Peter Kupfer wrote:
Not to diverge from this awesome conversation, but I find that this is more true than I ever thought. I am 25, and I teach high school students, and I look at the action of these people that are 11 - 7 years younger than me, and I see some of the things I did as HS student and I am now yelling at them for doing.
Maybe I'm just a slow learner or stubborn, but I always feel saddened when I observe this tendency, or when I hear people talk about it as if it was unavoidable. Rightly or wrongly, it always sounds to me like giving up or acquiescing to the power structure for the sake of an easier life (and please note that I'm talking in the abstract here, not about anyone in particular).
I'm less naive than I was as a young adult, and more cynical, and, I hope, more experienced and knowledgable. Yet the things I believed twenty years ago are just as important to me now as they were then, just in different ways.
I used to worry that growing more conservative was inevitable as you aged. Fortunately, I had several bad examples who were outstanding in their fields, and it doesn't seem to be happening to me. Not yet - and, with luck, not ever.
I didn't really mean like serious life altering things.
Just things like procrastinating till the last minute, not keeping there chair on the floor, not working in class, and more general things like this.
I think this is a normal and natural progression. The young don't want to listen to the older because they think they know everything (I am speaking about me :) ) and eventual they realize that maybe older people (I can't believe I am one of them) have something worthy to say. But, if they never learn this on their own, they won't ever mature.
I have gone off hot headed *MANY* times and been wrong and I have /slowly/ learned to think a little bit more before I speak. This is what I meant, and I think it is a healthy process.
Not necessarily that people lose their convictions or become more conservative (although I think in ways this is inevitable, because we think that how it was was better, not in all ways, but some) but that they grow up a little.
-- Peter T. Kupfer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
