http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2013/05/what-is-adult.html
http://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2013/09/what-is-adult-part-2.html
Ever since the Valentine's Day school shooting in Parkland, Florida, there has been protest marches by the teenage students from that school for more gun control.
This activism has renewed calls to allow 16-year olds to vote?
But at the same time, gun control want to limit sales of certain type of rifles to people 21 years old or older.
So which is it? We're adults at 16, or adults at 21? That's a 5-year gap!
An article from the left-wing publication TheNation advocates that 16-year olds be allowed to vote, based on the bright insights that teenagers sometimes have on current events
https://www.thenation.com/article/lower-the-voting-age-to-16/
But if someone is old enough to vote, smart enough to vote, mature enough to vote, then it shall stand that the same person is old enough, smart enough and mature enough to...............
- drink alcoholic beverages
- smoke
- join the military and be sent to battle
- buy some rifles
And if a 16-year is considered "adult enough to vote', then..........
- a 16-year old criminal should only be tried as an adult
- a 16-year old criminal should be held in adult prison
- a dead 16-year old shouldn't be called a "dead child"
- a situation where 16-year olds are being killed shouldn't be referred to as "killing children"
Those 4 bullet points (oops, sorry for the wording) will make left-wing activists cringe since they're usually the ones who advocate against trying teenage suspect as adults, putting teenage criminals in adult prison, and they ALWAYS call a case of police/gang/lone-wolf shooting of teenagers as "killing children"
But when teenagers advocate for policies favored by many left-wing "progressives" (ie, gun control), they're all of a sudden not "children" anymore, but adults who deserve the right to vote!
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Being that I'm a wannabe librarian (I've majored in Library & Information Science), I've also noted the section where books published for teenagers is labeled the "Young Adult Section"
Young adults?
15-year olds are "young adults?"
So what would happen if someone my age (37) attempted to have sexual relations with those 15-year old "young adults"?
That would be a statutory offense. The person my age would be arrested and be labeled a "sex offender" who would be banned from anywhere near schools where these so-called "young adults" attend.
You see why I'm not a fan of calling the teenage section of the library as a "young adult section".
As far as I'm concerned, Young Adults are people who just finished high school, the stereotypical age of college undergraduates.
(note that I said "stereotypical age", a 35 year old who finally started college would definitely NOT be a "young adult")
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And back to that TheNation article that I mentioned earlier, there was this quote that made roll my eyes
Noting that high-school students have “far better BS detectors” than adults, constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe asked as the young people from Florida opened up the gun debate,“Wouldn’t it be great if the voting age were lowered to 16?”
Wait, what? Teenagers have “far better BS detectors” than adults?
I'm sorry, but get real! Even the most intellectually gifted teens are unprepared for the mind-games of con artists, pimps, cult leaders, and other shady characters who view them as "fresh meat".
Every teenager wants to promote a "street-smart" image of themselves. Nobody wants to be seen as the naive, gullible fool. But there's ALWAYS someone who can outsmart you and con you. If they can't outsmart you one way, they'll outsmart you another way.
Even adults have trouble with that. Anyone who is emotionally vulnerable (that includes teenagers who proclaim themselves "sophisticated", "street smart" and "hardcore") can be manipulated by those who tell them what they want to hear. Those who claim to have "better BS detectors" are about to learn a hard lesson about their bragging when they're in unsupervised situations at college, signing contracts, and more.
I definitely wouldn't claim to be immune from manipulative people, as you can learn from my situation at this blog post
And a blog post about other people who claimed that they're immune from being taken advantage just because they're "tough" and "street smart"
This is not to say teenagers don't have valuable insights. They do.
I mean, I had some brilliant insights back when I was 16, but I also learned a lot more since then! Some through formal education and "book learning", but more through life experiences that I didn't yet have at that age!
Oh, oh, that word "life experience". My dad used to say "you don't have life experience" to deter criticisms of his decisions.
Some of his decisions were wrong, but more accurately, wrong timing! Like buying and moving house in a different part of the island when I was a teenager. I hated my parents for that! I hated my parents for putting in a situation where I either go to school with people I don't know, or continue go to school with people I know but lie about the home address to do so! Living a lie can take it's toll.
I later told my dad "your life experience doesn't include growing up in Hawaii" (it's true), and told my mom (who did grow up in Hawaii) "your life experience doesn't include changing neighborhoods growing up" (also true), so they didn't have the life experience I had. So much for them having "life experience"
As an adult I sort of understand why dad used the words "life experience" (nevermind that his different "life experience" made it hard to understand my life experience).
Because as an adult, I have gained some life experiences that I haven't yet experienced when I was a teenager arguing with dad (though I'm still right about that stupid house though).
For example, I now have experience being having to stay employed to pay my living expenses.
Having a job and keeping a job requires sometimes making split-second decisions under severe psychological pressure. The results of such pressure is much worse than getting an "F" on the report card or doing detention after school. The results are getting a different type of "F" (fired, as in, you just lost your source of income, good luck avoiding homelessness now) or doing real time in incarceration, which would make afterschool detention seem "easy"
Also, having such responsibilities mean you'll experience all your "bright ideas" that you had as a teenager turn to severe failures.
Right-wing writer Kurt Schlichter had this to say when young rightwing blowhard Tomi Lahren got fired from TheBlaze last year.
We need to dispense with the cute kid conservative novelty acts and understand that our ideology – unlike liberalism – is not based on feelings and preferences but is instead drawn from a wisdom and understanding of human nature that comes only from hard-won life experience. That’s not to say young people should sit down and shut up – far from it. They have valuable insights we need to hear, especially from worlds they uniquely inhabit, like colleges or the company-level military. Sometimes they have done in-depth study and reporting on specific issues, including writing books. That’s earned expertise, not some mere knack for viral ranting, and that’s not what we are talking about here.
It’s our own fault for letting them represent us to the world – maybe we do it because they flatter us by offering a dim reflection of what we believe. But when they recite conservative chapter and verse for us, that’s all they’re doing – reciting. It’s not ingrained, it’s not seared into them through study and experience. It’s a stunt, a parlor trick. One of several reasons we conservatives need to stop putting them out there is because most conservatives have a youthful liberal phase and the kid who delights us today by mimicking our views will likely take a misguided off-ramp or two along the road to adulthood.
and this
Hey, I don’t blame the conservakids for cashing in on the spotlight. If I was 24 and someone offered me a gig and a boatload of cash, game on. But as it happens, when I was 24, I was a platoon leader in Germany during the last years of the Cold War leading other young people.
You see, in the military, one wrong move can get you killed!
In business, one wrong move based on what you thought were "brilliant ideas" can cause your company to go bankrupt and workers laid off!
While I wasn't in the military, and nor do I own a business (unless you count my selling my music via online distributor as a "business", though I don't have any employees), I do have some experience with "bright ideas turned to failure"
I worked as a substitute teacher, and I came into the job with some bright ideas that I thought would work.
Those "bright ideas" led to students not taking my authority seriously and some classroom chaos. Those "bright ideas" led to administrators wondering "what the hell were you thinking?"
I had to learn from failure, and readjust how I do things.
You can only learn so much from a book or a video. You actually have to do things under pressure.
You actually have to face failure, and learn to grow and readjust from that!
Though I was dreaming circa 20 to be a well-known commentator (I was thinking musical commentator like Chuck D, or news commentator like Bill O'Reilly), I am now glad I didn't get the early fame like Tomi Lahren did.
Tomi Lahren never had to be in an authority position (that could be military, business, or teaching) where you have to make hard split-second decisions under psychological pressure where failure could lead to very embarrassing and life-changing results.
It's easy to rant about "how things should be" based on cliches.
It's harder to make serious leadership decisions in real time.
It is these decisions, and readjusting based on results gone wrong, that later give your words much more credibility than someone who just came straight outta the ivory tower.
Don't get me wrong, I do like it when teenagers pay attention to current events & history, and are attempting to base a political philosophy based on what they learned. That's exactly what I was doing when I was that age. (Though to be real, that was at a time before social media and YouTube).
However, teenagers need more "seasoning", more time to digest the various viewpoints instead of just repeating cliches.
This isn't just directed at anti-gun teens who only learned the anti-gun side of the story , but I'm also thinking of the anti-abortion teens who repeat the cliches of their parents/church/etc but haven't yet been in a situation of facing an unwanted or difficult pregnancy!
Teenagers will eventually grow into gaining real life experience where they apply their knowledge and see their ideas put into action. Sometimes, those ideas get validated, other times, those ideas get smashed into pieces.
But that's OK, that's what becoming an adult is! We all live and learn!
