The Ontology of the Grown-Up
Why I keep framing civilizational maturity as “adulthood”
Let me say it again for those in the back:
We have built god-tools and handed them to a species still running on stressed-animal reflexes.
We can rewrite genomes, flood the world with synthetic media, and bend the carbon cycle, then act surprised when the consequences arrive like weather. In Adulthood of Humanity, I call this the Adolescent Polycrisis: adult power with juvenile institutional habits. That phrase is diagnostic. And it’s also a design choice, because the frame you choose decides what readers can “see” as common sense.
Why the metaphor matters
Metaphors are not decorative language. They structure how we reason about abstract systems (politics, time, responsibility) by mapping them onto something concrete and lived. So when I frame civilization as “adolescent” and “growing toward healthy adulthood,” I’m doing more than clever word play. I’m choosing a source domain (a healthy adult human) to make the target domain (civilization) legible at gut level.
That choice “smuggles” in a moral psychology without waving an ideological flag. Most people disagree about regulation, markets, climate, education, and AI. Far fewer people disagree about what a healthy adult looks like: self-control, responsibility, repair, care for dependents, and the ability to plan beyond the next hit of dopamine.
The mapping: Civilization ← Healthy Adult
Here’s the conceptual bridge I’m building:
Governance maps to executive function—the capacity to pause, simulate consequences, and inhibit impulses.
Institutions map to habits and routines—structures that reduce chaos and free attention for higher work.
Public attention maps to cognitive bandwidth—finite, exhaustible, worth protecting as infrastructure.
Planet-scale risks (climate, AI, bio) map to adult consequences—the blowback that comes from real power.
Maintenance maps to basic competence—keeping the house from rotting because you live in it.
That’s the point of the metaphor: it turns sprawling policy debates into a single developmental question—Are we acting like adults with adult power?
What “healthy adult” implies, and what it does to policy
Developmental psychology gives a clean anchor here. Research on emerging adulthood describes a transitional stage marked by identity exploration, instability, self-focus, “feeling in-between,” and a wide sense of possibility. Read that again and tell me it doesn’t rhyme with the current century: geopolitical churn, institutional whiplash, techno-optimism, and a collective sense of being suspended between worlds.
Now layer in the clinical view. In Schema Therapy, the Healthy Adult mode is the integrating capacity that regulates emotion, moderates extremes, and makes realistic decisions. Translate that upward: a mature civilization doesn’t suppress dissent (that’s authoritarian “punitive parent” energy). It doesn’t surrender to tantrum politics either. It integrates signals into coherent action.
This is where the frame becomes politically useful, because it re-labels contested ideas in a way people can feel:
Regulation becomes self-mastery. In an “adolescent freedom” story, rules are tyranny. In the adulthood story, rules are the cognitive brakes that keep you alive.
Circular economy becomes hygiene. A grown-up cleans up their mess. Outsourcing waste to “somewhere else” starts to look like immaturity.
Future-generation representation becomes duty. Adulthood carries generativity: a concern for guiding and protecting the next generation.
Cognitive infrastructure becomes public health. If attention and sense-making are civic infrastructure, then media literacy and training in critical ignoring stop sounding like classroom luxuries.
The key insight: “adulthood” routes around tribal identity. “Environmentalism” can trigger partisan reflex. “Grown-up stewardship” triggers something older and more universal.
Why I lean hard on maintenance
Modern status culture worships novelty. Yet civilization runs on maintenance and repair: the labor that keeps ordinary life going. My manuscript makes the same turn: adulthood rewrites the hero story. Innovation still matters, yet the adult question becomes, Does this reduce the maintenance burden on future generations—or increase it?
That is a maturity test you can apply to anything: AI systems, supply chains, energy grids, school design, healthcare, climate adaptation. Adults choose the option that keeps the house livable.
Proof that “adult institutions” can exist
I am not constructing an abstraction here. Some places have built early prototypes of long-horizon governance and deliberation that aim at coherence rather than outrage. These are sketches of what I call Type 1 institutions: structures that protect the long now, stabilize attention, and make stewardship normal.
Adolescence as a stage, not a sentence
Calling society “adolescent” can sound like an insult. I mean it as a developmental stage with a direction. Adolescence is risky because the accelerator matures before the brakes. That’s exactly what our century feels like: explosive capability, thin wisdom. The point of the metaphor is agency. It says: yes, this phase is volatile, yet it has a trajectory. We can grow up on purpose.
So the claim is simple: “Adulthood” is a coordination frame. It gives ordinary people a felt standard for what maturity looks like at planetary scale: recognize power, accept stewardship, prioritize time-binding continuity.
What would a healthy adult do, if the house were the planet, and the kids were the future?