsolete children) after
accumulating years of, guess what, experience.

You need both. Wonder with no experience = Axe Cop. Experience with no wonder
= Enron, etc.

------
return0
There's very little exposure to fear and uncertainty today , compared to the
past. That's why it's possible for adults to be children forever. I doubt
that's a full life experience, though.

------
Florin_Andrei
> _Light that is lost is never found._

That's what I used to think, but it's wrong.

> _Then there are the others. They have no passion and have deep love for
> money. The most common example of this is a lawyer or banker. They craft
> nothing. They care not about who they offer their service to but instead
> care about how much money they will make. Their light is no where to be
> found._

This part, however, is very much true.

------
zvanness
I'm guessing the HN algorithm does not like posts that get more comments than
points.

------
calcsam
Well, those are broad strokes...

------
michaelochurch
First, I don't agree that "the light" never comes back. It is, however,
extremely rare. Usually, it involves a transformation similar to a deep
religious experience that occurs over months (i.e. spending 6 months in an
ashram). But many yuppies who do that sort of thing still learn nothing, so no
guarantees.

Second, creative "light" vs. fear is a false dichotomy.

 _Game of Thrones_ quote time:

    
    
        Bran: Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?
        Ned Stark: That is the only time a man can be brave.
    

What kills creativity is giving in to fear (cowardice) and especially the
daily compromises that don't feel cowardly but are. The problem is not the
emotion (of fear) itself. We _need_ fear. (If nothing else, I'd imagine that
the OP agrees we need to fear mediocrity and creative atrophy.) What we don't
need is to feed the senseless fear and status insecurity that modern society
seems to encourage.

~~~
gertef
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120188/quotes?item=qt0365374](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120188/quotes?item=qt0365374)

    
    
        Archie Gates: You're scared, right?
        Conrad Vig: Maybe.
        Archie Gates: The way it works is, you do the thing you're scared shitless of,
        and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before you do it.
        Conrad Vig: That's a dumbass way to work. It should be the other way around.
        Archie Gates: I know. That's the way it works.

