piranha: red origami crane (Default)
[personal profile] piranha
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.

on 2007-10-24 00:26 (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] beckyzoole.livejournal.com
I think of rule-breaking as a normal and necessary part of growing up; it's part of the process of becoming mature, it is something that people do before they are mature. So if an adult is doing a lot of rule-breaking "just because", that's an adult that's acting like an adolescent. [shrug]

Of course, there's also mature rule-breaking in which a person has thought through the reasons and consequences and made a conscious decision to do their own thing.

What bugs me a lot, though, is when someone's rule-breaking impinges on my own life. For example, I was at a party once where a 50-something man was feeding women gooey chocolate-dipped fruit with his hands, in the process getting chocolate and fruit smushed onto their faces, hair and clothes. I wanted nothing to do with this, because I was wearing a new, dry-clean-only outfit. He ragged on me about being "square" and "not having fun" -- but I wasn't avoiding him because of some inhibited fear of dirt. I just didn't think the "fun" would be worth the dry-cleaning bill.

on 2007-10-24 14:27 (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] prairierabbit.livejournal.com
What bugs me a lot, though, is when someone's rule-breaking impinges on my own life.

I agree. Recently, it seems to be a trend that at a four-way stop, drivers try to slip through two or three at a time, instead of waiting to take their individual turns. That's simply selfishness and the sort of entitlement ("I'm special, I shouldn't have to wait my turn") that aggravates others. I don't have any patience with that sort of rule-breaking. Mature rule-breaking, to me, involves choices that are not simply a way to privilege oneself at the expense of others.
ext_481: origami crane (Default)
Posted by [identity profile] pir-anha.livejournal.com
oh, this is a good example of a type that nobody had brought up in the other thread. yes, absolutely, rule-breaking out of a misplaced sense of entitlement; there's a lot of that. i wouldn't call that immature, i think (i don't want to overload the term), but it's still an obnoxious type of rule-breaking.

on 2007-10-24 21:41 (UTC)
ext_481: origami crane (Default)
Posted by [identity profile] pir-anha.livejournal.com
*ewww*, gross. though i am not entirely sure what rule he was breaking. however, even if no rules are broken, imposing one's own standards of "fun" on others is louty behaviour.

on 2007-10-24 21:48 (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] beckyzoole.livejournal.com
Oh, he was going on about overcoming inhibitions, and said that avoiding physical dirt and mess was a symptom of sexually inhibition, and so on.

He thought the rule he was breaking was "now now, don't get dirty!" (with overtones of sex as "dirty") -- but really the rule he was breaking was "don't impose your own standard of fun on others". That, and the general rule of "don't be an a**hole".

on 2007-10-24 22:29 (UTC)
ext_481: origami crane (Default)
Posted by [identity profile] pir-anha.livejournal.com
oh, ok. well, that's perfectly alright for him to be doing, overcoming his own inhibitions. even asking others to go along is ok. but berating them when they say "no" is a different story, and pushing stuff in their face, that goes over the line.

i am not sure there actually is a rule such as "don't impose your own standard of fun on others" in the mainstream. that rule exists in several of my subcultures, and it's one i don't break, *heh*. but it's broken so often towards me by regular people that i am doubting they are aware of it.

parts of the whole "don't impose on others" it are accepted and even enshrined in law -- when it comes to physical actions, and loud noise. but generally people seem to act as if their sense of fun were the only sense of fun possible. it's often not enough to just say "no, thanks", many times there's argument about how this thing i am turning down "would be fun!" and how i need to let loose and enjoy myself more. i've lost count of how often my sense of humour has been disparaged.

on 2007-10-25 01:05 (UTC)
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)
Posted by [personal profile] redbird
I wonder how he would have reacted to "it's your fun, will you pay my dry cleaning bill?"

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