05-01-2022, 11:15 AM
(04-30-2022, 11:51 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: In general, people in their early 20s are more insufferable than teenagers. In particular, people in the moderately high IQ range (say, 115 to 125) who are smart enough to begin theory, but lacking either
a) the education or experience to comment on what works in the real world
or
b) the more advanced intelligence required to make the more meaningful nuances that allow people to understand the complexities of reality rather than over-simplifying that reality into convenient narratives and black and white games of hero/villain.
I have observed this characteristic across people in that age range for a long time, as well as looked at several historical examples, and it doesn't seem to correlate well with generational theory (ie, people in that age range tend to be annoying to deal with whether they're from an idealist, reactive, civic or adaptive cohort).
Smart, young people are the bulls in the china shop. The people that you want in a china shop are the ill-paid people who see the prices of the china and recognize that they are in deep trouble if some pricey trinket breaks.
It's the dumb people in their early twenties who do the worst. Among them are the outright criminals whose athleticism makes them menaces. They are the robbers and rapists. They are the ones who see the payout on a loved one's insurance policy and think someone holding that policy worth more alive than dead. Criminals on the whole are dolts low in intellect and emotional maturity. They are dumb enough to believe that they can lie their ways out of a problem.
I can't say how general it is, but most people in their twenties need to spend some time doing domestic service, warehouse work, farm or industrial labor, or sales-clerking with the fear that such will be their permanent lot if they muck up in any way. They mist know that their employer sees a piece of fine glassware more precious than their employee. Or they must work 60 hours or so a week doing miserable white-collar jobs such as cold-calling or customer retention. I've been a substitute teacher, and I can tell you that I learned more lessons applicable to teaching from sales-clerking and even factory work than from any academic study (aside from some philosophy and psychology). As for teaching -- many teachers have no idea of what the real world -- the ugly world in which people are expendable tools and material objects are precious, and in which one must remember at all times that the customer's payment is the source of one's meager paycheck -- demands of people. Knowing this can break one. Who said that capitalism is nice to workers? You can hate that all that you want, but the people who really rule believe that what Karl Marx said was wrong about capitalism is wonderful because they enjoy great power, indulgence, and gain. Such people believe that their tennis elbow is more horrific than someone else's pancreatic cancer.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.