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I think you’re underestimating 12-year olds here.
I mean i just want to note for a second that the aging retardant properties of humanity are one of the great miracles that puts us above other species.
Most other mammal species, including dogs, cats, camels, zebras, horses, cattle, sheep, whatever farm animal/pet you can think of typically lives no longer than 20 years, while for humans it’s routinely 80 years, about 4x as long.
That, it turns out, is one of humanity’s great strengths. We age significantly slower, and that includes a significantly longer childhood. Most feral animals grow up and reach puberty within 1-3 years, while for humans it takes at least 12 years (even longer if you wait to be socially accepted as an “adult”). This gives us more time to play, figure things out, learn, and develop. It is for this reason that we’re able to pull off more amazing things than other species, because our long lifes warrant that getting a long, proper education is worth it. Because if we only lived for 20 years, it would hardly be worth it to study till you’re 25 years old.
So, aging slower, and staying childish for longer, is actually one of humanity’s great strengths. It is unfortunate, i believe, that we’re trying to remove that human specialty in these days and trying to make people grow up faster.
Well that’s basically the premise of populism. Your policy is doing whatever most of your audience would first think of doing (with no subtlety at all so as not to seem too smart or distant to them) then you just ignore the consequences when they come to bite you in the ass and most people won’t think all those bad things are a result of your own stupid policy, because they believe it was perfectly logical and flawless to begin with.
Unfortunately, nowadays populism is used almost exclusively about progressive ideas that are popular as a way to dismiss them because they’re not profitable or some shit.
Can we try populism+? We just get one guy, like a really smart good dude. Like a heavenly super person. We get them to look at all the ideas we have for stuff and tell us if there will be any consequences. If he says it’s good, we do it. If it turns out bad, we kill him and try again.
We would need a name for this person. Something powerful right? Maybe “EMPEROR”
The average American is as literate as a 5th to 6th grader.
https://www.thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/2024-2025-literacy-statistics
5th to 6th graders are 10 to 12 years old, normally.
So uh… yep, mhm, the average American is about as stupid as a 12 year old, that’s a bit on the optimistic side though.
Dude’s theory isn’t really wrong, Americans are dumb and immature as fuck, and yes the statistics exist to back that up.
Honestly it terrifies me when I think about this.
I’m too stupid to be smarter than this many people.
Ya, that struck me as real truth. It’s a nice summary, gets quickly to the root of the problem. If you are facing yet another moron, this elucidates what’s going. People do not aspire to mature beyond 5th grade anymore. Adjust your strategies accordingly.
I honestly would take a fifth grader over most seventh graders most of the time.
Middle school was just a series of brutal fights where I grew up. Physically for the boys and psychology for the girls.
I’m just saying we should be careful what we wish for, though we really do need much better reading programs in schools.
This L take is something a 12yo would come up with…
This is very accurate. In my twenties, I worked on myself relentlessly to try to become “grown up”. Eventually I looked around and realized that hardly anyone else was doing that, and people twice my age were still acting like children. Then they elected a man-boy King in their image.
Try drugs.
The drugs just made me even more aware I’m surrounded by crazy children. Maybe I did the wrong drugs.
No those were the right ones, but there are also other ones that make you giggle so it doesn’t suck quite so much. Gotta find the right cocktail for you ;)
I just had a try of elvanse at 50mg slow release yesterday from a friend, and damn it was heaven ((for a while, dose def too high for me, slept an hour during the night and had minor hallucinations (could be the slow release melatonin trying its hardest to shut me down)). Definitely asking the cannot sit still doctor to hit me with a 30mg for trial run.
Sorry kind of off topic, just wanted to share, might be finally getting the right stuff bros! Atomoxetine after 1 year at 130mg making me depressed so that they told me to drop it, but impulse control and short term memory already taking hits after a week off that stuff. Just dont want to feel empty inside anymore, but also would like to function like a responsible adult, so let us see. Man feeling hunger pangs again is kinda bummer, although gets me motivated to cook though.
Vyvanse was perfection for me.
I too passed the self-imposed ritual. It has not made me happy, but it helped me understand why I wasn’t.
For me when I realized I was more grown up than the adults around me, I realized I could relax a bit and not hold myself to such an unsustainable standard. On the other hand I still have lofty goals for myself that I still strive to reach so I’ll pick up a ton of cool experiences along the way and maybe I’ll achieve those pipedreams or maybe I won’t but either way it beats just stagnating and aging in place
damn. well said
Twelve year olds are more advanced, make it 8.
Sounds like something a president on a list would say.
He does keep drawing the line at 12…
Now that I think about it, the situation in the US really does play out like an unconscionable large version of Lord of the Flies.
This is pretty spot on.
Ralph was just trying to help organize and make everyone’s lives better. He was ignored and his life was threatened.
Simon, the insightful one, was trying to get people to see reason to quell their mania. He was murdered.
Piggy, the intelligent and compassionate one, was murdered.
Intelligent, compassionate, and a vessel for the author’s racist worldview.
Don’t mind me. I hate that book, and I hate that it’s taught in every school as if it has anything important to say. We’ve run the Lord of the Flies experiment, both accidentally and very intentionally. Every time, we’ve demonstrated that humans are better than that, and the author’s beliefs about human nature were both very incorrect and very racist.
I still resent being forced to debate my classmates about whether human nature was intrinsically “good” or “evil,” directly after reading that book, even though it was 25 years ago. I was the lone voice on the side of “good,” for lack of a “good and evil are subjective terms, but nonetheless humans are empathetic and this book is horseshit” team. I got dogpiled by 20 some other students for about 45 minutes. Fuck you Ms. Brown, and fuck you William Golding. That book has nothing important to say other than exposing its author’s racist insecurities.
Where in the book does it reveal racism?
but “good” and “evil” are human constructs meaning they can’t be intrinsic to humans? That teacher was an idiot.
[edit] There is some irony in a teacher encouraging a whole class to gang up on one student regarding a subject related to lord of the flies, though.
Stanford Prison Experiment. Slavery. Lynch mobs. Segregationists. Anti-Feminists. Prison-Industrial Complex. The majority of the country voting for the leader passing out signs that said “MASS DEPORTATIONS”. Maybe there’s some inherent cruelty to the mainland USA. Maybe there’s still too much lead particles in the air. As someone who has never left the mainland, I’ve seen overwhelming evidence to the “non-empathetic” side. Or, perhaps, the majority of people are passive, and cruelty is most capable of spurring people to action.
Stanford prison experiment was manipulative, it was not real science - look it up. The rest of the bad things you talk about are very real and an evidence of the evil side of humanity. That doesn’t mean there’s no good side, though.
I prefer to take a more The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street approach to the worst acts of humanity, is not that it comes from a place of evil, but instead a place of fear that a very small handful have used to manipulate those who wouldn’t commit these acts otherwise.
Just looked it up. I now see the guards were told to abuse the prisoners. Thank you for informing me. I was unaware.
The average person’s attitude is if they aren’t family, they are tools. It’s literaly ingrained in our culture.
“Mind your own business”, “It’s a dog eats dog world” etc.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was a sham.
The broader point, though, is that the scenario of The Lord of the Flies has actually happened. We’ve had a small group of kids trapped on an island for an extended period of time and what happened is that they built a peaceful and harmonious society, which included spending time and resources caring for one of their number who broke their leg.
In hindsight it’s kind of surprising that people wouldn’t expect most of the kids to work together to help eachother survive because that’s why humans created cities, towns, villages, etc… -well before education was universal.
The island? Planet earth.
😁
The majority certainly doesn’t choose the active misery of others, and on the scale of the Lord of the Flies setting, humans have consistently shown collaboration and mutual aid. We’ve documented many instances of stranded groups, and even some people that volunteered to be stuck on a raft together for months, and they always choose to work together, despite their differences. Capitalism, fascism, and radical individualism/nationalism are the root of the societal scale evils, because they’re ideologies that propagate in the hands of the few that are willing to benefit at the cost of the many. Humans have not always lived under capitalism.
It’s possible that despite a “good” nature, humans still have a few, but very fatal flaws that cause them to keep electing the worst people. This is a key problem that makes every other characteristic irrevelanr.
I’ve always appreciated Douglas Adam’s take on this:
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
usa is the whole world
It’s the same people throughout. The post is about the USA.
I think its good that you had to read something you didn’t agree with in school. Look what its done for you.
Get over high school. Soon enough, you won’t remember Ms. Brown’s name.
Twelve year-old attitude, 2 year-old selfishness.
True. When I was young I thought why don’t we use the military domestically. Yeah it doesn’t work.
It actually works really well, if your goal is fascism.
This lines up with what I’ve been shouting into the void whenever I read a news article. “Where are the fucking adults?!”
You just made me remember that book that came out in his first term reassuring everyone that there were “adults in the room” protecting us from certain doom.
What a crock of shit that turned out to be.
Eh, I think that his 2nd term kind of helps validate that view of his 1st. Because he was a political newbie, he allowed those around him to help make staffing decisions, so you got mostly run of the mill Republicans. Terrible, certainly, but not sycophants. That’s all out the window this time. Key positions are filled based solely on either fealty to the mad king or ✨campaign contributions✨ (bribes). Anyone who dares speak out gets the axe, and at least for now it’s a metaphorical one.
Second term has been so much worse than the first in that regard. I was just telling my co worker the other day that it’s funny how Trump’s first term, and especially his first year, was just him firing tons of people that he appointed, and in his second term he’s hardly fired anybody. It really sends the signal just how much Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants, yes-men, and puffers this time around.
I think that’s part of the reason why the moron feels emboldened to say and do some truthfully horrifying shit.
when you reach the milestone of adulthood and take a peek behind the veil of responsibility…
… maybe Larry Niven was right in Ringworld, Humanity’s only defining trait is not our intelligence, our compassion, or our strength of will, but simply the luck of the few.
Makes too much sense. Is this guy CIA?
Since 2012 twelve year olds controlled the memes, also when an explosion of boomers joined social media. We’ve been letting the kids parents the adults for 13 years now.
the worst kind of 12yo is the one who want to change the world for the better but they’re fucking stupid so their well intensions end up serving the bad guys and screwing everybody else. the story of ukrainian NGOs - literally did the dirty job for oligarch and stayed in denial until the stink became biohazard.
the worst kind of 12yo is the one who want to change the world for the better
Ah, so you’ve never met one of those kids that just likes torturing animals for fun
I actually haven’t met these kinds of folks until later in life when I moved out to another city. I knew about this shit - Dnipropetrovsk maniacs was media shitshow and stuff but i had no folks like that in my immediate circle while growing up.
It’s a nation filled to the brim with children trapped in adult bodies.
This is not an opinion because I’m perpetually online. I go outside and they’re there too. Literally everywhere.
I was a shut-in before the 2024 Election. I figured social spaces there were somewhat immature because the mature people would have jobs and real life involvement. Then I started going outside, and I lost all hope. I’m too stupid for people to be this dumb. (Though I’ll admit, social media, algorithmic content, and the AI products probably made people dumber.)
It’s actually worse outside, which is why I am terminally online.
Already a term for it… maybe they weren’t aware of it on account of being twelve.
https://theconversation.com/the-infantilization-of-western-culture-99556
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantilization
Smacks of condescension, elitism, and historical naivety while being a short step away from bemoaning “degenerated modernity” to me.
https://theconversation.com/the-infantilization-of-western-culture-99556
This reads a lot to me like Sokrates’ speech that the children are all spoiled today. I.e. it has always been that way but people continuously assume that they have it especially bad in that regard.
Smacks of condescension, elitism, and historical naivety
Sorry, socially engineered infantilization is just an explanation, not a justification
It is not as though the tools to become a well rounded adult have been denied. In fact it’s arguable that with the internet those tools are more accessible than ever. It’s a personal choice to give in to the easy solutions and not seek out broader knowledge and understanding
We already have a word for that phenomena, it’s called fascism
I don’t think I’ve ever read a description or definition of fascism where the population being immature is a thing.
What do you mean?
Everything I don’t like is fascism, the more I don’t like it the more fascism-er it is
The elements of fascism could be construed as a childish/immature perception of reality, where the performance/aesthetics of maturity (particularly as perceived by chauvinistic men) is paramount. The examples listed in this post speak to uniformed (i.e childish) views on power, masculinity, and justice. These topics, among others, are sticking points of every flavor of fascism.
I’m not necessarily saying that this means the american population is immature, but our current fascist regime utilizes these tropes (among other elements of american culture) in their rhetoric, propaganda, and policy decisions to influence the population in pursuit of fascist ends. Seeing fascism as immature/childish certainly has validity, but I think the OP fails to fully capture our current political context with this lens. It would be better to see the state of american politics through the perspective of a failing proto-fascist empire metastasizing into a full fledged fascist regime, informed and shaped by its own reactionary propaganda, of which a large amount appears childish upon first glance.
