Maturity: Is age just a number?

When most people think of age, we wusually think about the number of years that people had lived. I use to think that when you are an adult, you start to become this enlightneed being who knows everything but I am realize that age has nothing to with maturity. The maturity I am referring to is the maturity that comes from life experiences and while not everyone shares the same experiences as me, I do know that maturity is a relative experience. Is Age really a number in this regard?

I know that all that every old person is age old sage who dispenses wisdom and not every young person is a moron. There is a stigma that the older you are, the more maturity you have but I am learning that is not the case. I realized that some adults are not really that much more mature than children and they may not know as much as they thought. There is also the physical aspects to take into account, your teeange years is where your body undergoes physical and mental changes and it usually the years where you start to find yourselves and identity. I wodner though, is age usually a number when it comes to maturity?

First thing: You seem to conflate "maturity" with "wisdom." These are not the same thing, but there is a correlation.

For a quick version of how I distinguish the two: "maturity" is being able to act like an adult, while "wisdom" is being able to think like one.

But are those tied to age? Hell no. It all depends on the experiences a person has, and the points in their life when they happen.

Sorry I don't have anything more specific. My brain is slow right now.

Age plays a role in maturity. Not just because older people have more life experiences but also because recent studies show that the brain keeps developing until around the age of 25. You can read more about it here.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=141164708

In general maturity comes from both age and life experiences (thou the two are closely related).

edited 4th Jun '14 1:25:52 PM by privilegedwhiteguy

One thing worth noting when citing such studies: Many of them are about anatomical factors, which aren't 100% predictive of anything related to "wisdom", "decision-making" or any of the other things people use to gauge maturity.

Funny, I always thought maturity is related to wisdom but that isn't the case isn't it?

"Is age just a number?"

Tell my knees that.

Oh. IMO human language is a little bit of a crutch when trying to tackle this subject.

What is knowledge? What is Wisdom? What is Experience? What is Intelligence? Can a person be wise without being intelligent? Can a person be intelligent without being wise? Must the person have experience, knowledge, both, or neither to reach a wise conclusion? Are these factors something you can learn, inherit, or teach?

It is incredibly hard to define all of those things. Adding the layer of ages just adds weigh onto it. Children have a very simple, direct way of looking at life. I do not mean to quote those bogus studies of "Children answered a question 25 Ph Ds from Harvard couldnt answer!", no, I am simply saying that lacking societal...training, they will often have observations that will strike anyone else from "queer", to "humorous" to "Someone kill me now now NOW please". And they will seem so wise, or unique.

Children are not without their moments of wisdom.

I think that a person, young or old, can reach a conclusion that can be deemed "wise" for many reasons. The kid might decide not to get in a fight with the bully cuz he had seen him beat up someone else early, and concocted a plan to avoid it. Maybe he was told by his partner. Maybe his parents told him. Maybe his thought process was something like "I cannot beat him in a fight. I will beat him up later when he is not expecting me." His decision not to fight is "wise", but the methods at which he might have arrived to this conclusion are not necesarily born of age, experience, or knowledge, or even correct, according to context.

Older people have had more time to fail. Harshly. At life. A lot. I mean. Getting to old age you accumulate a wealth of regrets and unless there are severe issues of ego or so, you will acknowledge them one way or another. Some might acknowledge them by trying to be better, others might just ignore them and blame them on someone else because it is easier, while others again, might act wise, but for "wrong" reasons... (Say, a corrupt banker decides against fraud because he was already almost caught last time.) But they will likely have some paralel in their life that they can relate their current situation to.

So, on the subject of age and wisdom...you just gotta consider how the person learned, why they learned it, and how they do what they do. You could say "But a wise person could put in doubt what his parents thaught him", to which I say "But what if he was not thaught how to doubt anything he was told?", and the argument goes on and on about if wisdom and maturity can be thaught...because it is so incredibly hard to define...

I think maturity is handled in some concepts by developmental theories. Piaget and Erik Erikson come to mind. But these are a lot more concrete, these are things far more measurable than morality or so. For example (Erikson) goes over the general concerns for a certain age range from infants to adulthood. Piaget focuses more on cognitive processes (At what age more or less can children tell that two things weigh differently? At what age are they able to tell that the cup I put under the blanket is still actually under the blanket, and not gone into an alternate dimension?)

But it fails to cover a lot, like morality and religion, and socialization...

You could look about them online, Erik Erikson and Jean piaget, and I hope they can help you define something more than my pointless rambling does.

Well, I've met people who were dumb as bricks and twice as thick whose kids were brilliant. But I think that might be because a lot of people sort of decide to switch their brains off as they get older because they're not really challenged by what they do.

Most older people don't usually work in careers that challenge them...

Most people seem to have this weird idea that learning is something you have to do until you leave school and then never have to do again, like it was some kind of god-awful chore, rather than a way to make you better equipped to understand and deal with the world around you.

Alarmingly, this doesn't just mean they stop their academic studies, but actually stop learning anything at all, remaining overgrown children all their lives.

edited 7th Jun '14 6:49:52 AM by InverurieJones

I guess with most people there is a stigma that most learning is something that is done in school. School does seems like a chore and it does give a foundation but I realized that learning happens all over the place. School is a place where people receive an education but school isn't the only place where you can learn things.

There i a moment in life for everything...

My experience has it that, when you are forced to mature early, when things gets loose makes terrible adults...

For maturity to be actually ise it is required to follow a, so to speak, spiritual path. Maturity imposed by context usually ends badly

How does one impose maturity on another exactly? Maturity is more something that if you don't have it, you either develop it or you don't. It's not exactly transferrable. If it was, I'd imagine raising children would be a lot easier.

I really do know that Maturity takes time and not everyone maturesa the same rate.

Ain't that the truth. And it's not something you can't backslide on either.