Modern Immaturity

The first synonym for maturity that occurs to me is “equipoise,” with its suggestion of cool-headed balance, which may explain why children in possession of emotional equilibrium and the ability to exercise judgment are so rare and disturbing. They seem freakish not because they are prodigies of temperament but because they remind us of unhappy adults we have known. Something about them has been thwarted, like the yellow grass that grows under rocks. They have leaped from infancy to unhappy middle age without having ever grown up.

One of the unforeseen gifts of being a parent of young children is seeing our own worst behavior reflected back at us – impulsiveness, greed, impatience, spontaneous anger, a total lack of gratitude, and disregard for whatever displeases or inconveniences us; in a word, selfishness. Children are not nice, and neither are we, at least most of the time. From children we are given another chance to finally learn how inappropriate, how utterly abhorrent, childish behavior is in an adult, and for that we can be grateful. Anyone who romances childhood as a time of innocence and virtue inhabits a universe I hope never to visit.

So, let us imagine a world in which immaturity is widely admired as acceptable adult behavior and the right of every citizen. Most likely you are way ahead of me, dear reader, and so is the British writer Theodore Dalrymple, the pen name of Dr. Anthony Daniels. That is our fallen world, of course, and it is Dalrymple’s delight to expose its vulgarity and savagery. Dalrymple comes by his 20/20 moral vision the old-fashioned way, by earning it. He seems to have practiced medicine in much of the Third World, and until recently worked as a prison doctor and psychiatrist in Birmingham, England. Some liken Dalrymple to George Orwell, and both writers share a reverence for honesty, fearlessness about cultural pieties and a mastery of the plain style of writing. One of Orwell’s books was titled Down and Out in Paris and London; one of Dalrymple’s, Life at the Bottom. The good doctor, however, is a moralist, a lineal descendent of writers as various as La Rochefoucauld (about whom he has written a fine essay) and Samuel Johnson, and much of his prolific output, happily, is available online at The New Criterion, City Journal and The Spectator, among other places.

I don’t wish to give the impression that Dalrymple is just another scold, the literary counterpart of the red-faced guy at the end of the bar muttering about kids and taxes, though his most recent book is titled Our Culture, What’s Left of It. Some of his best work examines books, especially Russian classics and most especially Anton Chekhov, his fellow doctor-writer. His single most moving and memorable piece appeared in The Spectator two weeks before Christmas in 2003. It carries the headline “Reasons to be cheerful,” which would have sent me running in the opposite direction above the byline of any other writer.

The essay, barely three pages in the printout I saved, appears no longer to be available online. It opens reasonably and matter-of-factly, which is a perfect strategic feint for a Jeremiah who wishes to court, not repel, his readers: “In my line of work, it is rather hard to think of reasons to be cheerful. On the contrary, it requires a lot of concentrated intellectual effort: one has the sensation of scraping the bottom of one’s skull for thoughts that just aren’t there. Of course, since lamentation about the state of the world is one of life’s unfailing pleasures, the world is a greater source of satisfaction than ever.”

That final, quiet punch line is quintessential Dalrymple, who proceeds to justify the headline: “Thanks to the fact that I write, my life is satisfactory: I can inhabit gloom and live in joy. When something unpleasant happens to me, provided only that it is potentially of literary use, my first thought is `How best can I describe this?’ I thereby distance myself from my own displeasure or irritation. As I tell my patients, much to their surprise – for it is not a fashionable view – it is far more important to be able to lose yourself than to find yourself.”

Beautiful, and that brings us back to immaturity. I’m not certain young children – say, under seven or eight – are equipped to feel or express genuine gratitude, though they certainly know how to fake it. Nor do they possess the emotional grace to distance themselves from “displeasure or irritation.” Many adults do not, of course, in an age when no sports event seems complete without at least one attention-grabbing temper tantrum.

As an act of homage, one is tempted to type out the essay in its entirety, it is so dense with wisdom and precision of thought and expression. I hope eventually Dalrymple reprints it between hard covers. I keep my printout in my desk for those times when I need a quick moral and stylistic tonic. Here’s another excerpt:

“I’m never bored. I’m appalled, horrified, angered, but never bored. The world appears to me so infinite in its variety that many lifetimes could not exhaust its interest. So long as you can still be surprised, you have something to be thankful for (that is one of the reasons why the false knowingness of street credibility is so destructive of true happiness).”

And another:

“I try to infuse my patients with the glory of the world, with indifferent success, I must admit. It is almost as if they wanted to be boring, to justify their own lack of interest in it. To be bored and disabused is taken by many people nowadays as a sign of spiritual election or superiority, as if the world does not quite come up to their exacting standards. With the right attitude, though, very small things, such as an inscription in a second-hand book, can kindle enthusiasm and joy.”

Those are inspirational words one can respect because they come from the pen of a grownup, a man with equipoise.