{"id":59494,"date":"2021-09-27T05:21:13","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T09:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=59494"},"modified":"2021-09-27T05:21:13","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T09:21:13","slug":"learning-to-grow-a-battle-to-be-waged-with-susan-neiman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/learning-to-grow-a-battle-to-be-waged-with-susan-neiman\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to “grow”, a battle to be waged with Susan Neiman"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nWhat does it mean to “grow up”?\u00a0The question should haunt all parents, and all those who have the task of accompanying children on their path to adulthood.\u00a0However, it is rarely asked.\u00a0Why ?\u00a0Perhaps, answers the American philosopher\u00a0<\/span>Susan Neiman<\/span><\/a>\u00a0, because the fear of growing up hides the fear of aging, which itself hides the fear of dying, that is to say, paradoxically, the fear of living!<\/span><\/p>\n

In a society fascinated by images of youth, a double fight against our \u201creluctance to grow up\u201d is then necessary.\u00a0This fight, Susan Neiman resolutely and courageously commits to it in a book that every educator should read, and whose Premier Parall\u00e8le editions have been offering a translation since September 2, 2021. Subtitled\u00a0<\/span>Praise of adulthood in an era which infantilizes us<\/span><\/em>\u00a0,\u00a0<\/span>his reflection<\/span><\/a>\u00a0aims to show the reality of \u201cgrowing up\u201d, as an ineluctable process for human life, and its legitimacy, as an inescapable objective of educational action.\u00a0Because growing up is at the same time an indisputable fact;\u00a0and an ideal, “which deserves to be harnessed”.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this book which “wants to be useful”, the philosopher intends to show what it means to “mature as it should”, in order to be able to say how one can “intelligently accompany a life”.\u00a0Its subject is the same as that of\u00a0<\/span>Emile or Education<\/span><\/em> , of Rousseau<\/span><\/a>\u00a0, “the only philosophical work entirely devoted to the fact of growing up”, she believes.<\/span><\/p>\n

A necessity to accept<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The book reminds us that, because of human incompleteness, growing up is a fundamental necessity.\u00a0We are born completely destitute, and our survival depends on a whole series of conquests (cognitive, motor, emotional, and social) which take place not only during childhood and adolescence, but throughout life. .\u00a0The \u201cprocess\u201d that makes everyone a (fully) human being is \u201ca process that never ends\u201d.\u00a0The child is in this sense “the living affirmation of human transcendence”, in the words of Simone de Beauvoir, by bringing something radically new, and by never being reducible to what he is at a given moment. determined.<\/span><\/p>\n

If one does not accept to recognize the immediate positivity of “growing up”, it is often because one refuses the impoverishment and the shrinking which would be the mark of “adulthood”.\u00a0But we must distinguish between lucidity and resignation.\u00a0To be an adult is not to resign yourself to a narrow life, and of less interest.\u00a0One must accept the uncertainties, and give up certain dreams, leaving the world of the illusory for that of self-realization.<\/span><\/p>\n

Certainly old age is on the horizon for the best life in the world, and it has often been seen as a shipwreck.\u00a0But it can have \u201csparkle\u201d, and \u201chumanity, creativity and self-development continues, beyond flops, falls, excesses and mistakes\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Social mechanisms of infantilization<\/strong><\/h4>\n

However, the question “what’s the point of growing up?”\u00a0Arises in a cruel way if one takes into account what Susan Neiman calls “the conceptual horror of our world”, in other words the negativity of a time when neo-liberalism triumphed.\u00a0Because \u201cthe social structures in which we operate are designed so that we remain childish\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

We would like to know more about the mechanisms that keep us in the alienation of immaturity, and make us wade through \u201cthe swamps of adolescence\u201d.\u00a0These mechanisms “intended to infantilize the subjects” are now “more subtle but not less powerful, and certainly more invasive” than the feudal-type mechanisms.\u00a0It is not sure that it is enough to designate the state, which would like to prevent us from “thinking independently”, and the dominant culture, “which does not want adults”.<\/span>
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