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copied from a comment else-LJ:
[...] it seems like a very immature behavior. I think of teenagers (or two-year-olds) being defiant just to exercise or demonstrate some power in the world (largely because it's the only power they have--or think they have, the power to say "no").
Maybe I'm imagining a straw man; maybe people who assert this aren't saying and feeling and thinking "oooh, look how naughty we are, we're *breaking* the *rules*!" But my imagination isn't coming up with another attitude to explain it differently, and I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to learn differently
let me turn the question around: what is so mature about following rules?
aside from transgressive rulebreaking as a political statement (i do this as a matter of course), and the adrenaline rush (i don't do this; i don't _like_ adrenaline rushes), i actually think it's a healthy part of the maturation process to break rules. i was raised to be very law abiding (obedient to god, the government, my elders, men). i do not actually think there is anything inherently mature in obeying rules, it's something we get trained to do as children, and many of us retain it by habit and out of fear, not out of a thoughtful evaluation of the reasons for the rules and carefully considered agreement. we just worry about the consequences, and few of us consider whether those consequences should even be there.
i used to struggle with this a lot, and for me it was a sign of maturity to even consider breaking any rules -- maturity as in thinking for myself, evaluating conditions, accepting responsibility for my actions, and refusing it for the feelings of others when i did something they didn't like but which harmed nobody. and i broke some rules just to break them, to see how i'd feel, what would happen. sometimes rules need to be broken to show that they're total hogwash. sometimes they need to be broken to learn that yeah, maybe they're not such a bad idea. without pushing the envelope, how do we really know where our boundaries lie?
is that "immature"? while in the process of maturing, one's by definition immature, but i view that more in terms of "not fully grown into an adult" as opposed to "naughty little prankster trying to freak the mundanes" which seems to be how you are using it.
i still have some rules in my head that i should break just to break them; stuff that i sucked in as an unquestioning child without assessing their validity for myself.
it's enormously freeing to break such engrained rules. even if afterwards i decide that yeah, the rule works for me, and i should keep it; it's way better to have broken it and evaluated my feelings than to have just accepted it. and yeah, it is fun to do something that makes me a little bit more free. part of the fun is in having overcome a multitude of fears that keep us all in line. another part is a certain joie de vivre from doing your own thing, censure by others be damned. i don't view that as immature per se.
[...] it seems like a very immature behavior. I think of teenagers (or two-year-olds) being defiant just to exercise or demonstrate some power in the world (largely because it's the only power they have--or think they have, the power to say "no").
Maybe I'm imagining a straw man; maybe people who assert this aren't saying and feeling and thinking "oooh, look how naughty we are, we're *breaking* the *rules*!" But my imagination isn't coming up with another attitude to explain it differently, and I have been unsuccessful in my attempts to learn differently
let me turn the question around: what is so mature about following rules?
aside from transgressive rulebreaking as a political statement (i do this as a matter of course), and the adrenaline rush (i don't do this; i don't _like_ adrenaline rushes), i actually think it's a healthy part of the maturation process to break rules. i was raised to be very law abiding (obedient to god, the government, my elders, men). i do not actually think there is anything inherently mature in obeying rules, it's something we get trained to do as children, and many of us retain it by habit and out of fear, not out of a thoughtful evaluation of the reasons for the rules and carefully considered agreement. we just worry about the consequences, and few of us consider whether those consequences should even be there.
i used to struggle with this a lot, and for me it was a sign of maturity to even consider breaking any rules -- maturity as in thinking for myself, evaluating conditions, accepting responsibility for my actions, and refusing it for the feelings of others when i did something they didn't like but which harmed nobody. and i broke some rules just to break them, to see how i'd feel, what would happen. sometimes rules need to be broken to show that they're total hogwash. sometimes they need to be broken to learn that yeah, maybe they're not such a bad idea. without pushing the envelope, how do we really know where our boundaries lie?
is that "immature"? while in the process of maturing, one's by definition immature, but i view that more in terms of "not fully grown into an adult" as opposed to "naughty little prankster trying to freak the mundanes" which seems to be how you are using it.
i still have some rules in my head that i should break just to break them; stuff that i sucked in as an unquestioning child without assessing their validity for myself.
it's enormously freeing to break such engrained rules. even if afterwards i decide that yeah, the rule works for me, and i should keep it; it's way better to have broken it and evaluated my feelings than to have just accepted it. and yeah, it is fun to do something that makes me a little bit more free. part of the fun is in having overcome a multitude of fears that keep us all in line. another part is a certain joie de vivre from doing your own thing, censure by others be damned. i don't view that as immature per se.