Adults at 18? 21? Really?
No doubt everyone knows, a few things in life have a minimum age limit to which you can indulge yourselves in. This includes driving and alcohol, but this minimum age limit, almost equivalent to the age of adulthood, is not very consistent amongst different countries. Inconsistencies make the classification of adults, at least from the government-legal perspective, doubtful in validity. The question popped into my head from a distantly related topic in a conversation with a friend of mine about generation gap between freshers and seniors. People of the an older generation always seem to be able to tell the inexperience of younger generations and neutrally comment them as immature. This phrase has frequently come from my mom. The situation is similar to the senior I am now; being able to feel differences in their thought processes and perspectives as “immature” - not exactly an apt adjective. So what makes us an adult, as it sounds like a word with a vague meaning to me so far. I will define an adult as someone that have the capacity to be independent and act within a boundary of acceptable moral and logical standards. (the last part is still pretty damn vague) This can only be achieved through learning via experiences and adaptation, an unquantifiable process we call maturity.
I remember a friend telling me something to which I had no reply. He said society does not really give you a choice if you want be in a society or not. There is no such thing as liberty in that sort of thing. It sounds kind of a “loner” or slightly “emo” to say, but even if humans are social animals by generalisation, it does not mean that one wants to be a responsible individual within that society by deduction. Many people have ask why not when I present the question to them, but that is beside the point, because the argument here is about the inexistent choice. So, when you reach 18, you are accountable for all your actions. I wondered who reached the consensus of 18 to be the age you become legal. Is it because that’s the approximate age, which the majority of people come out of high school and is believe to have enough moral education to behave like an adult. Then you have a problem with education, does everyone take in what is taught, does everyone attend every single class or to say even go to school. Even in the developed countries, the filmed evidence of teenagers stealing in the recent riots of the UK does not suggest moral education is even close to saturating in a 1st world country! So why do people suggest that 18 is the “coming of age”, a time when one transits into adulthood, even if you take it out of context from the legal system where things need to be exact.
Depending on experiences, one might be more mature than another. This suggests that maturation occurs at different rates, although the measurement of it will prove an impossibility. The time to reach adulthood will therefore vary, I would say some might not even reach it for their whole lives. I believe this is why chavs and NEDs came into the British vocabulary, if you consider it away from the derogatory connotations. The education and experiences simply too different between individuals. Perhaps if we look at this from scientific point of view, the human brain does not stop developing until the age of 27. One of my classmates smartly asked the question, why do people not classify that age as the legal age for things such as alcohol and make a intermediate classification between 18-27 something different. You tell me, because our lecturer didn’t know.
Back to the freshers I met this year. I would say like me they all expected themselves to be independent from now on, a false perception. This is merely proven by the fact that you do not pay for your own education. It is either your parents who does or for Scots, that means you don’t pay taxes thanks to SAAS. Secondly, they all probably thought I have become more mature after transiting through the summer holidays between the end of high school and university. You may reject this notion, but subconsciously there is going to be at least a small degree of it in your head, because I’m guilty of it. The more I got to know these people, the more I realized how well protected they were. They were all new to an environment with an expectation absolutely different from reality is. At least they are eager and keen. The concentration of their thoughts lies in the immediate or near future, but never the extended future. For god’s sake, its only been 14 years of educational misery.
The didactic comments of a mentor, whether this is your parents or someone else, about the fact that anything you do now and later will shape your path drastically does not seem to cross anyone’s mind. Things they find funny are also “childish”, just like the the thing you recall yourself laughing about when you were 6. A comment of “you’re stupid” would have sufficed. I agree that I am probably no means an adult in the eyes of people older than me, but I cannot realise what I lack in maturity, I just know its there. Everyone is ignorant in this sense, but some are more than others. So when you use the argument of “I’m an adult so I can…..” you’re really making yourself look silly.
