What's An Adult?

Continuing the query that Barbarians at the Gate brought me to - the NY Times published a very interesting Op-Ed piece last week comparing the idea of an adolescent risk-taking mind-set, with the actual risks taken by adults.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/opinion/17males.html?ref=opinion

It appears that although society likes to tag adolescent brains as underdeveloped and prone to making stupid decisions, it's the current crop of adults that tend to be making super stupid decisions. Of course, some of stupid decisions I made as an adolescent are things that tend not to pop up as statistics "64% of adolescent girls confess to stupidly telling their crush that they liked them liked them," "Thirty percent of adolescent girls think it is a good idea to serve your younger sisters non-alcoholic beer but tell them its real" but the matter of the instinct to be stupid is with all of us.

So, what makes you a grown up? Your mistakes have more serious consequences? Your choices roil a broader group than your grade? If we're all still dicking around in middle age, then we're all still dicking around like teenagers but with more money and nicer beer.

We all like to watch TV where people act inappropriately -for laughs or for drama. I'd argue that the behavior that makes compelling TV doesn't really scream "adult." Like, do we really want our Doctors banging each other as much as they do in Greys Anatomy? I vote no: I want a doctor who is not interested in boning the other doctor operating on me. Dawson and Joey are not doctors so they can bone all they want.

I think many Americans want our life to be more like our media, even if that includes wild misbehavior. Frat house style partying. Getting in relationship drama.

Is this stuff unavoidable, or are we looking for it? Or, does it, in the current climate, just seem like the norm?

I have wondered -and worried - if all my novel reading has skewed my perspective on my own interpretation of my life's narrative: am I looking for plot points and moments (maybe even subconsciously) that occur in books? I think it's completely possible that if I watched a ton of TV and movies, my expectations and judgements about my personal narrative would change. I think we use these artistic mediums as a foil for our experience.

What does this say about all those Barbarians? If our goals and foibles as adolescents and adults are not dissimilar, I think it makes those Barbarians just like the rest of us, but with crazy money that effects thousands of lives, and, therefore, should create more of a moral imperative to be responsible, sober, reflective adults.

And those adjectives are boring. What's on TV?