Maturity Part III

Three years ago, I wrote about the mirage of maturity (see June 17tth, 2005). People have a desire to want to seem mature, so they spend money and partake in things that are not enjoyable (like cigar smoking) to hide the scared child inside. A year and a half ago, I wrote about maturity again (see December 21, 2006). That time, I wrote about how people will cease certain activities that they enjoy just to seem mature.

I was having a beer with my friends, Soulless Hedonist and the Wrestler, the day before my birthday. The Wrestler told a story of how he was at work and overheard two men in their fifties talking about which young women at work they would like to bang. He thought it is was weird. “Isn’t that what young guys do and not old guys?” he asked. Soulless Hedonist was less shocked. “People don’t change or mature,” he said, “they just hide it better.” “They have the same desire to drink and chase girls,” he added, “they just no longer have the ability to participate.”

I agree with Soulless Hedonist in that people fundamentally do not change so much. We are all animals and we cannot make fifty-year-old men stop lusting after young girls. They still have functioning gonads after all. The existence of a job, a family and increased responsibilities doesn’t castrate someone.

But maturity, like modesty or politeness, is not about what is on the inside. It’s about social norms and acting within the realm of what is appropriate.

For instance, playing with toys is socially appropriate for a seven-year-old, but not socially acceptable for, say, a forty-year-old. The forty-year-old’s social group would find it inappropriate and he would be alienated. Conversely, we chastise those who try to act older. Teenagers who want to marry are seen as foolish and youths who feign interest in certain subjects are seen as pretentious and are made fun of by their peers. In fact, my previous blogs on maturity were really about pretentious people and boring people, two things I see as inappropriate.

But, if desire is static and maturity is relative, then almost everyone is actually fairly mature. Take the frat boy, where binge drinking and partying is acceptable to his social group. He is apt at recognizing his surroundings and is acting quite appropriately. For the Sex in the City women, caring about shoes instead of families is fine. With relative maturity, it may in fact be the Wrestler who was immature. He didn’t recognize that fifty-year-old men do actually talk about banging women.

Of course, with relative maturity, it is often difficult to determine what maturity and appropriateness are. Additionally, there is a maturity paradox. People that are too appropriate are boring and, thus, are no longer appropriate.

Alas, with such difficulty in its definition, one wonders what people are looking for when they say they want someone to be “mature.” I suppose they are asking for someone who fits their hypothetical idea of what appropriate social norms are (but not too much). If that is true, it is really an attempt to judge someone subjectively and hide it as an objective criticism.