This is the Peter pan story roughly speaking as Peter pan is this Magical boy
"pan" means… Pan is the god of everything, roughly speaking… right?
And so it's not an accident that he has the name Pan and he's the boy that won't grow up, and he's magical
Well, that's because children are magical, they can be anything. They're nothing but potential
and Peter Pan doesn't want to give that up
Why? Well he's got some adults around them, but the main adult is Captain Hook
Well who the hell wants to grow up to be Captain Hook? …first of all you've got a hook!
second you're a tyrant and third, you're chased by the
Dragon of Chaos with the clock in its stomach right the crocodile. It's already got a piece of you
well, that's what happens when you get older,
time has already got a piece of you and eventually it's got a taste for you and
and eventually it's going to eat you and so a hook is so traumatized by that that he can't help but be a tyrant
And then Peter Pan looks at traumatized Hook and says well no, I'm not sacrificing my childhood for that. So that's fine. Except he ends up King of the Lost Boys
In Neverland, and Neverland doesn't exist and who the hell wants to be King of the Lost Boys
And he also sacrifices the possibility to have a real relationship with a woman, because that's Wendy right and she's kind of conservative
middle-class
London dwelling girl. She wants to grow up and have kids and have a life she accepts her mortality she accepts her maturity
Peter Pan has to content himself with Tinkerbell
She doesn't even exist. She's like she's like the fairy of porn
She doesn't exist
She's a substitute for the real thing
But the dichotomy that you are talking about is very tricky because
there's a sacrificial element in maturation right you have to sacrifice the pluri-potentiality of
childhood for the actuality of a frame and
The question is well, why would you do that? Well one reason is it happens to you whether you do it or not
you can either choose your damn limitation or
you can let it take you unaware when you're 30 or
Even worse when you're 40 and then that is not a happy day you see I see people like this
And I think it's more and more common in our culture because people can put off maturity without suffering an immediate penalty
But all that happens is the penalty accrues
and then when it finally hits it just wallops you because when you're 25 you could be an idiot it's no problem even when you're
Out in the job search, it's like well, you don't have any experience, and you're kind of clueless. Yeah, yeah, you're young
You know it's no problem
We can that's what young people are like, but they're full of potential, okay well now you're the same person at 30
It's like people aren't so thrilled about you at that point
It's like what the hell have you been doing for the last ten years well?
I'm just as clueless as I was when I was 22 yeah, but you're not 22
You're an old infant
Right and that's an ugly thing an old infant
so
The rea.. part of the reason you choose your damn sacrifice
Because the sacrifice is inevitable
but at least you get to choose it and then there's something that's even more complex than that in some sense is that
The problem with being a child is that all you are is potential and its really low resolution you could be anything
But you're not anything
So then you go and you adopt an apprenticeship
Roughly speaking
And then you become at least you become something and when you're something that makes the world open up to you again
You know when you are like a really good plumber
Then you end up being far more than a plumber right you end up being a good employer not not that plumbers are not… I'm not putting
plumbers down… it's like more power to plumbers, they've saved more lives than doctors, so
Hygiene right, so
You know if you're a really good plumber well
Then you have some employees you run a business you make you train some other people you enlarge their lives
You're kind of a pillar of the community you you have your family. It's you can once you pass through that narrow
training period which narrows you and
Constricts you and develops you at the same time then you can come out the other end with a bunch of new
Possibility at hand and Jung talked about that he thought that the proper
Part of the proper path of development in the last half of life was to rediscover
the child that you left behind as you were apprenticing and
so then you get to be something and
Regain that potential at the same time very very smart well. He was very very smart so that's
very wise very
wise thing to know so
Yep, sacrifice
We'll talk more about that, too you get to pick your damn sacrifice. That's all you don't get to not make one
Your sacrificial whether you want to be or not
That's a good thing to know as well, so even though it's rather you know it's rough thing to figure out but... other questions?
-I have knownthat thing you just said about noticing it more and more in people late into their twenties. -Okay. Yeah
-What do you think about that where do you think that comes in terms of culture we live in... -I think universities facilitate it.
Because you can go to university to not be something
instead of going to university to be something and that's it's Pleasure Island and
the price you pay for it especially in the U.S. is debt and
You're enticed into it because the administrators can pick your pocket
So they rob your future self while allowing you to pretend that you have an identity
Right very nasty and you can't declare bankruptcy with your student loans in the U.S. It's indentured servitude and
It is precisely Pleasure Island
it's exactly that and so tuition fees have shot way out of control and
part of the reason that universities don't make more demands on their students and
Let them get away with all the things they let them get away with is because they're basically
Why the hell would you chase them out?
There are a hundred thousand dollars or more
So they can do whatever they want as long as you get to sell them to the salt mines
right
So and you know it's not the only reason because the other thing that's happened is that the rate of technological
transformation is so fast now and the rate of turnover of things is that it's it is
genuinely harder for people who are say eighteen to twenty… when I was a kid roughly speaking the kind of rough patch for
For life is probably fourteen to seventeen something like that now
It's I think it's eighteen to twenty five something like that
and I think the reason for that is is that all the jobs that the bloody hippies complained about being doomed to in the
1960s have now disappeared their problem was oh my God
I'm going to go have to work for a corporation and get a salary for the rest of my life
You know and then I'll just end up in it with a pension and that'll be my whole life. It's like
well, it seems like a lot better deal than an
endless round of part-time Starbucks jobs
So you know some of it is that it's it's just it's it's there's a space now in our culture that
that is
lacking for people to make that transformation from from adolescence into adulthood and so it's just
It's it's the cost of that is forestalled. It's not a good thing
It's not a good thing