Everything Is F*cked(41)
An adolescent will say he loves you, but his conception of love is that he is getting something in return, that love is merely an emotional swap meet, where you each bring everything you have to offer and haggle with each other for the best deal. An adult will love freely without expecting anything in return because an adult understands that that is the only thing that can make love real. An adult will give without seeking anything in return, because to do so defeats the purpose of a gift in the first place.
The principled values of adulthood are unconditional—that is, they cannot be reached through any other means. They are ends in and of themselves.22
Figure 6.2: An adult is able to eschew his own pleasure for the sake of his principles.
There are plenty of grown-ass children in the world. And there are a lot of aging adolescents. Hell, there are even some young adults out there. That’s because, past a certain point, maturity has nothing to do with age.23 What matters are a person’s intentions. The difference between a child, an adolescent, and an adult is not how old they are or what they do, but why they do something. The child steals the ice cream because it feels good, and he is oblivious or indifferent to the consequences. The adolescent doesn’t steal because he knows it will create worse consequences in the future, but his decision is ultimately a bargain with his future self: I’ll forgo some pleasure now to prevent greater future pain.24
But it’s only the adult who doesn’t steal for the simple principle that stealing is wrong. And to steal, even if she gets away with it, would make her feel worse about herself.25
Why We Don’t Grow
When we are little kids, the way we learn to transcend the pleasure/pain values (“ice cream is good; hot stoves are bad”) is by pursuing those values and seeing how they fail us. It’s only by experiencing the pain of their failure that we learn to transcend them.26 We steal the ice cream, Mom gets pissed off and punishes us. Suddenly, “ice cream is good” doesn’t seem as straightforward as it used to—there are all sorts of other factors to consider. I like ice cream. And I like Mom. But taking the ice cream will upset Mom. What do I do? Eventually, the child is forced to reckon with the fact that there are trade-offs that must be negotiated.
This is essentially what good early parenting boils down to: implementing the correct consequences for a child’s pleasure/pain-driven behavior. Punish them for stealing ice cream; reward them for sitting quietly in a restaurant. You are helping them understand that life is far more complicated than their own impulses or desires. Parents who fail to do this fail their children in an incredibly fundamental way because it won’t take long for the child to have the shocking realization that the world does not cater to his whims. Learning this as an adult is incredibly painful—far more painful than it would have been had the child learned the lesson when he was younger. He will be socially punished by his peers and society for not understanding it. Nobody wants to be friends with a selfish brat. No one wants to work with someone who doesn’t consider others’ feelings or appreciate rules. No society accepts someone who metaphorically (or literally) steals the ice cream from the freezer. The untaught child will be shunned, ridiculed, and punished for his behavior in the adult world, which will result in even more pain and suffering.
Parents can fail their children in another way: they can abuse them.27 An abused child also does not develop beyond his pain-and pleasure-driven values because his punishment follows no logical pattern and doesn’t reinforce deeper, more abstract values. Instead of predictable failures, his experience is just random and cruel. Stealing ice cream sometimes results in overly harsh punishment. At other times, it results in no consequences at all. Therefore, no lesson is learned. No higher values are produced. No development takes place. The child never learns to control his own behavior and develops coping mechanisms to deal with the incessant pain. This is why children who are abused and children who are coddled often end up with the same issues when they become adults: they remain stuck in their childhood value system.28
Ultimately, graduating to adolescence requires trust. A child must trust that her behavior will produce predictable outcomes. Stealing always creates bad outcomes. Touching a hot stove also creates bad outcomes. Trusting in these outcomes is what allows the child to develop rules and principles around them. The same is true once the child grows older and enters society. A society without trustworthy institutions or leaders cannot develop rules and roles. Without trust, there are no reliable principles to dictate decisions, therefore everything devolves back into childish selfishness.29
People get stuck in the adolescent stage of values for similar reasons that they get stuck with childish values: trauma and/or neglect. Victims of bullying are a particularly notable example. A person who has been bullied in his younger years will move through the world with an assumed understanding that no one will ever like or respect him unconditionally, that all affection must be hard-won through a series of practiced conversation and canned actions. You must dress a certain way. You must speak a certain way. You must act a certain way—or else.30
Some people become incredibly good at playing the bargaining game. They tend to be charming and charismatic and are naturally able to sense what other people want of them and to fill that role. This manipulation rarely fails them in any meaningful way, so they come to believe that this is simply how the whole world operates. Life is one big high school gymnasium, and you must shove people into lockers lest ye be shoved first.