It has been a personal routine of mine to write to myself something about maturity through the present medium right around the current time of the year. The point is to organize the thoughts I have gathered throughout a school year and remind myself of shortcomings of either myself or others, or both (which is not explicitly stated), so as to be beneficial toward my hopefully progressing maturity, and, if anyone would even care to pay attention to my amateur writing, to others.
Last post was about humility as a sign of maturity, a character disposition that affect both thoughts and actions. The current post focuses not on personality dispositions that affect both thoughts and actions but on dispositions of actions alone, i.e. behavioral dispositions.
Many suffer from what we would call "immature" dispositions. No, I do not mean a father playing dumb with his toddler child, or a mother playing dolls with her daughter. They are rather mature examples of parenthood, neither would any reader assume such actions to be immature under a commonsensical standard. What I mean is habits that often bring about adverse social conditions as opposed to harmony.
I will use some examples. Hopefully they are based on the most common shortcomings to have everyone reading this see one's own shortcomings in them, be it present or past. Imagine for a moment a girl that broods over tiny things, exploding an issue that is not that big of a deal into larger proportions later on, the kind of behavioral disposition one might see in public high schools. It is quite common to see a "preppy" girl seek after allies to confirm her biases against a person she felt hurt by, gossiping against her perceived adversary. She would not reveal the full truth; her statements would be bloated, censored, and/or filled with lies. Later in the semester, the gossip would explode and many feelings would be hurt and many confusions would arise.
For we expect well-formed adults to quickly get over negative emotions and, as we like to say, "not give a shit," we consider such a brooding immature. Yet we see in many cases this sort of high-school drama queen immaturities carry over well beyond college sorority years into the professional and the married life. Many married women blatantly admitted to me that "girls talk." Indeed they do, often with quite a malicious intent. Women, on the other hand, quoting from a female friend of mine, "would go to sleep after a nice glass of chilled white wine and wake up not giving two shits about the petty dramas of yesterday."
It is now turn to imagine for a moment a boy that habitually seek to prove his masculinity. Imagine further that this boy is quite a nerd (for we have bashed on preppies already). Whenever a social conflict arises, however small it may be, he seeks to domineeringly assert his perceived superior intellect (within the virtual world and/or reality), ranging from pretending to know a subject he barely knows about, thinking that his brain power could deduce correct solutions on the spot with limited information and without properly knowing the subject, accusing someone of ignorance when he himself is the one that is ignorant, to imagining things in favor of his arrogant delusions.
For we expect well-formed adults to recognize one's shortcomings and improve rather than falsely and with toxicity compensate, we call such an exertion of rather toxic masculinity immature. Yet we see in many cases of the said shortcomings carried, like the example above, well beyond high school years into the professional and the married life. A philosopher once warned me that such a behavior, in his experience, is prevalent among professors and philosophers themselves, the "nerds" and supposed masters of logic. Sadly, my experience has been reflective of his. On numerous occasions, I have witnessed intellectuals speak of matters that they clearly do not know about, pretending to be smarter. I heard somewhere that squires like complain about his defeated duel. A true knight, on the other hand, knows when to kneel and bow his head with honor and dignity, even in defeat.
So how, then, can we fix such immaturities at older ages? We could first talk about psychotherapeutic methods. Therapists seem to be the go-to solutions people (who are not mentally ill) think about nowadays, and many have been putting faith in psychotherapy in fixing behaviors. Indeed, prominent psychologists Ross and Nisbett noted in their book The Person and the Situation that, in our society, "psychotherapists fill the functions. . . that kin, kith, and coworkers fill" (183). In other words, people nowadays rely on psychotherapists to cure them of their problems as opposed to close relations like our ancestors have. The said problems are derived from stunted emotional growth, i.e. qualities our society commonly characterize as "immature." (It should be noted that I am speaking of this matter completely apart from mental illnesses; they are of quite different species to tame.) So, in a sense, psychotherapy serves in part as a parental substitution.
I myself think that psychotherapy can be a valuable companion to growth (the value of which is determined purely by how willing the patient is and how competent the therapist is). I subscribe to a sort of "fused" method that combines aspects of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and psychoanalysis (psychodynamics/PD). But I found myself not putting as much faith in therapy as many of my peers do. Each therapeutic method suffers from shortcomings. CBT alone may often not be sufficient, because the unconscious may not be healed. PD may often result in protracted search for the inner scars and the process of "coming to terms with them." The two methods has the potential to compliment each other, but they do not address physical actions in themselves.
Enter alcoholics anonymous. They are not a therapeutic organization specializing in psychology. Rather, they are a support group that focuses on the action of drinking excessively first and foremost through fraternal bonding. They are more in line with how people of traditional societies relied on close relations. They now have a catchphrase associated with them: "Fake it until you make it." The gist of the phrase does not mean that one should lie constantly. Rather, it means not doing something you want to. In other words, act contrary to your desires. In moral philosophical terms, such "fakeness" is called continence. Virtue ethics classify four stages of virtue in the following descending order: virtue, continence, incontinence, and vice. Virtue is of perfection where goods acts are accompanied by good beliefs and the pleasure of carrying out the said good acts. Continence does have the like belief and the acts, but it lacks the pleasure. In the instance of a recovering alcoholic, abstaining from alcohol would not be so pleasurable to him. Thus his abstinence is continence, falling short of true virtue, a "faking." But this "faking" is better than incontinence where only the good belief exists. Without saying much, it is better than pure vice also.
Let us now apply to the examples to hopefully paint how my thoughts will pan out in practice. The exampled girl lacked proper parental supervision growing up, so she lacks the visual memory of how to deal with conflicts. The limitations of pure CBT would not be touching on the potential loneliness she feels due to her lack of parental supervision, fueling her desire to gossip and feel accepted. The limitations of pure PD would be not touching on improving the cognitive habit of brooding that leads to the toxic gossiping. But neither really touches on the action of gossiping as an independent issue to address; it is approached in light of other factors.
The exampled boy grew up feeling weak, fatter, and less athletic compared to other boys, so he attempts to unconsciously compensate for his inferiority complex. CBT would not be touching on the underlying causes deep within his unconscious that give rise to his compensatory exhibition of superiority. PD would not address adequately the numerous ways the compensation can happen (false reliance on his intellect, toxic arguments filled with ad hominem, manipulation of perspectives of others, objectifying girls through habitual masturbation and pornography, etc.), and the equally numerous thought patterns that give rise to compensatory acts.
Valuable the methods surely can be. However, the shortcomings of the methods may not fully help the growth, the negation of immature behavioral dispositions. While the psyche is being formed, the actions should be guided, even when the thoughts and the unconscious brings about the desire to do the contrary. No, the continence we seek would not be the full virtue we ought to be attaining. But it is a step closer to being a mature, well-formed adult. Never have I heard, "pleasure of being mannered maketh man." But I have heard the old English proverb, "manners maketh man."
So be mannered and focus on your actions. If you feel the urge to gossip, hold it back first. You will have a chance to deal with inner-workings of your unconscious later. If you feel the urge to exhibit superiority, hold it back first. You will have a chance to deal with your childhood insecurities in your private meditations.
There are psychological concepts that I could write pages about, extrapolating further into the possible objections. But I shall not use up the time here to do so. The gist of this post is this: Try your utmost best to first detect the desires that run contrary to your conscience. Then, try as equally as hard to act contrary to the wrongful desires. This is nothing new. In teaching us to grow, educational sources ranging from our parents to Sesame Street have always focused on how to act first, not how to feel or desire. The focus ought simply to be focused throughout our adult years.
