What's so great about being a grown up?
This article talks--very shallowly--about how when the writer was a boy, other boys wanted to be grown ups, but now men want to remain adolescents.
A long, somewhat amusing, and relatively unobjectionable column begins its conclusion with this:
Halsall would be a very lonely voice today. Nowadays it seems grown-up men aspire to being perpetual adolescent. Instead of moving from youthfulness to maturity, today's men want nothing more than to stay as young as their own teenage children, to share their TV programmes and computer games.
They seek to avoid rather than assume responsibility. In the words of Gary Cross, the author of a new book Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity, they have transmuted what was formerly a stage of life into a lifestyle with no end in sight.
-->Ooh, how angry this makes me. There's one GIANT, OBVIOUS logical fallacy: Begging the question.
The author assumes that the reason grown-up men are sharing their children's TV shows and computer games is because the grown-up men want to remain adolescents.
Jackass.
The author further assumes that watching TV and/or playing computer games somehow prevents an adult man from taking responsibility (what responsibility, the author never says).
Shall we break this down into a syllogism?
Premise: "Fun" is something only children do.
Premise: Adults should avoid being like children.
Conclusion: Therefore, adults should avoid fun.
Because the very idea that a man can only be an adult if he has time-sucking job, or he spends every spare minute doing...I'm not sure what, but recreation is clearly either verboten, or limited to a specific set of options which the author does not define. (Maybe if he weren't wasting time worrying about how other people live, he might have the time to do his goddamn job and become a real writer, instead of a generalization-spewing hack.)
Are computer games childish but gardening is not?
Is it better to watch a sporting event on TV than whatever TV shows the author objects to?
This of course applies to women as well. Why do some people believe that after some age--usually thirty--we have to give up some things we enjoy, simply because those things are also enjoyed by younger people? Put me on the Carousel, baby, because my palm crystal is flashing.
Evidently when the author's expiry date was passed, he turned into sour milk.
Where I come from, playing games with your kids is called parenting. That we now have a generation of dads who can play video games with their kids is just a result of technological development. My dad, sister, and I played Monopoly together--should he have said, "No, kids, I have to go do something Grown Up now"? My childhood would have been greatly diminished if he had.
Where is it written that adults have to be miserable? That they aren't allowed to have any recreation time? Or that their recreational pursuits are only to be selected from an approved list of Grown Up Stuff?
Now hear this, all stuffy assholes: Just because you no longer enjoy video games or comic books doesn't mean no one does. Everyone grows and changes. Sometimes the changes make you less apt to participate in some activities you once enjoyed. Sometimes they don't.
If a man or woman is paying their bills, raising well-mannered children (if any), not breaking any laws, and functioning in general as a contributing member of society, then they have earned the right to spend their free time however they choose, without the nasty, judgmental, intended-to-induce-guilt barbs of joyless assholes who have forgotten how to be happy.