Staying a child

I don’t want to grow up. Not that I want to be a child in responsibilities or that I preferred my life when I was younger. I am so glad that part of my life is over. It is seen as childish to have radical politics and mature politics are “realistic” and incremental. Kids have not been fully stamped into accepting the world as it is and that is amazing.

One of the most annoying things to deal with when I talk to liberals is that they don’t even engage with radical ideas but just dismiss them for being childish. Maturity is 2.3 mm/year sea level rise as earth slowly gets cooked. I feel like it is naive to think that anyone could do better than current people in power and absurd to think there could be a better way the world is fundamentally. And if a better world is possible you get asked to be able to spell it out exactly before any changes are tried. It feels like being asked to imagine color before you have ever opened your eyes.

When growing up one of the biggest things I wanted to avoid was being childish because I was taught that is a bad thing. I learned it is good to be mature and grown up. That I should be a strong adult that is responsible for myself and those around me. I adopted realistic politics of social democracy and thought institutions would help me. And for me they did in a lot of ways growing up in a western country with a solidly well off family. I wanted to become the mature “realistic” person that could defend her ideas by citing studies and have no creativity or room for the unknown in them.

It is painful to look at the world and think this does not have to be this way. The endless work and the millions of deaths is not just how the world must be. If being a communist is self harm then growing up is learning to cope by representing the experiences. I think kids are too often hated for this because it is less painful to accept the world as it is. But it is childish to cry at this world.