Grow Up: The Four Maturities

Recently a story has been hitting the media that adolescence doesn't really end until 25, due to continuing neurological and emotional development. There has been the usual back and forth over if kids are being coddled or if we as a culture have too been hard, etc. Etc. Etc. I'm not qualified to make judgments in the area of neuroscience and my lack of parenting experience weakens the force of any opinions I'd make in that area. Instead I'll focus on something more relevant to my age group: what to do about growing up.

Dependability: The Supreme Virtue of Manhood

      The definition of what makes a man a man is anything but clear in today's culture. Is it simply possessing a y-chromosome and and a rather vulnerable body part in the pelvic region? Is it being super-ripped  and sleeping with as many women as you can get? Is it being sensitive and open enough to talk about your feelings? Is it making money and gaining power? Is it drinking beer A instead of beer B? I'm here to offer my observation on the single defining trait that separates the real men from the overgrown boys: Dependability.

Video Games and the Male Mind

      For those of you who have been in a coma since around when the first Star Wars movie came out in theaters and just woke up, we now have these things called 'video games' that can be played on our tube-less TV and graphics-capable computers. While you marvel at that (and our lack of neon-colored suits) I should also tell you that these video game things have also been a teensy bit controversial. One of the theories that swirled around the motive for the Columbine shooting was that the boys responsible had played too many violent first-person-shooter games. And now there is rising alarm in some circles that the age of the average gamer is now 35. The popular image of the boy who had 'failed to launch' used to be the bachelor who played the field with girls instead of committing and settling down; now it's a fat, unwashed slob who plays World of Warcraft or Call of Duty until 4AM. So what's the deal here? Why is this one form of entertainment so enticing and divisive?