When a common quip reveals something far more than what’s often thought
Oh, gosh, don’t you have any silly pet peeves? Anybody? Well, I certainly do. One of them is hearing someone say, “We’re all adults here.”
Now saying that within range of my hearing aids is sure to gets my bile a runnin’. “We’re all adults here.” Rubbish! What the Hell is that supposed to mean? Does such give any so-called adults in the room or wherever such humans congregate carte blanche permission to do whatever they want to do? Does just because one is 18 or 21 or even 43, 81, or 113 one therefore has the right and the privilege to act like an immature boffletwit?
It’s definitely not a term of endearment, is it? Indeed, it’s a projection of the speaker’s sense of expectations around behavior. Saying out loud unto others “we’re all adults here” constitutes a form of chastisement, does it not? It is as if the speaker of the horrid phrase feels entitled to lord it over the rest of us as if we’re serfs, slaves, or God forbid, little children.
Look around the planet. Gaze thru the annals of history. Study the mysteries of economics, finance, business, politics, art, sports, and religion. The leaders of nations are all adults. The leaders of businesses are usually adults. Adults are everywhere down in this Planet Earth at the bottom of the atmosphere, and we have fucked it up.
Children often have a better grasp of both subject matter and of reality itself before adulthood corrupts them into deceiving themselves and each other as adults. Human adults are a damn mess, and a terrifying one, too. Human adults are prone to violence, ethical and moral lapses while being in denial they engaged in unethical and immoral acts while blaming everyone else.
My dear sister, who I love and cherish deeply, kept repeating “We’re adults here” like an automaton the last time we visited. At the time, I couldn’t figure out why such a phrase was irritating me so much. Hearing those horrid words felt like cockleburs in me underwear! So I chewed on it for about a month and a half before it finally dawned upon me, yes, it’s a pet peeve! Thank you, Sis!
Such a phrase played into the story I’ve made up since childhood other people see me as “deaf, dumb, and stupid,” and I am “always in trouble” with somebody over something. These are crazy stories I make up in my head as I give meaning, unconsciously in the moment, to whatever I observe in my environment and interpret. Many philosophers, psychologists, and neurologists have long ago understood perception is deception, that what we consciously view as “reality” is much more and also different from what our minds believe it to be.
So please stop saying, “We’re all adults here.” Being an adult doesn’t make the world a better place, and yet isn’t that the implied possibility, the potential of being an adult human? We supposedly have a certain degree of freedom of choice and action within the limitations of our circumstances. Free will may indeed be an illusion, and, yes, we may all live within a simulation in a holographic or simulated universe of a multiverse, but within the confines of the Greater Game we do have a wee bit of power. So grab it, that power, stop saying, “We’re all adults here” as such keeps us dumbed down, depressed, and oppressed, and help break us all the hell out!
William Dudley Bass
Monday 7 July 2025
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol
Copyright © 2025 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.