Susan Neiman is a philosopher and Director of the Einstein Forum and has written many books with the latest being “Why Grow Up”. It came on the heels of another book titled “Moral Clarity”. Neiman says in one of the many interviews on Youtube that, “Moral clarity is inspiration, it is conviction, it is the ability to persuade people of moral positions but it is that which cannot be defined because you only get it case by case. Most of us are willing to agree on general principles, life liberty, pursuit of happiness…most of us would also disagree on certain extreme cases. Moral clarity, however, means looking at each particular case, facts and context and working out your answers. The call for morality is a very important thing because we all want to be moral people, we want to see ourselves as moral people. Moral clarity is not moral simplicity….”
The above contention of Neiman is important because it is in this context that she talks of how to grow up. “I have been struck by how completely paradoxical our views are on growing up. The interesting thing is that all children want to grow up…they associate growing up with having autonomy and power and being able to control their own lives. Adults, on the other hand, have wildly idealized childhood and painted it much rosier…which is by no means as it is otherwise children wouldn’t want to get out of it. And particularly idealized the age between 17-27….the funny thing about that is I do not know anyone who has gotten through them who would like to repeat them…I remember hearing when I was of that age that, ‘this is the best time of your life’. I was terribly insecure inside…I was figuring out who I was, having heartbreaks and having no practice at making decisions, you think every decision is fateful…who I fall in love with, what I study …this is going to decide everything about of my life…in addition to all this you think you are wasting the best part of your life. The question is why do we keep sending that message and why are adults told to do what they can to imitate that stage. We are preparing young people to expect very little from their lives and demand even less.”
Neiman says we have to prepare to grow old by training our mind. And how? “We are made to feel guilty if we do not put in enormous effort in training our body, nobody tells us to spend half an hour a day reading something difficult…in order to grow up you have to grapple with the difficult. Growing up is hard, it is a process that never stops. It is hard but not boring,…Part of the reason why people resist is that they think nothing can happen to you after you are 40 or 60! We are taught growing up is a matter of resignation, giving up the idea that we may change anything at all…viewing it as a youthful fantasy…Youth is associated with hope and age with resignation. Being grown up is somewhere in between.” Neiman gives a beautiful paraphrasing of Alice’s famous quote, “I have to keep running to stay in the same place.” She says that trying to keep your eye on the way the world is and ought to be is hard…becoming adult is about understanding and keeping pace with this movement…
Neiman contends that virtue is one thing, happiness another…they may not meet, “I think we should strive for happiness, the basic childish impulse we have is that if you do right you will be happy, wrong will be punished. That is how we raise our children…We all tend to worry about our own happiness and other peoples virtue or lack of it…if we turn that on its head and worry about our own virtues and other’s happiness, we may get closer to it. … “
The “moral clarity” that emerges on this issue of how to grow up, is to look at age in its face and work on one’s virtues to increase others' happiness. About one’s own, we will find out as we grow up…
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>http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/events/susan-neiman/
