Just another aspect of arrested development?


I suppose that I was supposed to identify aspects of myself in the recently published book review (on The American Spectator web site) of The Death of the Grown-Up by Diana West. I haven't read the book, and probably won't. (As someone who probably fits much of the arrested development profile, I probably can't read a book, or follow a coherent argument, from start to finish.) Strangely, however, the book review never mentions the internet, or the addiction to fast information that supposedly accompanies it. In such a scathing critique that seems to touch all the predictable bases - from adults imitating teen fashion and playing video games, to shirking responsibility and (of course) multiculturalism - the quick fix of information, the preference toward folksonomies rather than hierarchic taxonomies, are passed over. Aren't these also, and perhaps even glaringly, additional signs of arrested development? Grown-ups should be decisive, should make clear distinctions, rather than let everything flow.

It would seem to me that there's something almost obviously 60's counter-cultural about an approach toward information that legitimizes all points of view, that sees value in letting multiple points of view co-exist. In this same way, those who would view such an approach as juvenile would also feel that it presents an imminent danger to western civilization (at least as much as adults dressing like kids). Being disorganized is, after all, a prerogative of kids who are yet to learn the necessity, if not the pleasure, of being organized. Adults understand that everything has its proper place, and it's their job to see to it that each thing finds that place.



Go to: Please organize me.