The cover story of today's NY Times Magazine asks: "Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?"
Hello?! What did you expect?
I've been writing about this trend for years, now, especially since I've been living in Park Slope, the capital of narcissistic parents raising emotionally stunted children. Apparently, though, this Brooklyn enclave has merely been the standard bearer for a national movement. While there are more devouring, suffocating, coddling mothers and castrated or otherwise neutered fathers breeding faux princes and princesses per square mile out here in Stepford than anywhere else I've ever lived or know of, the entire country seems to have gotten on board the dysfunction train.
The Times piece focuses on how many 20-somethings either still live or come back to live with their parents because they have no capacity for independent living or thinking. And make no mistake, this grossly delayed individuation isn't an economic problem anymore than the euphemistically labelled "attention deficit disorder" trend is a brain problem.
This is a parenting problem!
But hey, that's the psychological/sociological assessment of the situation, or as I've been taking to calling it lately, the "3-dimensional" perspective.
Metaphysically speaking, though, this trend toward apparent maturational retardation is merely... interesting. Meaning, it makes me curious to understand from the expanded Fourth Dimensional perspective what purpose this is inevitably serving in our evolution.
Perhaps it is accelerating the collapse of our institutionalized way of organizing society, for example, as an entire generation of young adults arrive to be unable or unwilling to work at what we once called a "job," (I have written about "The End of the Job" as an archaic way of creating prosperity before HERE.) or are uninterested in attending, let alone graduating from traditional universities where "knowledge" is transferred to kids without wisdom. Also good news is that fewer and fewer young people are marrying or having kids, at least not in their 20's. This is crucial to our evolution because in an enlightened society, young adults would not be expected to raise children.
So, while the short view looks alarming, the expanded view offers hope. Yes, even though, as a psychotherapist and advocate for children for 3 decades in 3D, I've railed against the ineptitude of parents and the insidiousness of institutions charged with tending to our offspring's mental and physical well-being, I do see something positive in this present day process of deconstruction. Very often, it has to become clear that a way of living has been outgrown, so we can make the move to a new way.
It's all good, folks.
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