Where Are All the Adults?

In her debut salon, Maria Górska-Piszek invites you to explore how we ended in a culture of permanent adolescence, and what would be the best way out of it.

Nobody feels like an adult these days, and many young people don’t even aspire to be one. The usual badges of adulthood are either out of reach or completely lost their appeal. We don’t know what else could be put in their place. Without a shared narrative that explains what is even the point of growing up, or experienced elders who could guide the candidates through this process, a lot of us don’t feel like proper adults even in our 30s.

We can’t seem to find role models that we could happily relate to. For many of our parents, adulthood was a neverending treadmill of sacrifice, chores, and obligations. While we appreciate the effort they’ve put into keeping us alive and fed, we struggle to find good reasons to voluntarily choose the same fate. Why would anyone choose this, given an option not to? Does an adult life have anything valuable to offer us at this point?

And yet, only adults get a vote on how the future is going to look like. If we all sit and wait for someone wiser to make everything right, the people who show up might turn out to be anything but wise. When so many of us don’t feel qualified to carry out basic life maintenance tasks, how are we going to tackle large-scale tricky problems?

In this salon, we will explore:

• What does it mean to be an adult when familiar milestones no longer make any sense?
• What visions of adulthood have we taken out of school? How is that serving us?
• What effect does prolonged adolescence have on society as a whole?
• Does anyone really feel like an adult? What’s the secret of people who seem to have their lives put together?
• Is being an adult just one long streak of chores and obligations? Or does it unlock some superpowers you couldn’t have otherwise?
• How can one become an adult and still maintain the best parts of a childlike attitude?
• How would a modern rite of passage into adulthood look like?

Good to read before the salon:

• Why Doesn’t Anybody Feel Like an Adult Anymore?
• As We May Adult
• This Is Why I’ll Never Be an Adult
• Where Have All the Adults Gone?
• Adulting Isn’t Hard (Twitter thread)

***

🗓 ii Calendar

📋 Code of Conduct

📚 Become a member, get a free ticket every month, access our forums, members-only events, and more!

–