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From: israel@tove.UUCP (Bruce Israel)
Newsgroups: net.social
Subject: Re: what is an adult?
Message-ID: <307@tove.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Aug-85 19:48:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: tove.307
Posted: Tue Aug  6 19:48:37 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 8-Aug-85 01:22:33 EDT
References: <767@lll-crg.ARPA>
Reply-To: israel@tove.UUCP (Bruce israel)
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Maryland, Laboratory for Parallel Computation, C.P., MD
Lines: 18

In article <767@lll-crg.ARPA> bandy@lll-crg.ARPA (Andrew Scott Beals) writes:
>What is an adult?

Hmmm, interesting question.  I guess that my definition of adulthood
is when you primarily act with maturity.  Now what is maturity?  I
think that it's when you avoid doing something that you want to do,
because you don't like the consequences of the action.  For example, if
you're best friend's SO propositions you, turning down the sex because
of what it would do to your friend, and also your relationship with your
friend, is an act of maturity.  I think that this definition should
probably be restricted to refer to consequences in terms of other
people, i.e. "... because you don't like the consequences of the action
as it affects others"; I'm not sure that not robbing a bank because you
are afraid of going to jail is maturity or just common sense.
-- 

Bruce Israel   
seismo!umcp-cs!israel (Usenet)    israel@Maryland (Arpanet)