Here's an article about the amoral disparity between puberty’s onset and the brain’s maturation, and the clash between nature's preoccupation and humanistic morality.
All age restrictions come off as nothing more than posturing to me. Regardless of what the laws prescribe, the fact is that scarcely anyone waits until they are 21 to try alcohol or 18 until they have sex. Whenever an adult lectered me on such things when I was a teen I took great delight in asking them how old they were when they first did x. That shuts them up.
And this insistence they like to make that our brains aren't fully developed as teens strikes me as nothing more than a rationalization. Not being a neurologist, I am in no position to refute that theory in scientific terms. I will only say that it seems to resemble some of the chatter that was made around the turn of the 20th century concerning the inferiority of the brains of africans and women. It was alleged by 'experts' of the time that black men had smaller anterior neo-cortexes than white men and woman just had significantly smaller brains overall. Now, it is true that if you hold the brain of the white man as the nay-plus ultra of brains then, obviously, anything that deviates from it would be 'inferior'. Likewise, if modern neurologists assume that adult brains are 'mature' then any differences between the adult brain and the adolescent brain will be seen as signs of 'immaturity'. In other words, the argument that adolescents are neurologically immature and thus unworthy of the same rights that adults take for granted is the scientific equivalent of a tautology and deserves the ridicule that, I predict, it will one day receive from future scientists.
A truly modern approach to the matter would be to admit that age is no more relevent to personal freedom than sex or race. An even better policy, in my opinion, would be to recognize the obvious fact that different people mature at different rates and then simply enact a series of legal reforms that would put a licensing system in place. Just as the government requires citizens to earn a license to operate vehicles and handle firearms, so should they get the right to have sex and enjoy recreational drugs only after they have demonstrated their capacity to do these things with a modicum of knowledge and responsibility. It would not be a perfect system, but it seems more reasonable than simply handing out these rights at some arbitrary age and letting the dices fall where they may.
All age restrictions come off as nothing more than posturing to me. Regardless of what the laws prescribe, the fact is that scarcely anyone waits until they are 21 to try alcohol or 18 until they have sex. Whenever an adult lectered me on such things when I was a teen I took great delight in asking them how old they were when they first did x. That shuts them up.
ReplyDeleteAnd this insistence they like to make that our brains aren't fully developed as teens strikes me as nothing more than a rationalization. Not being a neurologist, I am in no position to refute that theory in scientific terms. I will only say that it seems to resemble some of the chatter that was made around the turn of the 20th century concerning the inferiority of the brains of africans and women. It was alleged by 'experts' of the time that black men had smaller anterior neo-cortexes than white men and woman just had significantly smaller brains overall. Now, it is true that if you hold the brain of the white man as the nay-plus ultra of brains then, obviously, anything that deviates from it would be 'inferior'. Likewise, if modern neurologists assume that adult brains are 'mature' then any differences between the adult brain and the adolescent brain will be seen as signs of 'immaturity'. In other words, the argument that adolescents are neurologically immature and thus unworthy of the same rights that adults take for granted is the scientific equivalent of a tautology and deserves the ridicule that, I predict, it will one day receive from future scientists.
A truly modern approach to the matter would be to admit that age is no more relevent to personal freedom than sex or race. An even better policy, in my opinion, would be to recognize the obvious fact that different people mature at different rates and then simply enact a series of legal reforms that would put a licensing system in place. Just as the government requires citizens to earn a license to operate vehicles and handle firearms, so should they get the right to have sex and enjoy recreational drugs only after they have demonstrated their capacity to do these things with a modicum of knowledge and responsibility. It would not be a perfect system, but it seems more reasonable than simply handing out these rights at some arbitrary age and letting the dices fall where they may.