Okay – so in this post I’m not going to go into the hard evidence (which I have), to support my perspective. Why? Because I’m not here to convince ‘everybody’ or ‘anybody’  of anything.

My perspective is based on my real experience of people over the last few months in a particular forum. It is ‘The Times’ online forums. The cost of this forum is high as it involves subscribing to ‘The Times Online’. It would naturally select higher earners who would expectedly be adults who are of higher intelligence and educational backgrounds. And – I’m not going into evidence about that. It is a reasonable inference to make.

Immaturity

Up there, I ‘meet’ adults, with their ideas and responses to some of my thoughts. But the way I’m gonna approach this is to look at ‘children’. Look, I know that children fall in a wide age-group. So – I’m talking about the over-arching underdevelopment of children which people know about. I am not asserting that all children are the following but generally they will be expected to show the following:

1. They are gullible and more easily influenced by authority.
2. They lack higher order cognitive skills. Hence critical thinking skills are not well developed. So they don’t know how to evaluate and act correctively on hard evidence.
3. They are quick to sulk, avoid and/or throw a hissy-fit.
4. When they do not like authority figures, verbal abuse of others is more likely.
5. They mostly like groups and small gangs.
6. They have much greater needs to be popular, to feel valued and loved.
7. Easily depressed by depressing situations.
8. Generally lack ability for self-reflection, self-correction by self-driven means.
9. Driven by primary needs mostly. I’m not spoon feeding what Maslow said (bugger off!).
10. Often react with distress to change.

For sure there are children who would demonstrate very good qualities such as: resilience, creativity, sound thinking skills and so on. But I declared at the outset that I’m picking on the general weaknesses of the state of a statistical child in a broad age group.

Maturity

Adults usually consider themselves to be ‘mature’. But most people don’t know what maturity really means.  The clickable mindmap below is a very simplified skeleton of how I conceptualise ‘maturity’.

Mindmaps are not meant to be thorough explorations of concepts. Obviously, I did not wish to re-explore human strengths and weaknesses. As I grow older, I’m discovering more and more everyday how many adults are actually stuck at the maturity level of (average) children. This is not to suggest that age brings me maturity. This is not about me! Chrysst!

I see self-reflection as an important factor in personal growth. It is not as easy as people might imagine because it means being strong enough to see one’s self in relation to the world of others. Honesty with the self – so as to avoid self-deception – does not come easily but must be important. But self-reflection is not simply thinking about things in the confines of one’s head. ‘We’ can easily admit our faults and failures more easily in the privacy of our own minds. That may be a good first step. Can one admit it to a trusted other? Now that’s a challenge. For example, one can more easily admit to oneself that one was a fool for A, B or C thought or action. Admitting it to another person is a different order of maturity. I’m not talking about ‘apology‘.

Other features:

1. coping with complexity
2. managing the unexpected
3. dealing with human weaknesses in the self or others
4. tolerance of diversity

I’m not about to give a full list because this is not a tutorial! The above four features can be derived from several things on the mindmap.

What’s next? How very dare you ask! What – are you in search of a guru? Do mature people require gurus? You are free to believe what you want.

Disclaimer & Guidance