Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay
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I will respond to questions and comments as time permits, but if you want to take issuewith any position expressed here, you first have to answer this question:
What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?
I simply will not reply to challenges that do not address this question. Refutabilityis one of the classic determinants of whether a theory can be called scientific. Moreover,I have found it to be a great general-purpose cut-through-the-crap question to determinewhether somebody is interested in serious intellectual inquiry or just playing mind games.Note, by the way, that I am assuming the burden of proof here - all youhave to do is commit to a criterion for testing.It's easy to criticize science for being "closed-minded". Are you open-mindedenough to consider whether your ideas might be wrong?
The latest demographic freak-out is the emergence of the "man-child," adult males who opt for extended adolescence.
Okay, time for a challenge. Over here we have John Q. Slacker. He's 30 years old. Working a marginal job, living in a marginal apartment, spending all his extra money on beer, video games, entertainment, and dating. Not getting rich but he has enough to cover his chosen lifestyle.
We want John Q to move into a higher paying job where he makes more but also works a whole lot harder, get married and move into a nice house. Which he will have to maintain. Have kids. He will have a lot more income, but his discretionary money won't be any greater than before. In fact less, because he won't be able to spend so many spare hours on video games and other single guy stuff. And if his family situation turns out to be unsatisfactory for any of a thousand reasons, it will cost him big time to leave.
As the method actors like to say, "What's my motivation?" Start writing. I'll wait.
♫ doot, doot, de doot de dooty doot..♪ (that's "Raindrops are Falling on my Head")
.....(crickets chirping)....
Yeah, me neither. And there's the point. Thereis nothing we can offer him as an incentive. Nothing realistic, anyway. The only thing that would be likely to motivate him would be more money for less work so he can have more single guy stuff and more free time to enjoy it in. Maybe if women everywhere decide to go all Lysistrata on him, and refuse to have anything to do with him until he pulls his share of the societal load, he might budge, but that won't happen.
The only people who are going to opt for the high paying job - nice house - wife - kids scene are the people who are motivated to do so because they want it. They want the life itself, the status that goes with it, the companionship, and so on.
There's some good news about the man-child phenomenon. I'm talking here about minimally self-supporting man-children. Man-children who support themselves by sponging off others ("scrubs," they were called in the TLC song) or crime are another matter. Also not a new phenomenon.
The downside is that man-child is not an occupation with a good health plan. If man-child gets sick, or drags his childhood out to age 65, who'll cover the bills?
We have managed to create a world that would have seemed utopian a couple of centuries ago. In the developed world, large numbers of people can pretty much have whatever they want much of the time. There are limits. Yeah, we'd all like a harem of supermodels, a holodeck, and a flying car. But most people in the U.S. and Europe can eat pretty much whatever they want when they want. Want fresh strawberries in Narvik, Norway or Nome, Alaska in mid-January. Can do. Want it for every meal? That's up to you and your taste buds. Want a flat-screen TV, high-speed internet, a cell phone? You got it. Nobody tells you what your life's occupation will be or whom you have to marry. Want to go to Tahiti, the South Pole, or climb Mount Everest? These aren't the sorts of things most people can do on the spur of the moment, but you can do them. It may take you a few years to save the money, maybe a decade in the case of Mount Everest if you put all your other wants on hold, but they're not impossible. They're not the sorts of things you could never, ever dream of doing. We can't have everything we want immediately or simultaneously, we can't have mutually incompatible things (a fun job and no education, a beautiful spouse when we're ugly or socially repellent) and - something that looms ever larger the more utopian our world gets - we can't avoid all the things we don't want, but a moment's reflection will reveal the surprising extent to which we get to do whatever we want.
There are an almost infinite number of ways this course of events can play out in detail, but most of them fall into a surprisingly small number of patterns.
In 1969, molecular biologist Gunther Stent published The coming of the Golden Age; a view of the end of progress. In a chapter entitled The Road to polynesia, he noted that societies on tropical Pacific islands, in environments that supplied food in abundance, evolved in the direction of hedonism. Despite claims that humans are innately oriented toward work, he noted that tropical polynesians seemed to have no problems abandoning work as a pastime altogether. Stent went on to picture a similar state of affairs with air conditioned apartments taking the place of Tahitian beaches.
The only problem with that scenario is that palm trees don't break down and need to be fixed. They don't get cracked plaster, broken windows, or leaky roofs. Nobody needs to pay the power bill to keep them running.
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Created 12 March 2007; Last Update 24 May, 2020
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