[FRIAM] Pondering the slang Adulting

[Prof David West]

Nick,
there was a troll before there was acting like a troll (i.e. trolling), and the troll was a bridge lurker.  Read, sometime, Vernor Vinge's SciFi book True Names for insight into how magical/mythical metaphors dominated the early days of computing/programming when master developers were wizards.

Adulting is  byproduct of a culture and an economic class where social roles (e.g. child, adult, elder) are poorly and arbitrarily  defined (e.g. 18 is 'adult' when you need cannon fodder in Vietnam, but 21 to indulge in socially acceptable induction of an altered state of consciousness); and when there are minimal, if any, ritualistic rites of passage marking transitions from role to role. I include economic class as a climate for silliness like "adulting" because 'adult' behavior is imposed and the child has no option and cannot revert.

Nice pun re "childing" but unless you are of the community that eschews sex except for procreative purposes; consensual sex will, most of the time, be adulting regardless of the age of the participants.

davew


On Wed, Nov 14, 2018, at 9:40 AM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Thanks, Glen.  Oh, I see that it has come to mean many things.  Meaning 
> is like that.  But I was curious about its origin.  Was the person who 
> first used the term thinking about the Billie Goats Gruff (WHO'S THAT 
> TRAMPING OVER MY BRIDGE!) [Yes, Owen, I am shouting.}  or was he putting 
> along, at 2 miles an hour, half a sleep in the back of a boat on a quiet 
> Vermont lake?
> 
> Nick 
> 
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> Clark University
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
> Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2018 9:15 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Pondering the slang Adulting
> 
> I've always taken "the Troll" to be a species of Trickster... not always 
> comfortable, but often valuable.
> 
> 
> On 11/14/18 7:39 AM, ∄ uǝʃƃ wrote:
> > It's come to mean many things, but all along the lines of provocation.  Boghossian et al, for example, did a *great* job at provoking Wilson and Shaw and a host of other actual scholars into responding to their science fraud.  But it's important, to me anyway, to remember that trolling also encompasses behaviors like Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and Socrates' treatment of Euthyphro.
> >
> > So, the options you've offered, fishing or monster, is impoverished.  The village shaman is a better example.  Even if shamen/witches mostly use provocation to hypnotize and control the villagers [†], we can assume that some (perhaps small) percentage of shamen/witches are doing it for the good of the tribe, not just to grab a quick bite.
> >
> > As I've posted before, here is my favorite defense of trolling:
> >
> >   How to make a nuisance of yourself in [usenet] news
> >   
> > http://web.archive.org/web/20070609085706/http://www.sm.luth.se/~torke
> > l/eget/net.html
> >
> > Torkel's dead, but definitely not forgotten!
> >
> > [†] Perhaps mostly in self-defense, since the physically or mentally abnormal people who didn't become holy people might be executed or exiled.
> >
> > On 11/13/18 7:40 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> >> I have always wondered about "trolling".  Is it the monster under the bridge or the fisherman.  Or both?
> 
> 
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