The Disadvantages of Youth (and why chronological adults don't understand them as well as they think)
There’s no such thing as maturity, only varying degrees of immaturity. Progress doesn’t always lead to competence or cure, and immaturity is never shed, only lessened and managed. Many attribute their personal development to life learning when, in reality, they mostly get older and have an emotional system less poorly suited for judgment (more on this in a bit). It’s naïve to think young people simply lack knowledge and that growing older necessarily means growing wiser. Intelligence and learning don’t guarantee wisdom; judgment isn’t purely intellectual; and exposure to the lessons doesn’t guarantee they’re learned. And these are amongst the most important lessons. Since they’re rarely learned, wisdom comes in part from realizing why it DOESN’T come with age. In the post The Epistemology of Irrationality , I examined the dynamics of irrationality as a means of studying RATIONALITY. Similarly, to understand maturity--or “non-immaturity,...