Fun Public Humiliation, Etc.

God, people are fun. Just...fun. The Socrates discussion went well; we split into two groups to make it easier. My prominent worries appear to be in everyone's head, at any rate my questions always resonate with the group and make it to the top three topics. Mine actually made it through today, "What does it mean to be an adult?" I'd like to pursue this further, "In regards to children (and those with the mental capacity of children), how much responsbility should be attributed to the child and how much to their environment?" But that will come later.

Adulthood, as it turns out (predictably so), adulthood means different things to different people. One woman, a professed anarchist, believed that an "adult" had a house, family, children, all the typical things of "settling down." Another brought up the distinction between the "private adult" and the "public adult." One might be constrained in one's public life, i.e. women being contained to the household, but still feel an "adult" in private, capable of raising a family, etc, no longer feeling like a "child." A main point of adulthood seemed to be a matter of taking responsiblity, rather than passing it on to a "parental" figure. A woman from England spoke of how 16 year old girls back home would talk about having a kid so that they could get a Council house, etc because if they HAD a child, the government would basically support them. The question, then, became, if you are always taken care of like that, institutionalized, can you ever really be an adult? And so forth.

Afterwards, naturally, we regressed to high school, and ate a lot of ice cream and played Monopoly and Jenga (and held our breaths in anticpation at every block successfully removed). THis group of high schoolers sitting next to us would "punish" the loser by making him or her perform some ridiculous stunt, such as hugging a stranger or asking someone to hit them on the head with a squeaky (I LOVE the word "squeaky") mallet.

At some point, a few of our group had to sing and dance to a Korean pop song in front of a bunch of more sedate tables while wearing wigs. We cracked up, but were generally ignored by the normal chess playing citizens.

When I got back to the apartment, I was still full from the Korean lunch (clear broth with wheat, not RICE!, noodles, kim chee, dumplings), so I ate a bit of glass noodles and beef and chatted with a friend, who as it turned out the next day, was slightly inebriated, but hardly to the point of excess. Slept well, in anticipation of a full week....