Or perhaps a senile one. 
:smack: Streak, not steak. sigh. Sorry for the typo. (Typo’s spoil my attempts at feeling pleased with myself.)
The masochistic steak: one that a vegitarian can enjoy without guilt.
This thread is giving me a regular pain in my penetralia.
Because there is no guarantee that that meaningful experience will yield a universal truth. For every person who has bought a house and considered it the best investment in their life, there is another person who will consider it the biggest mistake they ever made. Some older people will tell you to enjoy your youth and make all the mistakes you can early while others will tell you to bare down and set yourself up for the future.
In effect, the wisdom you’ve gained by living your life likely has no bearing on the circumstances I was born into or am facing currently and there is no guarantee that a person who lived through some of the same experiences as yourself took away the same lesson.
As a result, the wisdom gleaned from experience amounts to little more than a list of ways in which one would have liked to live differently.
Age doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom, but it does bring experience and perspective.
It is impossible for a 22 year old to understand, not because they don’t have sufficient intellectual capacity, but because they haven’t experienced it. One clear sign of cocky youth is the notion that everything is a matter of intellectual capacity, with no acknowledgement of any other form of growth or experience. And the sneering insistence that if we old farts can’t tell them what it’s like to have lived three times as long as they have, then it can’t really be anything important. “Oh sure, so you’ve lived 60 years to my 20, big deal, explain to me what you’ve learned in those extra 40 years and how you’ve changed, grown, developed, matured, and evolved. Oh, and if you can’t put 40 years of life experience into a message board post, then obviously you don’t really know anything I don’t know. 'Cause I’m smart, I am!”
To the children who would ask those kinds of questions, here’s a response: Tell us everything you’ve learned and everything different about your soul, your emotional maturity, your spiritual development, your professional accomplishments, your social development and your intellectual advancement since you were ten years old. Do it in such a way that a ten-year old can understand and feel what you’re talking about. Even if you could put it all into words, and explain your growth and development, would the ten-year old be able to really comprehend it? Would he feel the way you do? Really know what you do?
If you can’t do that, then it’s simply childish to think someone three times (or twice, or whatever) your age can impart to you all that has happened to them in their additional years, and make you understand it. Some things cannot be taught in words. Perhaps most of the more important things can’t. That’s just one tiny fragment of what one learns if one lives long enough and has the ability to develop as a person. Reading about someone’s life doesn’t give you the faintest glimmer of what it’s like to have lived it. And any accusatory “you’re no smarter than me!” stance demanding that an entire age group “explain” themselves is purely puerile posturing.
Think of it this way: experience teaches you how to get stuff done, with less angst and friction.
Think of the very first time you ever had to make a public speech in a forum that mattered. Intimidating, no? The second time is easier, and the third time - easier still. Then think of the person who has done it many times over the years.
Now, there is no doubt that some people are just plain better at it than others - born orators. But take the very same person, and ask them - which was easier and went better, the very first time you ever made a public speech, or after 20 years of experience making public speeches?
It is hard to imagine anyone would say “why, the first time, of course”.
As with public speaking, so with many other activities. You have lived through the awkwardness, the inevitable mistakes. You know better how to recover from difficulties. These things cannot be achieved through raw intelligence alone, they must be lived through.
Surely it’s at least leading you to scroll beyond ashman165’s posts at least, though?
This thread reminds me of one from several years back, a pit thread by a teenager enraged about Geena Davis’s decision to have a baby while in her forties. This teen felt she knew more about it than Geena Davis and her obstetrician husband. I thought at that time, and I still feel that a “Ask The Teenager to Solve Your Grownup Problems” thread would be endlessly hilarious.
But there is no universal truth, there is only truth for you - at least when it comes down to the things that matter. And the point isn’t universal truth - its becoming a better person - however you define that.
ashman165: You are, amazingly, even more arrogant than I was at your age. You are, astoundingly, even more unteachable than I was at your age. I grew out of that.
I started to type “I hope you will too”, but then I realized that I honestly don’t care.
This is hilarious. The friend sounds like quite the cut-up.
Wisdom of the aged; dismiss pompous nonsense with good-natured laughter.
I actually agree with ashman’s friend. Not only do I take umbrage with, and hence refrain from using, the word penetralia, but I take umbrage with, and refrain from using, the word umbrage.
I’ve been meaning to post to this thread for days now, so I apologize if I take it off track.
As long as people pay attention, learn from their mistakes, and discern cause-and-effect from happenstance, they will continue to get smarter. It doesn’t matter if they’re 25 or 85. So yes, a person like that will be wiser the longer he or she lives.
Unfortunately, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that very few people are actually like that. The pain of having to admit you might be wrong, ignorant or helpless is too great for most people. They become set in their ways and when things don’t turn out as they expected, they always chalk it up to bad luck, not bad planning. Eventually people no longer even want to see the world as it really is, because they can’t deal with the confusion and meaninglessness. This is when they stop reading the paper and start reading People magazine.
And if you don’t think that’s the truth, well, you just haven’t been paying attention long enough ;).
It seems we have another person whose vocabulary has failed him. I’d recommend looking up the word arrogant and learning its meaning so as to avoid any further embarrassment.
There’s one trait common to people who intentionally and truly teach: they must be necessarily be possessed of greater knowledge in the subject than those whom they seek to teach. There is another trait people possess which allows them to teach others, but that has to do with their ineptitude. I’m uncertain that you fall into the first category, but your misuse of arrogant leaves me inclined to think the second category might well be the case.
You clearly cared enough to invoke both a rhetorical and logical fallacy in one sentence. I thank you for leaving for all to see such a shining example of your scholarship; it counsels much. I couldn’t have possibly made your position look anymore foolish than you have done. Bully for you.
Do you really want to play this game?
ar⋅ro⋅gant –adjective
- making claims or pretensions to superior importance or rights; overbearingly assuming; insolently proud: an arrogant public official.
—Synonyms
- presumptuous, haughty, imperious, brazen. See proud.
What part of that doesn’t describe your needlessly verbose contributions to this thread? And why do you feel the need to put your arrogance on full display with endless games of “gotcha”? It just seems a little douchey.
None of those may be SAT words, but they get my point (and the point of many others in this thread) across nicely.
(emphasis mine)
Please cite where any of that applies to me. To do so, you’d have to show that I’m:
lying,
claiming I have superior importance, or rights,
that I’m either assuming or, well, overbearingly so,
insolently proud (not just proud, but insolently so),
The last part makes little sense considering they use the word to be defined as part of the definition. But in any event, I’m not a public official. None of those is demonstrably the case, particularly in light that I have specifically denied that I’m superior to anyone, have greater rights than anyone or are more important than anyone.
You seem to write, still, without an understanding of the word. Moreover, you don’t seem to grasp the idea of logical predicates. I can see dealing with you will require much effort to educate you beyond where you are now. I hope I have the time and patience to help you in what will prove a journey wrought with frustration.
I see. So because I sometimes use SAT words, you’re deriding me as arrogant. That’s curious that something needed to satisfy a minimum standard for college admissions is seen by you as a step so high to render one who uses his high school words being worthy of the title arrogant. Yes, you will require much work indeed.
No problem my friend, this post is a pretty good example of you being insolant, overbearing and a bit of a douchebag. Oh wait, the call is coming from inside the home… I mean, that’s the post where you ask how you’re being being arrogant.
Imagine that.
Since you seem to have been birthed full-form from a pod in your parent’s garage, you may not understand the subtle nuances of a thing called “slang.” Among a large majority of people in our age bracket (mid-to-late 20s), an “SAT word” is any word that is rarely found in everyday speech, but could easily be found in the SAT’s vocabulary section. These words often have similar definitions to more common words. They are also often used in conversation by people who believe they are intellectually superior around others to prove they are intellectually superior.
Furthermore, the above paragraph could be construed as an implication that I am uneducated twit. That is the second time you’ve done so in the last few days. Well, excuse me for being gauche, but you can cram it. As a librarian I learned long ago that knowing something off the top of your head is a fool’s game. It is impossible to know everything. But knowing who to ask, that is the secret to having access to everything.
Which is rather the point of this thread, isn’t it?
You know, you might have been well on your way to making a point, but your bias and wild assumptions betrayed you. It’s of curious import that you presume to give yourself so much credit to think that you’re worth any extra effort it might take to come off “intellectually superior” towards. I write like this because I speak like this. I speak like this because I was raised to speak in a manner which wouldn’t on first glance indicate that I’m mentally vacant. If that means occasionally I use a word many find unusual, I really care not. It’s of no moment one way or another whether you know or don’t know certain words. Such limitations on the part of the others don’t affect my life any more than my limitations affect theirs.
Perhaps if you presented yourself otherwise, there’d be no reason to imply as much.
I’m glad to see you haven’t yet stopped using these amusing logical fallacies of which you’re quite evidently too fond. You’ve created a caricature of a straw man argument, and then not even well-argued against even it.
It’s logically incongruent to suggest that not knowing “something off the top of [one’s] own head is a fool’s game . . .**ut knowing who[m] to ask is the secret of having access to everything.” It’s either the case that one should know something off the top of one’s head or, or one shouldn’t.
However, the point you really wanted to make was about know “everything” off the top of one’s head as opposed to the much lower, and more realistic standard, of just knowing something.
Undaunted with such petty concerns as being logically consistent with your own straw man argument, you imply that I lack the ability to do research because I know something from memory. Well, your point, as is usual, is completely without merit. As a person who values education, it should come as no great surprise that I, like all other scholars in the world, value research. And I, like all others, am obliged to do it. A lot. But there’s a curious thing about scholars of the world, we tend to have above average vocabularies. And we are often wont to use them. Take issue with that if you must, but it won’t do to deride someone for making use of their education (in a very minor way, might I add) while in the same paragraph espousing that you are educated and possessed of wisdom.
I suppose it would be entirely possible for me to write using very tiny words and still convey the same ideas. However, attendant to that would also be conveyed the idea that I’m a person of protracted language skills. I find that a silly way to address high-minded ideas inasmuch as big ideas aren’t best served by using a childlike ability to explain them.
Or should I just stick with words like “thingies” and “whatchamajiggers” in my daily life while discussing areas of abstract thought so not to put anyone off with having marginally large words appear alongside extremely complex mathematical structures? I don’t know about you, but were I going to have surgery, I’d be less than confident in my surgeon’s skills if he referred to doing a whatchamacallit procedure on my hoozidoozit with the thingamabob while having me monitored by some newfangled gadgetry. Sorry. Thank you, no. Those who have done the work and well-learned their schooling are most assuredly free to speak as though they did, without being labeled arrogant as it’s completely not pretentious to speak as though one’s educated given that one actually is.
I’m not a Boomer (only 37), but I have learned to live by this quote:
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
ashman165 - You probably think this quote is trite, but if you would heed its advice, your arguments would be much more persuasive.
That’s just not true. There are four relevant levels of language:
- Simple language expressing simple ideas
- Complex language expressing simple ideas
- Complex language expressing complex ideas
- Simple language expressing complex ideas
You seem to think you’re using 3, but from what I’ve read in this thread, you’re actually using 2. If you really want to be esteemed for your rhetorical skills, shoot for 4.